Tag Archives ⇒ friends journal

What are Quaker Values? Here are some answers.

May 2, 2018
· Martin Kelley

A new issue of Friends Jour­nal is up online: “What Are Quak­er Val­ues Any­way?” The phrase “Quak­er val­ues” has become a com­mon way to explain our con­nec­tion to one anoth­er but I won­der if we’re using it too casu­al­ly (I talked more of “Quak­er brand­ing” in an Editor’s Desk post try­ing to drum up sub­mis­sions). This issue also has writ­ing from our fifth annu­al (fifth?!?) Stu­dent Voic­es Project. I’m real­ly hap­py how the issue came out. You can read much of it online with­out a subscription:


Speaking the Language of Quaker Values - Friends Journal

Speak­ing the Lan­guage of Quak­er Val­ues — Friends Journal 

A Friend’s per­spec­tive on mon­ey and philanthropy.

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Could Quakerism be the radical faith?

April 23, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Isaac Smith won­ders whether the title of Chris Ven­ables’s recent piece, “Could Quak­erism be the rad­i­cal faith that the mil­len­ni­al gen­er­a­tion is look­ing for?,” is fol­low­ing Betteridge’s Law of Headlines.

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?

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.

Whassup Quaker Internet?

April 4, 2018
· Martin Kelley

The August issue of Friends Jour­nal will look at “Going Viral with Quak­erism.” I wrote an Editor’s Desk post with some ideas of top­ics I’d love to see and some queries:

  • Do we have a vision of what kind of Quak­erism we’re invit­ing peo­ple into?
  • Does grow­ing neces­si­tate cast­ing off or re-embracing var­i­ous Quak­er practices?
  • Can we point to spe­cif­ic and repro­ducible tasks that meet­ings have done that have led to growth?
  • Are there mod­els from oth­er church­es or social change move­ments that we could learn from?
  • What are the dan­gers of over-focusing on growth?
  • Is there real­ly a pos­si­bil­i­ty that Quak­erism could become a mass movement?
  • What would our Quak­er expe­ri­ences look like if our num­bers rose even ten-fold?

One thing that’s miss­ing there is the inter­net. Yet one of the most com­mon things peo­ple want to talk about when we talk about grow­ing Friends is the inter­net. I think we’ve got­ten to the point at which we can’t just pin our hopes for future vital­i­ty of the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends on the inter­net. It’s not a build-it-and-they-will come phe­nom­e­non, espe­cial­ly now that so much of the inter­net’s atten­tion mech­a­nisms are dom­i­nat­ed by billion-dollar companies.

I went into the Friends Jour­nal archives to get a lit­tle per­spec­tive on Friends’ evolv­ing rela­tion­ship with elec­tron­ic media. The word “inter­net” first showed up near the end of 1992, in a short announce­ment of a new Quaker-themed list­serv. In 1993 there was a fan­tas­tic arti­cle on elec­tron­ic net­works, The Invis­i­ble Meet­ing­house. Writ­ten by Joel GAzis-SAx, it describes the Quak­er Elec­tron­ic Project as

an ongo­ing year­ly meet­ing that Friends around the world can join any time. It is, at once, a library, a meet­ing­house, a social cen­ter, and a bul­letin board. W e have cre­at­ed both a com­mu­ni­ty and a resource center…

Amaz­ing­ly, many of the peo­ple men­tioned in this arti­cle from 25 years ago are still active online.

The first “http” web address was pub­lished in Friends Jour­nal in a 1995 issue. In June 2001 the mag­a­zine announced its own web­site; the word “blog” debuted in 2004, “Face­book” in 2007, “Twit­ter” in 2011. Obvi­ous­ly, the inter­net is great for out­reach. But time check: we’ve been col­lec­tive­ly reach­ing out online for a quar­ter cen­tu­ry. Every orga­ni­za­tion has a web­site. Blogs and social media have become a set­tled tool in outreach.

