I don’t think Quakers’ historical memory always serves us very well. In 1656, George Fox wrote a letter from Launceston Gaol, a portion of which is quoted in every edition of Faith and Practice. It’s been reproduced as giant posters and the key phrase has become one of the go-to elevator pitches for modern Friends. It tells us to “be patterns” and “walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in every one; whereby in them ye may be a blessing, and make the witness of God in them to bless you: then to the Lord God you shall be a sweet savour, and a blessing.”

We’ve taken one paragraph from one letter as a mission statement and now we get people wringing their hands trying to reconcile this Pollyanna-style niceness with the horror we see in the world. You get Friends valiantly trying (and mostly failing) to see “that of God” in ICE agents, terrorists, or authoritarian political leaders.

I think a big part of the problem is that Quakers have overall been a comfortable, well-off people for a long time. We’ve spent much of the last 300 years mostly remembering the happy-feeling stuff. Fox and his fellow early Friends were wary of “the world,” seeing it as a fallen place that we could transcend only with the guidance and healing powers of the Living Christ. Yes, he talked about being patterns in that letter, but way down. The letter actually started off in a thunderous manner that quite frankly, I think perhaps speaks more clearly to our time:

Dwell in the power of life and wisdom, and dread of the Lord of life, and of heaven and earth, that you may be preserved in the wisdom of God over all, and be a terror and a dread to all the adversaries of God, answering that of God in them all, spreading the truth abroad, awakening the witness, confounding the deceit, gathering up out of transgression into the life, into the covenant of light and peace with God. Let all nations hear the sound by word or by writing. Spare no place, spare no tongue, nor pen; but be obedient to the Lord God. Go through the work, and be valiant for the truth upon earth; tread and trample down all that is contrary.

None of this is practical advice for what to do if you see secret police jump out of unmarked van to kidnap someone off the street. But what if our editions of Faith and Practice all advised us to a terror and dread and to walk the earth treading and trampling on all that is contrary to divine love? Toward the end of the letter, Fox advised us to “be obedient to the power, for that will save you out of the hands of unreasonable men and preserve you over the world to himself.” May it be so.

Other commentaries: Simon St. Laurent (2007), Stuart Masters (2016), Mark Wutka (2018) and Lewis Benson’s brilliant 1970 essay “ ‘That of God’: What Did George Fox Mean by It?” Also, John Andrew Gallery has a recent Pendle Hill pamphlet on the essay, which I haven’t read but assume is worth reading.

Update: in the Reddit discussion KeithB said that he wondered if there were Quakers out there looking for justification to tangle it up with ICE officers. Pretty much as we were talking, word came out that the son of well-known Philly-area Quaker family being arrested at his home in Portland, Oregon, on suspicions of participating in violent anti-ICE protests a few weeks ago.

The prosecutors have released a bunch of pictures of violent activity being perpetrated by someone who looks like the accused, with a similar arm tattoo. That protestor used a stop sign as a battering ram, and then threw a brick at an ICE agent that hit his head, drew blood, and required medical attention. I sure hope it’s not a Quaker in those photos and that his defense attorneys can prove it. Tread and trampling is not a license for assault.

Quakerism is an experiential religion: we believe we should “let our lives speak” and we stay away from creeds and doctrinal statements. The best way to learn what Quakers believe is through listening in on our conversations.

In the last few years, dozens of Quakers have begun sharing stories, frustrations, hopes and dreams for our religious society through blogs. The conversations have been amazing. There’s a palpable sense of renewal and excitement. QuakerQuaker is a daily index to that conversation.

I still like it as a distinctly Quaker philosophy of outreach.

The restaurant chain Red Robin recently made a fifteen-second TV ad whose joke is that its veggie-burgers are perfect for customers whose teenage daughters are “going through a phase.” It’s had rather limited airplay (it’s the 450th or so most run ad in the past 30 days) but still, Business Insider ran a piece on it which claimed that “the chain managed to insult all potential vegetarian and vegan customers” with the ad. For evidence, it cited three mild comments on Red Robin’s Facebook page. Fair enough.

