Tag Archives ⇒ history

Seeking a People

August 2, 2018
· Martin Kelley

If we are con­verg­ing on his­to­ry and prac­tice, we are miss­ing the point. If we are depend­ing on insti­tu­tions to cre­ate a new soci­ety or ush­er in the King­dom, then we are deceived. These will not bring the rad­i­cal­ly egal­i­tar­i­an and Spirit-filled com­mu­ni­ties that God fos­tered among ear­ly Friends.

Seek­ing a People

Legacy or burden?

June 8, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Lega­cy or burden?

One issue to which I am par­tic­u­lar­ly sen­si­tive is how our obses­sion with the past comes across to new­com­ers. Some peo­ple (espe­cial­ly those with Quak­er ances­tors) are excit­ed by our his­to­ry, while oth­er peo­ple are turned off or sim­ply puz­zled by Quak­er jar­gon and Quak­er genealo­gies, which they expe­ri­ence as a seri­ous bar­ri­er to being included.

Lega­cy or burden?

Skeletons (not even) in the closet

May 22, 2018
· Martin Kelley

This is a bit a gru­some sto­ry, though not as shock­ing at it should be. Louellen White, a researcher look­ing for bur­ial records of Native Amer­i­can chil­dren stum­bled on a Native Amer­i­can skull just sit­ting in a dis­play case of a old Philadel­phia meeting.

As White searched for grave­yard ledgers in the library — crammed with stuffed birds, cloth­ing, shells and books — she came upon the skull. Her legs wob­bled. And her stom­ach dropped. Arsenault-Cote offered advice and reas­sur­ance. “You’re out there look­ing for them, and now they’re show­ing them­selves to you,” she told White. “He’s been wait­ing a long time.” His­tor­i­cal­ly, Philadel­phia Quak­ers were “incon­sis­tent friends” to Indi­ans, engaged in the same col­o­niz­ing projects as oth­er faiths while see­ing them­selves as unique­ly able to edu­cate natives.

Incon­sis­tent is an apt word. Paula Palmer has been trac­ing the his­to­ry of Quak­er Indi­an Board­ing Schools: high-minded enter­pris­es that often for­ca­bly stripped her­itage from their pupils in ways that were as cul­tur­al­ly impe­r­i­al as they were unaware.

Byber­ry Meet­ing dates to the 1690s and the meet­ing­house grounds are full of abo­li­tion­ist his­to­ry. The skull was appar­ent­ly dug up in the mid-nineteenth cen­tu­ry as part of a near­by canal project and is thought to have come to the meet­ing­house as part of a col­lec­tion from a shut­tered his­tor­i­cal soci­ety. Its pres­ence on the shelf rep­re­sents the atti­tudes of Friends many decades ago who thought noth­ing of plac­ing a Lenape skull in a case. There’s also the sad sub­text that the meet­ing library is said to be so unused that most of the meet­ing’s con­tem­po­rary mem­bers had no idea it was there. It’s a shame that it took an out­side researcher to notice the skele­tons in our dis­play case.

https://​www​.philly​.com/​p​h​i​l​l​y​/​n​e​w​s​/​4​8​3​0​7​2​5​7​1​.​h​tml

Quaker Abolitionist Benjamin Lay Remembered

May 8, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing has pub­lished a piece on the reha­bil­i­ta­tion of dis­owned sev­en­teenth cen­tu­ry Quak­er rab­bler­ouser Ben­jamin Lay

On Sat­ur­day, April 21, 2018, Abing­ton Month­ly Meet­ing unveiled a bur­ial stone for Sarah & Ben­jamin Lay. The event which fea­tured open­ing remarks by author Mar­cus Redik­er and local res­i­dent and Quak­er Avis Wan­da McClin­ton was fol­lowed by a gath­er­ing in the meet­ing­house in the man­ner of a Friends Memo­r­i­al Meeting.

Abing­ton was the first Friends meet­ing I ever vis­it­ed and I’ve loved the sto­ry of Lay since the time I first stum­bled on it (even as a kid I was enough of a local his­to­ry nerd that I might have read of Lay’s antics before I ever met a Quak­er). I’m per­son­al­ly so hap­py to see him get this wider recog­ni­tion. The PYM piece is all-text but much of the grave mark­er cer­e­mo­ny has been post­ed to YouTube.

