Tag Archives ⇒ Betsy Cazden

Quaker Money

July 27, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Here’s a from-the-archives piece I stum­bled again on recent­ly. It’s from New Eng­land his­to­ri­an Bet­sy Caz­den, whose insights on Quak­er cul­ture I adore. She wrote this for Friends Jour­nal in 2006:

How did Friends come to do so well? The stan­dard sto­ry is a vari­ant on the Puri­tan one: Quak­ers became wealthy by work­ing dili­gent­ly; extend­ing their exper­i­men­tal approach to reli­gion to invent new indus­tri­al tech­nolo­gies; trad­ing hon­est­ly (there­by attract­ing cus­tomers); mak­ing pro­duc­tive use of transat­lantic kin­ship net­works; and liv­ing fru­gal­ly, with­out money-drains like drink­ing or gam­bling, there­by free­ing up mon­ey for sav­ings, invest­ment, and phil­an­thropic giv­ing to Quaker-run insti­tu­tions. All of that may be true, but is at best par­tial. The unspo­ken “rest of the sto­ry” has two pieces: land and slaves.

I’m sure I’ve read this arti­cle before (I uncon­scious­ly sum­ma­rized it this past May) but I think it’s an impor­tant dis­cus­sion to rethink every so often.


Quaker Money, Old Money, and White Privilege - Friends Journal

Quak­er Mon­ey, Old Mon­ey, and White Priv­i­lege — Friends Journal 

“As a birthright Friend, she real­ly knew her antiques.” This com­ment opened a tes­ti­mo­ny to the life of…

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Betsy Cazden’s new site

January 5, 2007
· Martin Kelley

I’m pleased to announce that my lat­est free­lance project has just launched: Betsy​Caz​den​.com. There’s noth­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly rev­o­lu­tion­ary about the tech­nol­o­gy behind the site or its design, but the Quak­er geek in me is so hap­py to see it. Long-term read­ers will remem­ber my excit­ed post Fel­low­ship Mod­el of Lib­er­al Quak­ers, writ­ten after read­ing Bet­sy’s Bea­con Hill Friends pam­phlet Fel­low­ships, Con­fer­ences, and Asso­ci­a­tions. Bet­sy is one of the small num­ber of Quak­er his­to­ri­ans will­ing to take on con­tem­po­rary his­to­ry and her obser­va­tions can be quite insight­ful. I hope she’ll find an even wider audi­ence with this site and the blog that she plans to add soon.

FGC Gathering program is up, whew…

March 23, 2005
· Martin Kelley

Thank you to every­one who refrained from com­ment­ing after 9pm last night. I final­ly slogged through the work of putting the FGC Gath­er­ing pro­gram online in my role as FGC web­mas­ter. Whoo-whee! For those who don’t know, the Gath­er­ing is a week-long con­fer­ence held at dif­fer­ent loca­tions each sum­mer: this year’s takes place Sev­enth Month 2 – 9 in Blacks­burg, Virginia.

Now I guess it’s time to think about work­shops. Zach Moon and I are offer­ing up one called “Strangers to the Covenant” but then you know that already. Liz Oppen­heimer aka the The Good Raised Up is lead­ing one called “Quak­er Iden­ti­ty: Yearn­ing, Form­ing, Deep­en­ing” that I sus­pect will be informed by her “own expe­ri­ence of step­ping into a Quak­er iden­ti­ty”. There’s also an excit­ing his­to­ry work­shop being led by Bet­sy Caz­den, “Dilem­mas from Our Quak­er Past” (I have to admit when I saw the list­ing I won­dered if I should call Zach up and assure him he’d be fine doing the Strangers work­shop on his own so I could take Bet­sy’s). Oth­er men­tions: my wife Julie real­ly liked the Lynn Fitz-Hugh work­shop she took a few years ago.

As always there are work­shops whose lead­ers I know to be more sol­id and ground­ed than the work­shop they’re propos­ing; con­verse­ly, there are work­shops that sound more inter­est­ing than I know their leader to be. Like always there are plen­ty whose appeal and/or rel­e­vance to Quak­erism I just don’t com­pre­hend at all, but that’s the Gathering.

Any rec­om­men­da­tions from the peanut gallery? I should say that I’d like to refrain from ridi­cul­ing all of the work­shops that beg to be made fun of. It feels as if this would edge too close to detrac­tion. We will only get to King­dom by mod­el­ing Chris­t­ian char­i­ty and wear­ing our love on our sleeves.