Tag Archives ⇒ reading

First thoughts about convergent weekend

February 22, 2009
· Martin Kelley

Hey all, the Reclaim­ing Prim­i­tive Quak­erism work­shop at Cal­i­for­ni­a’s Ben Lomond Cen­ter wrapped up a few hours ago (I’m post­ing from the San Jose air­port). I think it went well. There were about thir­ty par­tic­i­pants. The make­up was very inter­gen­er­a­tional and God and Christ were being named all over the place!

I myself felt stripped through­out the first half, a sense of vague but deep unease – not at how the work­shop was going, but about who I am and where I am. Christ was hard at work point­ing out the lay­ers of pride that I’ve used to pro­tect myself over the last few years. This morn­ing’s agen­da was most­ly extend­ed wor­ship, begun with “Bible Read­ing in the Man­ner of Con­ser­v­a­tive Friends” (video below) and it real­ly lift­ed the veil for me – I think God even joked around with me a bit.

As always, many of the high points came unex­pect­ed­ly in small con­ver­sa­tions, both planned and ran­dom. One piece that I’ll be return­ing to again and again is that we need to focus on the small acts and not build any sort of move­ment piece by piece and not wor­ry about the Big Con­fer­ence or the Big Web­site that will change every­thing that we know. That’s not how the Spir­it works and our push­ing it to work this way almost invari­ably leads to fail­ure and wast­ed effort.

Anoth­er piece is that we need to start focus­ing on real­ly build­ing up the kind of habits that will work out our spir­i­tu­al mus­cles. Chad of 27Wishes had a great anal­o­gy that had to do with the neo-traditionalist jazz musi­cians and I hoped to get an inter­view with him on that but time ran out. I’ll try to get a remote inter­view (an ear­li­er inter­view with him is here, thanks Chad for being the first inter­view of the weekend!)

I con­duct­ed a bunch of video inter­views that I’ll start upload­ing to my Youtube account and on the “reclaiming2009” tag on Quak­erQuak­er. When you watch them, be char­i­ta­ble. I’m still learn­ing through my style. But it was excit­ing start­ing to do them and it con­firmed my sense that we real­ly need to be burn­ing up Youtube with Quak­er stuff.

I need to find my board­ing gate but I do want to say that the oth­er piece is putting togeth­er col­lec­tions of prac­tices that Friends can try in their loca­tion Friends com­mu­ni­ty. Gath­er­ing in Light Wess led a real­ly well-received ses­sion that took the Lord’s Prayer and turned it into an inter­ac­tive small group even. We took pho­tos and a bit of video and we’ll be putting it togeth­er as a how-to some­where or other.

Pic­tures going up on Flickr, I’ll orga­nize them soon. Also check out Con​ver​gent​Friends​.org and the Reclaim­ing Prim­i­tive Quak­erism work­shop page on QuakerQuaker.

When Isaac Penington, Margaret Fell and Elizabeth Bathurst join the reading group

January 20, 2009
· Martin Kelley

Not some­thing I’ll do every day, but over on Quak­erQuak­er I cross-referenced today’s One Year Bible read­ings with Esther Green­leaf Mur­er’s Quak­er Bible Index. Here’s the link to my post about today: First Month 20: Joseph ris­es to pow­er in Egypt; Jesus’ para­ble of wheat & tares and pearls. It’s a par­tic­u­lar­ly rich read­ing today. Jesus talks about the wheat and the weeds aka the corn and the tares, an inter­est­ing para­ble about let­ting the faith­ful and the unfaith­ful grow together. 

As if know­ing today is Inau­gu­ra­tion Day, Isaac Pen­ing­ton turned it into a polit­i­cal ref­er­ence: “But oh, how the laws and gov­ern­ments of this world are to be lament­ed over! And oh, what need there is of their ref­or­ma­tion, whose com­mon work it is to pluck up the ears of corn, and leave the tares standing!”

Mar­garet Fell sees the wheat and tares as an exam­ple of jeal­ousy and false min­istry: “Oh how hath this envi­ous man got­ten in among you. Sure­ly he hath come in the night, when men was asleep: & hath sown tares among the wheat, which when the reapers come must be bound in bun­dles and cast into the fire, for I know that there was good seed sown among you at the first, which when it found good ground, would have brought forth good fruit; but since there are mixed seeds­men come among you & some hath preached Christ of envy & some of good will, … & so it was easy to stir up jeal­ousy in you, you hav­ing the ground of jeal­ousy in your­selves which is as strong as death.”

We get poet­ry from the sev­en­teen cen­tu­ry Eliz­a­beth Bathurst (ahem) when she writes that “the Seed (or grace) of God, is small in its first appear­ance (even as the morn­ing ‑light), but as it is giv­en heed to, and obeyed, it will increase in bright­ness, till it shine in the soul, like the sun in the fir­ma­ment at noon-day height.”

The para­ble of the tares became a call for tol­er­ance in George Fox’s under­stand­ing: “For Christ com­mands chris­t­ian men to “love one anoth­er [John 13:34, etc], and love their ene­mies [Mat 5:44];” and so not to per­se­cute them. And those ene­mies may be changed by repen­tance and con­ver­sion, from tares to wheat. But if men imprison them, and spoil and destroy them, they do not give them time to repent. So it is clear it is the angels’ work to burn the tares, and not men’s.”

A cen­tu­ry lat­er, Sarah Tuke Grubb read and wor­ried about reli­gious edu­ca­tion and Quak­er drift: “But for want of keep­ing an eye open to this pre­serv­ing Pow­er, a spir­it of indif­fer­ence hath crept in, and, whilst many have slept, tares have been sown [Mat 13:25]; which as they spring up, have a ten­den­cy to choke the good seed; those ten­der impres­sions and reproofs of instruc­tion, which would have pre­pared our spir­its, and have bound them to the holy law and tes­ti­monies of truth.”

I hope all this helps us remem­ber that the Bible is our book too and an essen­tial resource for Friends. It’s easy to for­get this and kind of slip one way or anoth­er. One extreme is get­ting our Bible fix from main­stream Evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian sources whose view­points might be in pret­ty direct oppo­si­tion from Quak­er under­stand­ings of Jesus and the Gospel (see Jeanne B’s post on The New Calvin­ism or Tom Smith’s very rea­son­able con­cerns about the lit­er­al­ism at the One Year Bible Blog I read and rec­om­mend). On the oth­er hand, it’s not uncom­mon in my neck of the Quak­er woods to describe our reli­gion as “Quak­er,” down­grade Chris­tian­i­ty by mak­ing it option­al, unmen­tion­able or non-contextual and turn­ing to the Bible only for the oblig­a­tory epis­tle ref­er­ence.

This was first made clear to me a few years ago by the mar­gins in the mod­ern edi­tion of Samuel Bow­nas’ “A Descrip­tion of the Qual­i­fi­ca­tions Nec­es­sary to a Gospel Min­istry,” which were pep­pered with the Bib­li­cal ref­er­ences Bow­nas was casu­al­ly cit­ing through­out. On my sec­ond read­ing (yes it’s that good!) I start­ed look­ing up the ref­er­ences and real­ized that: 1) Bow­nas was­n’t just mak­ing this stuff up or quot­ing willy-nilly; and 2) read­ing them helped me under­stand Bow­nas and by exten­sion the whole con­cept of Quak­er min­istry. You’re not read­ing my blog enough if you’re not get­ting the idea that this is one of the kind of prac­tices that Robin, Wess and I are going to be talk­ing about at the Con­ver­gent work­shop next month. If you can fig­ure out the trans­port then get your­self to Cali pron­to and join us.

