Tag Archives ⇒ Quaker

We Quakers should be cooler than the Sweat Lodge

July 5, 2004
· Martin Kelley

I have just come back from a “Meet­ing for Lis­ten­ing for Sweat Lodge Con­cerns,” described as “an oppor­tu­ni­ty for per­sons to express their feel­ings in a wor­ship­ful man­ner about the can­cel­la­tion of the FGC Gath­er­ing sweat lodge work­shop this year.” Non-Quakers read­ing this blog might be sur­prised to hear that Friends Gen­er­al Con­fer­ence holds sweat lodges, but it has and they’ve been increas­ing­ly con­tro­ver­sial. This year’s work­shop was can­celled after FGC received a very strong­ly word­ed com­plaint from the Wampanoag Native Amer­i­can tribe. Today’s meet­ing intend­ed to lis­ten to the feel­ings and con­cerns of all FGC Friends involved and was clerked by the very-able Arthur Larrabee. There was pow­er­ful min­istry, some pre­dictable “min­istry” and one stun­ning mes­sage from a white Friend who dis­missed the very exis­tance of racism in the world (it’s just a illu­sion, the peo­ple respon­si­ble for it are those who per­ceive it).

I’ve had my own run-in’s with the sweat lodge, most unfor­get­tably when I was the co-planning clerk of the 2002 Adult Young Friends pro­gram at FGC (a few of us thought it was inap­pro­pri­ate to trans­fer a por­tion of the rather small AYF bud­get to the sweat lodge work­shop, a request made with the argu­ment that so many high-school and twenty-something Friends were attend­ing it). But I find myself increas­ing­ly uncon­cerned about the lodge. It’s clear to me now that it part of anoth­er tra­di­tion than I am. It is not the kind of Quak­er I am. The ques­tion remain­ing is whether an orga­ni­za­tion that will spon­sor it is a dif­fer­ent tradition.

How did Lib­er­al Friends get to the place where most our our younger mem­bers con­sid­er the sweat lodge cer­e­mo­ny to be the high point of their Quak­er expe­ri­ence? The sweat lodge has giv­en a gen­er­a­tion of younger Friends an oppor­tu­ni­ty to com­mune with the divine in a way that their meet­ings do not. It has giv­en them men­tor­ship and lead­er­ship expe­ri­ences which they do not receive from the old­er Friends estab­lish­ment. It has giv­en them a sense of iden­ti­ty and pur­pose which they don’t get from their meet­ing “com­mu­ni­ty.”

I don’t care about ban­ning the work­shop. That does­n’t address the real prob­lems. I want to get to the point where younger Friends look at the sweat and won­der why they’d want to spend a week with some  white Quak­er guy who won­ders aloud in pub­lic whether he’s “a Quak­er or an Indi­an” (could we have a third choice?). I’ve always thought this was just rather embar­rass­ing.  I want the sweat lodge to with­er away in recog­ni­tion of it’s inher­ent ridicu­lous­ness. I want younger Friends to get a taste of the divine love and char­i­ty that Friends have found for 350 years. We’re sim­ply cool­er than the sweat lodge.

* * * *

And what real­ly is the sweat lodge all about? I don’t real­ly buy the cul­tur­al appro­pri­a­tion cri­tique (the offi­cial par­ty line for can­cel­ing it argues that it’s racist). Read founder George Price’s Friends Jour­nal arti­cle on the sweat lodge and you’ll see that he’s part of a long-standing tra­di­tion. For two hun­dred years, Native Amer­i­cans have been used as myth­ic cov­er for thin­ly dis­guised European-American philoso­phies. The Boston pro­test­ers who staged the famous tea par­ty all dressed up as Indi­ans, play­ing out an emerg­ing mythol­o­gy of the Amer­i­can rebels as spir­i­tu­al heirs to Indi­ans (long dri­ven out of the Boston area by that time). In 1826, James Fen­i­more Coop­er turned that myth into one of the first pieces of clas­sic Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture with a sto­ry about the “Last” of the Mohi­cans. At the turn of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, the new boy scout move­ment claimed that their fit­ness and social­iza­tion sys­tem was real­ly a re-application of Native Amer­i­can train­ing and ini­ti­a­tion rites. Quak­ers got into the game too: the South Jer­sey and Bucks Coun­ty sum­mer camps they found­ed in the nineteen-teens were full of Native Amer­i­can motifs, with cab­ins and lakes named after dif­fer­ent tribes and the chil­dren encour­aged to play along.

