Tag Archives ⇒ book

A profile of William Penn by Andrew Murphy

January 4, 2019
· Martin Kelley

Mur­phy is a polit­i­cal sci­ence prof in New Jer­sey and has writ­ten a new bio of William Penn. I sus­pect this Aeon post is a bit of spon­sored con­tent to pro­mote the book but it’s still worth a read:

Penn was a man of para­dox­i­cal qual­i­ties. He espoused a rad­i­cal­ly egal­i­tar­i­an Quak­er the­ol­o­gy, insist­ing that some­thing divine resided with­in each indi­vid­ual, yet he owned slaves on his Amer­i­can estate. He praised rep­re­sen­ta­tive insti­tu­tions such as par­lia­ment and the jury sys­tem, but spent years in hid­ing for his loy­al­ty to an abso­lutist king. ‘I am like to be an adopt­ed Amer­i­can,’ he wrote short­ly after arriv­ing in Penn­syl­va­nia in 1682, but spent only four of his remain­ing 36 years there. And he was chron­i­cal­ly inca­pable of man­ag­ing mon­ey, spend­ing eight months in an Eng­lish debtors’ prison in his 60s, even while his colony quick­ly became a com­mer­cial success. 

https://​aeon​.co/​i​d​e​a​s​/​h​e​s​-​n​o​t​-​t​h​e​-​g​u​y​-​o​n​-​q​u​a​k​e​r​-​o​a​t​s​-​h​e​s​-​m​u​c​h​-​m​o​r​e​-​i​n​t​e​r​e​s​t​ing

Nuturing ministers: Case studies

December 24, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Bri­an Dray­ton is start­ing a new series of his­tor­i­cal exam­ples of Quak­ers giv­ing min­is­te­r­i­al advice and training:

As I am work­ing on a revi­sion of my book on the Quak­er min­istry, I am revis­it­ing his­tor­i­cal accounts of times when a min­is­ter was giv­en guid­ance (elder­ing, over­sight, nur­ture, dis­ci­pline). As part of that work, I will from time to time post “case stud­ies” on this blog. 

Nutur­ing min­is­ters: Case stud­ies, Intro

Mike Shell reviews book reviews

November 13, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Okay, it’s not quite so ref­er­en­tial: Mike’s lift­ing up three books in Sep­tem­ber’s Friends Jour­nal book columns that “help ‘white’ read­ers go deep­er into self-awareness about the hid­den dynam­ics of racism.” He also tells a lit­tle of his own sto­ry of color-blindness.

When my “white” friends said I couldn’t bring my “black” best friend to their lunch table, I shrugged and sat with him at a “black” table. On the minus side, when some­one in the school park­ing lot shout­ed nig­ger lover, and my friend want­ed to fight, I just told him I didn’t mind the insult. That was prob­a­bly my first seri­ous­ly hurt­ful act of “white color-blindness.” It took me decades to real­ize, to my shame, that it was he who was being insult­ed, not me. 

https://​uni​ver​sal​ist​friends​.org/​w​e​b​l​o​g​/​t​h​r​e​e​-​b​o​o​k​s​-​f​o​r​-​w​h​i​t​e​-​p​e​o​ple

Autopsy of a Deceased Church

July 26, 2018
· Martin Kelley

From a book review by Macken­zie Mor­gan on the Quak­er Out­reach site:

Often church­es that fail to reflect their chang­ing local com­mu­ni­ty die off in a gen­er­a­tion or two. Implic­it bias has been a point of dis­cus­sion in some year­ly meet­ings in recent years, and this is related.

In fact, a Friend once told me they’d been asked, “can we tar­get these Face­book ads only to peo­ple who are just like us?”

Actu­al­ly, Face­book can cre­ate what they call looka­like audi­ences. It’s very cool and very creepy at the same time. It’s part of the suite of fine-grain tar­get­ing tools that’s let­ting polit­i­cal pro­pa­gan­dists and lifestyle-focused com­pa­nies con­trol our media con­sump­tion at the social feed lev­el and rein­force liked-minded group­think. Atten­tion silos are dan­ger­ous for our democ­ra­cy and they’re no good for our church­es. If the Quak­er good news has any mean­ing left in it, it has to be wide­ly applic­a­ble out­side of our cul­tur­al, style bubbles.