Focused blogs and side trips

November 23, 2007
· Martin Kelley

Over on Eileen Flana­gan’s Imper­fect Seren­i­ty, there’s an inter­est­ing post on blog pub­lic­i­ty, “Blog­ging dilem­mas,” inspired in part by Robin M“ ‘s recent “How did you get here?” post. Both bring up inter­est­ing ques­tions about the role of blogs in com­mu­ni­ty build­ing and the loca­tion of that line that sep­a­rates good blog­ging from mere self-promotion and pandering.

Read­ers will prob­a­bly be unsur­prised to learn that I use Tech­no­rati, Google Blog Search, etc., every day to keep track of the Quak­er blo­gos­phere. I act as a kind of com­mu­ni­ty orga­niz­er and my search­es are for inter­est­ing posts talk­ing about Quak­ers (until read­ing Eileen’s post I had­n’t check my Tech­no­rati “rank” in months). Many peo­ple’s first intro­duc­tion to Quak​erQuak​er​.org is get­ting linked from it, and I sus­pect I’ve acci­den­tal­ly out­ed a few begin­ning blog­gers who had­n’t told any­one of their new blog!

I have a pro­fes­sion­al blog on web design and ana­lyt­ics (with a some­what off-topic but sat­is­fy­ing post on top at the moment) and sep­a­rat­ing that out has allowed me to use this per­son­al blog, Quak­er­Ran­ter, for what­ev­er I like. Most reg­u­lar­ly read­ers would say it focus­es on Quak­erism and cute kid pic­tures and while those are the most com­mon posts, the most read posts are the minor fas­ci­na­tions I indulge myself with occa­sion­al­ly. Quak­er plain dress is some­thing I prac­tice but don’t think about most of the time (806 read­ers in past month). My wife and I love to bust on bad baby names and unfair­ly unpop­u­lar baby names (627 vis­its). I’ve also detailed some out­ings to semi-legendary South Jer­sey haunts (317) and score high on search­es to them.

The con­ven­tion­al wis­dom of the blog-as-publicity tool crowd would prob­a­bly say these off-topic posts are dis­tract­ing my core audi­ence. Per­haps, but they’re infre­quent on the blog and long-lived on Google. Besides, I think it helps peo­ple to know I’m not just obsessed with one top­ic. Being a part of a real com­mu­ni­ty means know­ing each oth­er in all of our quirks. I’m more ten­der and for­giv­ing of oth­er Quak­er blog­gers when I know more of their sto­ry: it puts what they say into a con­text that makes it sound more lived, less ide­o­log­i­cal. There’s cer­tain­ly good rea­sons for tightly-focused pro­fes­sion­al blogs (I’d drop Techcrunch from my blogroll if they start­ed post­ing kids pic­tures!), but as more peo­ple read posts through feeds and aggre­ga­tors I won­der if there’s going to be as much pres­sure for per­son­al, community-oriented blogs to be as single-minded in their focus. 

We all have diverse, quirky inter­ests so why not indulge them? I have seen blogs that try too hard to pan­der to par­tic­u­lar audi­ences and boy, are they bor­ing! A cer­tain degree of idio­syn­crasy and sub­jec­tive orner­i­ness is prob­a­bly essen­tial. Per­son­al­i­ty is at least as impor­tant as focus.

PS: I’m also inter­est­ed in mak­ing sure I don’t loose the core audi­ence with all my side trips, hence the “lat­est Quak­er posts” at the top of the page. I have at least one request for a Quaker-only RSS feed and will even­tu­al­ly get that going.
PPS: As if on queue, the next post in Google Read­er after Eileen’s is Avin­ish Kaushik’s Blog Met­rics: Six rec­om­men­da­tions for mea­sur­ing your suc­cess. Parts of it are prob­a­bly a bit tech­ni­cal for most QR read­ers but it’s use­ful for think­ing about blogs as outreach.

Reading John Woolman 3: The Isolated Saint

August 17, 2006
· Martin Kelley

Read­ing John Wool­man Series:
1: The Pub­lic Life of a Pri­vate Man
2: The Last Safe Quaker
3: The Iso­lat­ed Saint

It’s said that John Wool­man re-wrote his Jour­nal three times in an effort to excise it of as many “I” ref­er­ences as pos­si­ble. As David Sox writes in Johh Wool­man Quin­tes­sen­tial Quak­er, “only on lim­it­ed occa­sion do we glimpse Wool­man as a son, a father and a hus­band.” Wool­man would­n’t have been a very good blog­ger. Quot­ing myself from my intro­duc­tion to Quak­er blogs:

blogs give us a unique way of shar­ing our lives — how our Quak­erism inter­sects with the day-to-day deci­sions that make up faith­ful liv­ing. Quak­er blogs give us a chance to get to know like-minded Friends that are sep­a­rat­ed by geog­ra­phy or arti­fi­cial the­o­log­i­cal bound­aries and they give us a way of talk­ing to and with the insti­tu­tions that make up our faith community.

I’ve read many great Wool­man sto­ries over the years and as I read the Jour­nal I eager­ly antic­i­pat­ed read­ing the orig­i­nal account. It’s that same excite­ment I get when walk­ing the streets of an icon­ic land­scape for the first time: walk­ing through Lon­don, say, know­ing that Big Ben is right around the next cor­ner. But Wool­man kept let­ting me down.

One of the AWOL sto­ries is his arrival in Lon­don. The Jour­nal’s account:

On the 8th of Sixth Month, 1772, we land­ed at Lon­don, and I went straight­way to the Year­ly Meet­ing of min­is­ters and elders, which had been gath­ered, I sup­pose, about half an hour. In this meet­ing my mind was humbly contrite.

But set the scene. He had just spent five weeks cross­ing the Atlantic in steer­age among the pigs (he does­n’t actu­al­ly spec­i­fy his non-human bunk­mates). He famous­ly went out of his way to wear clothes that show dirt because they show dirt. He went straight­away: no record of a bath or change of clothes. Sto­ries abound about his recep­tion, and while are some of dubi­ous ori­gin, there are first hand accounts of his being shunned by the British min­is­ters and elders. The best and most dubi­ous sto­ry is the theme of anoth­er post.

I trust that Wool­man was hon­est­ly aim­ing for meek­ness when he omit­ted the most inter­est­ing sto­ries of his life. But with­out the con­text of a lived life he becomes an ahis­tor­i­cal fig­ure, an icon of good­ness divorced from the minu­ti­ae of the dai­ly grind. Two hun­dred and thir­ty years of Quak­er hagiog­ra­phy and latter-day appeals to Wool­man’s author­i­ty have turned the tai­lor of Mount Hol­ly into the oth­er­world­ly Quak­er saint but the process start­ed at John’s hands himself.

