Tag Archives ⇒ quote

Steven Davison looks at “That of God” (Again)

October 17, 2025
· Martin Kelley

Often prof­fered as the pri­ma­ry belief among mod­ern Friends, the phrase has been stretched and pulled to the point of obtuse­ness in recent years. In the ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry Rufus Jones resus­ci­tat­ed it from pas­toral let­ters of Quak­er co-founder George Fox. But in 1970, Lewis Ben­son penned a scathing take­down of both Jones and “that of God” as a formulation.

Davi­son is return­ing to the debate:

“That of God” yearns for God, Fox implies in the quote we always use for this phrase. In that epis­tle, once we have done the inner work of our own trans­for­ma­tion in the light of Christ our­selves, then we can answer that of God in oth­ers. That of God with­in us is call­ing out in the dark­ness, and the Light answers with the Word.

“That of God”—Again
“That of God” — Again 

For decades, I have com­plained about Friends claim­ing that “that of God in every­one” is our cen­tral tenet…

Through the Flaming Sword Through the Flam­ing Sword 

Half forgotten Philadelhpia Quaker cemetery at center of development controversy

May 2, 2019
· Martin Kelley

As report­ed in the Philadel­phia Inquirer:

How many skele­tons might remain buried? Pos­si­bly thou­sands, accord­ing to archae­ol­o­gists, but no one knows. His­tor­i­cal maps are unclear on the ceme­ter­ies’ bound­aries, but numer­ous his­to­ries por­tray the grounds as used first by Quak­ers and then by the poor, whose num­bers increased along with the size of the city. 

They quote the Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing gen­er­al sec­re­tary, who had heard noth­ing about this. The arti­cle also cites a 1880s arti­cle in Friends Intel­li­gencer, the pre­de­ces­sor to Friends Jour­nal.

https://​www​.philly​.com/​a​r​t​s​/​s​c​h​u​y​l​k​i​l​l​-​y​a​r​d​s​-​q​u​a​k​e​r​-​c​e​m​e​t​e​r​i​e​s​-​p​h​i​l​a​d​e​l​p​h​i​a​-​h​i​s​t​o​r​y​-​b​r​a​n​d​y​w​i​n​e​-​d​r​e​x​e​l​-​2​0​1​9​0​5​0​2​.​h​tml

A Racially Diverse Society of Friends?

January 2, 2019
· Martin Kelley

The Jan­u­ary issue of Friends Jour­nal is online. I wrote the intro this month so I’ll just quote myself:

In recent years, a num­ber of Black Friends Jour­nal con­trib­u­tors have shared heart­break­ing sto­ries of not feel­ing wel­come in Quak­er cir­cles. As we planned this issue, we self-consciously added a ques­tion mark to the end of its title — “A Racial­ly Diverse Soci­ety of Friends?” The choice of punc­tu­a­tion hints at a cer­tain weari­ness — are we real­ly still ask­ing this? — along with the sug­ges­tion that maybe many Friends are con­tent enough with the sta­tus quo that they might sim­ply answer “no” to a call for diversity. 


Racially Diverse Society of Friends (January 2019) Archives - Friends Journal

Racial­ly Diverse Soci­ety of Friends (Jan­u­ary 2019) Archives — Friends Journal 

Jan­u­ary 2019: A Racial­ly Diverse Soci­ety of Friends? Full Issue Access Fea­tures: Are We Ready to Make the…

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

British Friends survey on diversity

December 18, 2018
· Martin Kelley

From Britain Year­ly Meeting:

What ways are we already diverse? Where do our strengths and weak­ness­es lie in terms of inclu­sion? Both these ques­tions need to be answered if we are to under­stand the nature and make up of this old and impor­tant faith com­mu­ni­ty that has a his­to­ry of sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to British and inter­na­tion­al equality. 

This intro doc­u­ment leaves me lit­tle unsure what kinds of diver­si­ty they’re look­ing for. Demo­graph­ic? Spir­i­tu­al? Geo­graph­ic? The one quote sug­gests that some­one hopes the results might help advance their agen­da. Is this just a one-off Sur­vey­Mon­key or will there be more to it?


Diversity: where are we now?

Diver­si­ty: where are we now? 

​Quak­ers in Britain are tak­ing part in a sur­vey to map the diver­si­ty of their faith and influence…

Quakers Quakers 

Daily quotes

March 5, 2018
· Martin Kelley

What’s an email newslet­ter with­out a dai­ly inspi­ra­tional quote, right? I’ve put togeth­er a lit­tle hack that should put one front and cen­ter every morn­ing. I’ve primed it with a hand­ful of clas­sics — Fox, the Pen­ing­tons, Jones. But as it gets going I’ll start includ­ing some of the great modern-day quotes that show up every week on the web. And rather than just quote a ran­dom 300-some-year-old quote out of con­text, I hope to find it embed­ded and dis­cussed in cur­rent blog posts. We’re a liv­ing tradition.

Quaker Ranter Archives

October 11, 2017

Categories:

Quak­er: As the blog name implies, I am a mem­ber of the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends, known col­lo­qui­al­ly as Quak­ers. Many of my blog posts deal with issues of our soci­ety and its inter­ac­tions with the larg­er world. I’ve been blog­ging as a Friend since 2003. I read through a lot of Quak­er mate­r­i­al every day; much of the con­tent on Quak­er­Ran­ter is a cura­tion of the con­tent that catch­es my fancy.

Fre­quent top­ics of inter­est: Non­vi­o­lence, Media & Tech, Design, Fam­i­ly, South Jersey/Philly, and Pho­tog­ra­phy.

Newsletter Archives:

Every Fri­day, that week’s posts are col­lect­ed togeth­er into a email newslet­ter. Here are the most recent editions:

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“Not that stupid piece of garbage”

July 10, 2003
· Martin Kelley

“My thought was, how did that get into the speech?“This choice quote comes from Greg Thiel­mann, an intel­li­gence expert in the US State Depart­ment (now retired). In today’s papers this Bush Admin­is­tra­tion insid­er has come right out and said that the White House “lied about Sad­dam threat”.
    Mean­while the happy-go-lucky Don­ald Rums­feld has said the occu­pa­tion is cost­ing the US $3.9 bil­lion per month (see side­bar) and Gen­er­al Tom­my Franks pre­dicts high troop lev­els will be need­ed “for the fore­see­able future.”