Autop­sy of a Deceased Church

Reading the Qur’an as a Quaker

April 26, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Earl­ham col­lege pro­fe­sor and Quak­er author Michael Birkel decid­ed to reach across reli­gious divides by sim­ply talk­ing to his neigh­bors, a project which came to span the Unit­ed States: Read­ing the Qur’an as a Quaker

What is it like to read some­one else’s scrip­ture? I think it’s quite pos­si­ble that it can change you in ways that I can’t pre­dict for any read­er, except to say that it will make your life richer.

In addi­tion to the Quak­er­S­peak video there’s also a book of Birkel’s project, Qu’ran in Con­ver­sa­tion.

Profiting on empire

April 10, 2018
· Martin Kelley

We think of slav­ery as issue that tore Friends apart as the con­sen­sus on its accept­abil­i­ty shift­ed in our reli­gious soci­ety. A review of a book shows that in the U.K., gun man­u­fac­tur­ing under­went this shift: Review: ‘Empire of Guns’ Chal­lenges the Role of War in Industrialization

On its face, the deci­sion by the Soci­ety of Friends to cen­sure a fla­grant arms mer­chant in its ranks may not seem sur­pris­ing. Paci­fist prin­ci­ples were cen­tral to Quak­er ide­ol­o­gy, as was oppo­si­tion to slav­ery. Guns fueled not just war but the slave trade. Yet Mr. Galton’s father, and his father before him — and indeed many oth­er Quak­ers who long dom­i­nat­ed Birmingham’s arms indus­try — had been unapolo­getic gun­mak­ers for 70 years with­out attract­ing rebuke. What had changed in the inter­im, in ways that are deeply inter­re­lat­ed, were soci­ety and the guns themselves.

Today the debate on guns in the U.S. is focused on assault weapons being used by indi­vid­u­als but the Gal­ton debate is more about the role of a Quaker-produced prod­uct in war. Britain of course was an empire, an empire held togeth­er by force of weapons. Some per­cent­age of the indus­tri­al rev­o­lu­tion in Britain was financed by war and its prod­ucts often were employed over­seas in the main­te­nance and exten­sion of the empire (I’m think­ing for exam­ple of trains).

When I first read John Wool­man I was struck by his call­ing slav­ery a prod­uct of war. I usu­al­ly think of it as a human rights and dig­ni­ty issue (and of course it was and Wool­man was par­tic­u­lar­ly sen­si­tive to the human dimen­sion) but it was also a type of high­ly orga­nized war­fare. See­ing the sys­temic nature of the trade as a whole let Friends bet­ter see the unac­cept­abil­i­ty of slav­ery — and impe­r­i­al weapons manufacturing.


Review: ‘Empire of Guns’ Challenges the Role of War in Industrialization (Published 2018)

Review: ‘Empire of Guns’ Chal­lenges the Role of War in Indus­tri­al­iza­tion (Pub­lished 2018) 

In her new book, Pro­fes­sor Priya Satia aims to over­turn the con­ven­tion­al wis­dom about the role of guns…

www.nytimes.com www​.nytimes​.com

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/

A Quaker Lens Aids Biblical Interpretation

March 8, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Rhon­da Pfalzgraff-Carlson reads main­stream com­men­tary on the book of Colos­sians and is dis­ap­point­ed. Why? They miss rela­tion­ships and con­texts that seem obvi­ous from a Quak­er per­spec­tive. A Quak­er Lens Aids Bib­li­cal Interpretation

Even know­ing that I’m col­or­ing this inter­pre­ta­tion through the use of a Quak­er lens, I believe that a Quak­er per­spec­tive can help the mean­ing of the Bible become more clear.

I must admit that I take claims that any denom­i­na­tion has some sort of spe­cial con­nec­tion to the ear­ly church with a heap­ing spoon­ful of salt. But the ear­ly church was dis­or­ga­nized in a way that Friends can be.