Were his strug­gles mere­ly inte­ri­or? When I look to my own min­istry, I find the call to dis­cern­ment to be the clear­est part of the work. I need to work to be ever more recep­tive to even the most unex­pect­ed prompt­ing from the Inward Christ and I need to con­stant­ly prac­tice humil­i­ty, love and for­give­ness. But the prac­ti­cal lim­i­ta­tions are hard­er. For years respectibil­i­ty was an issue; rel­a­tive pover­ty con­tin­ues to be one. It is ask­ing a lot of my wife to leave respon­si­bil­i­ty for our two small boys for even a long weekend.

How did Wool­man bal­ance fam­i­ly life and min­istry? What did wife Sarah think? And just what was his role in the sea-change that was the the “Ref­or­ma­tion of Amer­i­can Quak­erism” (to use Jack Mari­et­ta’s phrase) that for­ev­er altered Amer­i­can Friends’ rela­tion­ship with the world and set the stage for the schisms of the next century.

We also lose the con­text of Wool­man’s com­pa­tri­ots. Some are named as trav­el­ing com­pan­ions but the col­or­ful char­ac­ters go unmen­tioned. What did he think of the street-theater antics of Ben­jamin Lay, the Abbie Hoff­man of Philadel­phia Quak­ers. The most widely-told tale is of Lay walk­ing into Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing ses­sions, open­ing up a cloak to reveal mil­i­tary uni­form under­neath, and declar­ing that slave-made prod­ucts were prod­ucts of war, plunged a sword into a hollowed-out Bible full of pig’s blood, splat­ter­ing Friends sit­ting nearby.

What role did Wool­man play in the larg­er anti-slavery awak­en­ing hap­pen­ing at the time? It’s hard to tell just read­ing his Jour­nal. How can we find ways to repli­cate his kind of faith­ful­ness and wit­ness today? Again, his Jour­nal does­n’t give much clue.

Picked up today in the Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing Library:

PYM Librar­i­an Rita Var­ley remind­ed me today they mail books any­where in the US for a mod­est fee and a $50/year sub­scrip­tion. It’s a great deal and a great ser­vice, espe­cial­ly for iso­lat­ed Friends. The PYM cat­a­log is online too!

Strangers to the Covenant

July 1, 2005
· Martin Kelley

A workshop led by Zachary Moon and Martin Kelley at the 2005 FGC Gathering of Friends.

 

This is for Young Friends who want to break into the pow­er of Quak­erism: it’s the stuff you didn’t get in First Day School. Con­nect­ing with his­tor­i­cal Quak­ers whose pow­er­ful min­istry came in their teens and twen­ties, we’ll look at how Friends wove God, covenants and gospel order togeth­er to build a move­ment that rocked the world. We’ll mine Quak­er his­to­ry to reclaim the pow­er of our tra­di­tion, to explore the liv­ing tes­ti­monies and our wit­ness in the world. (P/T)

Per­cent­age of time: Wor­ship 20 / Lec­ture 30 / Dis­cus­sion 50

 

Extended Description

We hope to encour­age Friends to imag­ine them­selves as min­is­ters and elders and to be bold enough to chal­lenge the insti­tu­tions of Quak­erism as need­ed. We want to build a com­mu­ni­ty, a cohort, of Friends who aren’t afraid to bust us out of our own lim­it­ed expec­ta­tions and give them space to grow into the aware­ness that their long­ing for deep­er spir­i­tu­al con­nec­tion with shared wide­ly among oth­ers their age. Our task as work­shop con­ven­ers is to mod­el as both bold and hum­ble seek­ers after truth, who can stay real to the spir­it with­out tak­ing our­selves either too seri­ous­ly or too lightly.

Mar­tin and Zachary have dis­cov­ered a Quak­er tra­di­tion more defined, more coher­ent and far rich­er than the Quak­erism we were offered in First Day School. In integri­ty to that dis­cov­ery, we intend to cre­ate a space for fel­low­ship that would fur­ther open these glimpses of what’s out there and what pos­si­bil­i­ties exist to step out bold­ly in this Light.

Sun­day: Introductions
The most impor­tant task for today is mod­el­ing the ground­ed wor­ship and spirit-led min­istry that will be our true cur­ricu­lum this week. In a wor­ship shar­ing for­mat we will con­sid­er these questions:

  • What brought me to this workshop?
  • What did they fail to teach me in First Day School that I still want to know?

Mon­day: What is this Quakerism?
Today will be about enter­ing this ground­ed space togeth­er as Friends, begin­ning to ask some ques­tions that reveal and open. How do I artic­u­late what Quak­erism is all about? What ideas, lan­guage, and words (e.g. “God”, “Jesus” “Light”) do use to describe this tra­di­tion? Today we start that dia­logue. At the end of ses­sion we will ask par­tic­i­pants to seek out an old­er Friend and ask them for their answers on these queries and bring back that expe­ri­ence to our next gathering.

  • Wor­ship. Read­ing of select­ed texts from jour­nal and Bible
  • Present ques­tion: When some­one asks me “what is Quak­erism?” how do I respond.
  • Mar­tin and Zachary will share some thoughts on this ques­tion from oth­er Friends
  • Jour­nal­ing on Query
  • Dis­cus­sion of ideas and language.

Tues­day: The Mys­ti­cal Tra­di­tion and Gospel Order
We enter into the lan­guage and fab­ric of our Tra­di­tion at its mys­ti­cal roots. Ask­ing the ques­tions: What does God feel like? Intro­duce ear­ly Quaker’s talk about God. What does it feel like to be with God? What is Gospel Order?

  • Wor­ship. Read­ing of select­ed texts from jour­nals and Bible
  • Follow-up on pre­vi­ous day’s discussion/homework what new came into the Light overnight?
  • Jour­nal­ing on Query: When have I felt the pres­ence of God? Describe it in five senses?
  • Ini­tial dis­cus­sion and shar­ing of thoughts and ideas.
  • Intro­duce some ideas from ear­ly Friends and oth­ers on this Query. How have oth­ers (Jesus, Isa­iah, Mer­ton, Fox, Day) spo­ken of this experience?
  • Intro­duce themes of Spir­i­tu­al Prac­tice: If Quak­erism is about ask­ing the right ques­tions, how do we get into the place to hear those ques­tions and respond faith­ful­ly? We have already been incor­po­rat­ing devo­tion­al read­ing into our time togeth­er each morn­ing but we will intro­duce into the Light of Dis­ci­pline as such here. Nam­ing of oth­er prac­tices, pre­vi­ous­ly acknowl­edged and oth­er­wise, with­in the group.
  • Intro­duce ‘Spir­i­tu­al Dis­cern­ment’ themes for the fol­low­ing day’s session.

Wednes­day: The Roots of Friends’ Dis­cern­ment Tra­di­tion and the Testimonies
We delve into the archives, the dusty stuff, the stuff First Day School didn’t get to: the preach­ing from the trees, the prison time, the age George Fox was when he was first incar­cer­at­ed for his beliefs, what the tes­ti­monies are real­ly about and where they came from. Today is about tak­ing the skele­tons out of the clos­et and clean­ing house.