Cast out by the Quakers, Abington’s abolitionist dwarf finally has his day

April 19, 2018
· Martin Kelley

A nice sto­ry on the belat­ed recog­ni­tion being giv­en abo­li­tion­ist stal­wart and polit­i­cal prankster Ben­jamin Lay up at Abing­ton Meet­ing in Penn­syl­va­nia (my first meeting!):

About 12 years ago, the Abing­ton meet­ing­house care­tak­er, Dave Wer­mel­ing, found an old sketch of Lay in a box. A short biog­ra­phy on worn brown paper was glued to back of the draw­ing. “I thought, ‘Who is this, and how can you not be talk­ing about him?’” Wer­mel­ing recalled.

I’ve long admired the sto­ry of Ben­jamin Lay. I’m not sure that the gen­er­al pub­lic read­ing these arti­cles is quite real­iz­ing that Quak­er dis­own­ment wasn’t a full shun­ning. As far as I know he con­tin­ued to be influ­en­tial with Quak­ers, for his pas­sion if not his strat­e­gy. Lay went far, far ahead of the Quak­ers of the time. His stunts were awe­some, but drench­ing year­ly meet­ing atten­ders with pig blood and pub­lish­ing books with­out per­mis­sion was going to get you unin­vit­ed from for­mal deci­sion mak­ing meetings.

I would very much hope that if any of us mod­erns were trans­port­ed back to that era, we would find the con­di­tions of human bondage so out­ra­geous that we would all go full Ben­jamin Lay: dis­rupt meet­ings, shat­ter norms, get dis­owned by our reli­gious bod­ies. If you read the his­to­ry of eighteen-century Quak­er activism in the Philadel­phia area you’ll see there were many tracts start­ing in the ear­li­est years of the Quak­er colonies. There were lots of Quak­ers who felt slav­ery was moral­ly wrong. But few felt the empow­er­ment to break from social con­ven­tions the way Lay did. But that’s kind of the nature of prophe­cy. I would be sus­pi­cious of any can­di­date for prophet that is liked by the admin­is­tra­tive bod­ies of their time. What kind of com­pla­cen­cy are we demon­strat­ing by our inac­tions today?

https://​www​.philly​.com/​p​h​i​l​l​y​/​n​e​w​s​/​q​u​a​k​e​r​s​-​b​e​n​j​a​m​i​n​-​l​a​y​-​d​w​a​r​f​-​a​b​o​l​i​t​i​o​n​i​s​t​-​s​l​a​v​e​r​y​-​a​b​i​n​g​t​o​n​-​f​r​i​e​n​d​s​-​m​e​e​t​i​n​g​-​2​0​1​8​0​4​1​9​.​h​t​m​l​?​m​o​b​i​=​t​rue

Quaker historic ocean of zen calm silence

April 16, 2018
· Martin Kelley

The Young Quak­er Pod­cast in the UK recent­ly had an episode in which they had a mic run through 30 min­utes of silent wor­ship. I must admit I kind of laughed at the John Cage’­ness of it. But it’s gen­er­at­ed quite a bit of buzz. The Guardian declared it an ocean of calm, NPR thinks silence is gold­en. Not to be out­done, the BBC breath­less­ly announced that the pod­cast makes his­to­ry for record­ing Quak­er wor­ship (nev­er mind peo­ple have been wor­ship­ping via Skype and oth­er online media for many years now).

I love the inten­tion­al­i­ty of a room­ful of peo­ple agree­ing to set­tle into silence togeth­er as much as the next Friend, but I’m tempt­ed to won­der whether the cov­er­age would have quite so effu­sive if some­one had inter­rupt­ed part of the pod­cast’s silence to give a mes­sage. From daf­fodil min­istry to top-of-the-hour news­cast updates to dis­qui­si­tions on the gospel, pret­ty much any­thing would have popped the silence’s “moment of Zen,” to use NPR’s head-scratching description.

The best part of it all so far, in my opin­ion, is that one of the pod­cast­ers, host Jes­si­ca Hubbard-Bailey, got a chance to use the buzz to write her sto­ry of being a Quak­er for i (an online spin-off of the Inde­pen­dent): Life is tough for young peo­ple, but being a Quak­er has giv­en me hope.

