Tag Archives ⇒ Quaker

Swinging off the gallows and into the Glory

January 5, 2004
· Martin Kelley

Oh my gosh, TheOoze has an amaz­ing arti­cle on called “Ortho­dox Twenty-Somethings” (a review of “The New Faith­ful” and “The Younger Evan­gel­i­cals”, a great book I’ve rec­om­mend­ed. Read this arti­cle if you want to under­stand why Julie’s at a tra­di­tion­al Catholic Church and why I’m plain dress­ing. This is a bona fide phe­nom­e­non, folks.

None of this is sup­posed to be hap­pen­ing because it’s not the project for which two gen­er­a­tions of Protes­tant and Catholic cler­gy have worked… The push for rel­a­tivist moral teach­ing, “sim­pli­fied” wor­ship, inter­change­able sex roles, and an utter sep­a­ra­tion of pri­vate belief from polit­i­cal expres­sion has come from the pul­pit as read­i­ly as it has been demand­ed by pseudo-intellectual elites. But against all odds, por­tions of a mod­ern Amer­i­can soci­ety, which groans to find itself sec­u­lar­ist, is return­ing in a qui­et rev­o­lu­tion to the fun­da­men­tal truths of the Chris­t­ian religion.

Mean­while, no one should miss Melyn­da Huskey’s won­der­ful rant in the com­ments of my “Beyond Major­i­ty Rule” review. Warn­ing: it skew­ers a beloved Quak­er institution!

Or maybe it was just the gen­er­al whiff of the tomb – a real­ly old tomb, all scent of decay long gone, and noth­ing left but dust and dead air. No Quak­ers here, pal. No George Fox rebuk­ing priests from the next aisle. No Isaac Pen­ning­ton seiz­ing the moment of the Restora­tion to make Quak­ers as unpop­u­lar with the King and Court as they had been with the Pro­tec­tor and the Com­mon­wealth. No Mary Dyer ready to swing off the gal­lows and into Glo­ry for the sake of Light.

Arnold: Losing Our Religion

December 31, 2003
· Martin Kelley

Johann Christoph Arnold has an inter­est­ing piece on the inter­sec­tion of peace activism and reli­gion [orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished on Non​vi​o​lence​.org]. Here’s a taste:

The day before Mar­tin Luther King was mur­dered he said, “Like any­body, I would like to live a long life…But I’m not con­cerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will.” We must have this same desire if we are going to sur­vive the fear and vio­lence and mass con­fu­sion of our time. And we should be as unabashed about let­ting peo­ple know that it is our reli­gious faith that moti­vates us, regard­less of the set­ting or the consequences.

Many peace activists are dri­ven by reli­gious moti­va­tions, which is often all that keeps them going through all the hard times and non-appreciation. Yet we often present our­selves to the world in a sec­u­lar way using ratio­nal arguments.

It took me a few years to real­ly admit to myself that Non​vi​o​lence​.org is a min­istry inti­mate­ly con­nect­ed with my Quak­er faith. In the eight years it’s been going, thou­sands of web­sites have sprung up with good inten­tions and hype only to dis­ap­pear into obliv­ion (or the inter­net equiv­a­lent, the line read­ing “Last updat­ed July 7, 1997”). I have a sep­a­rate forum for “Quak­er reli­gious and peace issues” [which lat­er became the gen­er­al Quak­er­Ran­ter blog] In my essay on the Quak­er peace tes­ti­mo­ny, I wor­ry that mod­ern reli­gious paci­fists have spent so much effort con­vinc­ing the world that paci­fism makes sense from a strict­ly ratio­nal­ist view­point that we’ve large­ly for­got­ten our own moti­va­tions. Don’t get me wrong: I think paci­fism also makes sense as a prag­mat­ic pol­i­cy; while mil­i­tary solu­tions might be quick­er, paci­fism can bring about the long-term changes that break the cycle of mil­i­tarism. But how can we learn to bal­ance the shar­ing of both our prag­mat­ic and reli­gious motivations?

 

Beyond the MacGuffins: Sheeran’s Beyond Majority Rule

December 26, 2003
· Martin Kelley

A review of Michael Sheer­an’s Beyond Major­i­ty Rule. Twen­ty years lat­er, do Friends need to expe­ri­ence the gath­ered condition?

Beyond Major­i­ty Rule has one of the more unique sto­ries in Quak­er writ­ings. Michael Sheer­an is a Jesuit priest who went to sem­i­nary in the years right after the Sec­ond Vat­i­can Coun­cil. Forged by great changes tak­ing place in the church, he took seri­ous­ly the Coun­cil’s man­date for Roman Catholics to get “in touch with their roots.” He became inter­est­ed in a long-forgotten process of “Com­mu­nal Dis­cern­ment” used by the Jesuit order in when it was found­ed in the mid-sixteenth cen­tu­ry. His search led him to study groups out­side Catholi­cism that had sim­i­lar decision-making struc­tures. The Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends should con­sid­er itself lucky that he found us. His book often explains our ways bet­ter than any­thing we’ve written.