  • Wor­ship. Read­ing of select­ed texts from jour­nals and Bible
  • ‘Let’s talk his­to­ry’: Ear­ly Friends, the Mak­ing of The Soci­ety, and the Dis­cern­ment Tra­di­tion. [Mar­tin and Zachary may cov­er this, or we may arrange to have anoth­er Friend come and share some thoughts and infuse a new voice into our dialogue]
  • There are lots of tes­ti­monies: what are ours? Name some. How to they facil­i­tate our rela­tion­ship with God?
  • What’s up with “Obe­di­ence”, “Plain­ness”, and “Dis­ci­pline”? How do we prac­tice them?

Thurs­day: Friends in a Covenant­ed Relationship
We grow into our roles as lead­ers in this com­mu­ni­ty by con­sid­er­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ties and the hur­dles in deep­en­ing our covenant rela­tion­ship. We begin with con­sid­er­ing spir­i­tu­al gifts, and then con­sid­er ques­tions around min­istry, its ori­gin and its dis­cern­ment. We will take up the task of con­sid­er­ing what our work, what piece of this respon­si­bil­i­ty is ours to carry.

  • Wor­ship. Read­ing of select­ed texts from jour­nals and Bible
  • Jour­nal­ing on the Queries: What is alive inside of me? How are my spir­i­tu­al gifts named and nurtured?
  • What are the tasks of ministry?
  • What are the tasks of eldering?
  • What are the struc­tures and prac­tices in our month­ly, quar­ter­ly and year­ly meet­ings that we can use to test out and sup­port lead­ings? How do these struc­tures work and not work. Clear­ness com­mit­tees? Trav­el­ing Friends? Spir­i­tu­al nurture/affinity groups?
  • What is hold­ing us back from liv­ing this deep­ened rela­tion­ship? What is our respon­si­bil­i­ty to this covenant and this covenant community?

Fri­day: The Future of Quakerism
We begin the work that will occu­py the rest of our lives. The par­tic­i­pants of this work­shop will be around for the next fifty or more years, so let’s start talk­ing about sys­tem­at­ic, long-term change. We have some­thing to con­tribute to this con­sid­er­a­tion right now.

  • Wor­ship. Read­ing of select­ed texts from jour­nals and Bible
  • Where do we go from here? Mar­tin will present on emer­gent church. Zachary will present some thoughts on ‘Beloved Community’.
    Many have talked about deep com­mu­nion with God and about covenant com­mu­ni­ty. Many have spo­ken our hearts and giv­en voice to the pas­sion we expe­ri­ence; now it’s on us what are we going to do about it? Where is it happening?
  • Dis­cus­sion (maybe as a fish­bowl) Where do we envi­sion Quak­erism 50 years from now? 100 years from now?

External Website: Quaker Ranter, Martin’s site.

What’s God Got to Do, Got to Do With It?

April 18, 2005
· Martin Kelley

This essay is my hes­i­tant attempt to answer the ques­tions James R. post­ed a few weeks ago, I Am What I Am.

Lov­ing God with All Our Hearts

My reli­gion teach­es me that the first com­mand­ment is to love God above all else. The pri­ma­ry mis­sion of a reli­gious com­mu­ni­ty is to serve God and to facil­i­tate the spir­i­tu­al growth and dis­cern­ment of its mem­bers in their search for God. For me, this needs to be an explic­it goal of my meeting.

I very much appre­ci­ate James’s hon­esty that for him to use the term of “God” would be “mis­lead­ing, even dis­hon­est.” One of the cen­tral open­ings of Quak­erism is that we should not pro­fess an abstract under­stand­ing of God. We believe in the neces­si­ty for “deep and repeat­ed bap­tisms” and for every tes­ti­mo­ny and act in the min­istry to come from the “imme­di­ate influ­ence of his Spir­it” in a “fresh annoint­ing” (won­der­ful lan­guage from a Irish memo­r­i­al minute for Job Scott). I would wish that more Friends would fol­low James’s exam­ple and not speak with­out that imme­di­ate direct knowl­edge of the divine. (How many ple­nary speak­ers at Quak­er events are read­ing from a pre­pared speech? How many of us real­ly find our­selves turn­ing to prayer when con­flicts arise in busi­ness meeting?)

I don’t think one does need an expe­ri­ence of God to be a part of a Quak­er com­mu­ni­ty. Many of us go through dry spells where the Spir­it’s pres­ence seems absent and this cer­tain­ly does­n’t dis­qual­i­fy us for mem­ber­ship. But God is the cen­ter of our faith and our work: wor­ship is about lis­ten­ing to God’s call; busi­ness meet­ing is about dis­cern­ing God’s instruc­tions. This has to be under­stood. For those who can’t name God in their lives, it must be just a bit bizarre to come week after week to par­tic­i­pate with a group of peo­ple pray­ing for God’s guid­ance. But that’s okay. I think all that is good in our reli­gious soci­ety come from the Great Mas­ter. We are known by our fruits and the out­ward forms of our wit­ness­es con­stant­ly point back to God’s love. This is the only real out­reach we do. I’m hap­py spend­ing a life­time labor­ing with some­one in my com­mu­ni­ty point­ing out to the Spir­it’s pres­ence in our midst. All that we love about Quak­ers comes from that source but part of my dis­ci­pline is the patience to wait for God to reveal Her­self to you.

I joined Friends via the fair­ly com­mon route of peace activism. I could sense that there was some­thing else at work among the Quak­er peace activists I knew and want­ed to taste of that some­thing myself. It’s tak­en me years to be able to name and artic­u­late the divine pres­ence I sensed fif­teen years ago. That’s okay, it’s a nor­mal route for some of us.

The oth­er piece that the com­ments have been danc­ing around is Jesus. I’m at the point where I can (final­ly) affirm that Chris­tian­i­ty is not acci­den­tal to Quak­erism. As I’ve delved deep­er I’ve real­ized just how much of our faith and work real­ly does grow out of the teach­ings of Jesus. I don’t want to be part of a Friends meet­ing where our Quak­er roots are large­ly absent. I want to know more about Friends, which means delv­ing ever deep­er into our past and engag­ing with it. We can’t do that with­out fre­quent­ly turn­ing to the Bible. Lib­er­al Friends need to start explor­ing our Chris­t­ian roots more ful­ly and need to get more seri­ous about read­ing Quak­er writ­ings that pre­date 1950. There have been many great fig­ures in human his­to­ry, but what­ev­er you think about the divin­i­ty of Jesus, he has had much more of an impact on Quak­erism than all of the heroes of Amer­i­can lib­er­al­ism com­bined. We’ve got a Friend in Jesus and we’ve got to get on speak­ing arrage­ments with him again if we’re going to keep this Quak­erism going.

Shak­ing the Sandy Foundation

James asked if the reg­u­lars at Quak­er Ranter want­ed a purg­ing. I cer­tain­ly don’t want to kick any­one out but I don’t think some of the peo­ple cur­rent­ly involved in Quak­erism would be with us if we were truer to our call­ing. We need to start talk­ing hon­est­ly and have a round or two of truth-telling and plain speak­ing about what it means to be a Friend. Yes, there are some del­i­cate peo­ple who are offend­ed by terms like God and wor­ship, Christ and obe­di­ence. And many have good rea­sons to be offend­ed (as Julie point­ed out to me this week­end, one of the great­est sins our reli­gious and polit­i­cal lead­ers have done over the cen­turies is to com­mit evil in the name of God, for they not only com­mit­ted that evil but have so scarred some seek­ers that they can­not come to God). One can know Jesus with­out using the name and God does hold us in His warm embrace even through our doubts. But for those of us lucky enough to know His name should­n’t be afraid to use it.