Set in this con­text, George Price is clear­ly just the lat­est white guy to claim that only the spir­it of pur­er Native Amer­i­cans will save us from our Old World Euro­pean stodgi­ness. Yes, it’s appro­pri­a­tion I guess, but it’s so trans­par­ent and clas­si­cal­ly Amer­i­can that our favorite song “Yan­kee Doo­dle” is a British wartime send-up of the impulse. We’ve been stick­ing feath­ers in our caps since forever.

In the Friends Jour­nal arti­cle, it’s clear the Quak­er sweat lodge owes more to the Euro­pean psy­chother­a­py of Karl Jung than Chief Ock­an­ick­on. It’s all about “lim­i­nal­i­ty” and ini­ti­a­tion into myth­ic arche­types, fea­tur­ing cribbed lan­guage from Vic­tor Turn­er, the anthro­pol­o­gist who was very pop­u­lar cir­ca 1974. Price is clear but nev­er explic­it about his work: his sweat lodge is Jun­gian psy­chol­o­gy over­laid onto the out­ward form of a Native Amer­i­can sweat­lodge. In ret­ro­spect it’s no sur­prise that a birthright Philadel­phia Friend in a tired year­ly meet­ing would try to com­bine trendy Euro­pean pop psy­chol­o­gy with Quak­er sum­mer camp them­ing. What is a sur­prise (or should be a sur­prise) is that Friends would spon­sor and pub­lish arti­cles about a “Quak­er Sweat Lodges” with­out chal­leng­ing the author to spell out the Quak­er con­tri­bu­tion to a pro­grammed rit­u­al con­duct­ed in a con­se­crat­ed teepee steeplehouse.

(Push the influ­ences a lit­tle more, and you’ll find that Vic­tor Turn­er’s anthro­po­log­i­cal find­ings among obscure African tribes arguably owes as much to his Catholi­cism than it does the facts on the ground. More than one Quak­er wit has com­pared the sweat lodge to Catholic mass; well: Turn­er’s your miss­ing philo­soph­i­cal link.)

* * * *

Yes­ter­day I had some good con­ver­sa­tion about gen­er­a­tional issues in Quak­erism. I’m cer­tain­ly not the only thirty-something that feels invis­i­ble in the bull­doz­er of baby boomer assump­tions about our spir­i­tu­al­i­ty. I’m also not the only one get­ting to the point where we’re just going to be Quak­er despite the Quak­er insti­tu­tions and cul­ture. I think the ques­tion we’re all grap­pling with now is how we relate to the insti­tu­tions that ignore us and dis­miss our cries of alarm for what we Friends have become.

Plain Quaker Dressing at FGC

July 3, 2004
· Martin Kelley

As we got onto the cam­pus of UMass Amherst to help set up for this year’s FGC Gath­er­ing, Julie & I real­ized that this is the first time we’ve been to this venue since we start­ed plain dress­ing (last year we stayed home since Julie was very preg­nant). FGC Friends tend to turn to the Lands End cat­a­log for sar­to­r­i­al inspi­ra­tion. Hip­pie cul­ture is anoth­er font, both direct­ly as tie-die shirts and in mut­ed form as the taste­ful fair-trade clothes that many old­er Friends pre­fer. Because the Gath­er­ing takes place in July and in spo­rad­i­cal­ly air-conditioned build­ings, peo­ple also dress for sum­mer camp – kha­ki shorts & once col­or­ful fad­ed t‑shirts are the de fac­to Gath­er­ing uni­form. In this set­ting, just wear­ing long pants is cause for com­ment (“aren’t you hot like that?!”) Try broad­falls and a long-sleeve col­lar­less shirt, or a long dress!