Sheer­an’s advan­tage comes from being an out­sider firm­ly root­ed in his own faith. He’s not afraid to share obser­va­tions and to make com­par­isons. He start­ed his research with a rather for­mal study of Friends, con­duc­ing many inter­views and attend­ing about ten month­ly meet­ings in Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing. There are sec­tions of the book that are dry expo­si­tions of Quak­er process, sprin­kled by inter­views. There are times where Sheer­an starts say­ing some­thing real­ly insight­ful about ear­ly or con­tem­po­rary Friends, but then backs off to repeat some out­dat­ed Quak­er cliche (he relies a bit too heav­i­ly on the group of mid-century Haverford-based aca­d­e­mics whose his­to­ries often pro­ject­ed their own the­ol­o­gy of mod­ern lib­er­al mys­ti­cism onto the ear­ly Friends). These sec­tions aren’t always very enlight­en­ing – too many Philadel­phia Friends are uncon­scious of their cher­ished myths and their inbed­ded incon­sis­ten­cies. On page 85, he express­es the conun­drum quite eloquently:

If the researcher was to suc­cumb to the all too typ­i­cal canons of social sci­ence, he would prob­a­bly scratch his head a few times atjust this point, note that the ambi­gu­i­ty of Quak­er expres­sion makes accu­rate sta­tis­ti­cal eval­u­a­tion of Quak­er believes almost impos­si­ble with­out invest­ment of untold time and effort, and move on to analy­sis of some less inter­est­ing but more man­age­able object of study.

For­tu­nate­ly for us, Sheer­an does not suc­cumb. The book shines when Sheer­an steps away from the aca­d­e­m­ic role and offers us his sub­jec­tive observations.

There are six pages in Beyond Major­i­ty Rule that com­prise its main con­tri­bu­tion to Quak­erism. Almost every time I’ve heard some­one refer to this book in con­ver­sa­tion, it’s been to share the obser­va­tions of these six pages. Over the years I’ve often casu­al­ly browsed through the book and it’s these six pages that I’ve always stopped to read. The pas­sage is called “Con­flict­ing Myths and Fun­da­men­tal Cleav­ages” and it begins on page 84. Sheer­an begins by relat­ing the obvi­ous observation:

When Friends reflect upon their beliefs, they often focus upon the obvi­ous con­flict between Chris­to­cen­tric and uni­ver­sal­ist approach­es. Peo­ple who feel strong­ly drawn to either camp often see the oth­er posi­tion as a threat to Quak­erism itself.

As a Gen-X’er I’ve often been bored by this debate. It often breaks down into emp­ty lan­guage and the desire to feel self-righteous about one’s beliefs. It’s the MacGuf­fin of con­tem­po­rary lib­er­al Quak­erism. (A MacGuf­fin is a film plot device that dri­ves the action but is in itself nev­er explained and does­n’t real­ly mat­ter: if the spies have to get the secret plans across the bor­der by mid­night, those plans are the MacGuf­fin and the chase the real action.) Today’s debates about Chris­to­cen­trism ver­sus Uni­ver­sal­ism ignore the real issues of faith­less­ness we need to address.

Sheer­an sees the real cleav­age between Friends as those who have expe­ri­enced the divine and those who haven’t. I’d extend the for­mer just a bit to include those who have faith that the expe­ri­ence of the divine is pos­si­ble. When we sit in wor­ship do we real­ly believe that we might be vis­it­ed by Christ (how­ev­er named, how­ev­er defined)? When we cen­ter our­selves for Meet­ing for Busi­ness do we expect to be guid­ed by the Great Teacher?

Sheer­an found that a num­ber of Friends did­n’t believe in a divine visitation:

Fur­ther ques­tions some­times led to the para­dox­i­cal dis­cov­ery that, for some of these Friends, the expe­ri­ence of being gath­ered even in meet­ing for wor­ship was more of a for­mal rather than an expe­ri­en­tial real­i­ty. For some, the fact that the group had sat qui­ety for twenty-five min­utes was itself iden­ti­fied as being gathered.

There are many clerks that call for a “moment of silence” to begin and end busi­ness – five min­utes of for­mal silence to prove that we’re Quak­ers and maybe to gath­er our argu­ments togeth­er. Meet­ings for busi­ness are con­duct­ed by smart peo­ple with smart ideas and effi­cien­cy is prized. Sit­ting in wor­ship is seen a med­i­ta­tive oasis if not a com­plete waste of time. For these Friends, Quak­erism is a soci­ety of strong lead­er­ship com­bined with intel­lec­tu­al vig­or. Good deci­sions are made using good process. If some Friends choose to describe their own guid­ance as com­ing from “God,” that their indi­vid­ual choice but it is cer­tain­ly not an imper­a­tive for all.

