ONE YEAR AGO: The Not-Quite-So Young Quakers

It was five years ago this week that I sat down and wrote about a cool
new movement I had been reading about. It would have been Jordan Cooper’s blog that turned me onto Robert E Webber’s The Younger Evangelicals, a look at generational shifts among American Evangelicals. In retrospect, it’s fair to say that the QuakerQuaker community gathered around this essay (here’s Robin M’s account of first reading it) and it’s follow-up We’re All Ranters Now (Wess talking about it).

And yet? All of this is still a small demographic scattered all around. If I wanted to have a good two-hour caffeine-fueled bull session about the future of Friends at some local coffeeshop this afternoon, I can’t think of anyone even vaguely local who I could call up. I’m really sad to say we’re still largely on our own. According to actuarial tables, I’ve recently crossed my life’s halfway point and here I am still referencing generational change. How I wish I could honestly say that I could get involved with any committee in my yearly meeting and get to work on the issues raised in “Younger Evangelicals and Younger Quakers”. Someone recently sent me an email thread between members of an outreach committee for another large East Coast yearly meeting and they were debating whether the internet was an appropriate place to do outreach work–in 2008?!?

Published 9/14/2008.

FIVE YEARS AGO: Vanity Googling of Causes

A poster to an obscure discussion board recently described typing a particular search phrase into Google and finding nothing but bad information. Reproducing the search I determined two things: 1) that my site topped the list and 2) that the results were actually quite accurate. I’ve been hearing an increasing number of stories like this. “Cause Googling,” a variation on “vanity googling,” is suddenly becoming quite popular. But the interesting thing is that these new searchers don’t actually seem curious about the results. Has Google become our new proof text?

Published 10/2/2004 in The Quaker Ranter.

TEN’ISH YEARS AGO: War Time Again
This piece is about the NATO bombing campaign in Serbia (Wikipedia). It’s strange to see I was feeling war fatigue even before 9/11 and the “real” wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

There’s a great danger in all this. A danger to the soul of America. This is the fourth country the U.S. has gone to war against in the last six months. War is becoming routine. It is sandwiched between the soap operas and the sitcoms, between the traffic and weather reports. Intense cruise missile bombardments are carried out but have no effect on the psyche or even imagination of the U.S. citizens.

It’s as if war itself has become another consumer good. Another event to be packaged for commercial television. Given a theme song. We’re at war with a country we don’t know over a region we don’t really care about. I’m not be facetious, I’m simply stating a fact. The United States can and should play an active peacemaking role in the region, but only after we’ve done our homework and have basic knowledge of the players and situation. Isolationism is dangerous, yes, but not nearly as dangerous as the emerging culture of these dilettante made-for-TV wars.

Published March 25, 1999, Nonviolence.org

This is the proposal for the course. I started off with a long introduction on the history and philosophy of Quaker religious education and pedagogic acculturation and go on to outline a different sort curriculum for Quakerism 101.

I took extensive notes of each session and will try to work that feedback into a revised curriculum that other Meetings and Q101 leaders could use and adapt. In the meantime, if you want to know how specific sessions and rolesplays went, just email me and I’ll send you the unedited notes. If you’re on the Adult Religious Ed. committee of a South Jersey or Philadelphia area Meeting and want to bring me to teach it again, just let me know.

Thoughts on a Quakerism 101 Course

Over the last few years, there seems to be a real groundswell of interest in Quakers trying to understand who we are and where we came from. There’s a revival of interst in looking back at our roots, not for history or orthodoxy’s sake, but instead to trying to tease out the “Quaker Treasures” that we might want to reclaim. I’ve seen this conversation taking place in all of the branches of Friends and it’s very hopeful.

I assume at least some of the participants of the Quakerism 101 course will have gone through other introductory courses or will have read the standard texts. It would be fun to give them all something new–luckily there’s plenty to choose from! I also want to expose participants to the range of contemporary Quakerism. I’d like participants to understand why the other branches call themselves Friends and to recognize some of the pecularities our branch has unconsciously adopted.

