It’s a series of questions that has dogged Friends since we did away with clergy and started calling baptism a “sprinkling,” and it has been an issue of contention in every Quaker schism: Are we Christian? Are we really Christian? Does it matter if we’re Christian? What does it even mean to be Christian in the world?

One reason we began publishing more themed issues beginning in 2012 was so we use the topics to invite fresh voices to write for us. While we’ve long had regulars who will send us a few articles a year on miscellaneous topics, themes allow us to tempt people with specific interests and ministries: reconciliation from war, climate activism, workplace reform, mentorship, ecumenical relationships, the wider family of Friends, etc.

More recently I’ve started these “Editor’s Desk” posts as a way of sharing some of the ideas we have around particular upcoming issues. The post also gives us a URL that we can share on social media to drum up submissions. I also hope that others will share the URL via email.

The absolute best way of reaching new people is when someone we know shares an upcoming theme with someone we don’t know. There are many people who by chance or inclination seem to straddle Quaker worlds. They are invaluable in amplifying our calls for submissions. Question: would it help if we started an email list just for writers or for people who want to be reminded of upcoming themes so they can share them with Friends?

Just a moment…

www.friendsjournal.org

The North is the part of England to which the radicals retreated under Norman violence, and I suspect that’s part of why the more radical side of England comes out there. Quakerism developed mainly in the north and west of England and I suspect that nonconformity comes out of that radical spirit – which needs to be rekindled, not in ways manipulated by the Murdoch press or the Conservative Party or Ukip but much more in the way that William Blake understood, of connecting with the spirit of the land.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t add that we ran a nice piece by McIntosh in the February issue of Friends Journal. He talked about Thomas Merton, the Catholic monk with Quaker roots. Again, our spirituality in context.

Alastair McIntosh

I’d be happy to see a branch (fork) of Quakerism which dispensed with membership on the grounds that there’s no way to “be” a Friend, only Friendly, as a modifier to one’s actions, as fleeting as the Now Moment itself. You “are” a Friend now, and again now, but it takes work to “stay in the moment” as such.  It’s a practice.  You don’t get to rest on your laurels, as the Romans put it.  It’d be fun to see how that turned out.

Capitalization has lots of built-in quirks. In general, we capitalize only when names come from proper nouns and don’t concern ourselves about mismatches. We can write about “frogs and salamanders and Fowler’s toads” or “diseases such as cancer or Alzheimer’s.” Religious terms are even trickier: there’s the Gospel of Luke that is part of the gospel of Christ. In my Quaker work, it’s surprising how often I have to go into a exegesis of intent over whether the writer is talking about a capital‑L divine Light or a more generic lower-case lightness of being. “Black” and “white” are both clearly lowercased when they refer to colors and most style guides have kept it that way for race.

But seriously? We’re talking about more than color when we use it as a racial designation. This is also identity. Does it really make sense to write about South Central L.A. and talk about its “Koreans, Latinos, and blacks?” The counter-argument says that if capitalize Black, what then with White? Consistency is good and they should presumably match, except for the reality check: Whiteness in America has historically been a catch-all for non-coloredness. Different groups are considered “White” in different circumstances; many of the most-proudly White ethnicities now were colored a century ago. Much of the swampier side of American politics has been reinforcing racial identity so that out-of-work Whites (codename: “working class”) will vote for the interests of White billionaires rather than out-of-work people of color (codename: “poor”) who share everything but their melatonin level. All identities are incomplete and surprisingly fluid when applied at the individual level, but few are as non-specific as “White” as a racial designation.

Back in the 1990s we could dodge the question a bit. The style guide for my current publication notes “lc, but substitute ‘African American’ in most contexts.” Many progressive style sheets back in the day gave similar advice. In the ebb and flow of preferred identity nomenclature, African American was trending as the more politically correct designation, helped along by a strong endorsement from Jesse Jackson. Black wasn’t quite following the way of Negro into obsolescence, but the availability of an clearly capitalized alternative gave white progressives an easy dodge. The terms also perhaps subtly distinguished between those good African Americans who worked within in the system from those dangerous radicals talking about Black Power and reparations.