Maybe it’s Sheer­an’s Catholi­cism that makes him aware of these issues. Both Catholics and Friends tra­di­tion­al­ly believe in the real pres­ence of Christ dur­ing wor­ship. When a Friend stands to speak in meet­ing, they do so out of obe­di­ence, to be a mes­sen­ger and ser­vant of the Holy Spir­it. That Friends might speak ‘beyond their Guide’ does not betray the fact that it’s God’s mes­sage we are try­ing to relay. Our under­stand­ing of Christ’s pres­ence is real­ly quite rad­i­cal: “Jesus has come to teach the peo­ple him­self,” as Fox put it, it’s the idea that God will speak to us as He did to the Apos­tles and as He did to the ancient prophets of Israel. The his­to­ry of God being active­ly involved with His peo­ple continues.

Why does this mat­ter? Because as a reli­gious body it is sim­ply our duty to fol­low God and because new­com­ers can tell when we’re fak­ing it. I’ve known self-described athe­ists who get it and who I con­sid­er broth­ers and sis­ters in faith and I’ve known peo­ple who can quote the bible inside and out yet know noth­ing about love (haven’t we all known some of these, even in Quak­erism?). How do we get past the MacGuf­fin debates of pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions to dis­till the core of the Quak­er message?

Not all Friends will agree with Sheer­an’s point of cleav­age. None oth­er than the acclaimed Haver­for­dian Dou­glas V Steere wrote the intro­duc­tion to Beyond Major­i­ty Rule and he used it to dis­miss the core six pages as “mod­est but not espe­cial­ly con­vinc­ing” (page x). The unstat­ed con­di­tion behind the great Quak­er reuni­fi­ca­tions of the mid-twentieth cen­tu­ry was a taboo against talk­ing about what we believe as a peo­ple. Quak­erism became an indi­vid­ual mys­ti­cism cou­pled with a world-focused social activism – to talk about the area in between was to threat­en the new unity.

Times have changed and gen­er­a­tions have shift­ed. It is this very in-between-ness that first attract­ed me to Friends. As a nascent peace activist, I met Friends whose deep faith allowed them to keep going past the despair of the world. I did­n’t come to Friends to learn how to pray or how to be a lefty activist (most Quak­er activists now are too self-absorbed to be real­ly effec­tive). What I want to know is how Friends relate to one anoth­er and to God in order to tran­scend them­selves. How do we work togeth­er to dis­cern our divine lead­ings? How do we come togeth­er to be a faith­ful peo­ple of the Spirit?

I find I’m not alone in my inter­est in Sheer­an’s six pages. The fifty-somethings I know in lead­er­ship posi­tions in Quak­erism also seem more ten­der to Sheer­an’s obser­va­tions than Dou­glas Steere was. Twenty-five years after sub­mit­ting his dis­ser­ta­tion, Friends are per­haps ready to be con­vinced by our Friend, Michael J. Sheeran.

Post­script: Michael J Sheer­an con­tin­ues to be an inter­est­ing and active fig­ure. He con­tin­ues to write about gov­er­nance issues in the Catholic Church and serves as pres­i­dent of Reg­is Uni­ver­si­ty in Denver.

What makes a Quaker meeting house?

December 5, 2003
· Martin Kelley
An Atlantic County Methodist Episcopal Meetinghouse. Picture from NJChurschape
An Atlantic Coun­ty Methodist Epis­co­pal Meet­ing­house. Pic­ture from NJChurschape

One of my favorite sites is the amaz­ing NJChurch​scape​.com—that’s New Jer­sey Church­scapes, put togeth­er large­ly through the efforts of Frank L. Greenagel. It’s a true labor of love, a cat­a­loging of church and meet­ing archi­tec­ture in New Jer­sey. It has beau­ti­ful pho­tos, great sto­ries, read­able essays on archi­tec­ture. In a state where every­thing below Cher­ry Hill often gets ignored, South Jer­sey gets good cov­er­age and there’s a lot from the old Quak­er colony of West Jer­sey. This mon­th’s fea­ture is on the meet­ing­house, a build­ing of endear­ing sim­plic­i­ty and it rais­es a lot of ques­tions for me of how we relate to our church buildings.