Many peo­ple come to us sin­cere­ly as seek­ers, try­ing to under­stand the source of Quak­ers’ wit­ness and spir­i­tu­al ground­ing. I appre­ci­ate James’s ask­ing “why I feel so irrestibly drawn to a com­mu­ni­ty and reli­gious soci­ety in which the cen­tral term is God.” As long as that’s where we start, I’m hap­py to be in fellowship.

But fel­low­ship is an imme­di­ate rela­tion­ship that does­n’t always last. There are peo­ple involved in Quak­erism for rea­sons that are inci­den­tal to the mis­sion of our reli­gious soci­ety. We know the types: peace activists who seem to be around because Quak­ers have a good mail­ing list; Friends from ancient Quak­er fam­i­lies who are around because they want to be buried out with great-grandma in the ceme­tery out back; twenty-something lib­er­al seek­ers who like the open­ness and affa­bil­i­ty of Quak­ers. These are sandy foun­da­tions for reli­gious faith and they will not nec­es­sar­i­ly hold. If Quak­ers start­ed artic­u­lat­ing our beliefs and recom­mit­ting our­selves to be a peo­ple of God, we will have those who will decide to drift away. They might be hurt when they real­ize their attrac­tion to Quak­erism was misplaced.

Nam­ing the Trolls

We’ve all met peo­ple who have walked into a meet­ing­house with seri­ous dis­agree­ments with basic fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples of Quak­erism. This is to say we attract some loonies, or more pre­cise­ly: vis­i­tors who have come to pick a fight. Most reli­gious insti­tu­tions show them the door. As Friends we have a proud tra­di­tion of tol­er­ance but we’re too quick nowa­days to let tol­er­ance trump gospel order and destroy the “safe space” of our meet­ing­house. This is a dis­ser­vice to our com­mu­ni­ty. Every so often we get some­one who stands up to angri­ly denounce Chris­t­ian lan­guage in a Quak­er meet­ing. It’s fine to chal­lenge an in-group’s unex­am­ined pieties but I’m talk­ing about those who try to get the meet­ing to cen­sor ideas by claim­ing vic­tim­hood sta­tus when­ev­er they hear a Chris­t­ian world­view expressed. The per­son­’s moti­va­tions for being there need to be ques­tioned and they need to be lov­ing­ly labored with. We attract some peo­ple who deeply hurt and come with axes to grind. Some of them will use non-theism as their ral­ly­ing call. When they are eldered they will claim it’s because of their phi­los­o­phy, not their action. These kind of con­flicts are messy, unpleas­ant and often con­fus­ing but we need to address them head on.

There are plen­ty of pro­fess­ing Chris­tians who also need to be called on their dis­rup­tive behav­ior. They too would claim that any elder­ship is a reac­tion to their Chris­t­ian the­ol­o­gy. (Actu­al­ly, I know more pro­fess­ing Chris­tians than pro­fess­ing non-theists who should be chal­lenged this way (Julie asked “who?” and I came up with a list of three right off the bat)). But there are dis­rupters of all fla­vors who will trum­pet their mar­tyr­dom when Friends final­ly begin to take seri­ous­ly the prob­lems of detrac­tion (a fine Quak­er con­cept we need to revis­it). If we suf­fer unfair­ly we need to be able to muster up a cer­tain humil­i­ty and obe­di­ence to the meet­ing, even if we’re sure it’s wrong. Again, it will be messy and all too-human but we need to work with each oth­er on this one.

Shar­ing the Treasure

The real prob­lem as I see it is not respect­ful non-theists among us: it’s those of us who have tast­ed of the boun­ty but hoard the trea­sure for our­selves. We hide the open­ings we’ve been giv­en. A few weeks ago I was at year­ly meet­ing ses­sions attend­ed by some of the most rec­og­nized min­is­ters in Philadel­phia when a woman said she was offend­ed by the (fair­ly tame) psalms we were asked to read. She explained “I’m used to Quak­erese, Light and all that, and I don’t like all this lan­guage about God as an enti­ty.” No one in that room stood to explain that these psalms _are one of the sources_ of our Quak­erese and that the “Light” Friends have have been talk­ing about for most of the past three and a half cen­turies is explic­it­ly the Light _of Christ_. I don’t want to make too big a deal of this inci­dent, but this kind of thing hap­pens all the time: we cen­sor our lan­guage to the point where it’s full of inof­fen­sive double-meanings. Let’s not be afraid to talk in the lan­guage we have. We need to share the trea­sure we’ve been given.

Relat­ed Reading:

This post was inspired by James R’s com­ment, which I titled I Am What I Am. He was respond­ing orig­i­nal­ly to my essay We’re All Ranters Now. I remain deeply grate­ful that James post­ed his com­ment and then allowed me to fea­ture it. These are not easy issues, cer­tain­ly not, and its easy to mis­read what we all are say­ing. I hope that what I’m con­tribut­ing is seen through the lens of love and char­i­ty, in whose spir­it I’ve been try­ing to respond. I’m not try­ing to write a posi­tion paper, but to share hon­est­ly what I’ve seen and the open­ings I feel I have been giv­en – I reserve the right to change my opin­ions! From what I’ve read, I’d be hon­ored to be in fel­low­ship with James.

Liz Oppen­heimer has opened up with a thought­ful, ten­der piece called My Friend­ly jour­ney with Christ.

You know the dis­claimer at the bot­tom that says I’m not speak­ing for any Quak­er orga­ni­za­tion? I mean it. I’m just take phone orders and crank out web pages for a par­tic­u­lar orga­ni­za­tion. This isn’t them speaking.

It’s My Language Now: Thinking About Youth Ministry

March 16, 2005
· Martin Kelley

This past week­end I took part in a “Youth Min­istries Con­sul­ta­tion” spon­sored by Friends Gen­er­al Con­fer­ence. Thir­ty Friends, most under the age of 35, came togeth­er to talk about their expe­ri­ence of Quakerism.

Con­formed to the World

The issue that spoke most strong­ly this week­end was the expe­ri­ence of not being known. Young and old we longed for a nam­ing & nur­tur­ing of gifts. We longed to be seen as mem­bers one of anoth­er. Ear­ly on a young Friend from a well-known fam­i­ly said she often felt she was seen as her moth­er’s daugh­ter or con­fused with cousins and aunts. Anoth­er Friend with pedi­gree com­plained that as a young per­son inter­est­ed in Quak­erism he was seen by nom­i­nat­ing com­mit­tees as a gener­ic “Young Friend” who could be slot­ted into any com­mit­tee as its token youth rep­re­sen­ta­tive. Anoth­er young Friend agreed that, yes, there is “affir­ma­tive action for young Friends.”

