Tag Archives ⇒ quakers

Johan Maurer: Whose faith? Whose practice?

April 16, 2026
· Martin Kelley

Johan Mau­r­er brings up a ques­tion in a post about what was the Lon­don Year­ly Meet­ing’s book of Chris­t­ian Faith and Prac­tice. He asks whether our prac­tices should be treat­ed as mod­els we’d expect oth­er Chris­tians to follow.

I sup­pose that in either case, Chris­t­ian or Quak­er, the pre­vail­ing assump­tion was that these books are for inter­nal use among Friends. This is who we are, more or less. But what I like about the title Chris­t­ian Faith and Prac­tice is anoth­er inter­pre­ta­tion entire­ly, one I have no per­mis­sion or evi­dence to pro­pose: this way of faith and life is not just for us; it’s rec­om­mend­ed for all Chris­tians.

I’d argue a strong yes to this. When I think about what ancient Quak­er odd­i­ties might still be rel­e­vant, one of the ques­tions I ask myself is whether we could argue that the whole church should also adopt the prac­tice (how­ev­er unlike­ly that might be in real­i­ty). If it’s just some Quak­er canard, we can toss it into an antiq­ui­ty dust­bin. But if all Chris­tians should be fol­low­ing the prac­tice, then let’s set the example.

I like Thomas Clarkson’s his­tor­i­cal account of Friends par­tic­u­lar­ly because he’s not writ­ing for a Quak­er audi­ence. I get the feel­ing he’s hold­ing our prac­tices up for scruti­ny, as if to say that maybe every­one should be fol­low­ing them and indeed, his paci­fism and abo­li­tion­ism were great­ly influ­enced by the Friends he met in his work.

Of course this wit­ness to oth­er Chris­tians sort of falls apart if we don’t con­sid­er our­selves Chris­t­ian. If online dis­course is any indi­ca­tion, there are large num­bers of Quak­ers who are rather obliv­i­ous that almost all of our Quak­er iden­ti­ty has a bib­li­cal basis (selec­tive, of course, and also inter­pret­ed, debat­ed and chang­ing). Quak­erism is seen as some­thing that just ran­dom­ly popped up in the world. None of the ear­ly Friends would have thought that.

Whose faith? Whose practice? (part one)
Whose faith? Whose prac­tice? (part one) 

Polit­i­cal and cul­tur­al obser­va­tions in light of Quak­er discipleship.

blog.canyoubelieve.me blog​.canyoube​lieve​.me

Tim Gee tracks down Ann Lee’s Quaker connection

March 17, 2026
· Martin Kelley

I always love a lit­tle sleuthing and all the bet­ter if it argues against some poor­ly researched report that made its way to Wikipedia.

The claim is that Shak­er leader Ann Lee was born a Quak­er. The Wikipedia entry says: “Her par­ents were mem­bers of a dis­tinct branch of the Soci­ety of Friends (a sect of Quak­ers) and too poor to afford their chil­dren even the rudi­ments of edu­ca­tion.” The source of this is giv­en in the cita­tion: a 1879 ency­clo­pe­dia arti­cle, a copy of which is host­ed on Wik­isource: “Her par­ents were mem­bers of a dis­tinct branch of the soci­ety of Friends, and too poor to afford their chil­dren even the rudi­ments of edu­ca­tion.” A source for this claim was nev­er giv­en in the ency­clo­pe­dia, though lat­er on it does ref­er­ence Fred­er­ick William Evans, a much lat­er Shak­er figure.

That is the Tim Gee com­piles five pieces of evi­dence that togeth­er feel very con­vinc­ing.

There are of course influ­ences but that’s to be expect­ed. Every reli­gious move­ment of the Sec­ond Great Awak­en­ing had some rela­tion­ship to Quak­ers. The Methodists, Mor­mons, Holi­ness, Adven­tists all have some con­nec­tions. When you tour the “1652 Coun­try” area of Eng­land, where George Fox first brought Quak­ers togeth­er, you’ll keep run­ning into signs about John Wes­ley doing the same for Methodists a cen­tu­ry lat­er, and here in South Jer­sey where I live a whole slew of Quak­ers became Methodists in the ear­ly 1800s. At least one ear­ly Mor­mon evan­ge­list in Ohio essen­tial­ly went from Quak­er town to Quak­er town try­ing to recruit peo­ple. The Quak­er defense of female lead­er­ship and the prin­ci­ple that women can preach obvi­ous­ly rubbed off on the Shak­ers and oth­er movements.

The idea that the British colonies in Amer­i­ca were some pure land where we could rein­vent a prim­i­tive Chris­tian­i­ty was a pow­er­ful meme (if you will) at the time and cer­tain­ly drew Ann Lee to cross over and plant a reli­gious move­ment here. But Ann Lee picked one of the least Quak­er areas to plant her com­mu­ni­ty and drew ear­ly mem­bers from New Eng­land mil­len­ni­al­ist revival­ists. She def­i­nite­ly want­ed to build some­thing dis­tinct from Friends.

