Tag Archives ⇒ friends

Letter Regarding FUM Finances

October 23, 2025
· Martin Kelley

I thought that the expose on Earl­ham Col­lege was going to be this week’s Quak­er finan­cial melt-down sto­ry but Friends Unit­ed Meet­ing did the prover­bial “hold my beer” and announced it’s in seri­ous finan­cial per­il.

Friends Unit­ed Meet­ing (FUM) is the largest Quak­er mem­ber­ship orga­ni­za­tion in the world. Sim­pli­fy­ing quite a bit, it grew out of the Gur­neyites, the more churchy branch of Quak­ers who often adopt­ed min­istry and inter­na­tion­al mis­sions. Those mis­sions are the rea­son why there are so many Quak­ers in places like East Africa and Bolivia. Most of the world­wide body of Friends are part of that move­ment and many are for­mal mem­bers of FUM.

The­o­log­i­cal­ly, today’s FUM is a “big tent” asso­ci­a­tion that tries to hold togeth­er a wild­ly diver­gent set of beliefs and cul­tur­al norms, with gen­der and sex­u­al­i­ty being the most com­mon light­ning point. There’s always cor­ners of FUM threat­en­ing to leave or threat­en­ing to with­hold mem­ber­ship dues. There was seri­ous talk in the 1990s of a “realign­ment” that would split up FUM along evan­gel­i­cal and uni­ver­sal­ist lines but some­how that’s nev­er quite hap­pened and the tent has held. To its cred­it the big tent approach means that FUM has been a key facil­i­ta­tor of cross-branch dia­logue among North Amer­i­can Friends.

The finan­cial prob­lem is pret­ty straight­for­ward, a sto­ry as old as nonprofits:

Our audits have not been done in a time­ly fash­ion, inter­nal finan­cial con­trols have been miss­ing, and we did not ensure that good account­ing prac­tices were being fol­lowed. We have not been care­ful enough in review­ing finan­cial infor­ma­tion giv­en to us or in devel­op­ing the abil­i­ty of new board mem­bers to under­stand FUM’s com­plex finan­cial structure.

I’m gen­uine­ly sur­prised that FUM lead­er­ship was this asleep at the wheel but I sym­pa­thize. A non­prof­it I worked for in the 1990s went through a sim­i­lar cri­sis when a few years of back­logged audits came back and showed us we were in far worse shape than we had imag­ined. The oth­er major U.S. Quak­er asso­ci­a­tion, Friends Gen­er­al Con­fer­ence, went though some­thing sim­i­lar in the 1980s; the sto­ry I’ve heard is that the lawyers told them they were broke to go bank­rupt and they fig­ured their way out of the finan­cial hold.

Many non­prof­its go through boom and bust cycles but this sounds more than just that. I do hope Friends Unit­ed Meet­ing can pull through.

Letter Regarding FUM Finances
Let­ter Regard­ing FUM Finances 

Dear Friends, we will put the bad news first: at our cur­rent income and expen­di­ture rate, FUM will…

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Earlham College’s woes

October 22, 2025
· Martin Kelley

Chris Hardie has writ­ten a very infor­ma­tive piece about what’s hap­pen­ing at Earl­ham Col­lege, the beloved Quak­er school out in Rich­mond, Indi­ana. The news is pret­ty grim. Take this dev­as­tat­ing detail: “In 2007, Earl­ham had over 1,200 under­grad­u­ate stu­dents. This fall, that num­ber was 671. The col­lege has most­ly retained the same num­ber of teach­ing fac­ul­ty in that time…”

This has been hap­pen­ing for awhile. Then-dean of Earl­ham School of Reli­gion Matt His­rich warned us about some of this back in late 2020 when he revealed that Earl­ham Col­lege was raid­ing what had always been treat­ed as ESR’s endow­ment. By all accounts the cur­rent EC pres­i­dent is doing his best after inher­it­ing a mess but cut­ting pro­grams and reduc­ing staff isn’t goin to help turn it around.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this spi­ral is becom­ing ever more com­mon with small lib­er­al arts col­leges. The pan­dem­ic hit hard and a cur­rent drop in stu­dents (a baby bust that start­ed in the 2008 reces­sion) is just going to make things that much hard­er for these kinds of schools.