We modern-day Friends tend to think of the term meet­ing­house as unique­ly ours, but go back in his­to­ry and you’ll find just about every­one using the term to describe the non-showy build­ings they erect­ed for reli­gious ser­vices and town life. Dri­ve around South Jer­sey and you’ll see old Methodist church­es that start­ed out life as meet­ing­hous­es and look sur­pris­ing­ly Quak­er. Greenagel looks at the style and then asks:

At what point does a struc­ture cease being a meet­ing­house and become a church?.. With the ris­ing afflu­ence and increased mobil­i­ty of the pop­u­la­tion came a demand for more spe­cial­ized places to meet, as well as more of the basic com­forts and style which hereto­fore were dis­missed as too world­ly, so many church­es added small­er lec­ture rooms, class­rooms for Sun­day school, and oth­er assem­bly rooms dis­tinct from the main auditorium.

By this mea­sure, how many of our beloved East Coast Quak­er meet­ing­hous­es should real­ly just be called “church­es?” In the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry the Protes­tant “Sun­day School Move­ment” was picked up by Gur­neyite and Pro­gres­sive Hick­site Friends, with the class­es sim­ply renamed “First Day School” in def­er­ence to Quak­er sen­si­bil­i­ties (I’ve always won­dered if the name switch actu­al­ly fooled any­one, but that’s anoth­er sto­ry). By the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, the new mod­ern lib­er­al Friends had picked up the lec­ture for­mat, which like the First Day School move­ment had been adopt­ed from edu­ca­tion­al mod­els via oth­er reli­gious groups. Many of our larg­er month­ly meet­ings have fel­low­ship halls, class­rooms, kitchens, etc. These build­ings have become spe­cial­ized reli­gious wor­ship build­ings and many of them sit emp­ty for most of the week. But not all.

Nowa­days many Quak­er meet­ings with build­ings open them mid-week for use by com­mu­ni­ty groups. Quak­er meet­ing­hous­es host peace groups, bat­tered women hot­lines, yoga class­es, reli­gious con­gre­ga­tions in need of a tem­po­rary home and sim­i­lar caus­es. There’s often an ele­ment of good works in the group’s charter.

Per­haps this will­ing­ness to open our build­ings up earns us the right to con­tin­ue using the meet­ing­house name. If so, we should be care­ful to resist the pres­sure of the insur­ance indus­try to close our­selves up in the name of lia­bil­i­ty. One unique­ness to our wor­ship spaces is that they are not con­se­crat­ed and there should be no spe­cial rules for their use. They are over­sized barns and we should cher­ish that. We should remem­ber not to get fetishis­tic about their his­to­ry and we should­n’t tie up our busi­ness meet­ings in end­less dis­cus­sions over the col­or of the new seat cush­ions. When we turn our build­ings over for oth­ers’ use, we should­n’t wor­ry over­ly much if a chair or clock gets damanged or stolen. Friends know that our reli­gion is not our build­ings and that the mea­sure of our spir­it is sim­ply how far we’ll fol­low God, togeth­er as a people.

Related Reading:

  • There’s a very hand­some book about the HABS work on Quak­er meet­ing­hous­es in the greater Philadel­phia area called Silent Wit­ness: Quak­er Meet­ing Hous­es In The Delaware Val­ley, 1695 To The Present. (only $10!).
  • My friend Bob Bar­nett has been putting a lot of great work into a new West Jer­sey website.

Signs of Hope

November 26, 2003
· Martin Kelley

I think I some­times appear more pes­simistic than I real­ly am. Here are some of this week’s rea­sons for hope.
* Being in touch with Jorj & Sue and Barb and Tobi because of these writ­ings (could the “Lost Generation”:http://www.nonviolence.org/martink/archives/000147.php be mud­dling towards a new coalesence?)
* A small flur­ry of recent talks and pam­phlets about redis­cov­er­ing tra­di­tion­al Quak­erism: Mar­ty Grundy’s 2002 lec­ture _Quaker Trea­sure: Dis­cov­er­ing The Basis For Uni­ty Among Friends_, Paul Lacey’s _The Author­i­ty Of Our Meet­ings Is The Pow­er Of God_ , and Lloyd Lee Wilson’s “Wrestling With Our Faith Tradition”:http://www.ncymc.org/journal/ncymcjournal3.pdf (PDF)
* Tony P. say­ing he was griev­ed that Julie has left the Soci­ety of Friends and car­ing enough to talk to her. Thank you.
* A fly­er I saw this week­end, writ­ten by PYM Reli­gious Edu­ca­tion staff. It was a list of what they thought they should be doing and it was real­ly pret­ty good (why don’t they’d print this in _PYM News_ , it’s much bet­ter than their boil­er­plate entries this issue). Even more I hope the work does take a move in that direction.
* Thomas Ham­m’s The Quak­ers in Amer­i­ca, which just came in yes­ter­day. It’s per­haps a lit­tle too intro­duc­to­ry but we need a good intro­duc­tion and Ham­m’s the one to write it. His book on Ortho­dox Friends, Trans­for­ma­tion of Amer­i­can Quak­erism is amaz­ing­ly well researched and essen­tial read­ing for any involved Friend who wants to under­stand who we are. He’s work­ing on a com­pan­ion his­to­ry on the Hick­sites, which is very much needed.

