Tag Archives ⇒ religious

Is Quaker Culture an Obstacle to Faith?

February 2, 2019
· Martin Kelley

From Isaac Smith:

I have tend­ed to describe this shift in under­stand­ing as the moment when Quak­erism “clicked” for me — when it ceased to be just the weird sub­cul­ture I grew up in, and more a mat­ter of con­vic­tion. Prac­tices that I ignored or nev­er quite under­stood, like mak­ing group deci­sions with­out tak­ing a vote, now made sense, because they were borne out of an attempt to make Christ the present teacher in all affairs. 

Isaac’s piece stems in part from the Decem­ber Friends Jour­nal, on Quak­ers and Chris­tian­i­ty. A large per­cent­age of the sub­mis­sions we received for the issue had remark­ably sim­i­lar per­son­al sto­ries: peo­ple had grown up in a restric­tive reli­gious tra­di­tion and come to Lib­er­al Friends because of its open­ness to spir­i­tu­al seek­ing. If any­thing they were hos­tile to Chris­tian­i­ty and dis­tinc­tive Quak­er pecu­liar­i­ties when they joined but over time they slow­ly shift­ed, often after get­ting to know ground­ed elder Friends. Now they qui­et­ly iden­ti­fied as Chris­t­ian Friends.

We could have print­ed a whole issue of (most­ly) con­vinced Lib­er­al Friends who had redis­cov­ered Chris­tian­i­ty. Instead we picked a rep­re­sen­ta­tive sam­ple for the print edi­tion and pub­lished the rest as part of our our extend­ed online edi­tion; you can read it all at the online con­tents. Although Isaac’s sto­ry is dif­fer­ent (he grew up as a Friend) it shares a sim­i­lar trajectory.

(Issac also has some ques­tions about Quak­er pub­lish­ing, with a link to a great 2009 blog post from Johan Mau­r­er. I feel I should talk about this issue too but that’ll take a bit more pon­der­ing on my part).

Is Quak­er Cul­ture an Obsta­cle to Faith?

What is Renewal?

January 19, 2019
· Martin Kelley

From Tran­si­tion Quaker:

The Quak­er way offers us a key to recog­nis­ing what is authen­tic with­in any reli­gious tra­di­tion, includ­ing Chris­tian­i­ty, and dis­tin­guish­ing it from the dis­tor­tions of pow­er, priv­i­lege, lit­er­al­ism and dog­ma­tism that tend to cor­rupt every human enter­prise. What­ev­er sto­ries and images dis­play the guid­ing pow­er of the Inward Light, in any tra­di­tion, can help to reveal the life of the Spir­it and encour­age us to encounter it for ourselves. 


What is Renewal?

What is Renewal? 

A num­ber of Friends have been writ­ing and talk­ing about Quak­er renew­al for sev­er­al years, some­times with very…

transitionquaker.blogspot.com tran​si​tion​quak​er​.blogspot​.com

Trustworthy Friends

January 3, 2019
· Martin Kelley

Johan Mau­r­er has put togeth­er a sur­vey for Friends to talk about set­ting up trust­wor­thy churches:

A lot of Quak­er ener­gy has gone into reas­sur­ing skep­tics and wound­ed refugees that we Friends are not like “those peo­ple,” refer­ring to the zealots, author­i­tar­i­ans, and reli­gious entre­pre­neurs who have some­times giv­en faith a bad name. But what are we affir­ma­tive­ly promis­ing? And how do we increase our capac­i­ty to keep our promis­es and become more trustworthy? 

https://​ino​.to/​d​K​K​V​1T3

The end of religious liberty?

October 23, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Is it time to give up var­i­ous paci­fist calls for reli­gious lib­er­ty giv­en the way the con­cept has been coopt­ed by those try­ing to insti­tu­tion­al­ize discrimination?

At a time when the things that bind us togeth­er as a soci­ety are so frag­ile, I’m wary of efforts that smack of iso­lat­ing one­self from the sins of the world, rather than build­ing sol­i­dar­i­ty in hopes that, God will­ing, those sins might be overcome.

The dead end of reli­gious liberty

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, with some dates in my chart includ­ing the num­ber of Friends in the U.S. and Cana­da and oth­er or Friends from all the Amer­i­c­as (with rough­ly 20,000 Friends apiece in Bolivia and Guatemala, the dif­fer­ence is sub­stan­tial). I’m redo­ing all of these num­bers; if you’re inter­est­ed in read­ing the orig­i­nal ver­sion of this, you can check it out in Archive​.org.

Making Sense of the Starbucks Incident

September 12, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Here’s a piece we’ve pub­lished in the cur­rent Friends Jour­nal, writ­ten by a seventh-grader from the Friends School in New­town, Pa. We reg­u­lar­ly pub­lish middle- and high-schoolers in our annu­al Stu­dent Voic­es Project but this is a gen­er­al fea­ture we pub­lished because it’s inter­est­ing and fresh and intrigu­ing. Here’s what I wrote about it in my open­ing col­umn in the magazine:

In Mak­ing Sense of the Star­bucks Inci­dent, New­town Friends School seventh-grader Anki­ta Achan­ta shows how the Quak­er val­ues she’s been taught in class­es could have defused a nation­al­ly pub­li­cized racial inci­dent in a Philadel­phia Star­bucks. It’s some­times easy to be skep­ti­cal of the Quak­er iden­ti­ty of Friends schools, but Achan­ta reflects back the pow­er­ful impact of our col­lec­tive wit­ness in these institutions. 

