Tag Archives ⇒ reading

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. 

What Have Friends Been Reading?

July 12, 2025
· Martin Kelley

There’s a new top-five list of arti­cles from Friends Jour­nal so far in 2025. We have a cou­ple of news ones — the law­suits against DHS and the recent Quak­er Walk — but we also have more con­tem­pla­tive fair.

I like the sto­ry of the Friends at William Penn Uni­ver­si­ty in Iowa dis­cov­er­ing some of the pos­i­tive qual­i­ties of plain dress from a inter­net chal­lenge. And Gail Melix (Greenwater)‘s reflec­tion on being both Quak­er and Indige­nous is quite moving.

Our Top Five Articles for 2025 (So Far) - Friends Journal
Our Top Five Arti­cles for 2025 (So Far) — Friends Journal 

Let’s look at this year’s most wide­ly read fea­tures — from silent wor­ship to vocal protest, these sto­ries are grabbing…

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

A more modern commission

March 7, 2019
· Martin Kelley

As an East Coast unpro­grammed Friend, Quak­er mis­sion work is still a bit exot­ic. We’re used to read­ing of well-meaning nine­teenth cen­tu­ry Friends whose atti­tudes shock us today. But here’s a sto­ry of some Mid­west mis­sion work with the Shawnee in the 1970s and 80s.

Their “mis­sion” work con­sists of farm­ing, teach­ing, music and wood­work­ing and lan­guage trans­lat­ing, lots of trans­port­ing chil­dren and teens. It also involves preach­ing each week, and par­tic­i­pa­tion in funer­als, wed­dings, and oth­er tra­di­tion­al pas­toral duties, all aimed at intro­duc­ing peo­ple to Jesus.

Their “mis­sion” work con­sists of farm­ing, teach­ing, music and wood­work­ing and lan­guage trans­lat­ing, lots of trans­port­ing chil­dren and teens. It also involves preach­ing each week, and par­tic­i­pa­tion in funer­als, wed­dings, and oth­er tra­di­tion­al pas­toral duties, all aimed at intro­duc­ing peo­ple to Jesus. 

http://​www​.lib​er​al​first​.com/​o​p​i​n​i​o​n​/​o​u​r​-​g​r​e​a​t​-​c​o​m​m​i​s​s​ion

New eBook “Remixing Faith” Now Available

November 20, 2018
· Martin Kelley

From Wess Daniels:

I have put this talk togeth­er in ebook form com­plete with lots of pic­tures and illus­tra­tions and for­mat­ting that adds to the read­ing expe­ri­ence. I want­ed to share this with all of you and make it as acces­si­ble as pos­si­ble, so it is free to down­load. It should work with most modern-day eBook read­ers and apps. If that doesn’t work for you, I have also turned the talk into a down­load­able .PDF.

http://​gath​eringin​light​.com/​2​0​1​8​/​1​1​/​2​0​/​n​e​w​-​e​b​o​o​k​-​r​e​m​i​x​i​n​g​-​f​a​i​t​h​-​n​o​w​-​a​v​a​i​l​a​b​le/

North American Quaker statistics 1937 – 2017

September 17, 2018
· Martin Kelley

These are num­bers of Friends in Cana­da and the Unit­ed States (includ­ing Alas­ka, which was tal­lied sep­a­rate­ly pri­or to state­hood) com­piled from Friends World Com­mit­tee for Con­sul­ta­tion. I dug up these num­bers from three sources:

  • 1937, 1957, 1967, 1977, 1987 from Quak­ers World Wide: A His­to­ry of FWCC by Her­bert Hadley in 1991 (many thanks to FWC­C’s Robin Mohr for a scan of the rel­e­vant chart).
  • 1972, 1992 from Earl­ham School of Reli­gion’s The Present State of Quak­erism, 1995, archived here.
  • 2002 on from FWCC direct­ly. Note: Cur­rent 2017 map.

Friends in the U.S. and Canada:

  • 1937: 114,924
  • 1957: 122,663
  • 1967: 122,780
  • 1972: 121,380
  • 1977: 119,160
  • 1987: 109,732
  • 1992: 101,255
  • 2002: 92,786
  • 2012: 77,660
  • 2017: 81,392

Friends in Amer­i­c­as (North, Mid­dle South):

  • 1937: 122,166
  • 1957: 131,000
  • 1967: 129,200
  • 1977: 132,300
  • 1987: 139,200
  • 2017: 140,065

You could write a book about what these num­bers do and don’t mean. The most glar­ing omis­sion is that they don’t show the geo­graph­ic or the­o­log­i­cal shifts that took place over time. Mid­west­ern Friends have tak­en a dis­pro­por­tion­ate hit, for exam­ple, and many Philadelphia-area meet­ings are much small­er than they were a cen­tu­ry ago, while inde­pen­dent meet­ings in the West and/or adja­cent to col­leges grew like wild­flow­ers mid-century.

My hot take on this is that the reuni­fi­ca­tion work of the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry gave Quak­ers a sol­id iden­ti­ty and coher­ent struc­ture. Howard Brinton’s Friends for 300 Years from 1952 is a remark­ably con­fi­dent doc­u­ment. In many areas, Friends became a socially-progressive, par­tic­i­pa­to­ry reli­gious move­ment that was attrac­tive to peo­ple tired of more creedal for­mu­la­tions; mixed-religious par­ents came look­ing for First-day school com­mu­ni­ty for their chil­dren. Quak­ers’ social jus­tice work was very vis­i­ble and attract­ed a num­ber of new peo­ple dur­ing the anti­war 1960s1 and the alter­na­tive com­mu­ni­ty groundswell of the 1970s. These var­i­ous new­com­ers off­set the decline of what we might call “eth­nic” Friends in rur­al meet­ings through this period.

