Most Friends have an understanding of the architectural message that our meetinghouses express. We understand the simplicity of the structure. We understand the reason there are no steeples or crosses on the outside and why we have clear windows placed so as to invite the light to enter. We are equally sensitive to interior design. While we come into frequent, intimate contact with the meetinghouse exterior, and the land it sits on, we may be less aware of the message they convey.

There may be a little whiplash to talk about butterfly gardens after the recent article on Quaker worship from prison but I like the intentionality of Stocker’s observations: we are always making statements with the care (or non-care) of our physical space. Miami’s the kind of coastal city where climate change is very much not a theoretical issue and Stocker is very involved in his yearly meeting’s earthcare education initiatives. The meetinghouse grounds are a place to model good stewardship; taking the care to have them be inviting and quietly demonstrative of Quaker values is important outreach.

The following post was written by Blake Everitt, a Friend the UK and member of the newly-formed Revolutionary Quakers. This essay explores the prophetic and apocalyptic nature of early Quakerism, and sketches out how middle class revisionism took over the Religious Society of Friends.

The Religious Society of Friends: Children of Prophets or Children of Propheticide?

Polls and analysts confirm a growing trend for people to tune in almost exclusively to those news sources which reinforce their own opinions and condemn the others — regardless of quality, the use of facts, opinion, bias, and misinformation. Experts call this “source bias.” My straight-talking Quaker mother referred to it as “people trying to sell you a pig in a poke” — people trying to convince you of a point of view by giving you limited or false information, trying to sell you a pig in a bag when you can’t see it or examine it. Communist countries and dictatorships are masters at this.

https://www.buckscountycouriertimes.com/news/20190203/faith-freedom-of-press-essential-to-democracy

The reports gathered from the Jewish community in Germany by Quakers were of influence when Quakers accompanied the Jewish delegation who went to see Home Secretary Sir Samuel Hoare to plead the case for allowing immigration of children into Britain without the usual visa restrictions. They swayed the government and this planned immigration of German and Austrian Jewish children became known as the Kindertransport. Around 10,000 children were evacuated from Germany and Austria to Britain between 1938 and 1939.

What I find most fascinating is the detail that the Friends library in London doesnt have a lot of records of this work. It was so much in line with other refugee assistance Friends were doing in Europe that they evidently considered it just another day on the job, so to speak. I shared a piece on the related Quakerspeisungen a few days ago.

Kristallnacht, Kindertransport, and help for refugees

We are deeply saddened by the brutal slaying and injuries to members of your community and the law enforcement officers who intervened in the attack on your congregation on Saturday.
That this violation occurred during your worship together is especially distressing to us. We stand united with all people of faith in praying for everyone affected.

You can read the full piece on Facebook

Friends Committee on National Legislation is also sharing their Principles for Gun Violence Prevention backgrounder, a document that I wish wasn’t newly relevant every other week.

I don’t know much about Rorem or the extent or ongoingness of his Quaker identity (if anyone wants to share more in the comments that would be great). I keep a list I call “Surprising Unexpected Unlikely Quakers” for names people give me of famous’ish people with Quaker connections. Who’s your favorite unlikely Quaker?

At 95, Ned Rorem Is Done Composing. But He’s Not Done Living. (Published 2018)

As the composer, writer and gay icon lives quietly on the Upper West Side, his music and books…

www.nytimes.com

Superposters tend to be “more opinionated, more extreme, more engaged, more everything,” said Andrew Guess, a Princeton University social scientist. When more casual users open Facebook, often what they see is a world shaped by superposters like Mr. Wasserman. Their exaggerated worldviews play well on the algorithm, allowing them to collectively — and often unknowingly — dominate newsfeeds. “That’s something special about Facebook,” Dr. Paluck said. “If you end up getting a lot of time on the feed, you are influential. It’s a difference with real life.”

A great many general-interest Facebook groups that I see are dominated by trollish people whose visibility relies on how provocative they can get without being banned. This is true in many Quaker-focused groups. Facebook prioritizes engagement and nothing seems to get our fingers madly tapping more than provocation by someone half-informed.

Formal membership in a Quaker meeting is a considered process; for many Quaker groups, public ministry is also a deliberated process, with clearness committees, anchor committees, etc. On Facebook, membership consists of clicking a like button; public ministry, aka visibility, is a matter of having a lot of time to post comments. Public groups with minimal moderation which run on Facebook’s engagement-inducing algorithms are the public face of Friends these days, far more visible than any publication or recognized Quaker body’s Facebook presence. I written before of my long-term worry that with the rise of social media gatekeeping sites, we’re not the ones writing our story anymore.

I don’t have any answers. But the NYTimes piece helped give me some useful ways of thinking about these phenomena.

Facebook Fueled Anti-Refugee Attacks in Germany, New Research Suggests (Published 2018)

Towns where people use Facebook more also had more attacks on refugees, building on suspicions that the platform…

www.nytimes.com

I had been kicking around writing something on the uses and abuses of creeds in the Quaker tradition, but then I discovered that Ben Wood had written a fairly definitive version of that essay already. So read that instead.

Ben’s 2016 piece on Quakers and creeds is definitely worth a read. I checked my records and I must have missed it at the time, so I’ll share it now. He goes deep into the kinds of creeds that Penn and Barclay gave in their writings but also what the earlier Christian creed-makers were coming from. He also comes to today. Here’s a taste:

we cannot be creed-makers before we are story-preservers and story-tellers. We cannot hope to resolve differences unless and until we dig down into our own Quaker story; unless we come to terms with its power and implications. At least part of our sense of spiritual malaise is a reticence to engage with the depth of the Quaker tale. Partly that reticence is about a lack of teaching ministry among Friends. We haven’t given each other the tools to become skillful readers of our own narrative. We have assumed that people can just ‘pick this stuff up’ through a mysterious process of osmosis. This has led to a fragmentation of understanding about the meaning and implications of Quaker grammar.

In my world, talk of creeds has sprung up recently following the QuakerSpeak video of Arthur Larrabee’s nine core principles of unprogrammed Friends. His principles seem fairly descriptive of mainstream Liberal Friends to me, but predictably enough the video’s comments have people worried about any formulation: “Espousing core beliefs—no matter how well intentioned—risks introducing a creed.” One of my pet theories is that the mid-century truce over theology talk that helped Quaker branches reunite (at least on the U.S. East Coast) has stopped working.

Quakers and Creeds