Affir­ma­tive action?!? For young Friends?? At this state­ment my jaw dropped. Through­out most of my time as a twenty- and thirty-something Friend I have felt almost com­plete­ly invis­i­ble. I’d have to walk on water to be named to a com­mit­tee by my year­ly meet­ing (only in the last year has a year­ly meet­ing nom­i­nat­ing committee-member approached me). I can get pro­filed in the New York Times for my peace work but request as I try I can’t even get on the mail­ing list for my year­ly meet­ing’s peace committee!

And yet the deep­er issue is the same for me and the annoint­ed young Friends: we are seen not as our­selves but in rela­tion (or non-relation) to oth­er Friends. We are all tokens. As a small group of us met to talk about the issue of gift-naming, we real­ized the prob­lem was­n’t just lim­it­ed to those under forty. Even old­er Friends longed to be part of meet­ings that would know us, meet­ings that would see beyond our most obvi­ous skins of age, race and birth fam­i­ly to our deep­er, ever-changing and refresh­ing souls. We all long for oth­ers to give nur­tur­ing guid­ance and lov­ing over­sight to that deep­est part of our­selves! How we long to whis­per, sing and shout to one anoth­er about the Spir­it’s move­ment inside us. We all long for a reli­gious soci­ety where expec­ta­tions aren’t lim­it­ed by our out­ward differences.

This isn’t about fill­ing com­mit­tees and find­ing clerks. What if we could go beyond the super­fi­cial com­mu­ni­ties of nice­ness main­tained in so many Meet­ings to find some­thing more real – a “cap­i­tal ‘C’ Com­mu­ni­ty” as one Friend put it? This is about liv­ing that beloved Com­mu­ni­ty. Con­sul­ta­tions and pro­grams are easy but the hard work is chang­ing atti­tudes and chang­ing our expec­ta­tions of one anoth­er, expec­ta­tions that keep us from hav­ing to get to know one another.

One Body in Christ

As the con­sul­ta­tion wrapped up we were giv­en an overview of the next steps: set­ting up com­mit­tees, doing fundrais­ing, sup­port­ing iden­ti­fied youth work. It’s all fine and good but it was a pret­ty gener­ic list of next-steps that could have been gen­er­at­ed even before the meeting.
Caught up in the idea of a “youth min­istries pro­gram” are assump­tions that the prob­lem is with the youth and that the solu­tion will come through some sort of pro­gram­ming. I don’t think either premise is accu­rate. The real change needs to be cul­tur­al and it needs to extend far past youth. Even most of the old­er Friends at the con­sul­ta­tion saw that. But will they bring it back to the larg­er orga­ni­za­tion? Last Novem­ber I shared some con­cerns about the Youth Min­istries ini­ta­tive with its orga­niz­ing committee:

I haven’t heard any apol­o­giz­ing from old­er Friends for the neglect and invis­i­bil­i­ty that they’ve giv­en my gen­er­a­tion. I haven’t heard any­one talk about address­ing the issues of Quak­er ageism or the the cul­ture of FGC insti­tu­tion­al nepo­tism. At [the FGC gov­ern­ing board­’s annu­al meet­ing] I heard a state­ment that a youth min­istries pro­gram would be built on the ongo­ing work of half-a-dozen list­ed com­mit­tees, most of which I know haven’t done any­thing for youth ministries.

The point was hit home by an old­er Friend at the con­sul­ta­tion dur­ing a small-group break­out. He explained the all-too-familiar ratio­nale for why we should sup­port youth: “because they are an invest­ment in our future, they’re our lead­er­ship twen­ty and thir­ty years from now.” I sus­pect that a num­ber of Friends on gov­ern­ing boards – not just of FGC but of our ser­vice pro­grams and year­ly meet­ings – look at “youth min­istries” in a similarly-condescending, dis­mis­sive way, as invest­ment work in the future. Why else would younger Friends be so under-represented in most Quak­er com­mit­tees and pro­gram work?

The prob­lems tran­scend Quak­er insti­tu­tions. But Friends Gen­er­al Con­fer­ence is in a par­tic­u­lar­ly good posi­tion to mod­el the work. Will FGC cre­ate a youth min­istries ghet­to or will it do the hard work of inte­grat­ing its com­mit­tees? Will it final­ly start spon­sor­ing young min­is­ters in its Trav­el­ing Min­istries pro­gram? Will FGC ini­ti­ate out­reach efforts specif­i­cal­ly tar­get­ed at 20-somethings (the demo­graph­ic of the great major­i­ty of seek­ers who come to our doors)? Will there ever be a Friend under thirty-five invit­ed to give a major Gath­er­ing ple­nary talk?

Trans­formed by the Renew­ing of Our Minds

The con­sul­ta­tion was just 30 Friends. Most of the most excit­ing young Friends I know weren’t even invit­ed and real­ly could­n’t be with such a lim­it­ed atten­dance cap. One old­er Friend tried to sum up the week­end by say­ing it was the start of some­thing impor­tant, but that’s the wrong way to look at it. It’s real­ly only anoth­er step along the way, the con­tin­u­a­tion of work that’s been going on for 100 years, 350 years, 2000 years or more depend­ing on your frame of ref­er­ence. This is work that will con­tin­ue to be done over the course of gen­er­a­tions, in hun­dreds of meet­ing­hous­es and it will involve every­one in the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends in one way or another.

Lurk­ing unnamed in the back­ground of the Youth Min­istries Con­sul­ta­tion is the pop­u­lar “Quak­er” sweat lodge, which became so pop­u­lar pre­cise­ly because it was part­ly orga­nized by young Friends, gave them real lead­er­ship oppor­tu­ni­ties and knew–knew with a cer­tain­ty–that they could expe­ri­ence the divine and share that expe­ri­ence with their peers. If FGC’s pro­grams can’t match those cri­te­ria, then FGC will suf­fer the loss of yet anoth­er generation.
What was impor­tant to me were the trends rep­re­sent­ed. There was a def­i­nite inter­est in get­ting more deeply involved in Quak­erism and in explor­ing the reli­gious side of this Soci­ety of Friends.

Grace Giv­en Us

One strug­gle we’re going to con­tin­ue to have is with lan­guage. For one small-group break­out, the orga­niz­ing com­mit­tee broke issues down by top­ics. One was dubbed “Lead­er­ship Train­ing.” With that moniker it was sure­ly going to focus on some sort of delim­it­ed, sec­u­lar – and quite frankly bor­ing – pro­gram that would be based on an orga­ni­za­tion­al design mod­el. It was­n’t the con­cern I had heard raised so I asked if we could rename it to a “nam­ing of gifts” group; thank­ful­ly the sug­ges­tion was eager­ly accept­ed. Renam­ing it helped ground it and gave the small group that gath­ered per­mis­sion to look at the deep­er issues involved. No one in our small group point­ed out that our dis­cus­sion uncon­scious­ly echoed Paul’s let­ter to the Romans:

Do not be con­formed to this world, but be trans­formed by the renew­ing of your minds, so that you may dis­cern what is the will of God – what is good and accept­able and per­fect… For as in one body we have many mem­bers, and not all the mem­bers have the same func­tion, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and indi­vid­u­al­ly we are mem­bers one of anoth­er. We have gifts that dif­fer accord­ing to the grace giv­en to us. Romans 12.