Intro­duc­tions to the web and tech­niques and how-to’s have been done. But how do these var­i­ous media work togeth­er to advance our vis­i­bil­i­ty? What kind of expand­ed out­reach could hap­pen with a lit­tle more focus? How does any online project inte­grate with real-world activ­i­ty. I’m not naysay­ing the inter­net; obvi­ous­ly, I could give my answers to these ques­tions. But I’d like to know what oth­ers think about our Quak­er elec­tron­ic projects a quar­ter cen­tu­ry later?


Page not found - Friends Journal

Page not found — Friends Journal 

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Spring and healing

April 3, 2018
· Martin Kelley

I was just fill­ing out my work log for March and had for­got­ten just how crazy the weath­er here in the U.S. North­east had been, with suc­ces­sive waves of nor’easters dump­ing mas­sive amounts of snow on us. It made for some great kid pic­tures but it added quite a bit of chaos to work schedules.

So it seems kind of amaz­ing there’s an April issue of Friends Jour­nal. But there is and it’s a good one I think: we look at heal­ing. The cov­er of new tree leaves back­lit by spring­time sun is sea­son­al but it also reflects the top­ic and our mood after a win­try late winter.


Attention Required! | Cloudflare

Atten­tion Required! | Cloudflare 

www.friendsjournal.org www​.friend​sjour​nal​.org

Quakers and Mental Health

March 29, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Well this one hits home for me. The new Quak­er­S­peak talks to Ore­gon social work­er Melody George in the top­ic of Quak­ers and Men­tal Health:

I real­ly see men­tal diver­si­ty as a gift to a com­mu­ni­ty, and that the folks that I serve and that I’ve worked with are very resilient. If they tell you their sto­ries about how they’ve got­ten through their trau­mat­ic sit­u­a­tions and what’s helped them to keep going, faith is a huge part of that. And we have a lot to learn from their strength and resilience.

My fam­i­ly has had very avoid­able and out-of-nowhere con­flicts at two reli­gious spaces — one a Friends meet­ing and the oth­er a Pres­by­ter­ian church — over easy acco­mo­da­tions for my son Fran­cis. It seems like many of the dynam­ics that we’ve seen are not dis­sim­i­lar to those that keep oth­ers out of meet­ing com­mu­ni­ties. Who are we will­ing to adapt for? Is com­fort and famil­iar­i­ty our main goal?

Melody also wrote for Friends Jour­nal a few years ago, Imag­in­ing a Trauma-informed Quak­er Com­mu­ni­ty.

Profile of tech use by British Friends

March 23, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Irit Pol­lak and Abbey Kos at dotev­ery­one have been doing a series “Dis­patch­es from the Real World,” in which they pro­file “unex­pect­ed changes new tech­nol­o­gy is hav­ing on ser­vices and peo­ple.” This month they look at Friends in Britain.

It’s writ­ten for a tech audi­ence and leans a bit on the dichoto­my between old (“It still looks much the same as it did in 1670”) and mod­ern com­mu­ni­ca­tion but there are some insights that we Friends some­times take too much for granted:

Social media tends towards the shal­low and boast­ful. That’s not an intu­itive fit for the metic­u­lous work of ecu­meni­cal accom­pa­ni­ment, nor for a faith that val­ues authen­tic­i­ty and depth. How­ev­er, Tere­sa and her team know they need to do more — not despite their beliefs, but because of them.

I also appre­ci­ate the com­par­i­son between Quak­er orga­ni­za­tion and prin­ci­ples of decen­tral­iza­tion found in networks.

Just as in tech, decen­tral­i­sa­tion — build­ing a more net­worked approach — is high on Quak­ers’ agen­da. But that jour­ney is per­haps eas­i­er for a faith fun­da­men­tal­ly opposed to hier­ar­chy. Now, rather than try to hang onto old mod­els, Quak­ers in Britain are active­ly (and con­tin­u­ous­ly) check­ing their pow­er and privilege.

Friends Jour­nal ran a whole issue on Quak­ers and Social Media back in Novem­ber 2016. One of my favorite FJ tech pieces how­ev­er was in Novem­ber 2015, when we inter­viewed Sue Gar­diner to under­stand why Wiki­me­dia was so inter­est­ing in Quak­er process.

Just a moment...
Just a moment… 
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