Tag Archives ⇒ part

Could Quakerism be the radical faith?

April 23, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Isaac Smith won­ders whether the title of Chris Ven­ables’s recent piece, “Could Quak­erism be the rad­i­cal faith that the mil­len­ni­al gen­er­a­tion is look­ing for?,” is fol­low­ing Betteridge’s Law of Headlines.

I’d put the dilem­ma of Quak­erism in the 21st cen­tu­ry this way: It’s not just that our trea­sures are in jars of clay, it’s that no one would even know the trea­sures were there, and it seems like they’re eas­i­er to find else­where. And how do we know that what we have are even treasures?

I gave my own skep­ti­cal take on Ven­ables’s arti­cle yes­ter­day. Smith hits on part of what wor­ries me when he says cur­rent reli­gious dis­en­gage­ment is of a kind to be immune to “bet­ter social media game or a more stream­lined church bureau­cra­cy.” These are the easy, value-free answers insti­tu­tions like to turn to.

I’m think­ing about these issues not only because of this arti­cle but also because Friends Jour­nal is seek­ing sub­mis­sions for thr August issue “Going Viral with Quak­erism.” A few weeks ago I wrote a post that referred back to Quak­er inter­net out­reach 25 years ago.

Could Quak­erism be the rad­i­cal faith that the mil­len­ni­al gen­er­a­tion is look­ing for?

Cast out by the Quakers, Abington’s abolitionist dwarf finally has his day

April 19, 2018
· Martin Kelley

A nice sto­ry on the belat­ed recog­ni­tion being giv­en abo­li­tion­ist stal­wart and polit­i­cal prankster Ben­jamin Lay up at Abing­ton Meet­ing in Penn­syl­va­nia (my first meeting!):

About 12 years ago, the Abing­ton meet­ing­house care­tak­er, Dave Wer­mel­ing, found an old sketch of Lay in a box. A short biog­ra­phy on worn brown paper was glued to back of the draw­ing. “I thought, ‘Who is this, and how can you not be talk­ing about him?’” Wer­mel­ing recalled.

I’ve long admired the sto­ry of Ben­jamin Lay. I’m not sure that the gen­er­al pub­lic read­ing these arti­cles is quite real­iz­ing that Quak­er dis­own­ment wasn’t a full shun­ning. As far as I know he con­tin­ued to be influ­en­tial with Quak­ers, for his pas­sion if not his strat­e­gy. Lay went far, far ahead of the Quak­ers of the time. His stunts were awe­some, but drench­ing year­ly meet­ing atten­ders with pig blood and pub­lish­ing books with­out per­mis­sion was going to get you unin­vit­ed from for­mal deci­sion mak­ing meetings.

I would very much hope that if any of us mod­erns were trans­port­ed back to that era, we would find the con­di­tions of human bondage so out­ra­geous that we would all go full Ben­jamin Lay: dis­rupt meet­ings, shat­ter norms, get dis­owned by our reli­gious bod­ies. If you read the his­to­ry of eighteen-century Quak­er activism in the Philadel­phia area you’ll see there were many tracts start­ing in the ear­li­est years of the Quak­er colonies. There were lots of Quak­ers who felt slav­ery was moral­ly wrong. But few felt the empow­er­ment to break from social con­ven­tions the way Lay did. But that’s kind of the nature of prophe­cy. I would be sus­pi­cious of any can­di­date for prophet that is liked by the admin­is­tra­tive bod­ies of their time. What kind of com­pla­cen­cy are we demon­strat­ing by our inac­tions today?

https://​www​.philly​.com/​p​h​i​l​l​y​/​n​e​w​s​/​q​u​a​k​e​r​s​-​b​e​n​j​a​m​i​n​-​l​a​y​-​d​w​a​r​f​-​a​b​o​l​i​t​i​o​n​i​s​t​-​s​l​a​v​e​r​y​-​a​b​i​n​g​t​o​n​-​f​r​i​e​n​d​s​-​m​e​e​t​i​n​g​-​2​0​1​8​0​4​1​9​.​h​t​m​l​?​m​o​b​i​=​t​rue

Quaker historic ocean of zen calm silence

April 16, 2018
· Martin Kelley

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/​i​n​e​w​s​-​l​i​f​e​s​t​y​l​e​/​w​o​m​e​n​/​l​i​f​e​-​i​s​-​t​o​u​g​h​-​f​o​r​-​y​o​u​n​g​-​p​e​o​p​l​e​-​b​u​t​-​b​e​i​n​g​-​a​-​q​u​a​k​e​r​-​h​a​s​-​g​i​v​e​n​-​m​e​-​h​o​pe/

Norval Reece interviewed on MLK Jr anniversary

April 5, 2018
· Martin Kelley

To mark the fifti­eth anniver­sary of the death of Mar­tin Luther King, Jr., a Philadel­phia TV sta­tion inter­viewed Quak­er Nor­val Reece: Bucks Coun­ty Quak­er, Civ­il Rights Activist Reflects On Time With MLK

Reece is a proud Quak­er and believes it’s his Quak­er roots that sent him to Dr. King’s side. “I was raised to believe all peo­ple are equal, are born equal, cre­at­ed equal,” he said. Reece met King in 1967 at the old Robert Mor­ris Hotel in Philadel­phia. He spent sev­er­al hours with the civ­il rights icon. Reece says that night he, King and a few oth­ers planned a pover­ty march for the fol­low­ing spring, but King nev­er made it.

