Tag Archives ⇒ christian

Johan Maurer: Whose faith? Whose practice?

April 16, 2026
· Martin Kelley

Johan Mau­r­er brings up a ques­tion in a post about what was the Lon­don Year­ly Meet­ing’s book of Chris­t­ian Faith and Prac­tice. He asks whether our prac­tices should be treat­ed as mod­els we’d expect oth­er Chris­tians to follow.

I sup­pose that in either case, Chris­t­ian or Quak­er, the pre­vail­ing assump­tion was that these books are for inter­nal use among Friends. This is who we are, more or less. But what I like about the title Chris­t­ian Faith and Prac­tice is anoth­er inter­pre­ta­tion entire­ly, one I have no per­mis­sion or evi­dence to pro­pose: this way of faith and life is not just for us; it’s rec­om­mend­ed for all Chris­tians.

I’d argue a strong yes to this. When I think about what ancient Quak­er odd­i­ties might still be rel­e­vant, one of the ques­tions I ask myself is whether we could argue that the whole church should also adopt the prac­tice (how­ev­er unlike­ly that might be in real­i­ty). If it’s just some Quak­er canard, we can toss it into an antiq­ui­ty dust­bin. But if all Chris­tians should be fol­low­ing the prac­tice, then let’s set the example.

I like Thomas Clarkson’s his­tor­i­cal account of Friends par­tic­u­lar­ly because he’s not writ­ing for a Quak­er audi­ence. I get the feel­ing he’s hold­ing our prac­tices up for scruti­ny, as if to say that maybe every­one should be fol­low­ing them and indeed, his paci­fism and abo­li­tion­ism were great­ly influ­enced by the Friends he met in his work.

Of course this wit­ness to oth­er Chris­tians sort of falls apart if we don’t con­sid­er our­selves Chris­t­ian. If online dis­course is any indi­ca­tion, there are large num­bers of Quak­ers who are rather obliv­i­ous that almost all of our Quak­er iden­ti­ty has a bib­li­cal basis (selec­tive, of course, and also inter­pret­ed, debat­ed and chang­ing). Quak­erism is seen as some­thing that just ran­dom­ly popped up in the world. None of the ear­ly Friends would have thought that.

Whose faith? Whose practice? (part one)
Whose faith? Whose prac­tice? (part one) 

Polit­i­cal and cul­tur­al obser­va­tions in light of Quak­er discipleship.

blog.canyoubelieve.me blog​.canyoube​lieve​.me

Tim Gee tracks down Ann Lee’s Quaker connection

March 17, 2026
· Martin Kelley

I always love a lit­tle sleuthing and all the bet­ter if it argues against some poor­ly researched report that made its way to Wikipedia.

The claim is that Shak­er leader Ann Lee was born a Quak­er. The Wikipedia entry says: “Her par­ents were mem­bers of a dis­tinct branch of the Soci­ety of Friends (a sect of Quak­ers) and too poor to afford their chil­dren even the rudi­ments of edu­ca­tion.” The source of this is giv­en in the cita­tion: a 1879 ency­clo­pe­dia arti­cle, a copy of which is host­ed on Wik­isource: “Her par­ents were mem­bers of a dis­tinct branch of the soci­ety of Friends, and too poor to afford their chil­dren even the rudi­ments of edu­ca­tion.” A source for this claim was nev­er giv­en in the ency­clo­pe­dia, though lat­er on it does ref­er­ence Fred­er­ick William Evans, a much lat­er Shak­er figure.

That is the Tim Gee com­piles five pieces of evi­dence that togeth­er feel very con­vinc­ing.

