Tag Archives ⇒ blog

Spirit-Led Evangelism

June 1, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Spirit-Led Evan­ge­lism

Adria Gulizia guest post­ing on Johan Mau­r­er’s blog: It is hard to talk about God, Jesus and the spir­i­tu­al life in this moment in Amer­i­can his­to­ry. Many of our non-Christian neigh­bors find the lit­tle they know about Jesus to be attrac­tive or intrigu­ing, but they know enough about the fail­ings of the church to have very neg­a­tive opin­ions about actu­al Chris­tians. If we do have non-Christian friends, it may be despite our Chris­t­ian faith rather than because of it — we may be seen as the excep­tion that proves the rule.

https://​blog​.canyoube​lieve​.me/​2​0​1​8​/​0​5​/​a​d​r​i​a​-​g​u​l​i​z​i​a​-​s​p​i​r​i​t​-​l​e​d​-​e​v​a​n​g​e​l​i​s​m​.​h​tml

The sobriety of Barclay: games, sports, and comedies

April 20, 2018
· Martin Kelley

The sobri­ety of Bar­clay: games, sports, and comedies

So here I am, read­ing detec­tive nov­els, get­ting mas­sages, lis­ten­ing to blues, and griev­ing the death of Har­ry Ander­son. Are my recre­ations evi­dence of the degra­da­tion of soci­ety (or of Friends) in the cen­turies since Bar­clay? Or am I unique­ly cor­rupt? Or is there a way I’m actu­al­ly hon­or­ing his cau­tions despite the greater free­doms I claim in choos­ing ways to relax?

https://​blog​.canyoube​lieve​.me/​2​0​1​8​/​0​4​/​g​a​m​e​s​-​s​p​o​r​t​s​-​c​o​m​e​d​i​e​s​.​h​tml

I’m not the only one who digs archives

April 12, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Philadel­phia Friends are so mod­est that blog posts on Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing’s web­site don’t even have bylines. Or maybe some­one for­got to fill out a field. Either way, here’s a first-person account by an anony­mous Philadelphia-area Friend in their ear­ly 60s who start­ed read­ing Friends Jour­nal archives: Some Thoughts from the 1955 Friends Journal

I select­ed the issue clos­est to my birth date and began read­ing. The dis­cus­sion of the Kore­an con­flict, of the arms race, of the Israeli-Palestinian dis­pute, could all have been writ­ten today. And for a lunch-time med­i­ta­tion, this arti­cle, on prepar­ing for meet­ing, was just the right size for read­ing over my soup and sandwich.

Review of Traditional Quaker Christianity

April 5, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Patri­cia Dall­mann reviews a 2004 book by Friends of Ohio Year­ly Meet­ing, Tra­di­tion­al Quak­er Chris­tian­i­ty:

Though Tra­di­tion­al Quak­er Chris­tian­i­ty is intend­ed to con­vey the tra­di­tion among Con­ser­v­a­tive Friends, it may find read­ers among Lib­er­als and Evan­gel­i­cals. Should anoth­er gen­er­a­tion of Quak­ers come forth and under­take the restora­tion of “the des­o­la­tions of many gen­er­a­tions,” they could find this book a resource for build­ing up a Quak­er Chris­t­ian society.

I must admit that after spend­ing my work days read­ing man­u­scripts and my com­mutes read­ing blog posts, the enjoy­ment of books has got­ten a bit squeezed out. This looks like a use­ful one to try to fit it. Friend Mar­ty Grundy reviewed this title for Friends Jour­nal a few years ago. After post­ing the link to Patri­ci­a’s post, Macken­zie remind­ed me that Quak­er Faith and Pod­cast has also been going through the book in recent episodes.

https://​patradall​mann​.word​press​.com/​2​0​1​8​/​0​4​/​0​5​/​r​e​v​i​e​w​-​o​f​-​t​r​a​d​i​t​i​o​n​a​l​-​q​u​a​k​e​r​-​c​h​r​i​s​t​i​a​n​i​ty/

Daily quotes

March 5, 2018
· Martin Kelley

What’s an email newslet­ter with­out a dai­ly inspi­ra­tional quote, right? I’ve put togeth­er a lit­tle hack that should put one front and cen­ter every morn­ing. I’ve primed it with a hand­ful of clas­sics — Fox, the Pen­ing­tons, Jones. But as it gets going I’ll start includ­ing some of the great modern-day quotes that show up every week on the web. And rather than just quote a ran­dom 300-some-year-old quote out of con­text, I hope to find it embed­ded and dis­cussed in cur­rent blog posts. We’re a liv­ing tradition.

Decline and persistence, part two

March 2, 2018
· Martin Kelley

So much to chew on in Johan Mau­r­er’s Decline and per­sis­tence, part two. Find a good chair and take the time to read.

Friends the­ol­o­gy strips away all irrel­e­vant social dis­tinc­tions, giv­ing us the poten­tial for rad­i­cal hos­pi­tal­i­ty, but that requires us to neu­tral­ize elit­ist sig­nals of all kinds with a hunger to taste heav­en’s diver­si­ty here and now. If it takes a whole new con­ver­sion to give us the nec­es­sary free­dom and emo­tion­al range in place of old class anx­i­eties, so be it.

http://​blog​.canyoube​lieve​.me/​2​0​1​8​/​0​3​/​d​e​c​l​i​n​e​-​a​n​d​-​p​e​r​s​i​s​t​e​n​c​e​-​p​a​r​t​-​t​w​o​.​h​tml

Weak politics

February 27, 2018
· Martin Kelley

An unsigned post on the Quak­er Lib­er­tar­i­an group blog looks at post­mod­ernism and weak politics. 

As I see it, Quak­ers at their best have been about the work of the for­mer for many years. And post­moder­ni­ty offers a com­ple­men­tary philo­soph­i­cal and the­o­log­i­cal lens to Quak­er faith and prac­tice, even as it chal­lenges our tra­di­tion to the extent that it makes uni­ver­sal claims, builds up its own dom­i­nant struc­tures and nar­ra­tives, and engages in oppres­sion of oth­ers in the name of a greater good

Does our continued existence matter?

February 24, 2018
· Martin Kelley

I’m always hap­py when Johan Mau­r­er wades into an online dis­cus­sion, as he can often gives a steady­ing long-term view of pan­ics. He’s jumped in with per­spec­tive on the viral arti­cle of the week, Don McCormick­’s Can Quak­erism Sur­vive? from the Feb­ru­ary Friends Jour­nal.

Johan reminds us that alarms about the future of Quak­erism has long been ring­ing and draws on Joshua Brown’s warn­ings about New York Year­ly Meet­ing from 30 years ago! Lest we chalk all this up an inces­sant alarmism, Johan gives some stats about that year­ly meet­ing. Uh-oh:

7,070 (in 1955)
5,124 (in 1985)
3,241 (in 2015)

But Johan goes beyond that to ask some ques­tions that we real­ly need to sit with. For exam­ple, he asks:

Giv­en that we are a micro­scop­ic per­cent­age of the world Chris­t­ian move­ment, do we have an inflat­ed sense of our own impor­tance? Or, to put it more pos­i­tive­ly, could we rest con­tent­ed that our influ­ence on Chris­t­ian dis­ci­ple­ship will last beyond our insti­tu­tion­al survival?

This is a must-read blog for any­one any­where on the Quak­er spectrum

The Quaker movement: decline and persistence
The Quak­er move­ment: decline and persistence 

Polit­i­cal and cul­tur­al obser­va­tions in light of Quak­er discipleship.

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