Early Friends didn’t get involved in six-week courses. They were too busy climbing trees to shout the gospel further, inviting people to join the great movement. Later Quietist Friends had strong structures of recorded ministers and elders which served a pedagogic purpose for teaching Friends. When revivalism broke out and brought overwhelmingly large numbers of new attenders to meetings, this system broke down and many meetings hired ministers to teach Quakerism to the new people. Around the turn of the century, prominent Quaker educators introduced academic models, with courses and lecture series. Each of these approaches to religious education fiddles with Quakerism and each has major drawbacks. But these new models were instituted because of very real and ongoing problems Friends have with transmitting our faith to our youth and acculturating new seekers to our Quaker way.

The core contradiction of a course series is that the leader is expected to both impart knowledge and to invite participation. In practice, this easily leads to situations where the teacher is either too domineering _or_ too open to participation. The latter seems more common: Quakerism is presented as a least-common-denominator social grouping, formless, with membership defined simply by one’s comfortability in the group (see Brinton’s Friends for 300 Years.) One of the main goals of a introductory course should be to bring new attenders into Quaker culture, practice and ethics. There’s an implicit assumption that there is something called Quakerism to teach. Part of that job is teasing out the religious and cultural models that new attenders are bringing with them and to open up the question as to how they fit or don’t fit in with the “gestalt” of Quakerism (Grundy, Quaker Treasures and Wilson’s Essays on the Quaker Vision).

The greatest irony behind the Quakerism 101 class is that its seemingly-neutral educational model lulls proudly “unprogrammed” Friends into an obliviousness that they’ve just instituted a program led by a hireling minister. Arguments why Q101 teachers should be paid sounds identical to arguments why part-time FUM ministers should be paid. A Q101 leader in an unprogrammed meeting might well want to acknowledge this contradiction and pray for guidance and seek clearness about this. (For my Medford class, I decided to teach it as paid leader of a class as a way of disciplining myself to practice of my fellow Philadelphia Yearly Meeting Friends.)

The standard Quakerism 101 curriculum compartmentalizes everything into neat little boxes. History gets a box, testimonies get a box, faith and institutions get boxes. I want to break out of that. I can recommend good books on Quaker history and point participants to good websites advocating Quaker testimonies. But I want to present history as current events and the testimonies as ministry. The standard curriculum starts with some of the more controversial material about the different braches of Friends and only then goes into worship, the meeting life, etc. I want discussion of the latter to be informed by the earlier discussion of who we are and who we might be. The course will start off more structured, with me as leader and become more participatory in the later sections.

Curriculum:

What I want to do is have one solid overview book and supplement it with some of those fascinating (and coversation-sparking!) pamphlets. The overview book is Thomas Hamm’s Quakers in America. Published last year, it’s the best introduction to Quakerism in at least a generation. Hamm wrote this as part of a religions of America series and it’s meant as a general introduction to contemporary Quakerism. His later chapters on debates within Quakerism should be easy to adapt for a Q‑101 series.

Session I: Introductions

• Worship
• In-class reading of two pages from Quakers in America (profile of Ohio Yearly Meeting sessions, p. 1), reflections. (maybe start this class 2?)
• Introductions to one another.

Session II: What Are Our Models

• Worship
• In-class reading of two pages from Quakers in America (profile of First Friends Church of Canton, p. 3), reflections.
• What are our models? Roleplay of “What Would X Do?” with a given problem: JC, George Fox, Methodists, Non-denominational bible church, college. Also: the “natural breaking point” model of Quaker divisions.
• Reading for this class: “Convinced Quakerism” by Ben Pink Dandelion

Session III: The Schisms

• Worship
• In-class reading of two pages from Quakers in America (profile of Wilmington Yearly Meeting sessions, p. 5), reflections.
• Reading for this class: Quakers in America chapter 3, “Their Separate Ways: American Friends Since 1800,” about the branches

Session IV: Role of our Institutions

• Worship
• In-class reading of two pages from Quakers in America (profile of Lake Erie Yearly Meeting, p. 7), reflections.
• Reading for this class: “The Authority of Our Meetings…” by Paul Lacey

Session V: Controversies within Friends

• Could pick any 2–3 controversies of Hamm’s: “Is Quakerism Christian?,” “Leadership,” “Authority,” “Sexuality,” “Identity,” “Unity and Diversity,” “Growth and Decline.” Early in the course I could poll the group to get a sense which ones they might want to grapple with. The idea is not to be thorough covering all the topics or even all the intricacies within each topic. I hope to just see if we can model ways of talking about these within Medford.
• Reading for this class: Quakers in America chapter 5, “Contemporary Quaker Debates,” p. 120

Session VI: Role of worship, role of ministry, role of witnesses.