That mag­ic bal­ance of Quak­er cul­ture match­ing the zeit­geist of reli­gious seek­ers dis­ap­peared some­where back in the 1980s. We aren’t on fore­front of any cur­rent spir­i­tu­al trends. While there are bright spots and excep­tions 2, we’ve large­ly strug­gled with retain­ing new­com­ers in recent years. We’re los­ing our elders more quick­ly than we’re bring­ing in new peo­ple, hence the forty per­cent drop since the high water of 1987. The small 2017 uptick might be a good sign3 or it may be a sta­tis­ti­cal phan­tom.4 I’ll be curi­ous to see what the next cen­sus brings.

2023 Update: I seem to have mixed up some num­bers in my orig­i­nal 2018 post and have cor­rect­ed them above.

President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminiary on Simon Jenkins article

May 15, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Chalk this one up as anoth­er whisper-down-the-lane. As read­ers will prob­a­bly remem­ber, a few weeks ago, non-Friend Simon Jenk­ins wrote an opin­ion piece in The Guardian about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of British Friends drop­ping God from their Faith and Prac­tice. There were a lot of exag­ger­a­tions in it; the year­ly meet­ing ses­sion was most­ly decid­ing whether it it felt led to start the long process of revis­ing the doc­u­ment of Friends’ belief and prac­tice. Many year­ly meet­ings do this every gen­er­a­tion or so. AFAIK, there was no sub­stan­tive dis­cus­sion on what the revi­sions might bring. At the time, I spec­u­lat­ed that “Jenk­ins is chas­ing the head­line to advance his own argu­ment with­out regard to how his state­ment might polar­ize Friends.”

Now we have anoth­er head­line chas­er. The pres­i­dent of the South­ern Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary more or less reads Jenk­in­s’s piece aloud on his radio show (hat-tip havedan­son on the Quak­ers sub­red­dit). He light­ly skips over the fact that Jenk­ins isn’t Quak­er and admits to lim­it­ed expe­ri­ence of Quak­er wor­ship. The SBTS pres­i­dent, Albert Mohler, repeat­ed­ly calls the Guardian arti­cle a “news report” even though it is clear­ly labeled as an opin­ion piece. If any pub­lic­i­ty is good pub­lic­i­ty then it’s good that non-Friends like Jenk­ins and now Mohler are talk­ing about the decision-making process of a Quak­er year­ly meet­ing, but this is stu­pid piled on stupid.

From a media per­spec­tive, I get it: Mohler has a dai­ly 24-minute pod­cast to fill. He has interns who scan buzzy news items. They rearrange the text with inter­sti­tials like “he con­tin­ues, and I quote” and “he goes on to say” so that Mohler can spend five min­utes read­ing an arti­cle with­out sound­ing like he’s just read­ing an arti­cle. But seri­ous­ly, how does the pres­i­dent of a major sem­i­nary have such dis­re­gard for any­thing approach­ing aca­d­e­m­ic rig­or? Also: how much regur­gi­tat­ed junk is on the inter­net sim­ply because peo­ple need to fill time? The Quak­er cau­tion about giv­ing min­istry just because you’re paid to give min­istry and it’s time to give min­istry seems apt in this case.

Mon­day, May 14, 2018

Risking Community

April 20, 2018
· Martin Kelley

From Gregg Kosel­ka, a post that rewards read­ing a few times: Risk­ing Community

When I look around, there is still so much hurt that needs to be processed. There are still real dif­fer­ences in phi­los­o­phy about how to build com­mu­ni­ty. Some see how much needs to rad­i­cal­ly change so that those who have been mar­gin­al­ized can tru­ly be safe and have agency, and so want to go slow­ly to build it cor­rect­ly. Some see the dam­age hav­ing no com­mu­ni­ty can bring, and want to do what they can to build some­thing as safe­ly as pos­si­ble. I hate that these dif­fer­ences are still caus­ing dam­age to our rela­tion­ships and our com­mu­ni­ties. I don’t have a solution.

I appre­ci­ate the way he tries to under­stand the flip sides of com­mu­ni­ty and insti­tu­tion­al­ism; per­haps schism could be seen as the moment they can no longer be nego­ti­at­ed. As pas­tor of one of the “most insti­tu­tion­al of insti­tu­tion­al church­es for 15 years,” he was in the cen­ter of the cen­trifu­gal forces that tore apart both North­west Year­ly Meet­ing as a whole and indi­vis­i­ble Friends church­es with­in it. From a dis­tance of 3000 miles and 150 years of diverg­ing Quak­er his­to­ry, I’m not in a posi­tion to say whether things could have gone dif­fer­ent­ly or whether indi­vid­u­als always act­ed in their best ways but I can appre­ci­ate that it there must have been a lot of impos­si­ble choic­es and no-good answers as polar­iza­tion gave way to disintegration.

Risk­ing Community

The sobriety of Barclay: games, sports, and comedies

April 20, 2018
· Martin Kelley

The sobri­ety of Bar­clay: games, sports, and comedies

So here I am, read­ing detec­tive nov­els, get­ting mas­sages, lis­ten­ing to blues, and griev­ing the death of Har­ry Ander­son. Are my recre­ations evi­dence of the degra­da­tion of soci­ety (or of Friends) in the cen­turies since Bar­clay? Or am I unique­ly cor­rupt? Or is there a way I’m actu­al­ly hon­or­ing his cau­tions despite the greater free­doms I claim in choos­ing ways to relax?

https://​blog​.canyoube​lieve​.me/​2​0​1​8​/​0​4​/​g​a​m​e​s​-​s​p​o​r​t​s​-​c​o​m​e​d​i​e​s​.​h​tml