So I’ve decid­ed to write down all the con­ver­sa­tions or ques­tions I get about my dress this week. I should men­tion that I actu­al­ly pre­fer curi­ous ques­tions to the strange star­ing I some­times get. So here we go:

  • While ring­ing up a Gath­er­ing store order: some­one I’ve known for years asked me whether my cloth­ing was “a the­o­log­i­cal state­ment or if it was just comfortable.”
  • While trou­bleshoot­ing the store com­put­ers and answer­ing a cell­phone call from the office: com­pared to a lit­er­ary char­ac­ter named “Cos­mic Pos­sum,” who was described to me as some­one able to seem­less­ly live in both the past and mod­ern world (at the time the ref­er­ence was made I was work­ing two com­put­ers and tak­ing a cell phone call.
  • Walk­ing by the din­ing hall, an old­er Friend called out “Looks good!” I said “Huh?”, he replied “that’s a good outfit!”

Mon­day:

  • “Nice out­fit” again, this time from Nils P. As soon as he said it I warned him that I was keep­ing this log and that he should expect to see him­self in it.
  • I talked a lit­tle bit about dress with a friend from Bal­ti­more Year­ly Meet­ing, a gay Friend involved with FLGCQBC who is iden­ti­fy­ing more and more as con­ser­v­a­tive and think­ing about going plain. One con­cern he raised was avoid­ing sweat­shop labor. (I point­ed out that plain dress is a cot­tage indus­try and that the seam­stress­es are usu­al­ly local and believ­ers.) He also does­n’t want to look “like a farmer” as he walks around the city of Bal­ti­more. (I talked about how I have lim­its as to how plain I go and don’t want this to be a his­tor­i­cal out­fit but one which peo­ple might actu­al­ly be able to see them­selves adopt­ing. I also talked about how I still want to iden­ti­fy on some lev­el with urban anar­chist cul­ture, which has a sort of plain aesthetic.)

Tues­day:

  • An extend­ed con­ver­sa­tion with a book­store cus­tomer from Cal­i­for­nia. She began by ask­ing if I’m doing plain dress for the same rea­sons as anoth­er plain dress­er here, who I’ve seen but not met yet. We began talk­ing about moti­va­tions and what it’s like and how it is for women, espe­cial­ly who lead active lives. I talked about my wife’s Julie’s prac­tice, which includes leo­tards when she’s work­ing at a gym­nas­tics coach. We also talked about dif­fer­ent kinds of Quak­er­sIt was a great conversation.
  • While sit­ting on a book­store couch blog­ging: “You’re look­ing very dis­tin­guished here, with facial hair and susspenders. Is this what mar­ried life does? You’re look­ing very Quak­er­ly. Does thee also have a hat?”

Wednes­day

  • I spent sick most­ly in bed…
  • I did have a brief, fever-fed con­ver­sa­tion with some of the oth­er plain dress­ing youths and soon-to-be plain dress­ing youth. It’s not about dress, but about being Quak­er and about how we live as Friends.

Thurs­day:

  • I had an extend­ed con­ver­sa­tion with a cou­ple who run the Equal Exchange table about plain dress, Gohn Broth­ers cat­a­log and avoid­ing sweatshop-made cloth­ing for union-made cloth­ing. There’s a lot of peo­ple inter­est­ed in this and the issues real­ly con­nect with sim­plic­i­ty and jus­tice issues.

Quaker books and self-defeating bargain hunting

May 20, 2004
· Martin Kelley

Got an email in the book­store today from a poten­tial cus­tomer who chose Ama­zon over my employ­er Quaker­books, a niche inde­pen­dent book­store, because of their cheap cheap prices. I got a bit inspired by my reply, includ­ed here.

Sub­ject: book prices

I real­ly want­ed to buy the below book [Why Grace is True], but I checked ama­zon. com. Their prices: new is $16.07, or used from $5.94. Your price is $22.95.

I know how hard it is to be com­pet­i­tive, but I want­ed to let you know that peo­ple do com­par­i­son shop.

Bless­ings, C. 

Dear Friend,

Yes, Ama­zon, Wal­mart and the rest of the glob­al media/distribution jug­ger­naut will always be able to under­price us on the main­stream books.

