Tag Archives ⇒ friends

What Do Quakers Believe?

December 1, 2025
· Martin Kelley

How’s the old joke go? Ask five Quak­ers what they believe and you’ll get ten answers. Undaunt­ed, Decem­ber’s Friends Jour­nal tries to give some answers to the ques­tion any­way. I very much hope that indi­vid­ual Friends will find view­points they real­ly like as well as ones they real­ly don’t like, or at least don’t agree with. That there are no pat answers is itself part of the answer to the question.

Bonus: we’ve been work­ing on expand­ing our inter­na­tion­al inclu­sion in the mag­a­zine and an arti­cle from Sal­vado­ran Jas­son Areva­lo on the role of Quak­er pas­tors is the first fruits of our new Latin Amer­i­can cor­re­spon­den­t’s out­reach efforts.

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.