But then the page-view-whores at Huffington Post saw the BI piece and wrote that Red Robin is “under fire for dissing vegetarians,” still citing just those Facebook comments. Under fire? For three comments?

Sensing fresh (veggie?) meat, Phillymag links to HuffPost to claim that ”vegetarians and vegans far and wide are freaking out” and that a boycott has been declared. The author tells us that “‘Offended’ gets tossed around so rapidly” and it must be true, right?, as she uses it three more times just in her opening paragraph. It’s a pity that none of the three Facebook commenters were considerate enough to actually use the words “outrage” or “boycott.” One described the ad as “disappointing” (ouch!). Another used the word “dissatisfied” (zing!), though he was speaking not about the ad per se but rather a recent visit to the restaurant.

Seems like if there is an epidemic of offended-ness going on, we might take a look at the desperation of what passes for modern journalism these days. Offended-ness must get page views, so why not be offended at being offended? (I imagine some hack further down the pageview food chain is right now reading the Phillymag piece and typing out a headline about the worldwide vegan army issuing a fatwa on the teenage daughters of Red Roof executives.) Is this really the kind of crap that people like to share on Facebook? Do Internet users just not follow links backward to judge if there’s any truth to outrage posts on outrage? I usually ignore this kind of junk even to read past the ridiculous headline. But the phenomenon is all too ubiquitous on the interwebs these days and is really so unnecessarily divisive and stereotype-perpetuating.

The 2005 article was largely pessimistic, focused on the “committed, interesting and bold twenty-something Friends
I knew ten years ago” who had left Friends and blaming “an institutional Quakerism that neglected them and
its own future” but my hope paragraph was optimistic:

There is hope… 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.

Hard to imagine that only three years ago I was an isolated FGC staffer left to pursue outreach and youth ministry work on my own time by an institution indifferent to either pursuit. Both functions have become major staff programs, but I’m no longer involved, which is probably just as well, as neither program has decided to focus on the kind of work I had hoped it might. The more things change the more they stay the same, right? The most interesting work is still largely invisible.

Some of this work has been taken up by the new bloggers and by some sort of alt-network that seems to be congealing around all the blogs, Twitter networks, Facebook friendships, intervisitations and IM chats. Many of us associated with QuakerQuaker.org have some sort of regular correspondence or participation with the Emerging Church movement, we regularly highlight “amazing conversations” from new Friends and seekers and there’s a lot of inter-generational work going on. We’ve got a name for it in Convergent Friends, which reflects in part that “we” aren’t just the liberal Friends I imagined in 2005, but a wide swath of Friends from all the Quaker flavors.

But we end up with a problem that’s become the central one for me and a lot of others: what can we tell a new seeker who should be able to find a home in real-world Friends but doesn’t fit? I could point this week’s correspondent to meetings and churches hundreds of miles from her house, or encourage her to start a blog, or compile a list of workshops or gatherings she might attend. But none of these are really satisfactory answers.   

Elsewhere:

Gathering in Light Wess sent an email around last night about a book review done by his PhD advisor Ryan Bolger that talks about tribe-style leadership and a new kind of church identity that uses the instant communication tools of the internet to forge a community that’s not necessarily limited to locality. Bolger’s and his research partner report that they see “emerging initiatives within traditional churches as the next
horizon for the spread of emerging church practices in the United States.” More links from Wess’ article on emerging churches and denominations.

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 think the YAF/FI challenges can be roughly divided into three categories. They are introduced in the next paragraph, then elaborated on in turn. They are:

• *Accountability*. Communication and group process within YAF/FI has never been very good. We can change that, revitalizing the role of Business Meeting as setter of the vision and forum for subcommittee feedback and policy setting.
• *Outreach*. Who Do We Serve? YAF/FI has done no outreach to newly-convinced Friends and the planning of events has shown an insensitivity to the needs of this group.
• *Activities*. We’ve had a lot of conferences with mediocre programs that have little spiritual or Quaker focus. We can set yearly themes as a group in advance, giving Steering Committee guidance for particular programs.