This uncon­scious Chris­tian­i­ty is very strong among our branch of Quak­ers. As our small group dis­cussed nam­ing of gifts we turned to the roles of our month­ly meet­ings and start­ed label­ing their func­tions. As the mis­sion state­ment was worked out point by point, I noticed we were recre­at­ing gospel order. I sug­gest­ed that one was to “for­give each oth­er our tres­pass­es,” which was an idea the small group liked. Even so, a few mem­bers did­n’t want to use that language.

We were talk­ing gospel order, but with san­i­tized lan­guage; it’s an odd­i­ty that we mod­ern lib­er­al Friends turn so often to sec­u­lar vocab­u­lary: we talk of child­hood devel­op­ment mod­els, we use orga­ni­za­tion­al design lin­go, we speak in the Quak­er committee-speak.

My feel­ing is that lib­er­al Friends do want to be reli­gious. But we’ve spent a gen­er­a­tion replac­ing any word that hints of reli­gion with sec­u­lar­ized alter­na­tives and that now we often can’t think past this self-limited vocab­u­lary. One word that needs to be exer­cised more is “God.” If you want to be a mod­ern day Quak­er min­is­ter, just refor­mu­late every sec­u­lar­ized Quak­er­s­peak query you see to include “God.” When Friends ask “How can my month­ly meet­ing meet my needs,” nice­ly sug­gest that we also ask “How can my month­ly meet­ing meet God’s needs.” I found myself con­stant­ly refor­mu­lat­ing queries over the week­end. It’s kind of odd that the word “God” has become so absent from a Peo­ple gath­ered in the knowl­edge that “Christ has come to teach the peo­ple Him­self,” but that’s the Soci­ety we’ve inher­it­ed and this is where our min­istry must start.

Near the end of the con­sul­ta­tion one college-age Friend explained a moment when her Quak­erism was trans­formed from out­ward iden­ti­ty to an inward knowl­edge. “It’s my lan­guage now” she declared to us. Yes, it is. And that’s youth min­istry and elder min­istry, the good news that there’s a God we can name who will reveal what is “good and accept­able and per­fect.” That’s our work today, that is the min­istry of our ages.

More Read­ing:

FGC pub­lished a Good News Bul­letin about the Youth Min­istries Consultation.

Quakerism 101

August 10, 2004
· Martin Kelley

In Fall 2005 I led a six-week Quak­erism 101 course at Med­ford (NJ) Month­ly Meet­ing. It went very well. Med­ford has a lot of involved, weighty Friends (some of them past year­ly meet­ing clerks!) and I think they appre­ci­at­ed a fresh take on an intro­duc­to­ry course. The core ques­tion: how might we teach Quak­erism today?

This is the pro­pos­al for the course. I start­ed off with a long intro­duc­tion on the his­to­ry and phi­los­o­phy of Quak­er reli­gious edu­ca­tion and ped­a­gog­ic accul­tur­a­tion and go on to out­line a dif­fer­ent sort cur­ricu­lum for Quak­erism 101.

I took exten­sive notes of each ses­sion and will try to work that feed­back into a revised cur­ricu­lum that oth­er Meet­ings and Q101 lead­ers could use and adapt. In the mean­time, if you want to know how spe­cif­ic ses­sions and role­splays went, just email me and I’ll send you the unedit­ed notes. If you’re on the Adult Reli­gious Ed. com­mit­tee of a South Jer­sey or Philadel­phia area Meet­ing and want to bring me to teach it again, just let me know.

Thoughts on a Quak­erism 101 Course

Over the last few years, there seems to be a real groundswell of inter­est in Quak­ers try­ing to under­stand who we are and where we came from. There’s a revival of inter­st in look­ing back at our roots, not for his­to­ry or ortho­doxy’s sake, but instead to try­ing to tease out the “Quak­er Trea­sures” that we might want to reclaim. I’ve seen this con­ver­sa­tion tak­ing place in all of the branch­es of Friends and it’s very hopeful.

I assume at least some of the par­tic­i­pants of the Quak­erism 101 course will have gone through oth­er intro­duc­to­ry cours­es or will have read the stan­dard texts. It would be fun to give them all some­thing new – luck­i­ly there’s plen­ty to choose from! I also want to expose par­tic­i­pants to the range of con­tem­po­rary Quak­erism. I’d like par­tic­i­pants to under­stand why the oth­er branch­es call them­selves Friends and to rec­og­nize some of the pec­u­lar­i­ties our branch has uncon­scious­ly adopted.

Ear­ly Friends did­n’t get involved in six-week cours­es. They were too busy climb­ing trees to shout the gospel fur­ther, invit­ing peo­ple to join the great move­ment. Lat­er Qui­etist Friends had strong struc­tures of record­ed min­is­ters and elders which served a ped­a­gog­ic pur­pose for teach­ing Friends. When revival­ism broke out and brought over­whelm­ing­ly large num­bers of new atten­ders to meet­ings, this sys­tem broke down and many meet­ings hired min­is­ters to teach Quak­erism to the new peo­ple. Around the turn of the cen­tu­ry, promi­nent Quak­er edu­ca­tors intro­duced aca­d­e­m­ic mod­els, with cours­es and lec­ture series. Each of these approach­es to reli­gious edu­ca­tion fid­dles with Quak­erism and each has major draw­backs. But these new mod­els were insti­tut­ed because of very real and ongo­ing prob­lems Friends have with trans­mit­ting our faith to our youth and accul­tur­at­ing new seek­ers to our Quak­er way.

The core con­tra­dic­tion of a course series is that the leader is expect­ed to both impart knowl­edge and to invite par­tic­i­pa­tion. In prac­tice, this eas­i­ly leads to sit­u­a­tions where the teacher is either too dom­i­neer­ing _or_ too open to par­tic­i­pa­tion. The lat­ter seems more com­mon: Quak­erism is pre­sent­ed as a least-common-denominator social group­ing, form­less, with mem­ber­ship defined sim­ply by one’s com­fort­a­bil­i­ty in the group (see Brin­ton’s Friends for 300 Years.) One of the main goals of a intro­duc­to­ry course should be to bring new atten­ders into Quak­er cul­ture, prac­tice and ethics. There’s an implic­it assump­tion that there is some­thing called Quak­erism to teach. Part of that job is teas­ing out the reli­gious and cul­tur­al mod­els that new atten­ders are bring­ing with them and to open up the ques­tion as to how they fit or don’t fit in with the “gestalt” of Quak­erism (Grundy, Quak­er Trea­sures and Wilson’s Essays on the Quak­er Vision).

The great­est irony behind the Quak­erism 101 class is that its seemingly-neutral edu­ca­tion­al mod­el lulls proud­ly “unpro­grammed” Friends into an obliv­i­ous­ness that they’ve just insti­tut­ed a pro­gram led by a hireling min­is­ter. Argu­ments why Q101 teach­ers should be paid sounds iden­ti­cal to argu­ments why part-time FUM min­is­ters should be paid. A Q101 leader in an unpro­grammed meet­ing might well want to acknowl­edge this con­tra­dic­tion and pray for guid­ance and seek clear­ness about this. (For my Med­ford class, I decid­ed to teach it as paid leader of a class as a way of dis­ci­plin­ing myself to prac­tice of my fel­low Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing Friends.)