I appre­ci­ate Hardie writ­ing this. Back in 2013 I got to know him as a fel­low pan­elist at an ESR lead­er­ship con­fer­ence and we’ve kept in touch over the years. In recent years he’s been on a task almost as quixot­ic as sav­ing small col­leges: he bought a paper, the West­ern Wayne News (pub­lish­er of this arti­cle), and has been try­ing to build a mod­el of a sus­tain­able local paper. I shared his great man­i­festo in defense of the open inter­net a few years ago and try to keep up with his blog. I’m glad to see Friends are shar­ing today’s arti­cle pret­ty wide­ly on Facebook.

Earl­ham Col­lege has long been an invalu­able part of the Quak­er insti­tu­tion­al land­scape and Earl­ham School of Reli­gion fills a need that no oth­er school comes close to. See­ing these on the edge is wor­ri­some for the whole Soci­ety of Friends. Guil­ford Col­lege in North Car­oli­na has been hav­ing a rough go of it as well, though cham­pi­ons like my friend Wess Daniels have been pas­sion­ate at drum­ming up sup­port.

Earlham hopes big cuts foster long-term survival - Western Wayne News
Earl­ham hopes big cuts fos­ter long-term sur­vival — West­ern Wayne News 

Hop­ing to con­tin­ue its acclaimed lib­er­al arts edu­ca­tion offer­ings well into the future, Earl­ham Col­lege in Rich­mond is…

Western Wayne News West­ern Wayne News 

Steven Davison looks at “That of God” (Again)

October 17, 2025
· Martin Kelley

Often prof­fered as the pri­ma­ry belief among mod­ern Friends, the phrase has been stretched and pulled to the point of obtuse­ness in recent years. In the ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry Rufus Jones resus­ci­tat­ed it from pas­toral let­ters of Quak­er co-founder George Fox. But in 1970, Lewis Ben­son penned a scathing take­down of both Jones and “that of God” as a formulation.

Davi­son is return­ing to the debate:

“That of God” yearns for God, Fox implies in the quote we always use for this phrase. In that epis­tle, once we have done the inner work of our own trans­for­ma­tion in the light of Christ our­selves, then we can answer that of God in oth­ers. That of God with­in us is call­ing out in the dark­ness, and the Light answers with the Word.

“That of God”—Again
“That of God” — Again 

For decades, I have com­plained about Friends claim­ing that “that of God in every­one” is our cen­tral tenet…

Through the Flaming Sword Through the Flam­ing Sword 

Reviving Queer Worship

October 15, 2025
· Martin Kelley

In my lat­est author pod­cast inter­view, I talk with R.E. Mar­tin and Jason A. Ter­ry about the efforts to bring back wor­ship focused specif­i­cal­ly on the queer com­mu­ni­ty to Friends Meet­ing of Wash­ing­ton (FMW). I espe­cial­ly appre­ci­ate the work of con­nect­ing with elders who par­tic­i­pat­ed in this wor­ship in decades past — through the worst of the AIDS epi­dem­ic and through the strug­gle for grow­ing accep­tance of the 1990s.

You can watch the full episode of my talk with R.E. and Jason and read their arti­cle, “Advices and Que[e]ries: Cho­sen Fam­i­ly and Cho­sen Ances­tors.”

The Octo­ber issue of Friends Jour­nal is specif­i­cal­ly about affin­i­ty groups: how and why and when we might break off into wor­ship groups that specif­i­cal­ly include and exclude Friends. Octo­ber authors Vanes­sa Julye and Cur­tis Spence are inter­viewed as part of this mon­th’s Quak­ers Today pod­cast episode, “Quak­ers & Affin­i­ty Spaces: Find­ing Whole­ness in a Sep­a­rat­ed World.”

South Jersey Trips

September 26, 2025
· Martin Kelley

Odds and ends: last week­end my Friends meet­ing took a trip to John Wool­man Asso­ci­a­tion in Mount Hol­ly, New Jer­sey, ded­i­cat­ed to the 18th cen­tu­ry Quak­er abo­li­tion­ist; high­ly rec­om­mend­ed if you’re in the area. On the way out of town I vis­it­ed the Shinn Cur­tis Log House from 1712, which was so encased by addi­tions over the cen­turies that the orig­i­nal house was for­got­ten until demo­li­tion of the lat­er house in the late 1960s. 

My state pub­lic media PBS sta­tion has announced they’re ceas­ing oper­a­tions next year, hit hard by both fed­er­al and state bud­get cuts. Wedged between two top-five U.S. media mar­kets (New York and Philly), statewide news is often an after­thought to their sta­tions, so our PBS has been impor­tant. It’s also com­mis­sioned lots of quirky local his­to­ry doc­u­men­taries. In oth­er media news, I’m excit­ed for next year’s Man­dalo­ri­an movie, though my two Star Wars kids are wor­ried that the trail­er is too cute.

