Tag Archives ⇒ hope

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.

A New Quakerism

July 30, 2018
· Martin Kelley

A cyn­ic might file this under “hope springs eternal”:

A phrase that keeps com­ing to mind is “a new Quak­erism,” and odd­ly enough, I’ve been hear­ing oth­er Friends unknow­ing­ly echo this phrase back to me. It seems to me that many Friends, even those who con­sid­er them­selves “con­vinced,” are hun­gry for more than what the Soci­ety has to offer.

Of course it’s part of our tra­di­tion that it needs to be for­ev­er reborn. You can’t recy­cle ser­mons or use the prop of your uni­ver­si­ty learn­ing as a crutch. We are nev­er to know what might hap­pen when wor­ship starts, since the idea is that it’s direct­ly led in the moment by Christ. It’s also a part of our tra­di­tion that forms are for­ev­er cal­ci­fy­ing and that we need to remem­ber why we’re here and who’s brought us togeth­er. Glad to see the work continue.

A New Quakerism

What do Quaker believe anyway?

July 19, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Answer quick­ly: what are three things Quak­ers believe? Unless you’ve prac­ticed an answer to this ques­tion, chances are you’ll end up with a lot of umm’s and ahh’s and sen­tences so built up with dis­claimers that your lis­ten­er has to start sen­tence dia­gram­ming just to fig­ure out if you actu­al­ly answered. Arthur Larrabee got frus­trat­ed by the seem­ing­ly impos­si­ble task for explain­ing mod­ern Quak­er beliefs and decid­ed to do some­thing about it:

About 9 years ago I began to give voice to a life­long frus­tra­tion of mine. The frus­tra­tion was that I can­not answer the ques­tion “What do Quak­ers believe?” I would always answer the ques­tions some­what defen­sive­ly. I would say, “it’s kind of hard to know what Quak­ers believe, but let me tell you what I believe.” Or I would say, “well, it’s hard to know what Quak­ers believe today but let me tell you what Quak­ers believed at the begin­ning.” Or I would say what I thought Quak­ers believed and I would hope that no one else was lis­ten­ing because I did not want to be overcalled.

I think Arthur does a pret­ty good job tack­ling a very tough task. He bare­ly even men­tions Howard Brin­ton’s “SPICES.”

http://quakerspeak.com/9‑core-quaker-beliefs/

Worship Sharing and Vocal Ministry

July 9, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Wor­ship Shar­ing and Vocal Ministry

Very often, if we had just heard the les­son with­out its per­son­al and often anec­do­tal pre­am­ble, it would have felt much more like Spirit-led vocal min­istry. So why quib­ble about it? Because, by the time we get the les­son, it is so sat­u­rat­ed with “I” that it has trou­ble lift­ing off the ground to trans­form the We. Our con­scious­ness has been so deeply drawn into per­son­al­i­ty that it hin­ders the transper­son­al char­ac­ter we hope for in vocal ministry.

Wor­ship Shar­ing and Vocal Ministry

Sowing in tears

June 22, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Sow­ing in tears

As we keep sow­ing, we divide the labor accord­ing to our gifts. For every rad­i­cal prophet who risks every­thing to speak the truth, we hope some con­ser­v­a­tive is doing a good job of guard­ing the mon­ey that will pay the prophet’s bail. We make space for the pas­tor who cher­ish­es our com­mu­ni­ty, and we make space for the outward-facing evan­ge­list, who under­stands when the moment is ripe to inter­vene in our culture.

https://​blog​.canyoube​lieve​.me/​2​0​1​8​/​0​6​/​s​o​w​i​n​g​-​i​n​-​t​e​a​r​s​.​h​tml

Sowing in tears

June 22, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Sow­ing in tears

As we keep sow­ing, we divide the labor accord­ing to our gifts. For every rad­i­cal prophet who risks every­thing to speak the truth, we hope some con­ser­v­a­tive is doing a good job of guard­ing the mon­ey that will pay the prophet’s bail. We make space for the pas­tor who cher­ish­es our com­mu­ni­ty, and we make space for the outward-facing evan­ge­list, who under­stands when the moment is ripe to inter­vene in our culture.

https://​blog​.canyoube​lieve​.me/​2​0​1​8​/​0​6​/​s​o​w​i​n​g​-​i​n​-​t​e​a​r​s​.​h​tml

Sowing in tears

June 22, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Sow­ing in tears

As we keep sow­ing, we divide the labor accord­ing to our gifts. For every rad­i­cal prophet who risks every­thing to speak the truth, we hope some con­ser­v­a­tive is doing a good job of guard­ing the mon­ey that will pay the prophet’s bail. We make space for the pas­tor who cher­ish­es our com­mu­ni­ty, and we make space for the outward-facing evan­ge­list, who under­stands when the moment is ripe to inter­vene in our culture.

https://​blog​.canyoube​lieve​.me/​2​0​1​8​/​0​6​/​s​o​w​i​n​g​-​i​n​-​t​e​a​r​s​.​h​tml

Have we abandoned all hope for a viral Quakerism?

April 25, 2018
· Martin Kelley

So a curi­ous sta­tis­tic: so far no one has sub­mit­ted any arti­cles for the August Friends Jour­nal issue, “Going Viral with Quak­erism.” Is this a sign that we’ve all just giv­en up all hope of Quak­er spir­i­tu­al­i­ty mak­ing a dif­fer­ence in the world?

Prob­a­bly not: there are many issues for which we only get sub­mis­sions in the last week before dead­line (or the week after dead­line, which is not to be encour­aged). But if you are think­ing of writ­ing, or have been mean­ing to encour­age a friend with vision to send us some­thing, then by all means sit down in front of a keyboard.

Also, the issue after that is non-themed. If you’ve ever had any ques­tions for writ­ing a gen­er­al sub­mis­sion, let me know in the com­ments or direct mes­sage me. I’m writ­ing some­thing about that process this week.


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