Steven Davison looks at a proposal to record members at the yearly meeting level:
without meaningful pastoral care, regular worship, spiritual nurture, and a fellowship that goes deeper than just three annual meetings could provide, what does “membership” mean? All that’s left is Quaker identity and a sense of belonging to the unique spiritual community that is New York Yearly Meeting. To me, that’s a half-baked Quaker life.
Well, it’s in the courts now. The Philadelphia Inquirer headline reads Former Friends’ Central teachers sue school after firing over Palestinian professor invite while the PhillyVoice has an article on the discrimination case filed by two teachers fired by Friends’ Central School last year and the
Ariel Eure and Layla Helwa allege the Quaker school violated their civil rights by suspending and terminating them last year for supporting student protests to permit the Palestinian professor [Sa’ed Atshan] to speak. Additionally, they claim school administrators conducted a smear campaign after they were fired.
Friends Journalcovered the incident last year, as did multiple news outlets. It also came up in an interview I had with Sa’ed Atshan a few months ago. When we contacted Friends’ Central to fact-check Sa’ed’s account, the school couldn’t point to any inaccuracies but still said “we disagree with the fact pattern, including the timeframe, as described.” I still not sure what that’s even supposed to mean.
https://www.philly.com/philly/education/fired-friends-central-teachers-sue-palestinian-professor-saed-atshan-invite-20180508.html
http://www.phillyvoice.com/fired-teachers-sue-quaker-school-discrimination-defamation/
I have an Ask Me Anything request from reader Ruby M:
Hello! I’m studying The Friends Church for academic purposes and I’d love to hear from someone with firsthand experience. How easy is it to become a quaker? Do you ever feel people treat you differently because you’re a quaker? Do you think there should be more representation of quakers in the media? Thank you so much for your time. I’m very eager to hear back from you!
Since my experience is just one data point, I hope others will use the comment section below to add their stories.
I found becoming a Quaker to be something of a spiral process. I first walked into a Friends meetinghouse at the age of 20 and only slowly took on an identity as a Friend. At each step of the process, I learned more clearly what that might mean and have strived to grow into deeper faithfulness. I didn’t formally apply for membership until a decade or so after I became a regular attender. This time lag is not unheard of but I don’t think it’s usual. It’s more of an insight into my own carefulness and reticence about joining things than it is an indication of anything the meetings I attended required. When I did finally apply for membership I was quite qualified and wanted the clearness process to be exacting: again, this is an insight into my psyche!
Most people on the street don’t quite know what Quakers are so I can’t say I’m always treated differently. I guess seeing more Quakers in the media would be helpful, though given our overall small numbers I suspect even our fleeting appearances in TV shows and movies are more than we might proportionally expect.
I’m interested to hear how other Friends would answer Ruby’s question.
Jessica F: I’ve wanted to be a Quaker since I learned about the Abolitionists who helped with the Underground Railroad and prison reform. Unfortunately, the movie Gentle Persuasion presented Quakers as being against music so I became a Unitarian instead. Eventually I learned that wasn’t true for many Quakers and I found that all of the values I had developed through the years were also Quaker values and so becoming a Quaker gave me a support system and a community of like minds.
On QuakerQuaker, Kirby Urner starts a discussion on pronouns which is not the discussion you might expect:
I pay a lot of attention to pronoun use. People often say “our nuclear weapons” and/or “what we did in Vietnam”. I don’t have any nuclear weapons, nor do my friends.
Kirby’s lost reminds of the classic “What do you mean we, white man” Lone Ranger / Tonto joke.
Part of the deal of the modern nation state and its trappings of democracy is that we all own it together. The peasantry could be lacksidaisical when they were jiat doing the bidding of whichever duke/warlord/king controlled the plot of land in which their ancestral village now sat. But now we fight national wars because the state is us. It’s mostly a load of huey but it disarms what should be the natural Christian (and plain human) distaste for jingoistic tribalism.
http://www.quakerquaker.org/m/discussion?id=2360685%3ATopic%3A159446
Johan Maurer looks at one of our most-used George Fox quotes and wonders whether we’re using it authentically: Has Christ come to teach his people himself?
I want us to use our dearest cliches honestly, but if they sometimes seem weakened by overuse, the solution isn’t necessarily to discard them. Maybe we can rediscover their provocative content and test whether the promise within is already being fulfilled or could once again be fulfilled in our time.