There are of course influ­ences but that’s to be expect­ed. Every reli­gious move­ment of the Sec­ond Great Awak­en­ing had some rela­tion­ship to Quak­ers. The Methodists, Mor­mons, Holi­ness, Adven­tists all have some con­nec­tions. When you tour the “1652 Coun­try” area of Eng­land, where George Fox first brought Quak­ers togeth­er, you’ll keep run­ning into signs about John Wes­ley doing the same for Methodists a cen­tu­ry lat­er, and here in South Jer­sey where I live a whole slew of Quak­ers became Methodists in the ear­ly 1800s. At least one ear­ly Mor­mon evan­ge­list in Ohio essen­tial­ly went from Quak­er town to Quak­er town try­ing to recruit peo­ple. The Quak­er defense of female lead­er­ship and the prin­ci­ple that women can preach obvi­ous­ly rubbed off on the Shak­ers and oth­er movements.

The idea that the British colonies in Amer­i­ca were some pure land where we could rein­vent a prim­i­tive Chris­tian­i­ty was a pow­er­ful meme (if you will) at the time and cer­tain­ly drew Ann Lee to cross over and plant a reli­gious move­ment here. But Ann Lee picked one of the least Quak­er areas to plant her com­mu­ni­ty and drew ear­ly mem­bers from New Eng­land mil­len­ni­al­ist revival­ists. She def­i­nite­ly want­ed to build some­thing dis­tinct from Friends.

Ann Lee Was Never a Quaker: Here's the Evidence
Ann Lee Was Nev­er a Quak­er: Here’s the Evidence 

Five rea­sons why Wikipedia is wrong.

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Indigenous and Quaker Both

January 27, 2026
· Martin Kelley

There’s often an implied us-them dichoto­my when Quak­ers talk about Indige­nous Peo­ples so I’m fas­ci­nat­ed by com­mu­ni­ties that are both. My col­league Sharlee DiMenichi wrote about the hand­ful of month­ly meet­ings — and an entire year­ly meet­ing — in the U.S. that are major­i­ty Indige­nous.

I love com­pli­cat­ed iden­ti­ties like this. There’s a lot of dis­cern­ment that goes on about how to incor­po­rate Indige­nous and Quak­er ele­ments into life. For many, it seems a sur­pris­ing­ly nat­ur­al fit. This is true else­where, in parts of Africa and South Amer­i­ca, where mis­sion­ary Quak­ers’ beliefs meshed with the belief sys­tems of pre-colonial eth­nic groups, allow­ing an easy transition.

Also of inter­est is that these meet­ings are all Chris­t­ian, which demog­ra­phers tell us is the norm for Native Amer­i­cans today.1 Decolo­nial­ism means some­thing very dif­fer­ent for those who are com­mit­ted to hold on to Christianity.

Indigenous and Quaker Both
Indige­nous and Quak­er Both 

Explore how Native Quak­er com­mu­ni­ties hold onto their unique cul­ture while prac­tic­ing Christ-centered wor­ship cul­tur­al com­mon­al­i­ties, and shared…

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Talking about Who We Believe In

December 11, 2025
· Martin Kelley

I talked with Tom Gates this week about the nature of belief. He has an arti­cle in the cur­rent Friends Jour­nal titled “Beyond What Words Can Utter.”

We agreed that a lot of Quak­er belief can only be expe­ri­enced, not described, which makes for dif­fi­cul­ties when doing out­reach. It’s easy to go into nuance once some­one has com­ing into the meet­ing­house and is par­tic­i­pat­ing in an edu­ca­tion pro­gram but how do we get them off the street in the first place. Tom said:

I’m com­fort­able with Christ lan­guage and the inward light of Christ. And I know there are friends who are not, and there are good rea­sons why they’re not. I’m not deny­ing that. in these new­com­er ses­sions a per­sis­tent ques­tion is: Are Quak­ers Chris­t­ian? And how do you under­stand that? And they’re most­ly com­ing from back­grounds and oth­er kind of more con­ser­v­a­tive churches.

And so that’s a live ques­tion for them because in some sense they all left those church­es because the fun­da­men­tal­ism was grat­ing on them. I always pull off this thing from my shelf, it’s the Reader’s Guide to George Fox’s Jour­nal by Joseph Pick­vance. And he makes a fas­ci­nat­ing state­ment: the com­mon­est cause of mis­un­der­stand­ing of Fox’s teach­ing today is a fail­ure to real­ize how wide and deep and func­tion­al is the mean­ing that quote Christ had for him. 