• Focusing on Worship/Ministry (Witness)/MM Authority (Elders). If the calendar allows for eight sessions, this could easily be split apart or given two weeks.
• Reading for this class: “Quaker Treasures” by Marty Paxton Grundy, which ties together Gospel Order, Ministries and the Testimonies.

Session VII: What kind of religious community do we want Medford MM to be?

• This should be participatory, interactive. There should be some go-around sort of exercise to open up our visions of an ideal religious community and what we think Medford Meeting might be like in 5, 10, 25 years.
• Reading for this class: “Building the Life of the Meeting” by Bill & Fran Taber (1994, $4). I’ve heard there’s something recent from John Punshon which might work better.
• Also: something from the emergent church movement to point to a great people that might be gathered. Perhaps essays from Jordan Cooper & someone at Circle of Hope/Phila.

Books Used:

• “Quakers in America” is Thomas Hamm’s excellent new introduction to Friends is a bit pricey ($40) but is adapting well to a Q101 course.
• “Convinced Quakerism” by Ben Pink Dandelion mixes traditional Quaker understadings of convincement with Ben’s personal story and it sparked a good, wideranging discussion. $4.
• “Quaker Treasures” by Marty Grundy. $4
• “The Authority of Our Meetings…” by Paul Lacey. $4
• “Building the Life of the Meeting” by Bill and Fran Taber. $4

Considered Using:

• “Why Friends are Friends” by Jack Willcuts. $9.95. I like this book and think that much of it could be used for a Q101 in a liberal-branch Friends Meeting. Chapters: “The Wonder of Worship,” “Sacred Spiritual Sacraments,” “Called to Ministry,” “Letting Peace Prevail,” “Getting the Sense of the Meeting,” “On Being Powerful”–I find the middle chapters are the more interesting/Quaker ones).
• Silence and Witness by Michael Birkel. I haven’t read through this yet, but in skimming the chapters it looks like Birkel shys away from challenging the Quaker status quo. Within that constraint, however, it looks like a good introduction to Quakerism. $16.
• “Quaker Culture vs. Quaker Faith” by Samuel Caldwell.
• The Philadelphia Yearly Meeting Quakerism 101 curriculum. It’s not as bad as it could be but it’s too heavy on history and testimonies and too focused on the Jones/Brinton view of Quakerism which I think has played itself out. I’ve seen Q101 facilitators read directly out of the curriculum to the glazed eyes of the participants. I wanted something fresher and less course-like.

The photo reminds me of my New York Times moment, when the photographer insisted on a few shots of me holding a guitar, which made it onto the “CyberTimes” cover, but the paragraph describing the movement is a good, concise one:

Called “emerging” or “postmodern” churches, they are diverse in theology and method, linked loosely by Internet sites, Web logs, conferences and a growing stack of hip-looking paperbacks. Some religious historians believe the churches represent the next wave of evangelical worship, after the boom in megachurches in the 1980’s and 1990’s.

Still, much of the article talks about the superficial stuff, what Jordan Cooper calls the “candles and coffee” superficiality of some of a form-only emergent church style. There certainly is a lot of chaff with the wheat. Julie read the article and was really turned off to the dumb side of the emergent church:

Honey, I just can’t get with it. I empathize somewhat, but I’m a traditionalist, so I can’t say I don’t take just as much offense at “borrowing” Catholic and Orthodox spiritual practices as I do at the importing of the sweatlodge ripped off from Native Americans. I’m not saying that all Emerging Church groups do rip off, they’re trying to find something legitimate, I can see that. It’s just that they are settling for part of the truth without looking at the whole picture. Lectio Divina is part of a larger Catholic theology and really shouldn’t be divorced from it, etc. I empathize with the unchurched and the unfriendliness of traditional churches to the completely unchurched. I don’t know what the answer is, but this movement just strikes me as bizarre. Of course, again, I’m coming from a traditional Catholic perspective here, so “church” to me means something utterly different than to many, especially the unchurched and evangelicals, for example, who see worship as more open and dynamic and involving the heart, not so much about form. I guess in the end, it’s just that some of this Emerging Church stuff is just too “cool.” I’m glad that it puts some people in touch with God, and that’s a good thing. But church should never be too cool or too comfy or too sentimental. It should challenge too. What I’d like to hear in one of these articles is how these new forms and this new movement actually challenge people to commit to Christ and to change their lives. Hmmm.

So true, so true. What I’ve wondered is whether traditional Quakerism has a threshing function to offer the emergent-church seekers: we have the intimate meetings (partly by design, partly because our meetings are half-empty), the language of the direct experience with God, the warning against superficiality. I can hear Julie laughing at me saying this, as Friends have largely lost the ability to challenge or articulate our faith, which is the other half of the equation. But I’d like to believe we’re due for some generational renewals ourselves, which might bring us to the right place at the right time to engage with the emergent churchers and once more gather a new people.

I often feel like I’m talking to a brick wall when I talk about these issues (can’t we just all be nurturing without being told to, simply because it’s the right way to be?). Fortunately, there are some fascinating sites from thirty-somethings also seeing through the generational crisis affect Christians. Right now I’m reading Pastoral Softness, a post from Jordan Cooper, a pastor in a community church in Saskatchewan, and this paragraph just hits me so hard:

The modern church is not going to listen to us, it won’t affirm us, or give us any of its resources there is no point anymore in letting it get to us. It will be there in decline our entire lives and will probably go down fighting and wasting a lot of lives and money but to let that define us spiritually will be an even bigger loss. We can’t blame it for being what it is and if we are going to have a long term future in serving God, we need to stop looking at our environment and instead in our hearts.

Serious stuff, indeed, and I suspect some Friends would elder me for even repeating it. But its really the same message that Christ gave a young man 350 years ago:

When all my hopes in them and in all men were gone, so that I had nothing outwardly to help me, nor could I tell what to do, then, oh, then, I heard a voice which said, “There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition”; and when I heard it, my heart did leap for joy. Then the Lord let me see why there was none upon the earth that could speak to my condition, namely, that I might give Him all the glory. (Journal of George Fox)

Everyone knows the first part but it’s the last sentence that’s been speaking to me for at least the last year. Does Christ make the insitutions fail us just so He can direct our gaze to the true Source? And isn’t this what Quaker simplicity is all about: keeping our minds as undistracted as possible so we can see the real deal?

Cooper did an interview with Robert Webber, an author I know nothing about but who’s apparently written a few books dealing with the new generation of Evangelicals. I sometimes stumble across people and wonder if there’s not some kindred culture out there that’s just out of reach because it’s supposedly on some other side of an theological rift. Anyway, Webber says:

The pragmatic churches have become institutionalized — with some exceptions. They responded to the sixties and seventies, created a culture-driven church and don’t get that the world has changed again. Pragmatics, being fixed, have little room for those who are shaped by the postmodern revolution.

A lot of these evangelicals are reaching for something that looks very much like early Quakerism (which self-consciously reached toward early Christianity). I’d like to think that Friends have something to offer these seekers and that there could be a dynamic re-emergence of Quakerism. But to be honest, most Quakers I know don’t have anything to offer these wearied seekers except more of the same hashed out institutionalism, with different flavored toppings (differences of social stands, e.g., pacifism, attitudes towards gays). I know John Punshon’s been talking a lot about Quakers’ possible intersection with a larger renewed evangelism but I’m ashamed to admit I haven’t read Reasons for Hopeyet. I’ll do that soon.

Update:
Comparison chart of traditional, pragmatic, and younger evangelicals from Robert Webber by way of Jordan Cooper. Very interesting.

More Online Reading:
Leading Dying Churches
Jordan Cooper
The Ooze
“Indieallies” Meetup to connect with local readers of these sites