speaker

The bully, the Friend and the Christian

Martin Kelley — Fri, 21 Apr 2006 15:51:13 +0000

Lazy guy I am, I’m going to cut-and-paste a comment I left over at Rich the Brooklyn Quaker’s blog in response to his post “What This Christian Is Looking For In Quakerism”:http://brooklynquaker.blogspot.com/2006/04/what-this-christian-is-looking-for-in.html. There’s been quite a good discussion in the comments. In them Rich poses this analogy:
bq. During the Great Depression and World War II, I have been told that Franklin Roosevelt rallied the spirits of the American people with his “fireside chats”. These radio broadcasts communicated information, projected hope, and called for specific responses from his listeners; including some acts of self-sacrifice and unselfishness… Often people would gather in small groups around their radios to hear these broadcasts, they would talk about what Roosevelt had said, and to some extent they were guided in their daily lives by some of what they had heard.

Rich then supposes what a listener sitting in front of the radio might by thinking. I thought it was an interesting analogy and thought it provided another way of thinking about the relationship of Quakerism and Christianity and especially of a Quaker-styled Christianity. Let’s start with a listener who’s figured out that the speaker’s a real person and not just electronic fuzz

The year is 1933.
Twelfth day Third Month.
“Cue Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s first fireside chat”:ftp://webstorage2.mcpa.virginia.edu/library/nara/fdr/audiovisual/speeches/firesidechat_01.mp3
Our listener sitting in front of the radio would hear FDR’s voice without knowing who he is. The information would be there but there would be no particular weight attached to it. They might listen to it but they’d be just as likely to turn the knob and catch the much more entertaining Bob Hope special.
A bully sitting nearby in the room might rebuke the listener: “Don’t touch that dial! Listen to what he’s saying! That’s the PRESIDENT!” The listener, knowing nothing about our political system, would just hear a call to unearned authority. The bully’s rebuke would have the weight of fear–what might the bully do if I don’t listen?!?–but it will have taken the listener’s attention off of FDR and onto the bully.
Let’s say that instead there’s a gentle soul in the room who gives testimony. They share with our listener how valuable they’ve found FDR’s advice to be in the past. They’re simply saying, “it’s worth listening to this guy, he says some good stuff.”
As the listener starts appreciating FDR’s counsel, our nearby friend might start teaching about the role of the Presidency in American history. They could introduce concepts like checks-and-balances, they could tell stories of past Constitutional crises, they would talk about other types of political systems. Our listener would slowly gain a vocabularly that wouldn’t change the message but which would provide a way of talking about it. The friend would be tapping on the social history of generations of Americans who had struggled to understand how to organize themselves: the friend would be teaching our collective wisdom. By understanding it our listener would be in a better position to effectively act on FDR’s advice (perhaps they’d realize they need to lobby their senators to get FDR’s next budget passed).
A deconstructionist might argue that “The United States of America” is a social construct, but that doesn’t mean the Declaration of Independence isn’t an amazing, inspiring document that says something profoundly truthful about human existance.
Taking the analogy full circle, it’s almost as if liberal Friends today are afraid of teaching the Declaration of Independence because it might offend the Russian, Italian and Korean immigrants. We still believe in it and most of the immigrants are figuring out pieces of it hit-and-miss, but we’re just incredibly awkward talking about it since we’ve lost our language. If we just started speaking plainly again, that would give the immigrants a chance to say “hey that’s interesting but you know we did it this way back in the old country.” I wonder if we’d open up the conversation to a richer level of sharing?
The beauty of Quakerism is that we know that the quiet testimony and humble invitation are gifts we can share with one another and with all we meet. I’m thinking again of the Brian Drayton’s formulation:
bq. We are also called, I feel to invite others to share Christ directly, not primarily in order to introduce them to Quakerism and bring them into our meetings, but to encourage them to turn to the light and follow it.
The message we share matters not simply because it’s Christ’s but because it’s wise. We have much to share.
*Naming the Church*
The meeting I attend, “Middletown”:http://www.pym.org/pym_mms/middletownpa_cdq.php, is going through Acts in Bible Study and today the clerk forwarded some fascinating commentary from “1863 by a fellow named J. W. McGarvey”:http://www.ccel.org/m/mcgarvey/oca/OCA11.HTM. He talks about the names we give one another and the Source and it reminds me of the discussion over on Rich’s blog. Here’s a sample:
bq. The New Testament usage in reference to names is this: When the followers of Jesus were contemplated with reference to their relation to him as their great teacher, they were called disciples. When the mind of the speaker was fixed more particularly on their relation to one another, they were styled brethren. When their relation to God was in the foreground, they were called children of God. When they were designated with special reference to character, they were called saints. But when they were spoken of with the most general reference to their great leader, they were called Christians. A practical observance of the exact force of each of these names would soon conform our speech to the primitive model, and would check a tendency to exalt any one name above another, by giving to each its proper place.
The rest of the article is worth a read, though I can’t whole-heartedly endorse it. It ends up arguing for the kind of non-denominational Christianity that I find kind of shallow (maybe I just watch too much of “Marcus Grodi”:http://www.chnetwork.org/ewtn.htm Catholic conversion shows to buy into this simplicistic Protestanism, though I suspect Fox would have been more sympathetic to McGarvey than to Grodi).
*Coming together as church*
I’d like to give a shout-out to the Ohio Yearly Meeting (Conservative) ministers who came together a “worship opportunity last Sixth Night”:http://www.localquakers.org/Ministers.htm (Saturday to you worldly folks) at “Marlborough Meeting”:http://www.localquakers.org/Marlborough.html. The email invitation from Chip Thomas got wide enough circulation among Philadelphia Friends that I saw it three times. The ministry was tender and the fellowship afterwards very welcoming. It was nice to see this form of outreach from Ohio, I’d love to see more. Friends in the Philadelphia area will get another chance when Marlborough hosts another gathering of ministers on Sixth Month 24.