Our dis­cus­sion ranged quite a bit, from Art Larrabee’s “Nine Core Quak­er Beliefs” to Mar­cus Borg’s Heart of Chris­tian­i­ty and 1653’s Saul’s Errand to Dam­as­cus, by James Nayler and George Fox. I def­i­nite­ly need to do some more reading!

Full show notes and a tran­script are avail­able.

Tom has also writ­ten a follow-up post on Quak­er belief on his blog. 

Predictions on the ‘new evangelical’ movement

March 24, 2011
· Martin Kelley

Read­ers over on Quak​erQuak​er​.org will know I’ve been inter­est­ed in the tem­pest sur­round­ing evan­gel­i­cal pas­tor Rob Bell. A pop­u­lar min­is­ter for the Youtube gen­er­a­tion, con­tro­ver­sy over his new book has revealed some deep fis­sures among younger Evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians. I’ve been fas­ci­nat­ed by this since 2003, when I start­ed real­iz­ing I had a lot of com­mon­al­i­ties with main­stream Chris­t­ian blog­gers who I would have nat­u­ral­ly dis­missed out of hand. When they wrote about the authen­tic­i­ty of wor­ship, decision-making in the church and the need to walk the talk and also to walk the line between truth and com­pas­sion, they spoke to my con­cerns (most of my read­ing since then has been blogs, pre-twentieth cen­tu­ry Quak­er writ­ings and the Bible).

blankToday Jaime John­son tweet­ed out a link to a new piece by Rachel Held Evans called “The Future of Evan­gel­i­cal­ism.” She does a nice job pars­ing out the dif­fer­ences between the two camps squar­ing off over Rob Bell. On the one side is a cen­tral­ized move­ment of neo-Calvinists she calls Young, Rest­less, Reformed after a 2006 Chris­tian­i­ty Today arti­cle. I have lit­tle to no inter­est in this crowd except for mild aca­d­e­m­ic curios­i­ty. But the oth­er side is what she’s dub­bing “the new evangelicals”:

The sec­ond group — some­times referred to as “the new evan­gel­i­cals” or “emerg­ing evan­gel­i­cals” or “the evan­gel­i­cal left” is sig­nif­i­cant­ly less orga­nized than the first, but con­tin­ues to grow at a grass­roots lev­el. As Paul Markhan wrote in an excel­lent essay about the phe­nom­e­non, young peo­ple who iden­ti­fy with this move­ment have grown weary of evangelicalism’s alle­giance to Repub­li­can pol­i­tics, are inter­est­ed in pur­su­ing social reform and social jus­tice, believe that the gospel has as much to do with this life as the next, and are eager to be a part of inclu­sive, diverse, and authen­tic Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ties. “Their broad­en­ing sense of social respon­si­bil­i­ty is push­ing them to rethink many of the fun­da­men­tal the­o­log­i­cal pre­sup­po­si­tions char­ac­ter­is­tic of their evan­gel­i­cal tra­di­tions,” Markham noted.

This is the group that intrigues me. There’s a lot of cross-over here with some of what I’m see­ing with Quak­ers. In an ide­al world, the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends would open its arms to this new wave of seek­ers, espe­cial­ly as they hit the lim­its of denom­i­na­tion­al tol­er­ance. But in real­i­ty, many of the East Coast meet­ings I’m most famil­iar with would­n’t know what to do with this crowd. In Philly if you’re inter­est­ed in this con­ver­sa­tion you go to Cir­cle of Hope (pre­vi­ous posts), not any of the estab­lished Quak­er meetings.