Ann Lee Was Never a Quaker: Here's the Evidence
Ann Lee Was Nev­er a Quak­er: Here’s the Evidence 

Five rea­sons why Wikipedia is wrong.

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Indigenous and Quaker Both

January 27, 2026
· Martin Kelley

There’s often an implied us-them dichoto­my when Quak­ers talk about Indige­nous Peo­ples so I’m fas­ci­nat­ed by com­mu­ni­ties that are both. My col­league Sharlee DiMenichi wrote about the hand­ful of month­ly meet­ings — and an entire year­ly meet­ing — in the U.S. that are major­i­ty Indige­nous.

I love com­pli­cat­ed iden­ti­ties like this. There’s a lot of dis­cern­ment that goes on about how to incor­po­rate Indige­nous and Quak­er ele­ments into life. For many, it seems a sur­pris­ing­ly nat­ur­al fit. This is true else­where, in parts of Africa and South Amer­i­ca, where mis­sion­ary Quak­ers’ beliefs meshed with the belief sys­tems of pre-colonial eth­nic groups, allow­ing an easy transition.

Also of inter­est is that these meet­ings are all Chris­t­ian, which demog­ra­phers tell us is the norm for Native Amer­i­cans today.1 Decolo­nial­ism means some­thing very dif­fer­ent for those who are com­mit­ted to hold on to Christianity.

Indigenous and Quaker Both
Indige­nous and Quak­er Both 

Explore how Native Quak­er com­mu­ni­ties hold onto their unique cul­ture while prac­tic­ing Christ-centered wor­ship cul­tur­al com­mon­al­i­ties, and shared…

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Unintentional Consequences, Intentional Repair

January 8, 2026
· Martin Kelley

I wrote the open­ing col­umn for the Jan­u­ary Friends Jour­nal, which looks at Indige­nous Peo­ples and Friends. As reg­u­lar read­ers of this blog already no doubt know, I’m a fan of local his­to­ry, espe­cial­ly contact-era and colo­nial his­to­ries and espe­cial­ly about rela­tions with the Indige­nous Lenape and the enslaved Africans.

The whole issue is real­ly pow­er­ful and I hope you find it as enlight­en­ing as I did.

Where I live, in one of the colonial-era Quak­er colonies of the Mid-Atlantic Unit­ed States, there has long been a benev­o­lent por­tray­al of Quak­ers’ rela­tions with the local Indige­nous Peo­ples. We are told that ear­ly Friend William Penn nego­ti­at­ed the Treaty of Shacka­max­on with Lenape leader Tama­nend, a moment memo­ri­al­ized by parks, stat­ues, and a famous paint­ing by Ben­jamin West. The great French philoso­pher Voltaire declared it “the only treaty nev­er sworn to and nev­er bro­ken.” The new set­tlers bought each plot of land from the local Lenape bands. Vio­lence in the first half-century of Quak­er gov­er­nance was rare; coop­er­a­tion and good will were the norm.

And yet: there is no fed­er­al­ly rec­og­nized Indige­nous Nation left in this for­mer Lenape ter­ri­to­ry. Every boat­load of Quak­ers that sailed up from Delaware Bay brought the threat of anoth­er round of dead­ly small­pox. Every creek dammed to pow­er a mill cut off the spawn­ing fish runs that stocked upland creeks. Every pig let loose from an Eng­lish farm­stead ate through near­by Lenape maize and squash plantings.

Talking about Who We Believe In

December 11, 2025
· Martin Kelley

I talked with Tom Gates this week about the nature of belief. He has an arti­cle in the cur­rent Friends Jour­nal titled “Beyond What Words Can Utter.”

We agreed that a lot of Quak­er belief can only be expe­ri­enced, not described, which makes for dif­fi­cul­ties when doing out­reach. It’s easy to go into nuance once some­one has com­ing into the meet­ing­house and is par­tic­i­pat­ing in an edu­ca­tion pro­gram but how do we get them off the street in the first place. Tom said:

I’m com­fort­able with Christ lan­guage and the inward light of Christ. And I know there are friends who are not, and there are good rea­sons why they’re not. I’m not deny­ing that. in these new­com­er ses­sions a per­sis­tent ques­tion is: Are Quak­ers Chris­t­ian? And how do you under­stand that? And they’re most­ly com­ing from back­grounds and oth­er kind of more con­ser­v­a­tive churches.

And so that’s a live ques­tion for them because in some sense they all left those church­es because the fun­da­men­tal­ism was grat­ing on them. I always pull off this thing from my shelf, it’s the Reader’s Guide to George Fox’s Jour­nal by Joseph Pick­vance. And he makes a fas­ci­nat­ing state­ment: the com­mon­est cause of mis­un­der­stand­ing of Fox’s teach­ing today is a fail­ure to real­ize how wide and deep and func­tion­al is the mean­ing that quote Christ had for him. 

Our dis­cus­sion ranged quite a bit, from Art Larrabee’s “Nine Core Quak­er Beliefs” to Mar­cus Borg’s Heart of Chris­tian­i­ty and 1653’s Saul’s Errand to Dam­as­cus, by James Nayler and George Fox. I def­i­nite­ly need to do some more reading!