In Anki­ta Achan­ta’s reck­on­ing, Quak­er val­ues like integri­ty are basic uni­ver­sal val­ues of decen­cy. By claim­ing them, Friends could (and often do) eas­i­ly fall into the trap of Quak­er excep­tion­al­ism, but in Achan­ta’s piece, I see them as some­thing we put spe­cial empha­sis into. Ear­ly Friends did­n’t expect to found a denom­i­na­tion; Fox went across the land assum­ing every­one could be a Friend of the Truth, of Christ, of the Light. The lead­ing influ­ence of the Inward Light is avail­able to all and we can expect to see inspir­ing inci­dents of it in action every­where — even in viral Twit­ter videos.

Achan­ta also gave a new-to-me neologism:

As a seventh-grade stu­dent attend­ing a Friends school, I have been taught Quak­er val­ues. Although I am a Hin­du and not for­mal­ly a Quak­er, Quak­er val­ues are well aligned with my own reli­gious prin­ci­ples. I am com­mit­ted to liv­ing by them and con­sid­er myself a “Quin­du.”


Making Sense of the Starbucks Incident

Mak­ing Sense of the Star­bucks Incident 

Quak­er val­ues do not need to be mere the­o­ret­i­cal ideas.

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Reddit AMA on American Revolutionary-era persecutions

June 18, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Over on Red­dit, his­to­ri­an Jason Agli­et­ti hosts an Ask-Me-Anything about eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry Quak­er his­to­ry in Mary­land. There’s some good dis­cus­sion about the ways the largely-neutral Quak­er pop­u­la­tion was treat­ed in var­i­ous colonies, espe­cial­ly Mary­land, which is Agli­et­ti’s focus.

“The Friends They Loathed” was defend­ed in April 2018 and exam­ined a chap­ter of Mary­land his­to­ry that had nev­er been explored in detail before — the reli­gious per­se­cu­tion against Quak­ers dur­ing the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion. Despite being a his­to­ri­an of Amer­i­can Chris­tian­i­ty, I hold no reli­gious beliefs.

I am a recent­ly grad­u­at­ed with an MA in His­tor­i­cal Stud­ies which focused on the study of 18th Quak­er his­to­ry in Mary­land. AMA! from Quak­ers

Portland, Oregon high school ditching controversial ‘Quakers’ mascot

May 9, 2018
· Martin Kelley

On the list of reli­gious prob­lems, the use of “Quak­er” by non-Friends is more mys­tery than prob­lem. There’s the multi­na­tion­al giant Quak­er Oats Com­pa­ny of course, peri­od­i­cal­ly mak­ing tone deaf state­ment with its name. Friends of a cer­tain age might remem­ber 1989’s rebrand­ed Pop­eye the Quak­er Man and every eigh­teen months the laugh-out-loud Quak­er Oats threat­ens to sue us sto­ry goes re-viral on Face­book (the page is undat­ed and so always feels new; the inci­dent is at least 15 years old).

There are also var­i­ous schools who brand their sports teams with the Quak­er name. But a Port­land, Ore­gon, news sta­tion says that list is get­ting a bit small­er: Franklin High School ditch­ing con­tro­ver­sial ‘Quak­ers’ mascot

An assis­tant prin­ci­pal and anoth­er teacher told FOX 12 they shift­ed away from brand­ing the school as “Quak­ers” sev­er­al years ago. Sev­er­al stu­dents also said they don’t know much about who Quak­ers are or the reli­gion. Sev­er­al seemed to think Ben­jamin Franklin, who the school is named after, was a Quak­er. Franklin was not a Quak­er. FOX 12 also spoke to Kel­ly McCur­dy, who put three chil­dren through Franklin High. He said he believes the dis­trict is mak­ing a mis­take and eras­ing tra­di­tion. “I think it’s sil­ly, per­son­al­ly,” McCur­dy said. “It’s not racial­ly insensitive.”

It seems that the Fox affil­i­ate went out of its way to find a cranky per­son to deplore a point no one was mak­ing. Of course it’s not racial­ly insen­si­tive. But these appro­pri­at­ed names are always… well, weird. No pub­lic school would call them­selves The Jews or The Mus­lims or The Catholics or any­thing else smelling of reli­gion. It’s a sign of how dis­missed Friends are as a actu­al liv­ing reli­gious move­ment and denom­i­na­tion that our nick­name is con­sid­ered fair game. We must turn to the local news­pa­per to get the real back­ground:

Lisa Zuni­ga told the board that in 2014 she met Mia Pisano, a fel­low Franklin High par­ent who is a mem­ber of the Quak­er faith, and the pair start­ed an effort to change the name. The name, they argued, vio­lat­ed the sep­a­ra­tion of church and state. The dis­trict, they said, should nev­er com­man­deer a reli­gious sym­bol or con­no­ta­tion for a mas­cot. Despite inter­est in the name change, Zuni­ga said, par­ents met stiff resis­tance from the dis­trict. It was hard to even get any­one to explain what the process would be to bring about a name change, she said.

https://​www​.ore​gonlive​.com/​e​d​u​c​a​t​i​o​n​/​i​n​d​e​x​.​s​s​f​/​2​0​1​8​/​0​5​/​p​o​r​t​l​a​n​d​_​s​c​h​o​o​l​_​b​o​a​r​d​_​f​i​n​d​s​_​q​u​.​h​tml

http://​www​.kptv​.com/​s​t​o​r​y​/​3​8​1​4​5​8​3​3​/​f​r​a​n​k​l​i​n​-​h​i​g​h​-​s​c​h​o​o​l​-​d​i​t​c​h​i​n​g​-​c​o​n​t​r​o​v​e​r​s​i​a​l​-​q​u​a​k​e​r​s​-​m​a​s​cot