What we offer is a much wider selec­tion of Quak­er books than any­one else. We don’t just have the more watered-down books aimed at the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion (most­ly with the unsaid premise “what you can learn from those folksy Quak­ers”), but a whole list of books about Quak­er reli­gious edu­ca­tion, Quak­er vision, Quak­er belief, Quak­er his­to­ry and what it means to be a Quak­er today. We don’t just have the Harper­Collins titles, but those from Quak­er pub­lish­ers that Ama­zon’s nev­er heard of. We eas­i­ly beat Ama­zon in selec­tion and we cer­tain­ly match them in speed and cus­tomer service.

We give a more ground­ed con­text to what these books mean to Friends – the reviews on our site’s If Grace is True are writ­ten by Friends for Friends. We try to know our books. When peo­ple call us up we’ll help with their selec­tion. When they’re try­ing to decide, we’ll read the table of con­tents to them. Quak­er pub­lish­ers and book­sellers talk about the “min­istry of the writ­ten word,” which means remem­ber­ing that there’s a pur­pose behind this book­selling. These books aren’t com­modi­ties, they aren’t units, they’re not ISBN num­bers to be packed and shipped. We’d rather not sell a book than sell a book some­one would­n’t val­ue (which is why we’ll include neg­a­tive book descrip­tions & comments).

Pay­ing a few extra dol­lars to sup­port us means your also sup­port­ing the out­reach and Quak­er self-identity our cat­a­log pro­vides for many Friends. Plus you can be assured our employ­ees get liv­ing wages and health care (for which I’m per­son­al­ly thankful).

So yes, cus­tomers can save a few bucks at Ama­zon. Always will be able to. But your pur­chas­ing deci­sions are also deci­sions about who you sup­port and what you val­ue. There’s a price to dis­tinc­tive­ness, whether it’s cul­tur­al, reli­gious, region­al, or culi­nary. By buy­ing from Ama­zon you’re financ­ing a Wall Street-run com­mod­i­ty sell­er that does­n’t give a jot about Quak­erism or even whether grace might be true. If enough Friends choose price over con­tent, then Quak­er book­stores and pub­lish­ers will dis­ap­pear, our only rep­re­sen­ta­tion being main­stream books sold at gener­ic shops. That will cost us a lot more than sev­en bucks.

Well, I hope you enjoy the book. I’m sure Ama­zon appre­ci­ates your patronage.

In friend­ship,
Mar­tin Kelley

Quaker Emergent Church Planting

May 4, 2004
· Martin Kelley

Over on the Evan­gel­i­cal side of Friends is “Sim­ple Churches”:www.simplechurches.net, a move­ment of “organ­ic” church plant­i­ng. It’s a project of Harold and Wendy Behr, record­ed by North­west Year­ly Meet­ing and now work­ing with Evan­gel­i­cal Friends Church South­west. The core val­ues are ones I could cer­tain­ly sign off on: Lead­er­ship over Loca­tion, Min­istry over Mon­ey, Con­verts over Chris­tians, Dis­ci­ples over Deci­sions, Peo­ple over Prop­er­ty, Spir­it over Self, His King­dom over Ours. I par­tic­u­lar­ly like their site’s disclaimer:
bq. As your peruse the links from this site please rec­og­nize that the Truth reflect­ed in essays are often writ­ten with a “prophet­ic edge”, that is sharp, non com­pro­mis­ing and some­times rad­i­cal per­spec­tive. We believe Truth can be received with­out “curs­ing the dark­ness” and encour­age you to reflect upon find­ing the “can­dle” to light, per­son­al­ly, as you apply what you hear the Lord speak­ing to you. In Body life, often the most pow­er­ful oppo­nent of the “best” is the “good”.
They’re lead­ing a con­fer­ence next month in Rich­mond, Indi­ana, with mem­bers of Friends Unit­ed Meet­ing. How tempt­ing is this?

h3. See also:
* “Emer­gent Church Move­ment: The Younger Evan­gel­i­cals and Quak­er Renewal”:/Quaker/emerging_church.php

How Insiders and Seekers Use the Quaker Net

May 3, 2004
· Martin Kelley

Every once in awhile I get an indi­ca­tion that var­i­ous “weighty” Quak­ers come to my “Quak­er Ranter” site, usu­al­ly because of a group email that some­one sends around or a post on some list­serve. What’s fas­ci­nat­ing is that few of the insid­er Friends ever spend much time look­ing around: they go to the one page that’s been ref­er­enced and then – swoosh, they’re gone, pre­sum­ably back to their email or list­serve. There’s a pro­found lack of curios­i­ty about what else I might be writ­ing about. These insti­tu­tion­al Friends nev­er post com­ments and they rarely even send any feed­back by email.

