Really glad to see UK’s “The Friend” redesigning their website. It’s now mobile friendly and also allows visitors to read up to three free articles. I like sharing occasional articles from there so I’m excited that readers will be able to easily see them — and consider subscribing.
Quaker Ranter
A Weekly Newsletter and Blog from Martin Kelley
Tag Archives ⇒ Quaker
New book on Quaker prophetic faith
July 9, 2024
Really excited to see my friend Patricia Dallmann’s new book is available! It’s called The Light That Is Given. I read a pre-publication PDF version and was asked by the publisher to give a blurb. Here’s what I wrote:
Patricia Dallmann brings a modern prophetic voice to Scripture and ancient Friends’ texts. She carefully examines the language of these stories and brings new life to their teachings, but this is no exercise in mimicry. Dallmann shares her own experiences and shows us how traditional Quaker beliefs have guided her. This is an invaluable resource for those wanting to explore how traditional Friends’ faith and practice can be lived out by spiritual seekers today.
I see from Amazon that Douglas Gwyn and Stuart Masters gave even better blurbs so I’m in good company!
It’s a great summer for traditional Quaker books, with this and Christopher Stern’s new memoir. I wasn’t able to make his book talk at the FGC Gathering last week but hope to catch up on it. I did finally pick up a copy of 2015’s Traditional Quaker Christianity to add to my list of books I really really want to read. This week I finished Jean Soderlund’s Lenape Country: Delaware Valley Society Before William Penn, which distills a lot of the myths of Penn and Quakers (she’ll have an article on some of this in the August issue of FJ!).
Book Review Editor Search
July 3, 2024
Do you like books? Do you like working with people who like books? Friends Journal is looking for a new books editor. This is the person who coordinates all the reviews for the magazine.
Supping with the Spirit
June 11, 2024
I talked this week with Barbara Birch, who has a great article, The True Last Summer, in the current issue of Friends Journal on George Fox’s view that the final last supper was the spiritual one found in Revelation 3:20.
As I admit in the author chat interview, this is one of my favorite passages:
Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in and eat with you, and you with me… Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches.”
Barbara’s using a modern translation. I must admit to being fond of the more archaic KJV’s “I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.” Whatever the translation, I find it a source of comfort to know that the Healer, the Guide, the Christ Spirit is right there wanting to break bread with us. We are the lost sheep and He is out looking for us.
I think we moderns sometimes believe that the Spirit’s presence is our midst is a rare occurrence. We’re a skeptical people, rational and learned. We lock up potential ministry in suspicion and apply so many tests to our discernment that we sometimes fail to act at all. But what if communion is just a quiet knock away? What if the Comforter is always near? A nearby passage in Revelation says “because you are lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth” and likens spiritual gifts to a refiner’s fire. “I reprove and discipline those whom I love.”
On a warm day last year I was visiting the very lovely Barnegat Meeting. I had been mulling this passage the week before so laughed inwardly with delight when I sat down and realized the prominence of doors on both sides open to the warm weather. I almost laughed out loud when a nearby woodpecker started its rhythmic knock-knock-knock.
www.youtube.comBack to Jesus
June 5, 2024
Kevin-Douglas Olive, in Friendly Bible Study and Jesus my Friend, talks reconciling with the story of Jesus because of a meeting Bible study:
So who is this Jesus? The Jesus I know is the one who asks his followers “Who do you say that I am?” The Jesus I am trying to follow is the one who tells me to DO what he says and I am his friend (hence the name of Quakers — Friends). He is the radical rabbi or prophet who turned convention upside down and on whose teachings a new world religion was formed (for better or worse). Through Jesus’ life and death, gone is the need for sacrifice — it’s been done. Gone is the need to appease God, Jesus’ life and death does that. These ancient Jewish and pagan notions of god(s) and our relationship to the Divine were made obsolete. If we enter into the Life of Jesus, there will be certain fruits of the spirit which will manifest through our walk in the Light.
I’m old enough to remember K‑D as the pranksterish young adult Christian Friend delighting in confounding the Liberal Quakes at the FGC Gathering and then later, in 2008, as someone trying to start some sort of Convergent Friends presence in Baltimore. I’m glad he’s been continuing to follow the light and that the Bible study has been beneficial. If you want more, there’s a 2017 QuakerSpeak interview, How I Became a Quaker.
It’s also good hear in this post that Baltimore’s Homewood Meeting is attracting lots of new people under 40. I’ve been noticing that at my (tiny) meeting (a few weeks ago a few of the older Friends were off traveling and I looked around and realized the median age was something like 28). I’m hearing similar stories elsewhere. All anecdotes but I’m starting to wonder if Quakerism is having a bit of a moment.
pilgrimstranger.blogspot.comQuakers’ War Problem
June 1, 2024
A lot of modern-day Quakers like to think that Quakers have in all places and all times been clearly against all wars (see this recent Reddit thread for evidence). JW at Places to Go blog tells some of the stories that go against this myth.
Enough Quakers had qualms about pacifism in the face of these two great evils that Meetings wrestled with both members who chose to serve and fight against them, and the orthodoxy enshrined against fighting. What I found most heart warming was the Meetings who welcomed back their veterans with love and understanding and forgiveness. What I found disappointing was those Meetings which stripped those veterans of membership.
I myself am very much a pacifist. I have faith that the spirit of Christ will always provide a third way between violence and surrender. Is this trust warranted? Backed by political science or history? Probably not. My faith is the faith of a child, which my religious tradition tells me is a millstone I should be ready to carry.
But I’m also a human who watches horrors happening all over the globe. I don’t pretend to know any secret prayer that will stop Russian aggression against Ukraine, much less the indiscriminate terror of Hamas or the mass slaughter being carried out by the Israeli Defense Forces. I can share my faith in the Prince of Peace with my fellow humans but I can’t insist that they not struggle with it.
The modern history of the Quaker peace testimony was shaped in part by the need for members of the historic peace churches to pass the qualifications for U.S. conscientious objection laws during the World Wars (though if I’m not mistaken Friends helped draft those qualifications). For CO status one needs to have a sincere religious beliefs against all wars, context notwithstanding. I was trained as a CO counselor many many years ago and this was an important point to get across (some of this strictness has changed over the years and I’m no expert in current regulations). Purity is a hard standard in the real world when our consciences are pricked by the injustice we see.
I’ve written about the peace testimony many times, of course, most recently for Friends Journal (“Wrestling with the Peace Testimony”) and on this blog (“Presenting on the Peace Testimony”).
Matt Rosen: Quaker Membership and Convincement
May 23, 2024
Also interviewed this month: Matt Rosen, whose distinctions between membership and convincement seem spot-on to our condition today. Matt’s also part of a group of British young adults planning a very grounded conference. The Friend profiled the organizers recently.
Steven Dale Davison: Challenges and Gifts in Quaker Meetings
May 23, 2024
Steven was *that guy* when he joined Friends, combative and judgy about other people’s ministry. In retrospect, he wishes his meeting’s clearness committee had laid down the line when he joined. Even after talking with him I’m a little skeptical and hope they saw something in his initial arrogance that was ready to be overturned by Quaker experience.