The Black Lives Matter movement has brought Black back as the politically bolder word. Today it feels sharper and less coy than African American. It’s the better punch line for a thousand voices shouting rising up outside the governor’s mansion. We’ve arrived at the point where African American feels kind of stilted. It’s as if we’ve been trying a bit too hard to normalize centuries of slavery. We’ve got our Irish Americans with their green St Paddy’s day beer, the Italian Americans with their pasta and the African Americans with their music and… oh yes, that unfortunate slavery thing (wait for the comment: “oh wasn’t that terrible but you know there were Irish slaves too”). All of these identities scan the same in the big old melting pot of America. African American is fine for the broad sweep of history of a museum’s name but feels coldly inadequate when we’re watching a hashtag trend for yet another Black person shot on the street. When the megaphone crackles out “Whose lives matter?!?” the answer is “Black Lives Matter!” and you know everyone in the crowd is shouting the first word with a capital B.

Turning to Google: The Columbia Journalism Review has a nice piece on the nuances involved in capitalization, “Black and white: why capitalization matters.” This 2000 lecture abstract by Robert S. Wachal flat-out states that “the failure to capitalize Black when it is synonymous with African American is a matter of unintended racism,” deliciously adding “to put the best possible face on it.” In 2014, The NYTimes published Temple University prof Lori L. Tharps ’s convincing argument, “The Case for Black With a Capital B.” If you want to go historical, this thread on shifting terms by Ken Greeenwald on a 2004 Wordwizard forum [sadly gone and unfindable on Archive.org!] is pure gold.

And with that I’ll open up the comment thread.

Many of these same constraints and models underlay blogs as a whole. Most blog home pages don’t feature the most post popular posts or the one the writer might think most important. No, they show the most recent. As in comments, the entries are ordered in reverse chronological order. The pressure on writers is to repeat themselves so that their main talking points regularly show up on the homepage. There are ways around this (pinned posts, a list of important posts, plug-ins that will show what’s most popular or getting the most comments), but they’re rarely implemented and all have drawbacks.

Here’s the dilemma: the regular readers who follow your blog (read your magazine, subscribe to your Youtube, etc.) probably already know where you stand on particular issue. They generally share many of your opinions and even when they don’t, they’re still coming to your site for some sort of confirmation.

The times when blogs and websites change lives–and they do sometimes–is when someone comes by to whom your message is new. Your arguments or viewpoint helps them make sense of some growing realization that they’ve intuited but can’t quite name or define. The writing and conversation provides a piece of the puzzle of a growing identity.

(The same is true of someone walking into a new church; it’s almost a cliche of Friends that a newcomer feels “as if I’ve been Quaker my whole life and didn’t know it!” If taught gently, the Quaker ethos and metaphors give shape to an identity that’s been bubbling up for some time.)

So if we’re rethinking the mechanical default of comments, why not rethink blogs? I know projects such as Medium are trying to do that. But would it be possible to retrofit existing online publications and blogs in a way that was both future-proof and didn’t require inordinate amounts of categorization time?

I wondered whether this difficulty has become one of our modern-day stages of developing in the ministry. Both Samuel Bownas (read/buy) and Howard Brinton (buy) identified typical stages that Friends growing in the ministry typically go through. Not everyone experiences Su’s rift between their meeting’s identity and a desire for a God-grounded meeting community, but enough of us have that I don’t think it’s the foibles of particular individuals or monthly meetings. Let me tease out one piece: that of individual and group identities. Much of the discussion in the comments of Su’s post have swirled around radically different conceptions of this.

Many modern Friends have become pretty strict individualists. We spend a lot of time talking about “community” but we aren’t practicing it in the way that Friends have understood it–as a “religious society.” The individualism of our age sees it as rude to state a vision of Friends that leaves out any of our members–even the most heterodox. We are only as united as our most far-flung believer (and every decade the sweep gets larger). The myth of our age is that all religious experiences are equal, both within and outside of particular religious societies, and that it’s intolerant to think of differences as anything more than language.

This is why I cast Su’s issues as being those of a minister. There has always been the need for someone to call us back to the faith. Contrary to modern-day popular opinion, this can be done with great love. It is in fact great love (Quaker Jane) to share the good news of the directly-accessible loving Christ, who loves us so much He wants to show us the way to righteous living. This Quaker idea of righteousness has nothing to do with who you sleep with, the gas mileage of your car or even the “correctness” of your theology. Jesus boiled faithfulness down into two commands: love God with all your might (however much that might be) and love your neighbor as yourself.

A “religious society” is not just a “community.” As a religious society we are called to have a vision that is stronger and bolder than the language or understanding of individual members. We are not a perfect community, but we can be made more perfect if we return to God to the fullness we’ve been given. That is why we’ve come together into a religious society.

