I’d put the dilemma of Quakerism in the 21st century this way: It’s not just that our treasures are in jars of clay, it’s that no one would even know the treasures were there, and it seems like they’re easier to find elsewhere. And how do we know that what we have are even treasures?

I gave my own skeptical take on Venables’s article yesterday. Smith hits on part of what worries me when he says current religious disengagement is of a kind to be immune to “better social media game or a more streamlined church bureaucracy.” These are the easy, value-free answers institutions like to turn to.

I’m thinking about these issues not only because of this article but also because Friends Journal is seeking submissions for thr August issue “Going Viral with Quakerism.” A few weeks ago I wrote a post that referred back to Quaker internet outreach 25 years ago.

Could Quakerism be the radical faith that the millennial generation is looking for?