I appreciate that Johan also asks if we’re hoarding this insight and claiming it as particularly Quaker. One of my personal tests for adopting Quaker peculiarities of practice or belief is whether I could argue that they should be adopted by other Christians (or even other people of faith in general) as universal principles. An attitude of plainness not based on social pressures or uniforms is one I think would bring humility and insight to any follower of Christ, for example.
That Christ has risen and is here and is ready to guide us directly seems to be an obvious truth – the heart of the resurrection and of Pentecost and the apostles’ church plants. That some churches insert people in between is a potential distraction but even they would, I hope, keep in mind that Christ is there with them in their steeple houses and in their lives.
The only other take-away I have from this universality test is that it centers the Inward Christ and risen Jesus and not our human institutions. This was the obvious point in the 1650s as Quakers broke up religious meetings and I think it still holds true. Our libraries and meetinghouses and mission statements and staff flowcharts don’t mean anything if they get in the way of the purpose of our society, which is simply to help one another settle down, recognize that Inward Christ, and learn the corporate skills discernment so we can be Friends (of Jesus). The invitation to knock on Jesus’s door is extended to all, not just those of us calling ourselves Quaker.
https://blog.canyoubelieve.me/2018/04/has-christ-come-to-teach-his-people.html
The March issue of Friends Journal dropped online last week (and will soon hit mailboxes) and the first featured article is from Mike Merryman-Lotze, AFSC’s Middle East Program director, and looks at the Palestinian use of the concept of normalization. I first came across this term in a Max Carter book review in 2011 and have been wanting to run an article ever since because it really questions some Quaker orthodoxies. Mike writes:
So as Quakers committed to peace and engagement with all people, what should we take from this conversation? First, we should recognize that Palestinians and Israelis are getting together and cooperating but on their own terms. One of the key problems with many past people-to-people programs is that they were initiated and led by outside actors who imposed their own goals and terms on interactions. The normalization framework pushed forward by Palestinians is a reassertion of ownership of the terms of interaction by those most impacted by the systematic injustice of Israel’s occupation and inequality.
I’ve wondered how the paradox of normalization plays into some of the issues that seem to regularly stymie Quaker process. From my introductory Friends Journal column:
As Friends, our first instinct has been to think of conflicts as misunderstandings: if only everyone got to know each other better, love and cooperation would replace fear and confusion. It’s a charming and sometimes true sentiment, but many Palestinian activists charge that this process ignores power differentials and “normalizes” the status quo.
(if you have thoughts, feel leave them in the comments or reply to the daily email).
Earlier today Donald Trump tweeted that Boeing was spending $4 billion dollars to renovate Air Force One. He was off the facts by orders of magnitude but that doesn’t mean he didn’t know knew exactly what he was doing. It’s time we stop trying to read his tweets as exercises in truth finding. It doesn’t matter if Trump didn’t know or didn’t care about his numbers: With authoritarians, we must follow the effects, not the logic.
Trump’s tweet came less than half an hour after the Chicago Tribune posted a few short quotes from the Boeing CEO saying they were concerned about the implications of trade with China under a Trump Administration. It was relatively tame stuff and of course a multinational with billions of dollars in China is going to be concerned. About a quarter of their aircrafts are built for the Chinese market.
But follow not the logic but the effect: if you criticize this president in public he will destroy your shareholder value. Boeing lost half a billion dollars in value following Trump’s 140 characters. Every CEO in America will now have to think twice before speaking to the press. It would be fiscally irresponsible to do otherwise. A few quotes in a paper isn’t worth that amount of shareholder value.
Free speech isn’t just court cases or a few lines in the Constitution. Even the CEOs of the largest corporations in America need to watch their tongues. Silencing has begun.
A public service announcement from my wife Julie earlier this evening:
Autistic people feel anxiety just like all of us. However they may cope differently. For neurotypicals, if the anxiety is a result of someone taunting or being somehow rude or abrasive or annoying, we know to walk away. But in my experience with my spectrum kids, they don’t understand why people are mean, and they’ll freak out or just keep coming back for more. They don’t necessarily get that it’s best to leave some people alone and walk away. It takes many such lessons to “get it” because their minds work differently. They go from the specific to the general, not the general to the specific, as Temple Grandin points out. They are easy targets for bullies. #TheMoreYouKnowAboutAutism
Friends Journal