Evans makes some edu­cat­ed guess­es about the future of the “new evan­gel­i­cal” move­ment. She thinks there will be more dis­cus­sion about the role of the Bible, though I would say it’s more dis­cus­sion fo the var­i­ous Chris­t­ian inter­pre­ta­tions of it. She also fore­sees a loos­en­ing of labels and denom­i­na­tion­al affil­i­a­tions. I’m see­ing some of this hap­pen­ing among Friends, though it’s almost com­plete­ly on the indi­vid­ual lev­el, at least here on the East Coast. It will be inter­est­ing to see how this shakes out over the next few years and whether it will bypass, engage with or siphon off the Soci­ety of Friends. In the mean­time, Evans’ post and the links she embeds in it are well worth exploring.

Tell them all this but do not expect them to listen

October 8, 2010
· Martin Kelley

It seems to me that one of the cor­ner­stones of Judeo-Christian phi­los­o­phy is to remem­ber the sto­ries. I’m more than three-quarters of the way through the Bible (I’m stretch­ing my One Year Bible plan across two years) and that’s real­ly all it is: sto­ry after sto­ry of human’s rela­tions with God. Friends have picked up this method­ol­o­gy in a big way. Our pri­ma­ry reli­gious edu­ca­tion is the jour­nals elders have been asked to write to recount the tri­als and prophet­ic open­ings of a life lived in an attempt at spir­i­tu­al obedience.

blankThere must be a pur­pose to this con­stant sto­ry review, some way it deep­ens our own spir­i­tu­al lives. One gift it gives to me is per­spec­tive. I was just tak­ing an evening bath and found myself get­ting upset about a par­tic­u­lar sit­u­a­tion from my past and stopped to pick up my One Year Bible. The Old Tes­ta­ment read­ings for most of Tenth Month come from Jere­mi­ah. Here’s a bit of God’s instruc­tions to the prophet:

“Tell them all this, but do not expect them to lis­ten. Shout out your warn­ings but do not expect them to respond. Say to them, ‘This is the nation whose peo­ple will not obey the Lord their God and who refuse to be taught. Truth has van­ished from among them; it is no longer heard on their lips.’ ” (Jer 7:27)

And lat­er:

“Jere­mi­ah, say to the peo­ple, ‘This is what the Lord says: When peo­ple fall down, don’t they get up again? When they dis­cov­er they’re on the wrong road, don’t they turn back? Then why do these peo­ple stay on their self-destructive path? Why do the peo­ple of Jerusalem refuse to turn back? They cling tight­ly to their lies and will not turn around.’ ” (Jer 8:4)

Here we are, Sixth Cen­tu­ry B.C., and the spir­i­tu­al state of God’s peo­ple is in a ter­ri­ble state. It makes my aggriev­e­ments look pet­ty. And maybe that’s the point. The rela­tion­ship between God and His peo­ple have been in a rol­lar coast­er ride for mil­len­nia. Sure, Jesus’ new covenant brought about a lot of changes but did­n’t end hypocrisy or faith­less­ness. Protes­tants can point to the ref­or­ma­tion and Friends to the new peo­ple gath­ered by George Fox but both move­ments long ago floun­dered on the shoals of human weak­ness. His­to­ry has­n’t stopped. The tri­als of the spir­i­tu­al don’t stop. We don’t get a free ride of spir­i­tu­al ease just because we’re on the cur­rent edge of human history.

As ear­ly Friends were aware, a spir­i­tu­al life still requires lift­ing of the cross. It’s easy to let dis­ap­point­ments lead to despair, and to retreat into the many temp­ta­tions of the mod­ern world has at ready sup­ply. In that state it’s easy to put off wor­ry­ing about our duties to our fel­low humans, to life on earth and to God. Every once in a while I’ll get whiny about some­thing and my dear wife will say “get over it and do what you need to do already.” We’ve remem­bered the sto­ry of Jere­mi­ah for 2500 years for the same rea­son: “you think you’ve got it bad, you’re not being dec­i­mat­ed and enslaved in Baby­lon!” Perspective.