This con­trasts very sharply with the bulk of traf­fic to my site. Dozens of peo­ple a day come in off a Google search. Unless it’s a bad match, these seek­ers spend time on the site, click­ing all around, fol­low­ing links to oth­er sites, com­ing back, read­ing some more. Not every­one comes in via search engines: some fol­low links from else­where while oth­ers read the RSS Feed or just come in ever few days to see what’s new.

Part of the dif­fer­ence between “insti­tu­tion­al” and “seek­ing” users is in their use of search engines. Many estab­lish­ment Quak­ers don’t know how to use them or don’t think to use them. A web­site mar­ket­ing pro­pos­al of mine was almost nixed recent­ly when a com­mit­tee mem­ber learned that search engines bypass a site’s home­page to return results from inside pages. I just assumed that every­one knew by now how a search engine works. I use Google dozens of times a day; it’s hard for me to imag­ine any­one nav­i­gat­ing the net with­out it. It must almost be like they’re using a sep­a­rate medi­um. Both of us are using the inter­net as trans­mis­sion con­duit, but that’s like say­ing both a news­pa­per and a per­son­al let­ter use paper and ink for tran­si­tion: while this is indis­putably true, it does­n’t begin to speak to the dif­fer­ent use and the depth of audience.

* * *

I won­der if the inter­net divide rep­re­sents an even more sig­nif­i­cant divide between insti­tu­tion­al insid­ers and the rest of us. The insid­ers might be staff, com­mit­tee clerks or just very involved Friends but they share a cer­tain way of under­stand­ing their world. First off, they have their ideas all fig­ured out already. There’s a lack of curios­i­ty here. They aren’t search­ing for new writ­ers or new ideas. They will only con­sid­er some­thing after some oth­er Quak­er insti­tu­tion has rec­og­nized it, a Catch-22 sit­u­a­tion that the mil­i­tary refers to as “inces­tu­ous amplification.” 

Any project out­side of the estab­lished recog­ni­tion zone is invis­i­ble. Even ones that have become dom­i­nant in their field are acknowl­edged only begrudg­ing­ly. In the last ten years, Quak​er​.org has done more for out­reach than just about any institutionally-sponsored pro­gram or com­mit­tee. Yet I know of estab­lish­ment Quak­ers who still think of it as an upstart, and tru­ly believe their put­ter­ing about is more impor­tant, sim­ply because their orga­ni­za­tion has been around longer. In truth, many Quak­er web­sites get so lit­tle traf­fic as to be next to non-existent.

The insid­er’s pri­ma­ry point of ref­er­ence is insti­tu­tions. Pow­er comes from know­ing how ideas, pro­pos­als and deci­sions flow through these orga­ni­za­tions. A good idea is only good if it’s made by the right per­son and vet­ted by the right small group first. Some­times I’ll hear of the gos­sip of some group schem­ing with­in some Quak­er insti­tu­tion and I always have to laugh: like, WHO CARES? It’s a small bunch of peo­ple scram­bling over crumbs while the world ignores them. There’s a whole oth­er world of Friends and seek­ers out there build­ing their own cul­ture and con­nec­tions, or try­ing to.

This Quak­er Ranter site is pri­mar­i­ly for those still curi­ous, for those still inter­est­ing in build­ing some­thing real, for those want­i­ng engag­ing con­ver­sa­tion and sto­ries. I actu­al­ly pre­fer it to be a lit­tle bit “under­ground,” unknown or for­got­ten by insti­tu­tion­al­ists, for I think there’s dis­cus­sions we need to have and the open inter­net is a good place for that.