Nor­val was an activist with AFSC back in his youth, served as a Penn­syl­va­nia sec­re­tary of com­merce, and became a cable tele­vi­sion entre­pre­neur. He’s pret­ty ubiq­ui­tous in Quak­er cir­cles these days, link­ing the activist and entre­pre­neur­ial in inter­est­ing ways. My favorite part of the video is when they casu­al­ly redis­play a pic­ture they had blurred out near the begin­ning (the one in the pre­view) and don’t both­er nam­ing the guy walk­ing just ahead of him.

Quakers and Mental Health

March 29, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Well this one hits home for me. The new Quak­er­S­peak talks to Ore­gon social work­er Melody George in the top­ic of Quak­ers and Men­tal Health:

I real­ly see men­tal diver­si­ty as a gift to a com­mu­ni­ty, and that the folks that I serve and that I’ve worked with are very resilient. If they tell you their sto­ries about how they’ve got­ten through their trau­mat­ic sit­u­a­tions and what’s helped them to keep going, faith is a huge part of that. And we have a lot to learn from their strength and resilience.

My fam­i­ly has had very avoid­able and out-of-nowhere con­flicts at two reli­gious spaces — one a Friends meet­ing and the oth­er a Pres­by­ter­ian church — over easy acco­mo­da­tions for my son Fran­cis. It seems like many of the dynam­ics that we’ve seen are not dis­sim­i­lar to those that keep oth­ers out of meet­ing com­mu­ni­ties. Who are we will­ing to adapt for? Is com­fort and famil­iar­i­ty our main goal?

Melody also wrote for Friends Jour­nal a few years ago, Imag­in­ing a Trauma-informed Quak­er Com­mu­ni­ty.

Early Quaker “Yearly meetings”

March 18, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Bri­an Dray­ton is look­ing at an ear­ly form of pub­lic Quak­er wor­ship, who’s var­i­ous names (includ­ing “year­ly meet­ings”) have per­haps hid­den them from mod­ern Quak­er con­scious­ness: From the Quak­er tool­box: “Year­ly meet­ings” and related

These meet­ings often includ­ed gath­er­ings of min­is­ters, and of elders (and some­times the two togeth­er), and meet­ings most­ly for Friends. But the pub­lic wor­ship was care­ful­ly pre­pared for — usu­al­ly more than one ses­sion, often over more than one day, with lots of pub­lic­i­ty ahead of time. Tem­po­rary meet­ing places were erect­ed for large crowds (the word “booth” is used, these clear­ly held hun­dreds of people.

Bri­an’s sto­ry reminds me of when I was a tourist in the “1652 Coun­try” where Quak­erism was born. One of the stops is Fir­bank Fell, where George Fox preached to thou­sands. Most his­to­ries call that ser­mon the offi­cial start of the Quak­er movement.

But Fir­bank Fell itself is a des­o­late hill­side miles from any­where. There was a small ancient church there and then noth­ing but graz­ing fields off to the hori­zon. A thou­sand peo­ple in such a remote spot would have the feel of a music fes­ti­val. And that’s kind of what was hap­pen­ing the week the unknown George Fox walked into that part of Eng­land. There was a orga­nized move­ment that held inde­pen­dent reli­gious preach­ing fes­ti­vals. Fox was no doubt very mov­ing and he might have giv­en the seek­ers there a new way of think­ing about their spir­i­tu­al con­di­tion, but the move­ment was already there. I won­der if the gen­er­al meet­ings of pub­lic wor­ship that Dray­ton is track­ing down is an echo of those ear­li­er pub­lic festivals.

One of my Fir­bank Fell photos:

Decline and persistence, part two

March 2, 2018
· Martin Kelley

So much to chew on in Johan Mau­r­er’s Decline and per­sis­tence, part two. Find a good chair and take the time to read.

Friends the­ol­o­gy strips away all irrel­e­vant social dis­tinc­tions, giv­ing us the poten­tial for rad­i­cal hos­pi­tal­i­ty, but that requires us to neu­tral­ize elit­ist sig­nals of all kinds with a hunger to taste heav­en’s diver­si­ty here and now. If it takes a whole new con­ver­sion to give us the nec­es­sary free­dom and emo­tion­al range in place of old class anx­i­eties, so be it.

http://​blog​.canyoube​lieve​.me/​2​0​1​8​/​0​3​/​d​e​c​l​i​n​e​-​a​n​d​-​p​e​r​s​i​s​t​e​n​c​e​-​p​a​r​t​-​t​w​o​.​h​tml

Gathered vs focused Meeting part 2

February 26, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Isaac Smith is back adding some nuance to his pars­ing of the dif­fer­ences between Quak­er wor­ship experiences:

If you’re swept up in a net, you’re off bal­ance; you don’t have the same cer­tain­ty about your­self and your sur­round­ings as you did before. Part of what it means to be gath­ered is that uncer­tain­ty, that trust in some­thing even if you don’t ful­ly under­stand it.

https://theanarchyoftheranters.wordpress.com/2018/02/26/the-difference-between-a-gathered-meeting-and-a-focused-meeting‑2/