“What makes us Friends?” Just following the modern testimonies doesn’t put us very squarely in the Friends tradition–SPICE is just a recipe for respectful living. “What makes us Friends?” Just setting the stopwatch to an hour and sitting quietly doesn’t do it–a worship style is a container at best and false idol at worst. “How do we love God?” “How do we love our neighbor?” “What makes us Friends?” These are the questions of ministry. These are the building blocks of outreach.

I’ve seen nascent ministers (“infant ministers” in the phrasing of Samual Bownas) start asking these questions, flare up on inspired blog posts and then taildive as they meet up with the cold-water reality of a local meeting that is unsupportive or inattentive. Many of them have left our religious society. How do we support them? How do we keep them? Our answers will determine whether our meeting are religious societies or communities.

She points to a sad decline both in yearly meetings affiliated with Friends United Meeting and in those affiliated with Friends General Conference. A curiosity is that this decline is not seen in three of the four yearly meetings that are dual affiliated. These blended yearly meetings are going through various degrees of identity crisis and hand-wringing over their status and yet their own membership numbers are strong. Could it be that serious theological wrestling and complicated spiritual identities create healthier religious bodies than monocultural groupings?

The big news is in the south: “Hispanic Friends Churches” in Mexico and Central America are booming, with spillover in el Norte as workers move north to get jobs. There’s surprisingly little interaction between these newly-arrived Spanish-speaking Friends and the the old Main Line Quaker establishment (maybe not surprising really, but still sad). I’ll leave you with a challenge Margaret gives readers:

One question that often puzzles me is why so many Hispanic Friends
congregations are meeting in churches belonging to other denominations.
I would love to see established Friends meetings with their own
property sharing space with Hispanic Friends. It would be an
opportunity to share growth and challenges together.

If it’s a cultural difference, I suspect it’s less geographic than functional. I was speaking of the class of professional Friends (heavy in my parts) who purposefully obscure their language. We’re very good at talking in a way that sounds Quaker to those who do know our specific language but that sounds generically spiritual to those who don’t. Sometimes this obscurantism is used by people who are repelled by traditional Quakerism but want to advance their ideas in the Religious Society of Friends, but more often (and more dangerously) it’s used by Friends who know and love what we are but are loathe to say anything that might sound controversial.

I’ve told the story before of a Friend and friend who said that everytime he uses the word community he’s meaning the body of Christ. Newcomers hearing him and reading his articles could be forgiven for thinking that community is our reason-for-being, indeed: what we worship. The problem is that ten years later, they’ll have signed up and built up an identity as a Friend and will get all offended when someone suggests that this community they know and love is really the body of Christ.

Liberal Friends in the public eye need to be more honest in their conversation about the Biblical and Christian roots of our religious fellowship. That will scare off potential members who have been scarred by the acts of those who have falsely claimed Christ. I’m sorry about that and we need to be as gentle and humble about this as we can. But hopefully they’ll see the fruits of the true spirit in our openness, our warmth and our giving and will realize that Christian fellowship is not about televangelists and Presidential hypocrites. Maybe they’ll eventually join or maybe not, but if they do at least they won’t be surprised by our identity. Before someone comments back, I’m not saying that Christianity needs to be a test for individual membership but new members should know that everything from our name (“Friends of Christ”) on down are rooted in that tradition and that that formal membership does not include veto power over our public identity.

There is room out there for spiritual-but-not-religious communities that aren’t built around a collective worship of God, don’t worry about any particular tradition and focus their energies and group identity on liberal social causes. But I guess part of what I wonder is why this doesn’t collect under the UUA banner, whose Principles and Purposes statement is already much more syncretistic and post-religious than even the most liberal yearly meeting. Evolving into the “other UUA” would mean abandoning most of the valuable spiritual wisdom we have as a people.

I think there’s a need for the kind of strong liberal Christianity that Friends have practiced for 350 years. There must be millions of people parked on church benches every Sunday morning looking up at the pulpit and thinking to themselves, “surely this isn’t what Jesus was talking about.” Look, we have Evangelical Christians coming out against the war! And let’s face it, it’s only a matter of time before “Emergent Christians” realize how lame all that post-post candle worship is and look for something a little deeper. The times are ripe for “Opportunities,” Friends. We have important knowledge to share about all this. It would be a shame if we kept quiet.