* * *

I’m still think­ing about one of the con­ver­sa­tions I had the oth­er week at Vineland Men­non­ite Church–about the dif­fer­ence between the­ol­o­gy and Bib­li­cism. I like the­ol­o­gy and I like learn­ing about the con­text of Bible sto­ries I read. I enjoy hear­ing new the­o­ries about old para­dox­es (for exam­ple, Mar­tin Luther King’s take on the sto­ry of the Good Samar­i­tan fas­ci­nates me in part because it reminds me that the sto­ry is set on a real road and is intend­ed as a sto­ry about real peo­ple mak­ing dif­fi­cult choic­es). But I’m also aware that it’s easy to spend so much time read­ing and talk­ing about the com­men­tary that I for­get to read the orig­i­nal sto­ries them­selves. If sto­ries are reli­gious ed, then we have to remem­ber to actu­al­ly read the sto­ries. Some­times when I stum­ble on the cool blogs of the clever­est min­is­ters I won­der if they stop to actu­al­ly read the sto­ries. So much ener­gy seems to be expend­ed on mak­ing up new words and giv­ing mes­sages of easy hope. I can’t see Jere­mi­ah join­ing them at the local church brew pub fest to hoist a Rolling Rock. The cur­rent New Tes­ta­ment read­ing in the One Year Bible is Paul’s let­ter to the Coloss­ian, which includes this gem:

Don’t let any­one cap­ture you (Colos­sians) with emp­ty philoso­phies and high-sounding non­sense that come from human think­ing and from the spir­i­tu­al pow­ers of this world, rather than from Christ.

I’m sure George Fox hoot­ed in joy when he read that line! The sto­ries remind us that all is not well and that all will not be well. Temp­ta­tions still nips at our best inten­tions. The great­est temp­ta­tion is self-reliance. Our test as indi­vid­u­als and as a peo­ple will be demon­strat­ed by how we patient­ly and faith­ful­ly we bear the hard­ships we encounter and keep our trust in the risen Christ.

That of God via William Penn

October 3, 2010
· Martin Kelley

Asked what we believe many mod­ern Friends will reply “That there is that of God in every­one.” It’s an ear­ly Quak­er phrase but what exact­ly do we mean by it? Part of its cur­rent pop­u­lar­i­ty is its ambi­gu­i­ty. We live in a fierce­ly indi­vid­u­al­is­tic age and it can be read as a call to per­son­al inde­pen­dence: “I don’t need to care what you think because I’ve got that of God in me!”

So it’s use­ful to read William Pen­n’s thoughts on spir­i­tu­al indi­vid­u­al­ism in The Rise and Progress of the Peo­ple Called Quak­ers. He’s talk­ing about those mem­bers of the still-new Soci­ety of Friends who had become the “great­est trou­ble,” who “fought domin­ion over conscience”:

They would have had every Man inde­pen­dent, that as he had the Prin­ci­ple in him­self, he should only stand and fall to that, and no Body else: Not con­sid­er­ing that the Prin­ci­ple is one in all and though the Mea­sure of Light or Grace might dif­fer, yet the Nature of it was the same; and being so, the struck at the Spir­i­tu­al Uni­ty, which a Peo­ple, guid­ed by the same Prin­ci­ple, are nat­u­ral­ly led into: So that what is an Evil to one, is so to all, from the Sense and Savour of the one uni­ver­sal Prin­ci­ple which is com­mon to all, and which the Dis­af­fect­ed also pro­fess to be the Root of all true Chris­t­ian Fel­low­ship, and that Spir­it into which the Peo­ple of God drink, and come to be Spiritually-minded, and of one Heart and one Soul.

For Penn, that of God is the spir­it of the inward Christ – a spir­it we can drink from to find spir­i­tu­al uni­ty. It is an author­i­ty root­ed not in our own human weak­ness but in  uni­ver­sal spir­i­tu­al truths that are acces­si­ble to all.

Visit to Vineland Mennonite Church

September 27, 2010
· Martin Kelley

Yes­ter­day the fam­i­ly vis­it­ed Vineland NJ Men­non­ite Church.