ACCOUNTABILITY:

PYM/FI has not been an organization with good communication skills, group process or accountability. Business meetings have been thought of as a necessary and begrudged task where half the participants fall asleep.

Business Meetings should have clear, advance agenda. The YAF clerk should call for agenda items by email two weeks before the meeting (phoning prominent members who don’t have access to email), and send out a draft agenda the week before. Basic agenda items should include variation on the following (my facilitation experience comes from Quaker-inspired but not Quaker process, so some of these tasks might need to be turned into Quakerese):

• silent worship;
• agenda review;
• reports from all subcommittees (treasurer’s report, steering committee report, distribution committee report, email/web report);
• two substantive issues;
• setting next date;
• evaluation of meeting;

All reports should be written (ideally distributed by email beforehand and with a dozen copies at the meeting) and should include activity, fiscal activity, policy questions needing business meeting input, approval of future tasks. Every decision should have specific people as liaisons for follow-up, and part of the next Business Meeting should be reviewing progress on these tasks.

OUTREACH: WHO DO WE SERVE?

I have a very large concern that the official YAF/FI organization does not do extensive outreach and that it hasn’t always been sensitive to the needs of all YAFs.

As a convinced Friend who first ventured forth to a Quaker Meeting at age 20, I spent years looking for YAFs and not finding them. The only outreach that YAF/FI does is to graduating Young Friends (the high school program). Our outreach to newly convince Friends has been nonexistent.

Other underrepresented YAFs: the Central Phila. MM group, thirty-something YAFs, YAFs of color, les/bi/gay YAFs (our President Day’s gathering conflicts with the popular mid-winter FLGC gathering, an unfortunate message we’re sending), YAFs with children.

Some of the outreach challenges for YAF/FI include:

• Cliquishness. Many plugged-in YAFs know each other from high school days and it can be intimidating to jump into such a group. There’s also a reluctance to review assumptions brought down from the Young Friends (high school) program;
• The poor communication in YAF/FI keeps many disenfranchised YAFs from having a forum in which to express their concerns and needs. We can reach out to under-represented YAFs and ask them what a age-fellowship could provide them;
• Single-type events: the weekend gatherings keep away many YAFs with responsibility. The tenor of YAF/FI events often keeps away the more mature YAFs. I doubt one type of event could satisfy all types of YAFs. We should be open to support the leadership of disenfranchised YAFs by providing them the money, resources and institutional support to address their communities’ need (keeping in mind YAF events should be open to all).

ACTIVITIES

YAF events have had their problems. Thematically, they usually have not had Quaker themes, they have not been geared toward spiritual growth (usually First Day’s Meeting for Worship is the only spiritual component). They have followed the patterns of Young Friends events (3 day gatherings), even though this format excludes many (most?) YAFs.

We could easily have more of a mix of events. Some could be the traditional weekend events, some could be day events, like the successful apple-picking expedition and Swarthmore gathering a few years ago organized by Friends Center-employed YAFs.

As far as I’ve known, there has never been any Business Meeting brainstorming for themes, and each event has been organized in an ad hoc manner by a small group of people without feedback from the general YAF population. This is partly a result of the need for conference organizers to have a conference planned long in advance.

I propose that we set Year-Long Themes, a process that some groups employ to interesting effect. In the fall, there could be a Business Meeting to decide the next calendar year’s theme; Steering Committee could then organize all of the programmatic events around this topic. This would give large YAF input into the selection process and also provide an interesting unity to topics. Each topic should be broad enough to allow for an interesting mix of programs and each topic should have a specific Quaker focus. One pedagogical motivation behind these events should be to introduce and reinforce Friends’ history and culture.