More

I’ll be edit­ing and adding to this post over time as I see more pat­terns of site use. I’m curi­ous if oth­ers have seen sur­pris­ing pat­terns of inter­net use. Oh, and by the way I should cop to being a Quak­er insid­er myself, though I always try to keep the big pic­ture (i.e., God and the Spir­it’s com­mands) foremost.

Quaker publications meeting (QUIP) in Indiana

April 28, 2004
· Martin Kelley

Quak­ers Unit­ing in Pub­li­ca­tions, bet­ter known as “QUIP,” is a col­lec­tion of 50 Quak­er pub­lish­ers, book­sellers and authors com­mit­ted to the “min­istry of the writ­ten word.” I often think of QUIP as a sup­port group of sorts for those of us who real­ly believe that pub­lish­ing can make a dif­fer­ence. It’s also one of those places where dif­fer­ent branch­es of Friends come togeth­er to work and tell sto­ries. QUIP ses­sions strike a nice bal­ance between work and unstruc­tured time. It has its own nice cul­ture of friend­li­ness and coop­er­a­tion that are the real rea­son many of us go every year.

Quakers Uniting in Publications annual meeting in Richmond Indiana 2004.
Quak­ers Unit­ing in Pub­li­ca­tions annu­al meet­ing in Rich­mond Indi­ana 2004.
The theme of the 2004 annu­al ses­sion was “New Ways to Reach Our Mar­kets in a Chang­ing World” and our guest pre­sen­ters were pub­li­cists Doug and Kate Ban­dos of KSB Pro­mo­tions: http://​www​.ksbpro​mo​tions​.com
The Evans House, built 1855: Gur­neyite high style back in the day… It’s now the home of the Quak­er Hill Con­fer­ence Cen­ter, where we met. The Gur­neyites evolved into Friends Unit­ed Meet­ing and I had some good con­ver­sa­tions with Friends about some of the vision­ing FUM is doing. Pret­ty inter­est­ing stuff, like many Friends they too are try­ing to fig­ure out how to wres­tle more ful­ly with Quak­er tradition. 
Our hosts were the staff of “Friends Unit­ed Meet­ing. The FUM cam­pus in Rich­mond, Indi­ana, is very pret­ty in April, with flow­ers and the crabap­ple trees 
Even pret­tier is the refor­ested trail down to the White­wa­ter Riv­er Falls. 
We wouldn’t be Quak­ers if we didn’t have lots of meet­ings. Left: QUIP clerks Lucy Dun­can, Bar­bara Mays, Eliz­a­beth Cave. 
Philip Arnold from the Quak­er Book­shop in Lon­don, Ann Rap­er of North Car­olina YM (FUM) pub­li­ca­tions com­mit­tee and Liz Yeats, a for­mer FGC employ­ee and long­time QUIP stal­wart (Ann and Liz are also both board mem­bers of “Friends Journal). 
QUIP meet­ings are real­ly all about the con­ver­sa­tions in between ses­sions. Bar­bara Mays of Friends Unit­ed Press talks with the new FUM web­mas­ter Cur­tis Her­mann (who lat­er showed me the secret FUM cof­fee sup­ply and chat­ted about col­lar­less shirt vendors). 
Mar­jorie Ewbank holds up QUIP’s “Quak­er Tapestry”:http://www.Quaker-tapestry.co.uk pan­el, which should be fin­ished by the end of the century. 
Oblig­a­tory pic­ture of Simon, some­times referred to as the “QUIP baby“since his par­ents met at an annu­al QUIP meeting. 
A field trip to the Levi Cof­fin house in Foun­tain City. Run entire­ly by very ded­i­cat­ed vol­un­teers, it’s the only home still stand­ing of Levi and Catharine Cof­fin, Friends who helped thou­sands of escaped slaves get to Cana­da through the Under­ground Railroad. 
How many cam­eras does it take to make a group shot? That’s Trish Carn (the UK’s Quak­er Month­ly), Antho­ny Manousos (West­ern US’s Friends Bul­letin) and our very gra­cious photo-taker (who I think might be Ann’s son?). 
The many faces of Sal­ly Rick­er­man, Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing char­ac­ter par excel­lence. Sal­ly spent part of the week­end chal­leng­ing me about my plain dress­ing — okay, polite­ly ask­ing me a ques­tion and then fol­low­ing up my answer with her opin­ions. Sal­ly also brought along a par­o­dy she once put togeth­er, a fly­er for an orga­ni­za­tion called some­thing like “The Soci­ety of Sen­ti­men­tal Friends” for all those who want to be Quak­er because their great great grand­par­ents were Quak­er and they like antiques like old musty meetinghouses. 
The many faces of Sal­ly Rick­er­man (2)
The many faces of Sal­ly Rick­er­man (3)
Bar­bara Hir­shkowitz in front of the falls. I think Friends Gen­eral Con­fer­ence should put in a nature trail near our office too (I vote for bull­doz­ing the “Nation­al Con­sti­tu­tion Center”). 