Full show notes and a tran­script are avail­able.

Tom has also writ­ten a follow-up post on Quak­er belief on his blog. 

Young adults profiled in publications

December 7, 2025
· Martin Kelley

Two recent arti­cles in pub­li­ca­tions have got­ten some buzz. One writ­ten by AP reporter Luis Andres Henao looks at a rise of young adult inter­est in Friends and pro­files a dra­mat­ic increase in atten­dance at Arch Street Meet­ing in Philadel­phia. It’s been reprint­ed in a lot of news­pa­pers. It quotes a Valerie Goodman:

“It feels like I can have a minute to breathe. It’s dif­fer­ent than hav­ing a moment of med­i­ta­tion in my apart­ment because there’s still all of the dis­trac­tions around,” Good­man says. “And it’s crazy being in a room full of oth­er peo­ple that are all there to expe­ri­ence that themselves.”

The oth­er is a beau­ti­ful essay by a new UK Friend, who explains the appeal of the silence:

It was as if some­one had turned down the vol­ume of the world, and all that remained was my feel­ings, sit­ting raw and open like a wound. Rather than run­ning, I sat for an hour and let them wash over me. I left with a fresh­er per­spec­tive and spent the rest of the day in a calm daze. For the first time in a while, I felt anchored to some­thing greater than myself.

What Do Quakers Believe?

December 1, 2025
· Martin Kelley

How’s the old joke go? Ask five Quak­ers what they believe and you’ll get ten answers. Undaunt­ed, Decem­ber’s Friends Jour­nal tries to give some answers to the ques­tion any­way. I very much hope that indi­vid­ual Friends will find view­points they real­ly like as well as ones they real­ly don’t like, or at least don’t agree with. That there are no pat answers is itself part of the answer to the question.

Bonus: we’ve been work­ing on expand­ing our inter­na­tion­al inclu­sion in the mag­a­zine and an arti­cle from Sal­vado­ran Jas­son Areva­lo on the role of Quak­er pas­tors is the first fruits of our new Latin Amer­i­can cor­re­spon­den­t’s out­reach efforts.

blank

Letter Regarding FUM Finances

October 23, 2025
· Martin Kelley

I thought that the expose on Earl­ham Col­lege was going to be this week’s Quak­er finan­cial melt-down sto­ry but Friends Unit­ed Meet­ing did the prover­bial “hold my beer” and announced it’s in seri­ous finan­cial per­il.

Friends Unit­ed Meet­ing (FUM) is the largest Quak­er mem­ber­ship orga­ni­za­tion in the world. Sim­pli­fy­ing quite a bit, it grew out of the Gur­neyites, the more churchy branch of Quak­ers who often adopt­ed min­istry and inter­na­tion­al mis­sions. Those mis­sions are the rea­son why there are so many Quak­ers in places like East Africa and Bolivia. Most of the world­wide body of Friends are part of that move­ment and many are for­mal mem­bers of FUM.

The­o­log­i­cal­ly, today’s FUM is a “big tent” asso­ci­a­tion that tries to hold togeth­er a wild­ly diver­gent set of beliefs and cul­tur­al norms, with gen­der and sex­u­al­i­ty being the most com­mon light­ning point. There’s always cor­ners of FUM threat­en­ing to leave or threat­en­ing to with­hold mem­ber­ship dues. There was seri­ous talk in the 1990s of a “realign­ment” that would split up FUM along evan­gel­i­cal and uni­ver­sal­ist lines but some­how that’s nev­er quite hap­pened and the tent has held. To its cred­it the big tent approach means that FUM has been a key facil­i­ta­tor of cross-branch dia­logue among North Amer­i­can Friends.

The finan­cial prob­lem is pret­ty straight­for­ward, a sto­ry as old as nonprofits:

Our audits have not been done in a time­ly fash­ion, inter­nal finan­cial con­trols have been miss­ing, and we did not ensure that good account­ing prac­tices were being fol­lowed. We have not been care­ful enough in review­ing finan­cial infor­ma­tion giv­en to us or in devel­op­ing the abil­i­ty of new board mem­bers to under­stand FUM’s com­plex finan­cial structure.

I’m gen­uine­ly sur­prised that FUM lead­er­ship was this asleep at the wheel but I sym­pa­thize. A non­prof­it I worked for in the 1990s went through a sim­i­lar cri­sis when a few years of back­logged audits came back and showed us we were in far worse shape than we had imag­ined. The oth­er major U.S. Quak­er asso­ci­a­tion, Friends Gen­er­al Con­fer­ence, went though some­thing sim­i­lar in the 1980s; the sto­ry I’ve heard is that the lawyers told them they were broke to go bank­rupt and they fig­ured their way out of the finan­cial hold.

Many non­prof­its go through boom and bust cycles but this sounds more than just that. I do hope Friends Unit­ed Meet­ing can pull through.

Letter Regarding FUM Finances
Let­ter Regard­ing FUM Finances 

Dear Friends, we will put the bad news first: at our cur­rent income and expen­di­ture rate, FUM will…

mailchi.mp mailchi​.mp