Tag Archives ⇒ quakerspeak

What Attracts Newcomers to Quaker Meeting?

September 14, 2018
· Martin Kelley

From Quak­er­S­peak and Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing, a look at what attracts new­com­ers to Friends:

I very much like for exam­ple the deter­mi­na­tion that says some­body believes in peace and has the guts to say in a time of war, “No, I can’t fight. I can’t do that.” I think that takes a lot.

I think it had a lot to do with the peo­ple. There wasn’t real­ly that hier­ar­chy, where there was some­one talk­ing down to us, but we could real­ly share ideas and we could all learn from each oth­er, and I real­ly appre­ci­at­ed those ideals. 

What Attracts New­com­ers to Quak­er Meeting?

Doug Gwyn on QuakerSpeak: What Does Quakerism Teach About Connecting to Nature?

September 6, 2018
· Martin Kelley

A new video from Quak­er his­to­ri­an Gwyn:

Con­nect­ing with nature is about more than just exer­cise or tran­quil­i­ty. As Quak­er author Doug Gwyn shares, even in the 17th cen­tu­ry, Quak­ers were con­cerned about our dis­con­nec­tion with the nat­ur­al world and what it would mean for the future.

What Does Quak­erism Teach About Con­nect­ing to Nature?

Becoming a Quaker Minister

August 16, 2018
· Martin Kelley

I love the gen­tle, delib­er­ate way Stephanie talks in her Quak­er­S­peak videos. In this week’s she talks about Quake ministry:

Join­ing up in that includes mak­ing my par­tic­u­lar gifts and skills avail­able and not need­ing it to be about me or accom­plish­ment, but about seek­ing to real­ly be a part of what God is try­ing to make hap­pen with and through me and oth­ers, and to rejoice in that. 

Becom­ing a Quak­er Minister

How a Small Group of Quaker Activists Took on PNC Bank and Won

July 26, 2018
· Martin Kelley

One thing I love about the Friends move­ment is its abil­i­ty to live with­in the ten­sions of a being both a deeply spir­i­tu­al ascetic prac­tice and a strate­gi­cal­ly focused world-changing social action toolk­it. Some­times the two come togeth­er in won­der­ful ways. Quak­er­S­peak has a mini-documentary about the Earth Quak­er Action Team’s cam­paign to stop PNC Bank from financ­ing moun­tain­top removal mining:

George Lakey: So any way you look at it, this is an offense against the plan­et. It’s an offense against peo­ple. It’s where eco­nom­ic jus­tice and cli­mate jus­tice coin­cide. Let’s tack­le it.

Ingrid Lakey: This bank that had Quak­er roots, this bank that called itself the green­est bank in the busi­ness was in fact blow­ing up moun­tains to get coal which is a major con­trib­u­tor to cli­mate change. So we thought, “that’s not cool! We can’t let that slide.” Call­ing on our own belief in our integri­ty, we decid­ed to call them out on it.

I myself could watch a whole video of George Lakey just laugh­ing. I’ve attend­ed a few EQAT actions over the years and wrote a per­son­al sto­ry about my par­tic­i­pa­tion in a pub­lic fast in 2013.

How a Small Group of Quak­er Activists Took on PNC Bank and Won

What do Quaker believe anyway?

July 19, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Answer quick­ly: what are three things Quak­ers believe? Unless you’ve prac­ticed an answer to this ques­tion, chances are you’ll end up with a lot of umm’s and ahh’s and sen­tences so built up with dis­claimers that your lis­ten­er has to start sen­tence dia­gram­ming just to fig­ure out if you actu­al­ly answered. Arthur Larrabee got frus­trat­ed by the seem­ing­ly impos­si­ble task for explain­ing mod­ern Quak­er beliefs and decid­ed to do some­thing about it:

About 9 years ago I began to give voice to a life­long frus­tra­tion of mine. The frus­tra­tion was that I can­not answer the ques­tion “What do Quak­ers believe?” I would always answer the ques­tions some­what defen­sive­ly. I would say, “it’s kind of hard to know what Quak­ers believe, but let me tell you what I believe.” Or I would say, “well, it’s hard to know what Quak­ers believe today but let me tell you what Quak­ers believed at the begin­ning.” Or I would say what I thought Quak­ers believed and I would hope that no one else was lis­ten­ing because I did not want to be overcalled.

I think Arthur does a pret­ty good job tack­ling a very tough task. He bare­ly even men­tions Howard Brin­ton’s “SPICES.”

9 Core Quak­er Beliefs

Barking up the family tree

May 10, 2018
· Martin Kelley

There’s a num­ber of com­mon gate­ways for seek­ers to dis­cov­er Quak­ers – activism is a com­mon one (see last week’s Quak­er­S­peak inter­view with Lina Blount), as is plain dress (my posts on the top­ic are my most pop­u­lar), as is child­hood expe­ri­ences at Quak­er schools.

But a big gate­way is geneal­o­gy. Over the years I’ve got­ten count­less emails and phone calls from excit­ed new­com­ers who start off the con­ver­sa­tion with details of their fam­i­ly tree (when I used to answer the Quaker­books phone, I would let these folks go for about two min­utes before gen­tly inter­ject­ing “wow that’s fas­ci­nat­ing!, do you wan­na buy a book?!?”)

One fas­ci­nat­ing fac­toid in this week’s Quak­er­S­peak video comes from Thomas Hamm:

If your fam­i­ly arrived in the Unit­ed States before 1860, there’s prob­a­bly a 50 – 50 chance that you have a Quak­er ances­tor somewhere.

Quak­er Meet­ings should­n’t try to be the gath­er­ing spots for prodi­gal fam­i­ly reunions. The ear­ly Quak­ers were strangers to one anoth­er, join­ing togeth­er because of the fire of their con­vic­tions. Ours is a liv­ing, breath­ing, ever evolv­ing spir­i­tu­al prac­tice. Still: we are also a group­ing of peo­ple. We look for belonging.

The longer I’m with Friends, the more I think ours is a reli­gious com­mu­ni­ty that draws strength from the ten­sion of para­dox­es. I have a soft spot for the old Quak­er fam­i­lies. If Jesus brings some of the new peo­ple in through Beliefnet quizzes or Ances​try​.com search results, well, maybe that’s okay.

How to Research Your Quak­er Ancestry

Reading the Qur’an as a Quaker

April 26, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Earl­ham col­lege pro­fe­sor and Quak­er author Michael Birkel decid­ed to reach across reli­gious divides by sim­ply talk­ing to his neigh­bors, a project which came to span the Unit­ed States: Read­ing the Qur’an as a Quaker

What is it like to read some­one else’s scrip­ture? I think it’s quite pos­si­ble that it can change you in ways that I can’t pre­dict for any read­er, except to say that it will make your life richer.

In addi­tion to the Quak­er­S­peak video there’s also a book of Birkel’s project, Qu’ran in Con­ver­sa­tion.

Dreaming of Wholeness: Quakers and the Future of Racial Healing

April 19, 2018
· Martin Kelley

The most-excellent Ster­ling Duns is back on Quak­er­S­peak and dream­ing of whole­ness:

It feels sim­ple and deeply rad­i­cal to just say as a group that is com­mit­ted to hon­or­ing that of God in every­one, that that per­son of col­or, that black per­son is deserv­ing of their full human­i­ty — to be rec­og­nized by me as a Quak­er. That’s a sim­ple thing to say and it’s a rad­i­cal thing to say.