We’re All Ranters Now: On Liberal Friends and Becoming a Society of Finders

November 18, 2003
· Martin Kelley

It’s time to explain why I call this site “The Quak­er Ranter” and to talk about my home, the lib­er­al branch of Quak­ers. Non-Quakers can be for­giv­en for think­ing that I mean this to be a place where I, Mar­tin Kel­ley, “rant,” i.e., where I “utter or express with extrav­a­gance.” That may be the result (smile), but it’s not what I mean and it’s not the real pur­pose behind this site.

Friends and Ranters

The Ranters were fellow-travelers to the Friends in the reli­gious tur­moil of seventeenth-century Eng­land. The coun­try­side was cov­ered with preach­ers and lay peo­ple run­ning around Eng­land seek­ing to revive prim­i­tive Chris­tian­i­ty. George Fox was one, declar­ing that “Christ has come to teach his peo­ple him­self” and that hireling cler­gy were dis­tort­ing God’s mes­sage. The move­ment that coa­lesced around him as “The Friends of Truth” or “The Quak­ers” would take its orders direct­ly from the Spir­it of Christ.

This worked fine for a few years. But before long a lead­ing Quak­er rode into the town of Bris­tol in imi­ta­tion of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem. Not a good idea. The author­i­ties con­vict­ed him of heresy and George Fox dis­tanced him­self from his old friend. Soon after­wards, a quasi-Quaker col­lec­tion of reli­gious rad­i­cals plot­ted an over­throw of the gov­ern­ment. That also did­n’t go down very well with the author­i­ties, and Fox quick­ly dis­avowed vio­lence in a state­ment that became the basis of our peace tes­ti­mo­ny. Clear­ly the Friends of the Truth need­ed to fig­ure out mech­a­nisms for decid­ing what mes­sages were tru­ly of God and who could speak for the Friends movement.

The cen­tral ques­tion was one of author­i­ty. Those Friends rec­og­nized as hav­ing the gift for spir­i­tu­al dis­cern­ment were put in charge of a sys­tem of dis­ci­pline over way­ward Friends. Friends devised a method for deter­min­ing the valid­i­ty of indi­vid­ual lead­ings and con­cerns. This sys­tem rest­ed on an assump­tion that Truth is immutable, and that any errors come from our own will­ful­ness in dis­obey­ing the mes­sage. New lead­ings were first weighed against the tra­di­tion of Friends and their pre­de­ces­sors the Israelites (as brought down to us through the Bible).

Ranters often looked and sound­ed like Quak­ers but were opposed to any impo­si­tion of group author­i­ty. They were a move­ment of indi­vid­ual spir­i­tu­al seek­ers. Ranters thought that God spoke direct­ly to indi­vid­u­als and they put no lim­its on what the Spir­it might instruct us. Tra­di­tion had no role, insti­tu­tions were for disbelievers.

Mean­while Quak­ers set up Quar­ter­ly and Year­ly Meet­ings to insti­tu­tion­al­ize the sys­tem of elders and dis­ci­pline. This worked for awhile, but it should­n’t be too sur­pris­ing that this human insti­tu­tion even­tu­al­ly broke down. World­li­ness and wealth sep­a­rat­ed the elders from their less well-to-do brethren and new spir­i­tu­al move­ments swept through Quak­er ranks. Divi­sions arose over the eter­nal ques­tion of how to pass along a spir­i­tu­al­i­ty of con­vince­ment in a Soci­ety grown com­fort­able. By the ear­ly 1800s, Philadel­phia elders had became a kind of aris­toc­ra­cy based on birthright and in 1827 they dis­owned two-thirds of their own year­ly meet­ing. The dis­owned major­i­ty nat­u­ral­ly devel­oped a dis­trust of author­i­ty, while the aris­to­crat­ic minor­i­ty even­tu­al­ly real­ized there was no one left to elder.

Over the next cen­tu­ry and a half, suc­ces­sive waves of pop­u­lar reli­gious move­ments washed over Friends. Revival­ism, Deism, Spir­i­tu­al­ism and Pro­gres­sive Uni­tar­i­an­ism all left their mark on Friends in the Nine­teenth Cen­tu­ry. Mod­ern lib­er­al Protes­tantism, Evan­gel­i­cal­ism, New Ageism, and sixties-style rad­i­cal­ism trans­formed the Twen­ti­eth. Each fad lift­ed up a piece of Quak­ers’ orig­i­nal mes­sage but invari­ably added its own incon­gru­ous ele­ments into wor­ship. The Soci­ety grew ever more fractured.