When a friend came to me last year and sug­gest­ed the Young Quak­er Pod­cast record a silent Meet­ing for Wor­ship I was intrigued. But giv­en that most peo­ple are not quite so enam­oured with silence as Quak­ers, I couldn’t have antic­i­pat­ed the inter­est and response that followed.

https://​inews​.co​.uk/​i​n​e​w​s​-​l​i​f​e​s​t​y​l​e​/​w​o​m​e​n​/​l​i​f​e​-​i​s​-​t​o​u​g​h​-​f​o​r​-​y​o​u​n​g​-​p​e​o​p​l​e​-​b​u​t​-​b​e​i​n​g​-​a​-​q​u​a​k​e​r​-​h​a​s​-​g​i​v​e​n​-​m​e​-​h​o​pe/

Do Friends Query?

April 6, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Doug Gwyn is next up on Quak­er­S­peak, this time answer­ing What is a Quak­er Query?

The Quak­er Queries are a won­der­ful inven­tion of ask­ing our­selves some sim­ple ques­tions… I’ve heard it said that through­out much of our his­to­ry, we were shop­keep­ers and busi­ness peo­ple, and we were used to doing inven­to­ry all the time. And the queries are a kind of spir­i­tu­al and moral inven­to­ry that Friends do well to keep track of.

It’s become kind of easy to make fun of queries. The clas­sic use was as ques­tions for­mal­ly asked and for­mal­ly answered in Quak­er meet­ings for busi­ness. As Gwyn says they were a form of account­ing. Local con­gre­ga­tions would go though a set list and send them to quar­ter meet­ings to sift and answer so they could in turn send it up to year­ly meet­ing ses­sions. I’ve seen this process fol­lowed at Ohio Year­ly Meet­ing. It’s fas­ci­nat­ing if a bit tedious.

I could imag­ine the process being use­ful if for no oth­er rea­son that it gave Friends a chance to pry a bit into one anoth­er’s lives. Do all the mem­bers of our com­mu­ni­ty have their alco­hol use under con­trol? Are we real­ly com­mit­ted to peace in our communities?

These days a form of over-simplistic query is are writ­ten on the fly, with an implic­it “or” that I don’t always find par­tic­u­lar­ly help­ful. “Do Friends avoid the use of sty­ro­foam cups?” [or do you all hate the Earth?]. Used this way, queries risk becom­ing a list of busy­body norms to fol­lowed. We con­grat­u­late our­selves for not using paper nap­kins at a con­fer­ence we flew to.

As Doug points out, it helps to have a lit­tle humil­i­ty when it comes to queries. They’re one of the more use­ful items in the Quak­er tool­box. A good query will have some­thing to say to each of us, no mat­ter where we indi­vid­u­al­ly are in our spir­i­tu­al journey.

On the State of Religious Discourse at Haverford

March 13, 2018
· Martin Kelley

This one only tan­gen­tial­ly skims Friends but it’s an inter­est­ing case. A inde­pen­dent stu­dent web­site at the historically-Quaker Haver­ford Col­lege decid­ed not to do a spe­cial issue on reli­gion and one stu­dent penned an arti­cle about why he dis­agrees: On the State of Reli­gious Dis­course at Haverford

Haver­ford is not immune to this plague: we too rel­e­gate reli­gious knowl­edge to a dimen­sion of the per­son­al. Con­sid­er­ing the reli­gious his­to­ry and Quak­er roots of our insti­tu­tion, this is par­tic­u­lar­ly trou­bling. Haver­ford sells itself as a Quak­er insti­tu­tion, and there is a sense in which this is true, as there are cer­tain tra­di­tions at Haver­ford (speak­ing out of silence, quo­rum, con­fronta­tion, etc.), and yet the school split from orga­nized Quak­erism long ago, and one need only look at the last year to under­stand that we make deci­sions as an insti­tu­tion that are quite sep­a­ra­ble from any pro­mot­ed quak­er values.

Haver­ford’s offi­cial state­ment on its Quak­er iden­ti­ty is a rather strained two sen­tences, but in recent years it’s devel­oped a Quak­er Affairs pro­gram, which is cur­rent­ly led by the awe­some Wal­ter Sul­li­van. The pro­gram’s Friend in Res­i­dence pro­gram has brought in some great Quak­er thinkers on campus.

More on this top­ic soon as Friends Journal’s May issue will ask “What Are Quak­er Val­ues Any­way?” (Some of my pre­lim­i­nary thought are here).