Plain Dress Discussion on Yahoo

April 19, 2004
· Martin Kelley

Julie, my wife, has just start­ed a Yahoo group called PlainAnd­Mod­est­Dress.
Here’s her description:

This group is for Chris­tians inter­est­ed in dis­cussing issues of reli­gious plain and mod­est dress. It is not nec­es­sary to have grown up in a plain or mod­est­ly dress­ing group. We are espe­cial­ly inter­est­ed in the expe­ri­ences of those who have come to this point as a sort of con­ver­sion or a “recov­ery” of tra­di­tion that has been lost. Tra­di­tion­al Catholics, Anabap­tists, con­ser­v­a­tive Quak­ers, and oth­er Chris­tians wel­come here. The­o­log­i­cal points and demon­i­na­tion­al dif­fer­ences are open for dis­cus­sion (not argu­ment), as are the specifics of what type of plain dress you have been called to. Dis­cus­sion of head­cov­er­ing is also allowed here, as are gen­der dis­tinc­tions in dress. We may also share prayers for one anoth­er, as well as the chal­lenges we face in try­ing to live in obe­di­ence to the Lord. This is not a forum in which to dis­cuss the valid­i­ty of Chris­tian­i­ty – no blas­phem­ing allowed. 

There is much to be said about plain dress. This is not an easy wit­ness. It forces us to deal with issues of sub­mis­sion and humil­i­ty on a dai­ly basis – just try to go to a con­ve­nience store and not feel self-consciously set apart. Explain­ing this new ‘style’ to one’s more world­ly friends can be quite a chal­lenge. These are eter­nal issues for those adopt­ing plain dress and I laugh with com­rade­ship when I read old Quak­er jour­nal accounts of going plain.
Even so, I have a bit of trep­i­da­tion about a news­group on plain dress. I don’t want to fetishize plain dress by talk­ing about it too much. The point should­n’t be to for­mu­late some sort of ‘uni­form of the right­eous,’ and adop­tion of this tes­ti­mo­ny should­n’t be moti­vat­ed by peer pres­sure or ambi­tion, but by a call­ing from the Holy Spir­it – this is the crux of what I under­stand Mar­garet Fell to have been say­ing when she called pres­sured plain­ness a “sil­ly poor gospel”. (I should say that some non-Quaker do dress more as an iden­ti­fy­ing uni­form, which is fine, just not nec­es­sar­i­ly the Quak­er rationale).
But like any out­ward form or tes­ti­mo­ny (peace, Quak­er process, etc.), tak­ing up plain dress can be a fruit­ful course in reli­gious edu­ca­tion. I think back to being sev­en­teen and buck­ing my father’s wish that I attend the Naval Acad­e­my – my “no” made me ask how else my beliefs about peace might need to be act­ed out in my life. It became a use­ful query. Plain dress has forced me to think anew about how I “con­sume” cloth­ing and how I relate to mass mar­ket­ing and the glob­al cloth­ing indus­try. It’s also kept me from duck­ing out on my faith, as I wear an iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of my beliefs.
So join the plain dress dis­cus­sion or take a look at the ever-growing sec­tion of the site called Resources on Quak­er Plain Dress, which includes “My Exper­i­ments with Plain­ness”, my ear­ly sto­ry about going plain.