Peace and Twenty-Somethings

Martin Kelley — Fri, 17 Oct 2003 09:26:51 +0000

Over on Nonviolence.org, I’ve posted something I originally started writing for my personal site: Where is the grassroots contemporary nonviolence movement? It asks why there’s no the kind of young, grassroots culture around peace like the networks that I see “elsewhere on the net.”

The piece speaks for itself but there is one point of context and a few observations to make. The first is that the grassroots culture I was thinking of when I wrote the piece was the “emergent church,” “young evangelical” movement. Thirty years ago the kids I’ve met at “Circle of Hope”, a Philadelphia “emergent church” loosely affiliated with the Brethren could easily have been at a Movement for New Society* training: the culture, the interests, the demographics are all strikingly similar.

(MNS was a national but West Philly-centered network of group houses, publications, and organizing that forged the identities of many of the twenty-somethings who participated; Nonviolence.org is arguably a third-generation descendant of MNS, via New Society Publishers where I worked for six years).

The observation for Friends is that retro-organizing like the relatively-new “Pendle Hill Peace Network” [website URL long since dropped & picked up by spammer] will have a really hard time acting as any sort of outreach project to twenty-somethings (a main goal according to a talk given my monthly meeting by its director). The grassroots peace-centric communities that were thriving when the Network sponsors were in their twenties don’t exist anymore. Rather predictably, the photographs of the next two dozen speakers for the Pendle Hill Peacebuilding Forum series show only one who might be under forty (maybe, and she’s from an exotic locale which is why she gets in). I’m glad that a generation of sixty-something Quaker activists are guaranteed steady employment, but don’t any Quaker institutions think there’s one American activist under forty worth listening to?

I think the best description of this phenomenon comes from the military. They call it “incestuous amplification” and define it as “a condition in warfare where one only listens to those who are already in lockstep agreement, reinforcing set beliefs and creating a situation ripe for miscalculation.” I suspect that peace activists are so worried about their own relevancy that they have a hard time recognizing new peers or changed circumstances.

These numbers and the lack of speaker diversity explain why I rarely even bother with Quaker peace conferences anymore. I wouldn’t mind being overlooked in my peace ministry if I saw other activists my age being recognized. But I can’t take my invisibility as feedback since it’s clearly not about me or my work. The homogeneity of the speakers lists at most conferences sends a clear message that younger people aren’t wanted except as passive audience members clapping for the inspiring fifty- to seventy-somethings on stage. How much of current retro peace organizing is just self-stroking Boomer fantasy?

The in-group incestuousness has created a generation gap of relevancy. When institutions and movements become myopic, they become irrelevant to those locked outside. We have to go elsewhere to build our identities.

The internet is one place to go. From there it’s clear that the institutional projects don’t have the “buzz,” i.e., the support and excitment, that the Gen-X-led projects do. The internet alone won’t save us: there’s only so much culture one can build online and computer-mediated discussions favor argumentation, rationality, and ideological correctness. But it’s one of the few venues open to outsiders without cash or institutional clout.

But what about the content of a twenty-first century twenty-something peace movement?

Many of today’s twenty-something Quakers were raised up as secular peace activists. Our religious education programs often de-emphasize controversial issues of faith and belief to focus on the peace testimony as the unifying Quaker value. Going to protests is literally part of the curriculum of many Young Friends programs. Even more of a problem, older Friends are often afraid to share their faith plainly and fully with younger Friends on a one-on-one basis. The practice of personal and Meeting-based spritual mentorship that once transmitted Friends values between generations is very under-utilized today.

Almost all of these Friends stop participating in Quakerism as they enter their twenties, coming back only occasionally for reunion-type gatherings. Many of these lapsed Friends are out exploring alternative spiritual traditions that more clearly articulate a faith that can give meaning and purpose to social action. I have friends in this lost Quaker generation that are going to Buddhist temples, practicing yoga spirituality, building sweat lodges and joining evangelical or Roman Catholic churches. Will they really be won back with another lecture series? What would happen if we Friends started articulating the deep faith roots of our own peace testimony? What if we started testifying to one another about that great Power that’s taken away occasion for war, what if our testimony became a witness to our faith?

Why are a lot of the more thoughtful under-40s going to alternative churches and what are they hoping to find there?

Don’t get me wrong: I hope these new peace initiatives do well and help to build a thriving twenty-something activist scene again. It’s just that for fifteen years I’ve seen a sucession of projects aimed at twenty-somethings come and go, failing to ignite sustaining interest. I worry that things won’t change until sponsoring organizations seriously start including younger people in the decision-making process from their inception and start recognizing that our focus might be radically different.

Postscript
I share some observations about the different way institutional and outsider Friends use the internet in How Insiders and Seekers Use the Quaker Net.

UPDATE: The Pendle Hill Peace Network was laid down in late 2005. The cited reason was “budgetary constraints,” an empty excuse that sidesteps any responsibility for examining vision, inclusion or implimentation. It’s forum is now an advertising stage for “free mature porn pics.” It’s very sad and there’s no joy in saying “I told you so.”

UPDATE: After twelve years I laid down Nonviolence.org and sold the domain. I never received any real support from Friends.