Faced with ever-greater the­o­log­i­cal dis­uni­ty, Friends sim­ply gave up. In the 1950s, the two Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ings reunit­ed. It was cel­e­brat­ed as rec­on­cil­i­a­tion. But they could do so only because the role of Quak­er insti­tu­tions had fun­da­men­tal­ly changed. Our cor­po­rate bod­ies no longer even try to take on the role of dis­cern­ing what it means to be a Friend.

We are all Ranters now

Lib­er­al Quak­ers today tend to see their local Meet­ing­house as a place where every­one can believe what they want to believe. The high­est val­ue is giv­en to tol­er­ance and cor­dial­i­ty. Many peo­ple now join Friends because it’s the reli­gion with­out a reli­gion, i.e., it’s a com­mu­ni­ty with the form of a reli­gion but with­out any the­ol­o­gy or expec­ta­tions. We are a proud to be a com­mu­ni­ty of seek­ers. Our com­mon­al­i­ty is in our form and we’re big on silence and meet­ing process.

Is it any won­der that almost every­one today seems to be a hyphen­at­ed Quak­er? We’ve got Catholic-Quakers, Pagan-Quakers, Jewish-Quakers: if you can hyphen­ate it, there’s a Quak­er inter­est group for you. I’m not talk­ing about Friends nour­ished by anoth­er tra­di­tion: we’ve have his­tor­i­cal­ly been graced and con­tin­ue to be graced by con­verts to Quak­erism whose fresh eyes let us see some­thing new about our­selves. No, I’m talk­ing about peo­ple who prac­tice the out­ward form of Quak­erism but look else­where for the­ol­o­gy and inspi­ra­tion. If being a Friend means lit­tle more than show­ing up at Meet­ing once a week, we should­n’t be sur­prised that peo­ple bring a the­ol­o­gy along to fill up the hour. It’s like bring­ing a news­pa­per along for your train com­mute every morning.

But the appear­ance of tol­er­ance and uni­ty comes at a price: it depends on every­one for­ev­er remain­ing a Seek­er. Any­one who wants to fol­low ear­ly Friends’ expe­ri­ence as “Friends of the Truth” risks becomes a Find­er who threat­ens the nego­ti­at­ed truce of the mod­ern Quak­er meet­ing. If we real­ly are a peo­ple of God, we might have to start act­ing that way. We might all have to pray togeth­er in our silence. We might all have to sub­mit our­selves to God’s will. We might all have to wres­tle with each oth­er to artic­u­late a shared belief sys­tem. If we were Find­ers, we might need to define what is unac­cept­able behav­ior for a Friend, i.e., on what grounds we would con­sid­er dis­own­ing a member.

If we became a reli­gious soci­ety of Find­ers, then we’d need to fig­ure out what it means to be a Quaker-Quaker: some­one who’s the­ol­o­gy and prac­tice is Quak­er. We would need to put down those indi­vid­ual news­pa­pers to become a Peo­ple once more. I’m not say­ing we’d be unit­ed all the time. We’d still have dis­agree­ments. Even more, we would once again need to be vig­i­lant against the re-establishment of repres­sive elder­ships. But it seems obvi­ous to me that Truth lies in the bal­ance between author­i­ty and indi­vid­u­al­ism and that it’s each gen­er­a­tion’s task to restore and main­tain that balance.

* * *
Over the years a num­ber of old­er and wis­er Friends have advised me to live by Friends’ prin­ci­ples and to chal­lenge my Meet­ing to live up to those ideals. But in my year serv­ing as co-clerk of a small South Jer­sey Meet­ing, I learned that almost no one else there believed that our busi­ness meet­ings should be led by the real pres­ence of the liv­ing God. I was stuck try­ing to clerk using a mod­el of cor­po­rate decision-making that I alone held. I would like to think those wis­er Friends have more ground­ed Meet­ings. Per­haps they do. But I fear they just are more suc­cess­ful at kid­ding them­selves that there’s more going on than there is. I agree that the Spir­it is every­where and that Christ is work­ing even we don’t rec­og­nize it. But isn’t it the role of a reli­gious com­mu­ni­ty to rec­og­nize and cel­e­brate God’s pres­ence in our lives?

Until Friends can find a way to artic­u­late a shared faith, I will remain a Ranter. I don’t want to be. I long for the over­sight of a com­mu­ni­ty unit­ed in a shared search for Truth. But can any of us be Friends if so many of us are Ranters?

More Reading

For those inter­est­ed, “We all Ranters Now” para­phras­es (birthright Friend) Richard Nixon’s famous quote (semi-misattributed) about the lib­er­al econ­o­mist John May­nard Keynes.

Bill Samuel has an inter­est­ing piece called “Keep­ing the Faith” that address­es the con­cept of Uni­ty and its wax­ing and wan­ing among Friends over the centuries.