Plain Dress – Some Reflections

April 7, 2004
· Martin Kelley

A guest piece by Melynda Huskey

I’ve been much afflict­ed on the sub­ject of plain dress for the last sev­er­al months, thanks to Thomas Clark­son. Clark­son, a British Abo­li­tion­ist and close, even fond, observ­er of Friends, wrote a three-volume dis­qui­si­tion on Quak­er tes­ti­monies, cul­ture, and behav­ior (in 1811, if my mem­o­ry serves me). There’s a lot in Clark­son to think about, but his sec­tion on Quak­er garb was par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing to me. Not because I intend to take up a green apron any time soon (did you know that was a badge of Quak­er wom­an­hood for near­ly two cen­turies?), but because he pro­vides what a present-day anthro­pol­o­gist would describe as a func­tion­al­ist analy­sis of the mean­ing of plain dress: it served as a badge of mem­ber­ship, keep­ing its wear­ers pecu­liar and in vis­i­ble com­mu­nion with one anoth­er, while com­mu­ni­cat­ing a core val­ue of the tradition.

When I was a kid, I yearned for plain dress like the kids in Oba­di­ah’s fam­i­ly wore. I loved the idea of a Quak­er uni­form and could­n’t imag­ine why we did­n’t still have one. When­ev­er I asked my mom about it, she would patient­ly explain that an out­ward con­for­mi­ty in plain dress called atten­tion to itself as much as any world­ly out­fit did, and that Quak­ers should dress as plain­ly as was suit­able and pos­si­ble to their work in the world. It made sense, but I was still sorry.

And now, at near­ly 40, after 35 years of bal­anc­ing my con­vic­tions and my world, I’m still han­ker­ing after a tru­ly dis­tinc­tive and Quak­er­ly plain­ness. What isn’t any clear­er to me is what that might look like now.
After all, what are the options? Accord­ing to my part­ner, the dis­tinc­tive ele­ments of con­tem­po­rary Quak­er garb are high-water pants for Friends over 40 and grimy hands and feet for Friends under 40. This obvi­ous­ly jaun­diced view aside, there does­n’t seem to be much to dis­tin­guish Friends from, say, Methodists, Uni­tar­i­ans, or mem­bers of the local food co-op. A lit­tle den­im, a lit­tle kha­ki, some suede sport mocs, some san­dals and funky socks, batik and chunky jew­el­ry. It’s not obvi­ous­ly world­ly, but it’s not set apart, either. There is no tes­ti­mo­ny in our cur­rent dress.

On the oth­er hand, any­thing too vis­i­bly a cos­tume obvi­ous­ly isn’t right; I can’t appro­pri­ate the Men­non­ite dress-and-prayer-cap, for exam­ple. And my heart ris­es up against the whole range of “mod­est” cloth­ing present­ly avail­able – flo­ral prairie dress­es and pinafores, sailor dress­es, den­im jumpers, and head cov­er­ings – all with nurs­ing aper­tures and mater­ni­ty inserts, and mar­ket­ed by com­pa­nies with ter­ri­fy­ing names like “Dad­dy’s Lit­tle Princess,” “King’s Daugh­ters,” and “Lilies of the Field.” No Prairie Madon­na drag for me. No messy, time-consuming, attention-requiring long hair; no end­less sup­ply of tights and nylons and slips; no cold legs in the win­ter snow and ice. No squeez­ing myself into a gen­der ide­ol­o­gy which was for­eign to Friends from the very beginning.

It seems to me that con­tem­po­rary plain dress ought to be dis­tinc­tive with­out being the­atri­cal; it should be prac­ti­cal and self-effacing. It should be pro­duced under non-exploitive con­di­tions. It should be the same every day, with­out vari­a­tion intro­duced for the sake of vari­a­tion, and suit­able for every occa­sion It should be tidy and well-kept – Quak­ers were once known for the scrupu­lous neat­ness of their attire and their homes. And it should com­mu­ni­cate clear­ly that we are called and set apart.

But what gar­ments they might be that would accom­plish that, I can­not say. I’m stymied. Friends, share your light.

*Note from Mar­tin Kel­ley:* I’m start­ing to col­lect sto­ries from oth­er Friends and fellow-religious on issues like plain dress, the tes­ti­monies and faith renew­al. This is part of that project.