Glad to see my new col­league Ren­zo Car­ran­za in the lat­est Quak­er­S­peak.

Standing with the Marginalized, with Anthony Manousos)

September 22, 2025
· Martin Kelley

This week I talked with my old Friend Antho­ny Manousos about the [waves hand in the air] polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion we’re in. I’ve known Antho­ny for over 28 years now, back when we were part of a con­fer­ence to try to kick-start what lat­er was reborn as Quak­er Vol­un­tary Ser­vice (spoil­er: our attempt failed for what I think were most­ly gen­er­a­tional issues). Antho­ny is still protest­ing and wit­ness­ing to make a bet­ter world. I loved hear­ing his sto­ry of coali­tion work and the joy of orga­niz­ing with music. His arti­cle, “We Have No King,” appears in this mon­th’s Friends Jour­nal. 

I asked him what Quak­ers bring to protests:

One of the impor­tant things that we bring is our way of wor­ship. And our way of wor­ship helps to bring the tem­per­a­ture down. I think what the cur­rent regime wants is a vio­lent move­ment oppos­ing them. That plays out what they want (and cer­tain­ly the assas­si­na­tion of Char­lie Kirk plays into that sce­nario). What Quak­ers bring is a com­mit­ment to peace­ful protest. And when we’re around, we can be that strong, com­mit­ted, peace­ful pres­ence. And that’s important.

I also asked him a follow-up ques­tion of what we need to do to get out of the way and accept the lead­er­ship of oth­ers in social change. You can lis­ten to his answers or read them in the show notes. 

A Journey of Conscience: Ron Marullo’s Story

September 16, 2025
· Martin Kelley

I talked with Friends Jour­nal author Ronald Marul­lo this week. His arti­cle, “I Aint’ March­ing Any­more” (a nod to Phil Ochs of course), recounts his path to con­sci­en­tious objec­tion dur­ing the Viet­nam war, helped by a very knowl­edgable Quak­er coun­selor. It always amazes me that just a few con­ver­sa­tions at the right time can help some­one clar­i­fy their beliefs and set their lives on a dif­fer­ent path.

I was espe­cial­ly inter­est­ed in talk­ing about the after-effects of the CO process since I went through some­thing sim­i­lar myself. Around age 17 my father start­ed lob­by­ing hard for me to go to the Naval Acad­e­my at Annapo­lis. Except for a few years in Pres­by­ter­ian Sun­day School we had grown up most­ly a‑religious and I found the idea intrigu­ing. I think in ret­ro­spect I was most­ly excit­ed by the idea of an order­ly life that might address my ADHD (called hyper­ac­tiv­i­ty in those days). I got far enough into the process to take a phys­i­cal and get a let­ter of com­men­da­tion from our con­gressper­son but then thought more about the mil­i­tary itself. I real­ized I did­n’t feel com­fort­able join­ing an orga­ni­za­tion whose pur­pose was threat­en­ing to kill. I had on prin­ci­ple, and with­out much delib­er­a­tion, decid­ed not to engage in school­yard fights years before, and suf­fered the reg­u­lar humil­i­a­tions that comes of being the small­est kid in class who every­one knows won’t fight back. To the dis­ap­point­ment of my father I stopped the appli­ca­tion process for the navy. As I pon­dered what to do next, I asked myself what oth­er val­ues might come from my new­found paci­fism. Over the next few years I explored var­i­ous leads and — being in the Philadel­phia area — start­ed run­ning into Quak­ers, some of whom had a kind of inner con­vic­tion I found intriguing.

So while I was far too young to ever wor­ry about a draft, I did have a sim­i­lar defin­ing “what do I believe” moment as a teenag­er. As Ron says in our author chat pod­cast:

That was a turn­ing point in my life. I made deci­sions from fill­ing out those forms and answer­ing those ques­tions actu­al­ly made con­crete what I had inside me, ide­al­ly. You think about this and think about that and whether or not you hold it true. But when you have to put it all on paper and you have to sub­mit it to the world, it changes you. And I’ve lived by that phi­los­o­phy since that age. I’ve done it in my edu­ca­tion­al expe­ri­ence with chil­dren. I’ve done it in my pri­vate life with friends, care­giv­ing oth­ers. My wife and I have been doing that, you know, for decades.

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 — YouTube 

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