Themes that I’d love to see:

• Spiritual and historical roots of Quakerism. (Becca Grunko, Margaret Hope Bacon, Peggy Morsheck might be good resource people). Events could include a look at the fiery birth of Quakerism and an historical exploration of Friends Institute itself (founded in the 1880s, FI played a role in unifying the Hicksite/Orthodox schism in PYM and provided key assistance to the early AFSC; Gennyfer Davenport is hot on the trail of this history!).
• Quakers in the world. a look at volunteerism, and witness and ministry. An obvious event would be to participate in a week- or weekend-long PYM workcamp.
• Neat Quaker figures (maybe even neat PYM figures!). Conferences that look at the history of folks like John Woolman, William Penn, Lucretia Mott, perhaps current figures like the Willoughby’s.
• Quaker Lifestyle and the Testimonies. Egads, we could read Faith and Practice! For those of you who haven’t, it’s really an interesting book. Not all events should be thematic, of course. The early December Christmas gathering doesn’t need to be; neither does some of the day long events (i.e., the apple-picking expedition was a fun theme in itelf!).

This essay written Third Month 21, 1997 by Martin Kelley

The Story of this essay (written fall of 2003)

I wrote for Friends Institute, the Philadelphia-area young adult Friends group, back in March of 1997. I was very involved with the group at the time, serving formally as treasurer and webmaster and informally as the de-facto outreach coordinator. We had a visioning retreat coming up in a few months and I wrote this as a strengths / weaknesses / opportunities piece to get the ideas rolling. I thought we had some work to do around the issues of cliquishness, and I also thought we could become more thoughtful and spiritually-focused but I tried to find a sensitive way to talk about this issues.

I got a lot of reactions to this essay. Some people really really loved it, especially those outside the Philadelphia insiders group: “Thanks for the insightful analysis! You really did a wonderful job of objectively explaining the frustrations that some PYM YAF’s (myself included) have with FI” and “I was so inspired by your essay ‘YAF vision for future’ that we are hoping bring it forward and circulate it here in among Australian YAF.”

But some of the insiders felt challenged. One didn’t even like me talking about cliques: “I think that as a group we have all been aware for some time of the problems plaguing Friends Institute… I don’t like the word clique because it makes me think of an exclusionary snobbish group of people that looks down on others.” (of course this was my point).

As if to prove my analysis correct, the insiders immediately started talking amongst themselves. Within two weeks of emailing this essay, both of my formal positions in the organization were being challenged. One insider wrote a request to the yearly meeting to set up a competing Friends Institute website; others started wondering aloud whether it proper for an attender to be Friends Institute treasurer. No one ever questioned my dedication, honesty and good work. I was more actively involved in Quakerism and my meeting than most of the birthright members who participated in FI, and I was the most conscientious treasurer and webmaster the group ever had. My essay had obviously hit a nerve and the wagons were circling in against the outsider threat. Realizing just how ingrained these issues were and to what extent the insiders would go to protect their power, I eventually left Friends Institute to focus again on my monthly meeting’s thriving twenty- and thirty-something scene.

The essay continued to have a life of its own. The May 1997 visioning retreat focused on nothing at all and subsequent business meetings dropped to a handful of people. But the issues of the high-school focus, cliquishness, and unfriendliness to newcomers came to the forefront again a few months later, after some sexual assaults took place in the young adult community. A conference on “sexual boundaries” produced an epistle that hit some of the same topics as my visioning essay:

We identified a number of habits and issues in our young adult community that tend to bring up dangerous situations. For example, some of our sexual boundaries carry over from our experience as high-school aged Young Friends… Newcomers become “fresh meat” for people who come to gatherings looking to find quick connections… People get lost especially when we have larger gatherings, and we don’t watch out for each other.

Friends Institute drifted for a few years. By the summer of 2000, a convince Friend became clerk and tried to revive the group. She found my essay and emailed me: “I’ve been looking over the FI archives and am impressed by your contribution. Do you have any advice, suggestions, or time to become active again in FI?” Sad to say this attempt to revive Friends Institute also had a lot of problems.

I repost this essay here in 2003 partly to have a ongoing record of my Quaker writings here on my website. But I suspect these same issues continue in various young adult friends groups. Perhaps someone else can see this essay and be inspired, but a warning that I’ve seen these dynamics in many different young adult friends groups and seriously wonder whether reform or revival is impossible.
[/box]