We were com­ing after 8:30 Mass at Julie’s church and arrived a few min­utes before the wor­ship ser­vice while they were doing their reli­gious edu­ca­tion pro­gram. But the dis­tinc­tion between reli­gious ed and wor­ship was min­i­mal, almost non-existent. Atten­dance at both was near-universal (about 110 total) and much of the wor­ship itself was reli­gious edu­ca­tion. There was a series of 15 min­ute’ish ser­mons (deliv­ered by var­i­ous men), bro­ken up by some four-part a capel­la singing (beau­ti­ful), recita­tions from a Bible verse they were mem­o­riz­ing and kneel­ing prayer (a sur­prise the first time, as they all spin around sud­den­ly to face the back, kneel and pray).

blankIt’s prob­a­bly one of the most reli­gious­ly con­sci­en­tious com­mu­ni­ties I’ve seen. A lot of the ser­vice involved review­ing belief struc­ture. Their book of dis­ci­pline is very slim, not much more than a tract, but it’s some­thing they use and they spent part of the time read­ing from it. Much of the wor­ship hour was meant to rein­force who they were, why they were and how they were – to explain over and over why they led their dis­tinc­tive life. Theirs is a vol­un­tary asso­ci­a­tion for those who agree to fol­low the author­i­ty of the group’s teach­ings. I sus­pect that every adult in the room could give a detailed pre­sen­ta­tion on con­ser­v­a­tive Men­non­ite faith and give detailed answers about points of doc­trine. At the risk of insert­ing my own opin­ion I will ven­ture that the wor­ship ser­vice felt a bit dry (as Julie said, there was­n’t a ounce of mys­ti­cism in the whole pro­ceed­ing) but I don’t think the mem­bers there would feel offend­ed by this obser­va­tion. Excit­ing the sens­es is less impor­tant than review­ing the val­ues and liv­ing the moral life.

Visu­al­ly, the group is strik­ing. Every man in the room wore a long-sleeved white dress shirt but­toned all the way up, dark pants and black shoes; all had short hair and only one or two had facial hair. I was more dis­tinc­tive­ly plain in my broad­falls and sus­penders but the effect of sixty-or-so men and young boys all dressed alike was visu­al­ly stun­ning. Like a lot of plain peo­ples, the women were more obvi­ous­ly plain and all but one or two wore lightly-colored cape dress­es and head cov­er­ings (I lat­er learned that the excep­tions were new­com­ers who weren’t yet mem­bers). Seat­ed was seg­re­gat­ed, women on the left, men on the right. Gen­der roles are very clear. There were kids – lots of kids – all around, and a big focus of the ser­mons was fam­i­ly liv­ing. One extend­ed ser­mon focused on dis­cern­ing between pro­vid­ing well for one’s fam­i­ly vs. greed and the bal­ance between work­ing hard for your fam­i­ly vs. giv­ing up some things so you can spend time with them. Kids were present through­out the ser­vice and were rel­a­tive­ly well behaved.

The church itself was called a meet­ing­house and was plain – no cross­es of course. Peo­ple sat in pews and there was a raised area up front for min­is­ters and elders. The build­ing dou­bled as a school­house dur­ing the week and its school­rooms had a lot of Rod and Staff books, famil­iar from our own home school­ing. A mem­ber described the school as one leg of the three-legged stool, along with church and fam­i­ly. If any one part of the equa­tion was lack­ing in some way, the oth­er two could help insure the child’s moral wel­fare. School was free for church mem­bers but was open on a tuition basis to non-Mennonites. These out­siders were required to make cer­tain lifestyle choic­es that would insure the school stayed rel­a­tive­ly pure; the most impor­tant require­ment was that the fam­i­ly not have a tele­vi­sion at home.

My reg­u­lar read­ers will have one ques­tion on their mind right about now: did any­one invite us to lunch? Why yes they did! We did­n’t even have to prompt it. We knew a cou­ple there – M and J, who run a restau­rant in the local farmer’s mar­ket, a favorite Sat­ur­day morn­ing stop for us. They took us under their wing when they rec­og­nized us, sit­ting with us dur­ing wor­ship and then show­ing us the school. J said that if we came back again we could come over for lunch. Then she back­tracked and offered that we could come now, explain­ing that the church had had recent dis­cus­sions over whether it was too pushy to ask first-time atten­ders to lunch or whether they should restrain them­selves and invite them on the sec­ond vis­it. Wow, a church that thinks about this?!

