What does integrity mean in our family and spiritual lives? I’m leading on online retreat on Feb. 10 and 11th as part of the “Testimonies to Mercy” series. Learn more and sign up at Powell House’s website.
Quaker Ranter
A Weekly Newsletter and Blog from Martin Kelley
Tag Archives ⇒ online
Visiting new meetings online
September 23, 2022
A brand new video from QuakerSpeak, “What to Expect at a Hybrid Quaker Meeting for Worship,“ convincingly highlights the benefits of online worship. As Robin Mohr says:
One of the things we’ve learned in the last couple of years is that it is easier to visit a new Quaker meeting that’s far away because of the opportunities set up through online worship, and we’ve seen a lot of people go back to visit a meeting they visited before or to be able to visit someplace they’ve always heard about but never been to, and that has been a gift to our community.
A Quaker’s guide to online worship and meetings to the model safeguarding policy
March 20, 2020
From Woodbrooke in the UK, a 65-page PDF guide to hosting online Quaker worship. Very detailed and useful.
A Quaker’s Guide (PDF)
Is Quaker Culture an Obstacle to Faith?
February 2, 2019
From Isaac Smith:
I have tended to describe this shift in understanding as the moment when Quakerism “clicked” for me — when it ceased to be just the weird subculture I grew up in, and more a matter of conviction. Practices that I ignored or never quite understood, like making group decisions without taking a vote, now made sense, because they were borne out of an attempt to make Christ the present teacher in all affairs.
Isaac’s piece stems in part from the December Friends Journal, on Quakers and Christianity. A large percentage of the submissions we received for the issue had remarkably similar personal stories: people had grown up in a restrictive religious tradition and come to Liberal Friends because of its openness to spiritual seeking. If anything they were hostile to Christianity and distinctive Quaker peculiarities when they joined but over time they slowly shifted, often after getting to know grounded elder Friends. Now they quietly identified as Christian Friends.
We could have printed a whole issue of (mostly) convinced Liberal Friends who had rediscovered Christianity. Instead we picked a representative sample for the print edition and published the rest as part of our our extended online edition; you can read it all at the online contents. Although Isaac’s story is different (he grew up as a Friend) it shares a similar trajectory.
(Issac also has some questions about Quaker publishing, with a link to a great 2009 blog post from Johan Maurer. I feel I should talk about this issue too but that’ll take a bit more pondering on my part).
Help keep the work going!
January 8, 2019
If you spend much time online you’ll know that there’s a lot of noise and bad information on the Internet. This is true with Quaker material too. Every day I’m scanning the corners of the net to find the blog posts, Reddit threads, Quaker magazines and mainstream coverage of Friends and bringing it on QuakerQuaker and my QuakerRanter Daily Email.
Various January server bills are coming due in the next week and the Paypal account is empty. Between domain registrations, server bills, and the Ning service the site can often rack up over $50 in a given month.
Please consider a one-time donation at http://paypal.me/martinkelley or use the QuakerQuaker donation page to set up a monthly donation.
A Racially Diverse Society of Friends?
January 2, 2019
The January issue of Friends Journal is online. I wrote the intro this month so I’ll just quote myself:
In recent years, a number of Black Friends Journal contributors have shared heartbreaking stories of not feeling welcome in Quaker circles. As we planned this issue, we self-consciously added a question mark to the end of its title — “A Racially Diverse Society of Friends?” The choice of punctuation hints at a certain weariness — are we really still asking this? — along with the suggestion that maybe many Friends are content enough with the status quo that they might simply answer “no” to a call for diversity.
What are Quaker Values? Here are some answers.
May 2, 2018
A new issue of Friends Journal is up online: “What Are Quaker Values Anyway?” The phrase “Quaker values” has become a common way to explain our connection to one another but I wonder if we’re using it too casually (I talked more of “Quaker branding” in an Editor’s Desk post trying to drum up submissions). This issue also has writing from our fifth annual (fifth?!?) Student Voices Project. I’m really happy how the issue came out. You can read much of it online without a subscription:
Quaker historic ocean of zen calm silence
April 16, 2018
The Young Quaker Podcast in the UK recently had an episode in which they had a mic run through 30 minutes of silent worship. I must admit I kind of laughed at the John Cage’ness of it. But it’s generated quite a bit of buzz. The Guardian declared it an ocean of calm, NPR thinks silence is golden. Not to be outdone, the BBC breathlessly announced that the podcast makes history for recording Quaker worship (never mind people have been worshipping via Skype and other online media for many years now).
I love the intentionality of a roomful of people agreeing to settle into silence together as much as the next Friend, but I’m tempted to wonder whether the coverage would have quite so effusive if someone had interrupted part of the podcast’s silence to give a message. From daffodil ministry to top-of-the-hour newscast updates to disquisitions on the gospel, pretty much anything would have popped the silence’s “moment of Zen,” to use NPR’s head-scratching description.
The best part of it all so far, in my opinion, is that one of the podcasters, host Jessica Hubbard-Bailey, got a chance to use the buzz to write her story of being a Quaker for i (an online spin-off of the Independent): Life is tough for young people, but being a Quaker has given me hope.
When a friend came to me last year and suggested the Young Quaker Podcast record a silent Meeting for Worship I was intrigued. But given that most people are not quite so enamoured with silence as Quakers, I couldn’t have anticipated the interest and response that followed.
https://inews.co.uk/inews-lifestyle/women/life-is-tough-for-young-people-but-being-a-quaker-has-given-me-hope/