Relat­ed to last week’s dis­cus­sion of a lack of what one ex-Friend calls “punk-rock Quak­erism,” there’s always been a small sub­set of younger Lib­er­al Friends who have want­ed to go deep­er into Quak­er faith and prac­tice. Some joined Friends just for this, hav­ing devoured the Jour­nal of George Fox or Pen­n’s No Cross No Crown or Kel­ly’s Tes­ta­ment of Devo­tion before ever step­ping into a meet­ing­house, while oth­ers have slow­ly evolved as they learned more about Friends. Some­times they go plain for a spell; most of the time they even­tu­al­ly leave.

In her Sep­tem­ber Friends Jour­nal arti­cle, Young Friends Want What Ear­ly Quak­ers Had, Olivia Chalk­ley talks about the young Catholic tra­di­tion­al­ist scene (aka “the tradddies”):

As a Twit­ter user, I have a front row seat to the bizarre wave of tra­di­tion­al­ist Catholi­cism that’s sweep­ing New York’s Dimes Square arts scene and gar­ner­ing media atten­tion. In my own life, I have numer­ous friends and acquain­tances who were raised with lit­tle to no reli­gion and are now start­ing Bible study groups, attend­ing church reg­u­lar­ly, and even tak­ing cat­e­chism classes.

What would this look like for Friends? Olivia says it would have pro­gres­sive val­ues (her 2020 Quak­er­S­peak inter­view is A Quak­er Take on Lib­er­a­tion The­ol­o­gy). How could we do out­reach to young adults who might want a more seri­ous and nerdy Quak­erism with­out alien­at­ing spiritual-but-not-religious seek­ers look­ing for a spiritually-neutral hour of silence? (See Pare­to Curve out­reach.) Also the big ques­tion: is this just a fever dream for a few of us stuck in a bub­ble? Is there real­ly an oppor­tu­ni­ty for some­thing wide­spread enough to call a move­ment? Youth-led Quak­er move­ments have hap­pened before: New Swarth­moor, Young Friends North Amer­i­ca, and Move­ment for a New Soci­ety all cre­at­ed hip sub­cul­tures (albeit with­out overt spir­i­tu­al­i­ty in the lat­ter’s case). On a small­er, decid­ed­ly less-hip fash­ion, net­works like New Foun­da­tion Fel­low­ship, Quak­er­Spring, Ohio YM’s out­reach efforts, and School of the Spir­it all con­tin­ue to pro­vide oppor­tu­ni­ties for nerdy Friends want­i­ng to go deep into Quak­er spirituality.

I’m a bit skep­ti­cal, to be hon­est, but some things in the wider spir­i­tu­al cul­ture have been chang­ing the calculus: 

• As Olivia points out, Gen­er­a­tion Z is more unchurched than any in recent mem­o­ry; some of its mem­bers are look­ing for some­thing more sub­stan­tial and directive;
• The inter­net con­tin­ues to make non-mainstream move­ments ever eas­i­er to find and com­mu­ni­ties eas­i­er to organize; 
• Online wor­ship has made it eas­i­er for seek­ers to “shop around” for a non-local spir­i­tu­al com­mu­ni­ty that might bet­ter “speak to their con­di­tion,” to use the Quak­er lingo.

These cul­tur­al changes aren’t lim­it­ed to youth, of course. A reg­u­lar Quak­er Ranter read­er emailed me a few weeks ago to say that she’s start­ed attend­ing online wor­ship hun­dreds of miles away after her long­time meet­ing “become less and less a wor­ship­ing com­mu­ni­ty and more and more a  col­lec­tion of nice indi­vid­u­als.” The at-a-distance meet­ing “it is the spir­i­tu­al home I had stopped look­ing for!” I’m kind of curi­ous where these cur­rents are going to be tak­ing Friends of all generations.

Olivia and I talk about much of this in the lat­est FJ Author Chat.