Samuel D. Cald­well gave an inter­est­ing lec­ture back in 1997, Quak­er Cul­ture vs. Quak­er Faith. An excerpt: “Quak­er cul­ture and Quak­er faith are… often direct­ly at odds with one anoth­er in Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing today. Although it orig­i­nal­ly derived from and was con­sis­tent with Quak­er faith, con­tem­po­rary Quak­er cul­ture in this Year­ly Meet­ing has evolved into a bor­ing, peev­ish, repres­sive, pet­ty, humor­less, inept, mar­gin­al, and large­ly irrel­e­vant cult that is gen­er­al­ly repug­nant to ordi­nary peo­ple with healthy psy­ches. If we try to pre­serve our Quak­er cul­ture, instead of fol­low­ing the lead­ings of our Quak­er faith, we will most cer­tain­ly be cast out of the King­dom and die.”

I talk a bit more about these issues in Sodi­um Free Friends, which talks about the way we some­times inten­tion­al­ly mis-understand our past and why it mat­ters to engage with it. Some prag­man­tic Friends defend our vague­ness as a way to increase our num­bers. In The Younger Evan­gel­i­cals and the Younger Quak­ers I look at a class of con­tem­po­rary seek­ers who would be recep­tive to a more robust Quak­erism and map out the issues we’d need to look at before we could real­ly wel­come them in.

Are Catholics More Quaker?

November 16, 2003
· Martin Kelley

I guess folks might won­der why the son of the Quak­er Ranter is get­ting bap­tized in a Roman Catholic church…

[box]An updat­ed note before I start: I don’t want this to be seen as a cri­tique or put-down of any par­tic­u­lar indi­vid­u­als but to point out what seems to me to be a pret­ty obvi­ous larg­er dynam­ic with­in Quak­erism: our reli­gious edu­ca­tion pro­grams have not been doing a very good job at trans­mit­ting our faith to our young peo­ple. One mea­sure of such pro­grams is how many chil­dren we retain as actively-participating adults; by such mea­sures I think we can say Quak­ers are failing.

And, a few per­haps obvi­ous dis­claimers: 1) there are deeply faith­ful peo­ple who grew up in Young Friends pro­grams; 2) there are reli­gious ed instruc­tors who are wor­ried about the mes­sage we’re giv­ing our young peo­ple and fret as I do; 3) there are a lot of mem­bers of the RSoF who just don’t think teach­ing dis­tinct­ly Quak­er faith­ful­ness is impor­tant and would­n’t agree that there’s a problem.

I don’t think it’s use­ful to read this with­out also look­ing to my ear­ly arti­cle, The Lost Quak­er Gen­er­a­tion, which mourns the friends I’ve seen drop out of Quak­erism (many of them “birthright,” i.e., born into Quak­er fam­i­lies), and We’re all Ranters Now, which argues that our soci­ety of seek­ers needs to become a soci­ety of find­ers if we are to be able to artic­u­late a faith to transmit.
[/box]

On June 30, 2000, Julie and I met at a nation­al gath­er­ing of Quak­ers. Four­teen months lat­er we were mar­ried at the Wood­stown Friends Meet­ing­house under the care of the Atlantic City Area Friends Meet­ing. Rough­ly four­teen months lat­er, when the sparkles in our eyes were meet­ing with an approv­ing nod from God and our baby was con­ceived, I was co-clerk of Atlantic City Area Meet­ing and Julie was clerk of its Out­reach Com­mit­tee. Ten months lat­er, our infant son Theo was bap­tized at Mater Eccle­si­ae Roman Catholic Church in Berlin, N.J. It’s Julie’s new church; I myself remain Quak­er, but with­out a Meet­ing I can quite call home. What happened?

I don’t want to try to speak for Julie and why she left Friends to return to the faith she was brought up in. But I do have to tes­ti­fy that the rev­er­ence, spir­it and authen­tic­i­ty of the wor­ship at Mater Eccle­si­ae is deep­er than that in most Friends Meet­ing­hous­es. It’s a church with a lot of mem­bers who seem to believe in the real pres­ence of Christ. A dis­claimer that Mater Eccle­si­ae is unusu­al, one of the few church­es in the coun­try that uses the tra­di­tion­al Tri­den­tine Mass or Roman Rite, and that it attracts ardent fol­low­ers who have self-selected them­selves, in that they’re not going to their local parish church. I don’t think it’s the Catholi­cism alone that draws Julie – I think the pur­pose­ful­ness of the wor­shipers is a large piece. Despite all the dis­trac­tions (chants, Latin, rote con­fes­sions of faith: I’m speak­ing as a Friend), the wor­ship there is unusu­al­ly gath­ered. But more: there’s a ground­ed­ness to the faith. In a one-on-one con­ver­sa­tion the priest explained to me the ways he thought Quak­erism was wrong. I was­n’t offend­ed – quite the con­trary, I loved it! It was so refresh­ing to meet some­one who believed what he believed, (Hey, if I did­n’t believe in the degen­er­a­tion of the Roman Catholic Church or the emp­ty pro­fes­sions of hireling priests, I might join him. I also feel com­fort­able pre­dict­ing that he would wel­come my joust­ing here.)