The stan­dard Quak­erism 101 cur­ricu­lum com­part­men­tal­izes every­thing into neat lit­tle box­es. His­to­ry gets a box, tes­ti­monies get a box, faith and insti­tu­tions get box­es. I want to break out of that. I can rec­om­mend good books on Quak­er his­to­ry and point par­tic­i­pants to good web­sites advo­cat­ing Quak­er tes­ti­monies. But I want to present his­to­ry as cur­rent events and the tes­ti­monies as min­istry. The stan­dard cur­ricu­lum starts with some of the more con­tro­ver­sial mate­r­i­al about the dif­fer­ent braches of Friends and only then goes into wor­ship, the meet­ing life, etc. I want dis­cus­sion of the lat­ter to be informed by the ear­li­er dis­cus­sion of who we are and who we might be. The course will start off more struc­tured, with me as leader and become more par­tic­i­pa­to­ry in the lat­er sections.

Cur­ricu­lum:

What I want to do is have one sol­id overview book and sup­ple­ment it with some of those fas­ci­nat­ing (and coversation-sparking!) pam­phlets. The overview book is Thomas Ham­m’s Quak­ers in Amer­i­ca. Pub­lished last year, it’s the best intro­duc­tion to Quak­erism in at least a gen­er­a­tion. Hamm wrote this as part of a reli­gions of Amer­i­ca series and it’s meant as a gen­er­al intro­duc­tion to con­tem­po­rary Quak­erism. His lat­er chap­ters on debates with­in Quak­erism should be easy to adapt for a Q‑101 series.

Ses­sion I: Introductions

  • Wor­ship
  • In-class read­ing of two pages from Quak­ers in Amer­i­ca (pro­file of Ohio Year­ly Meet­ing ses­sions, p. 1), reflec­tions. (maybe start this class 2?)
  • Intro­duc­tions to one another.

Ses­sion II: What Are Our Models

  • Wor­ship
  • In-class read­ing of two pages from Quak­ers in Amer­i­ca (pro­file of First Friends Church of Can­ton, p. 3), reflections.
  • What are our mod­els? Role­play of “What Would X Do?” with a giv­en prob­lem: JC, George Fox, Methodists, Non-denominational bible church, col­lege. Also: the “nat­ur­al break­ing point” mod­el of Quak­er divisions.
  • Read­ing for this class: “Con­vinced Quak­erism” by Ben Pink Dandelion

Ses­sion III: The Schisms

  • Wor­ship
  • In-class read­ing of two pages from Quak­ers in Amer­i­ca (pro­file of Wilm­ing­ton Year­ly Meet­ing ses­sions, p. 5), reflections.
  • Read­ing for this class: Quak­ers in Amer­i­ca chap­ter 3, “Their Sep­a­rate Ways: Amer­i­can Friends Since 1800,” about the branches

Ses­sion IV: Role of our Institutions

  • Wor­ship
  • In-class read­ing of two pages from Quak­ers in Amer­i­ca (pro­file of Lake Erie Year­ly Meet­ing, p. 7), reflections.
  • Read­ing for this class: “The Author­i­ty of Our Meet­ings…” by Paul Lacey

Ses­sion V: Con­tro­ver­sies with­in Friends

  • Could pick any 2 – 3 con­tro­ver­sies of Ham­m’s: “Is Quak­erism Chris­t­ian?,” “Lead­er­ship,” “Author­i­ty,” “Sex­u­al­i­ty,” “Iden­ti­ty,” “Uni­ty and Diver­si­ty,” “Growth and Decline.” Ear­ly in the course I could poll the group to get a sense which ones they might want to grap­ple with. The idea is not to be thor­ough cov­er­ing all the top­ics or even all the intri­ca­cies with­in each top­ic. I hope to just see if we can mod­el ways of talk­ing about these with­in Medford.
  • Read­ing for this class: Quak­ers in Amer­i­ca chap­ter 5, “Con­tem­po­rary Quak­er Debates,” p. 120

Ses­sion VI: Role of wor­ship, role of min­istry, role of witnesses.

  • Focus­ing on Worship/Ministry (Witness)/MM Author­i­ty (Elders). If the cal­en­dar allows for eight ses­sions, this could eas­i­ly be split apart or giv­en two weeks.
  • Read­ing for this class: “Quak­er Trea­sures” by Mar­ty Pax­ton Grundy, which ties togeth­er Gospel Order, Min­istries and the Testimonies.

Ses­sion VII: What kind of reli­gious com­mu­ni­ty do we want Med­ford MM to be?

  • This should be par­tic­i­pa­to­ry, inter­ac­tive. There should be some go-around sort of exer­cise to open up our visions of an ide­al reli­gious com­mu­ni­ty and what we think Med­ford Meet­ing might be like in 5, 10, 25 years.
  • Read­ing for this class: “Build­ing the Life of the Meet­ing” by Bill & Fran Taber (1994, $4). I’ve heard there’s some­thing recent from John Pun­shon which might work better.
  • Also: some­thing from the emer­gent church move­ment to point to a great peo­ple that might be gath­ered. Per­haps essays from Jor­dan Coop­er & some­one at Cir­cle of Hope/Phila.

Books Used:

  • “Quak­ers in Amer­i­ca” is Thomas Ham­m’s excel­lent new intro­duc­tion to Friends is a bit pricey ($40) but is adapt­ing well to a Q101 course.
  • “Con­vinced Quak­erism” by Ben Pink Dan­de­lion mix­es tra­di­tion­al Quak­er under­stad­ings of con­vince­ment with Ben’s per­son­al sto­ry and it sparked a good, widerang­ing dis­cus­sion. $4.
  • “Quak­er Trea­sures” by Mar­ty Grundy. $4
  • “The Author­i­ty of Our Meet­ings…” by Paul Lacey. $4
  • “Build­ing the Life of the Meet­ing” by Bill and Fran Taber. $4

Con­sid­ered Using:

  • “Why Friends are Friends” by Jack Will­cuts. $9.95. I like this book and think that much of it could be used for a Q101 in a liberal-branch Friends Meet­ing. Chap­ters: “The Won­der of Wor­ship,” “Sacred Spir­i­tu­al Sacra­ments,” “Called to Min­istry,” “Let­ting Peace Pre­vail,” “Get­ting the Sense of the Meet­ing,” “On Being Pow­er­ful” – I find the mid­dle chap­ters are the more interesting/Quaker ones).
  • Silence and Wit­ness by Michael Birkel. I haven’t read through this yet, but in skim­ming the chap­ters it looks like Birkel shys away from chal­leng­ing the Quak­er sta­tus quo. With­in that con­straint, how­ev­er, it looks like a good intro­duc­tion to Quak­erism. $16.
  • “Quak­er Cul­ture vs. Quak­er Faith” by Samuel Caldwell.
  • The Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing Quak­erism 101 cur­ricu­lum. It’s not as bad as it could be but it’s too heavy on his­to­ry and tes­ti­monies and too focused on the Jones/Brinton view of Quak­erism which I think has played itself out. I’ve seen Q101 facil­i­ta­tors read direct­ly out of the cur­ricu­lum to the glazed eyes of the par­tic­i­pants. I want­ed some­thing fresh­er and less course-like.