So we fol­lowed them to their place for lunch. It was a won­der­ful oppor­tu­ni­ty to ask more ques­tions and get to know one anoth­er. Meals are impor­tant. Julie and I had won­dered why there were Men­non­ites in Vineland NJ of all places – and two Men­non­ite church­es at that! Short sto­ry is that there had been a civil­ian pub­lic ser­vice facil­i­ty in Vineland for con­sci­en­tious objec­tors and Lancaster-area Men­non­ites decid­ed that “the boys” sta­tioned there need­ed the ground­ing of a local church com­mu­ni­ty (appar­ent­ly oth­er C.O. camps were scenes of debauch­ery – Men­non­ite drag rac­ing in Col­orado Springs was cit­ed). This became Nor­ma Men­non­ite Church, which still exists and is anoth­er local church I’ve been mean­ing to vis­it for years (hi Mandy!). In the 1960s, there was a great round of lib­er­al­iza­tion among Men­non­ites, an unof­fi­cial aban­don­ment of the dis­tinc­tives cod­i­fied in their books of dis­ci­plines. Many church­es split and the Vineland Church was formed by those mem­bers of Nor­ma who want­ed to main­tain the discipline.

blankThis prob­a­bly explains the strong focus on the rules of the dis­ci­pline. For those want­i­ng more of the his­to­ries, I com­mend Stephen Scot­t’s excel­lent “An Intro­duc­tion to Old Order and Con­ser­v­a­tive Men­non­ite Groups” along with any­thing else Stephen Scott has writ­ten. The Vineland con­gre­ga­tion is part of the East­ern Penn­syl­va­nia Men­non­ite Church con­fer­ence, pro­filed on pages 173 – 176. A lot of the Men­non­ite issues and splits are echoed among Friends and we’d do well to under­stand these cousins of ours.

The result is a church that’s big on group prac­tice: the dress, the lifestyle. M. told me that they don’t believe in the­ol­o­gy but in Bib­li­cism. He explained that they don’t think the Bible con­tains the word of God but instead that it is the Word of God and he paused to let the dis­tinc­tion sink in. The Bible is not to be inter­pret­ed but read and fol­lowed, with spe­cial atten­tion giv­en the gospels and the let­ters of Paul.

So no, I’m not going to go Con­ser­v­a­tive Men­non­ite on you all. I have a TV. My pro­fes­sion is web design (they’re not into the inter­net, natch). I’m mar­ried to a pracitic­ing Catholic (I don’t know how they would bend on that) and at this point my brain is wired in a curi­ous, out­ward way that would­n’t fit into the nor­ma­tive struc­tures of a group like this. Doctrinally-speaking, I’m a Friend in that I think the Word of God is the Inward Christ’s direct spir­it and that the Bible needs to be read in that Light. There’s a lot of peo­ple who would­n’t fit for var­i­ous rea­sons, peo­ple who I would want in my church (they main­tain a hard line against remar­riage after divorce and I did­n’t even ask about gay issues). But I have to admit that the process and struc­ture puts togeth­er a real­ly great com­mu­ni­ty of peo­ple. They’re hard-working, kind, char­i­ta­ble and not near­ly as judg­men­tal as you might imag­ine – in prac­tice, less judg­men­tal than a lot of pro­gres­sive reli­gious peo­ple I know. Non-resistance is one of the pil­lars of their prac­tice and they were gen­uine­ly inter­est­ed in Julie’s Catholic church and my expe­ri­ences among Friends and we talked a fair bit about Islam.

Nor­mal­ly I’d give a big thanks to the church and M & J here, except I know they won’t read this. I am grate­ful to their kind­ness in shar­ing their church, beliefs and fam­i­ly meal with us.