What I can talk about is my mis­giv­ings about the prospect of rais­ing up Theo as a Quak­er in Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing. The weak­est ele­ment of the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends is its chil­dren’s reli­gious edu­ca­tion. This is some­thing I’ve seen man­i­fest­ed in two dif­fer­ent kinds of ways: con­tent and results.

Quak­ers have remark­ably few expec­ta­tions of their chil­dren. It’s con­sid­ered remark­able if old­er chil­dren spend a whole ten min­utes in Meet­ing for Wor­ship (I’ve heard adult birthright Friends boast that they’ve nev­er sat through a whole hour of Quak­er wor­ship). Quak­ers are obsessed about lis­ten­ing to what chil­dren have to say, and so nev­er share with them what they believe. I’ve known adults birthright Friends who have nev­er had con­ver­sa­tions with their par­ents about the basis of their faith.

Quak­er reli­gious edu­ca­tion pro­grams often for­go teach­ing tra­di­tion­al Quak­er faith and prac­tice for more fad­dish beliefs. The base­ment walls of the Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing youth cen­ter is paint­ed over with danc­ing gods, while of the big events of the Young Friends’ annu­al cal­en­dar is a “Quak­er sweat lodge”. A cul­ture of touch and phys­i­cal­i­ty (“cud­dle pud­dles”, back­rubs) is thought charm­ing and immod­est dress is con­sid­ered a sign of rebel­lious indi­vid­u­al­i­ty. Quak­er schools pub­lish brochures say­ing Meet­ing for Wor­ship is all about “think­ing, with God giv­en lit­tle notice.” When Quak­ers want to have “inter­gen­er­a­tional” wor­ship, they feel they have to pro­gram it with some sort of attention-keeping play­time activ­i­ty (Mater Eccle­si­ae echoes Quak­er tra­di­tion here: “inter­gen­er­a­tional” means chil­dren sit­ting through and par­tic­i­pat­ing in Mass with the adults).

Too many of the peo­ple my age and Julie’s who were brought up at Friends are igno­rant of basic Quak­er beliefs and are unaware of Quak­er tra­di­tions (FUM, EFI, Con­ser­v­a­tives) out­side the easy-going East Coast lib­er­al­ism they were raised in. For them being a Friend is act­ing a cer­tain way, believ­ing a cer­tain brand of polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy and being part of a cer­tain social group. Too many Young Adult Friends I’ve known over the years are cliquish, irre­li­gious, and have more than their share of issues around inti­ma­cy and sexuality.

Don’t get me wrong: these kids are often real­ly good peo­ple, chil­dren to be proud of, doing great things in the world. Many of them are open-hearted, spiritually-sensitive, and in deeply ground­ed rela­tion­ships. But only a very few are prac­tic­ing Quak­ers. And when I look at the reli­gious edu­ca­tion they get, I can’t say I’m sur­prised. If I were to raise Theo as a Quak­er, I would have to “home school” him away from most of the reli­gious edu­ca­tion pro­grams offered local­ly. When all the kids scram­ble out of wor­ship after ten min­utes I’d have to say “no” and tell him to keep sit­ting – how weird would that be?

Theo has a bet­ter chance of shar­ing the tra­di­tion­al Quak­er val­ues of the pres­ence of Christ, of Holy Obe­di­ence, and of bear­ing the cross by being raised as a Catholic in a tra­di­tion­al­ist church. It’s more like­ly he’ll turn out Quak­er if he’s bap­tised at Mater Eccle­si­ae. Julie and I will be teach­ing him rev­er­ence by exam­ple. I’ll share my Quak­er faith with him. I’m sure he’ll par­tic­i­pate in Quak­er events, but con­scious­ly, selec­tive­ly, guard­ed­ly (in the old Quak­er sense).

If Friends believe they have a faith worth holdling, they should also believe they have a faith worth pass­ing on. Do we?

Related Reading

  • Beck­ey Phipps con­duct­ed a series of inter­views that touched on many of these issues and pub­lished it in FGCon­nec­tions. FGC Reli­gious Edu­ca­tion: Lessons for the 21st Cen­tu­ry asks many of the right ques­tions. My favorite line: “It is the most amaz­ing thing, all the kids that I know that have gone into [Quak­er] lead­er­ship pro­grams – they’ve disappeared.”
  • I touch on these issues from the oth­er side in The Lost Quak­er Gen­er­a­tion, which is about the twenty- and thirty-something Friends that have drift­ed away