For those that might not have noticed, I have an arti­cle in the lat­est issue of the awkwardly-named FGCon­nec­tions: “Wit­ness of Our Lost Twenty-Somethings.” Astute Quak­er Ranter read­ers will rec­og­nize it as a re-hashing of “The Lost Quak­er Gen­er­a­tion” and its relat­ed pieces. Reac­tion has been quite inter­est­ing, with a lot of old­er Friends say­ing they relate to what I’ve said. It’s fun­ny how so many of us feel a sense of iso­la­tion from our own reli­gious institutions!

The Witness of Our Lost Twenty-Somethings

By Martin Kelley

What is it like to be a thirty-something Friend these days? Lone­ly and frus­trat­ing. At least half of the com­mit­ted, inter­est­ing and bold twenty-something Friends I knew ten years ago have left Quak­erism. This isn’t nor­mal youth­ful church-hopping and it’s not some char­ac­ter flaw of “Gen­er­a­tion X.” They’ve left because they were sim­ply tired of slam­ming their heads against the wall of an insti­tu­tion­al Quak­erism that neglect­ed them and its own future.

I can cer­tain­ly relate. For the last decade, I’ve done ground-breaking work pub­li­ciz­ing non­vi­o­lence online. I’ve been pro­filed in the New York Times and invit­ed on nation­al talk radio shows, but the clerk of the peace com­mit­tee in my achingly-small month­ly meet­ing always for­gets that I have “some web­site” and I’ve nev­er been asked to speak to Friends about my work. I wouldn’t mind being over­looked if I saw oth­ers my age being rec­og­nized, but most of the amaz­ing min­istries I’ve known have been just as invisible.

It’s like this even at the small-scale lev­el. I’ve gone to count­less com­mit­tee meet­ings with ideas, enthu­si­asm and faith­ful­ness, only to real­ize (too late, usu­al­ly) that these are just the qual­i­ties these com­mit­tees don’t want. Through repeat­ed heart­break I’ve final­ly learned that if I feel like I’m crash­ing a par­ty when I try to get involved with some Quak­er cause, then it’s a sign that it’s time to get out of there! I’ve been in so many meet­ing­hous­es where I’ve been the only per­son with­in ten years of my age in either direc­tion that I’m gen­uine­ly star­tled when I’m in a room­ful of twenty- and thirty-somethings.

I recent­ly had lunch with one of the thir­tysome­thing Friends who have left. He had been drawn to Friends because of their mys­ti­cism and their pas­sion for non­vi­o­lent social change; he was still very com­mit­ted to both. But after orga­niz­ing actions for years, he con­clud­ed that the Friends in his meet­ing didn’t think the peace tes­ti­mo­ny could actu­al­ly inspire us to a wit­ness that was so bold.

I wrote about this lunch con­ver­sa­tion on my web­site and before long anoth­er old Friend sur­faced. Eight years ago a wit­ness and action con­fer­ence inspired him to help launch a nation­al Quak­er youth vol­un­teer net­work. He put years of his life into this; his state­ments on the prob­lems and promis­es fac­ing Quak­er youth are still right on the mark. But after ear­ly excite­ment his sup­port evap­o­rat­ed and the project even­tu­al­ly fell apart in what he’s described as “a bit­ter and unsuc­cess­ful experience.”

The loss of Quak­er peers has hit close to home for me. When one close Friend learned my wife had left Quak­erism for anoth­er church after eleven years, all he could say was how pleased he was that she had final­ly found her spir­i­tu­al home; oth­ers gave sim­i­lar empty- sound­ing plat­i­tudes. I felt like say­ing to them “No, you dimwits, we’ve dri­ven away yet anoth­er Friend!” Each of these three lost Friends remain deeply com­mit­ted to the Spir­it and are now involved in oth­er reli­gious societies.

Young adults haven’t always been as invis­i­ble or unin­volved as they are now. A whole group of the Quak­er lead­ers cur­rent­ly in their fifties and six­ties were giv­en impor­tant jobs at Quak­er orga­ni­za­tions at very ten­der ages (often right out of col­lege). Also, there’s his­tor­i­cal prece­dent for this: George Fox was 24 when he began his pub­lic min­istry; Samuel Bow­nas was 20 when he was roused out of his meet­ing­house slum­ber to begin his remark­able min­istry; even Mar­garet Fell was still in her thir­ties when she was con­vinced. When the first gen­er­a­tion of Friends drew togeth­er a group of their most impor­tant elders and min­is­ters to address one of their many crises, the aver­age age of the gath­er­ing was 35. Younger Friends haven’t always been ghet­toized into Young

Audlt Friends only dorms, pro­grams, work­shops or committees.

There is hope. Some have start­ed notic­ing that young Friends who go into lead­er­ship train­ing pro­grams often dis­ap­pear soon after­wards. The pow­ers that be at Friends Gen­er­al Con­fer­ence have final­ly start­ed talk­ing about “youth min­istry.” (Wel­come!). A great peo­ple might pos­si­bly be gath­ered from the emer­gent church move­ment and the inter­net is full of amaz­ing con­ver­sa­tions from new Friends and seek­ers. There are pock­ets in our branch of Quak­erism where old­er Friends have con­tin­ued to men­tor and encour­age mean­ing­ful and inte­grat­ed youth lead­er­ship, and some of my peers have hung on with me. Most hope­ful­ly, there’s a whole new gen­er­a­tion of twenty- some­thing Friends on the scene with strong gifts that could be nur­tured and harnessed.

In the truest real­i­ty, our chrono­log­i­cal ages melt away in the ever-refreshing cur­rents of the Liv­ing Spir­it; we are all as chil­dren to a lov­ing God. Will Friends come togeth­er to remem­ber this before our reli­gious soci­ety los­es anoth­er generation?

Mar­tin Kel­ley is a mem­ber of Atlantic City Month­ly Meet­ing, Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing. He works for FGC as the web­mas­ter and book­store sec­re­tary. This arti­cle is writ­ten from his experience.