Tag Archives ⇒ spirituality

Reddit Thread on Quakers and Generative AI Art

August 4, 2026
· Martin Kelley

An inter­est­ing Red­dit thread on “Quak­ers and Gen­er­a­tive AI Art” by user balsawoodspirit.

I encour­age Friends to please remem­ber that Gen­er­a­tive AI art is pro­duced uneth­i­cal­ly from AI mod­els that scrape the work of real artists with­out con­sent or com­pen­sa­tion. In the last few weeks, I have encoun­tered two instances of Quak­ers using Gen­er­a­tive AI as a part of their Out­reach. This is deeply dis­turb­ing to me. There is no legit­i­mate rea­son to use Gen­er­a­tive AI Art. You can use open source images, you can hire artists, or you can make your own art. Or, use no art at all. Bet­ter that than to steal from artists and dis­play art you hand no hand in making.

My Face­book feed is awash in ter­ri­ble AI art accom­pa­nied by ter­ri­ble AI-written feel-good sto­ries, shared as much by Quak­ers as by any oth­er demo­graph­ic (my bad for still being on there, perhaps).

Quak­erism is a spir­i­tu­al­i­ty that requires active par­tic­i­pa­tion. You can’t just nod off in the back (well, you can but you should­n’t). Quak­er com­mu­ni­ties have been lived expe­ri­ences. As some­one who works dai­ly with writ­ers, it’s stun­ning just how much AI has become a crutch for peo­ple. There are some very active writ­ers in Quak­er online spaces whose work is most­ly AI. Is it for the social boost that comes from being ubiquitous?

A weird tan­gent but hear me out: if you read a lot of clas­sic Quak­er jour­nals, there’s fre­quent­ly sto­ries from their teens in which the author con­scious­ly wres­tles with plain dress. They talk about the lost friend­ships that came when they adopt­ed a more uni­form style and also about how hard it is to dis­cern and nav­i­gate the inevitable voice of pride inside them­selves (look at me, I’m plain!) with their legit­i­mate wish and lead­ing to be of use to the fel­low­ship. That process of wrestling with ego is some­thing that nev­er ends for any of us, but espe­cial­ly not one of these min­is­ters. Know­ing when min­istry is Spirit-led or ego-fed is a core com­pe­ten­cy for this work. In the end, the dress did­n’t mat­ter so much. But the “baby steps” of wor­ry­ing about it was an ear­ly work­out of those dis­cern­ment muscles.

When we turn to AI we stop work­ing those mus­cles and offload so much to the machine. Skip­ping the baby steps means we’re not nec­es­sar­i­ly going to be as prac­ticed when impor­tant deci­sions need to be made. Let’s put out bad art if it means we’ll start learn­ing how to put out more authen­tic art as we develop.

Alastair McIntosh interviewed

July 30, 2018
· Martin Kelley

High Pro­files mag­a­zine has pub­lished a nice inter­view with Alas­tair McIn­tosh, a Quak­er aca­d­e­m­ic, author, and activist. It’s not all about his Quak­erism but then it’s nice to see some­one using it as a just a piece of their iden­ti­ty. I love see­ing our roots laid out in the same sen­tence as a cri­tique of the Mur­doch press, etc.

The North is the part of Eng­land to which the rad­i­cals retreat­ed under Nor­man vio­lence, and I sus­pect that’s part of why the more rad­i­cal side of Eng­land comes out there. Quak­erism devel­oped main­ly in the north and west of Eng­land and I sus­pect that non­con­for­mi­ty comes out of that rad­i­cal spir­it – which needs to be rekin­dled, not in ways manip­u­lat­ed by the Mur­doch press or the Con­ser­v­a­tive Par­ty or Ukip but much more in the way that William Blake under­stood, of con­nect­ing with the spir­it of the land. 

I’d be remiss if I didn’t add that we ran a nice piece by McIn­tosh in the Feb­ru­ary issue of Friends Jour­nal. He talked about Thomas Mer­ton, the Catholic monk with Quak­er roots. Again, our spir­i­tu­al­i­ty in context.

Alas­tair McIntosh

Bono’s Christianity

December 26, 2013
· Martin Kelley

U2’s singer talks about God:

Reli­gion can be the ene­my of God. It’s often what hap­pens when God, like Elvis, has left the build­ing. [laughs] A list of instruc­tions where there was once con­vic­tion; dog­ma where once peo­ple just did it; a con­gre­ga­tion led by a man where once they were led by the Holy Spir­it. Dis­ci­pline replac­ing dis­ci­ple­ship. Why are you chuckling?

More on Frank Viola’s blog

Pew survey on dogma and spirituality

July 1, 2008
· Martin Kelley

Sur­vey: More have dropped dog­ma for spir­i­tu­al­i­ty in U.S. — USATO​DAY​.com

“Every reli­gious group has a major chal­lenge on its hands from all direc­tions,” says [Pew Forum direc­tor Luis] Lugo. When he fac­tors in Pew’s Feb­ru­ary find­ings that 44% of adults say they’ve switched to anoth­er reli­gion or none at all, Lugo says, “You have to won­der: How do you guar­an­tee the integri­ty of a reli­gious tra­di­tion when so many peo­ple are com­ing or going or fol­low­ing ideas that don’t match up?”

Lugo’s ques­tions is par­tic­u­lar­ly rel­e­vant for Friends, as many of us are con­verts. But the gen­er­al turn toward a more expe­ri­en­tial reli­gios­i­ty points to pos­si­bil­i­ties for fur­ther out­reach. Don’t have the time to check the sur­vey itself but USATo­day looks to have some good graphs about it.

The Lost Quaker Generation

September 30, 2003
· Martin Kelley

The oth­er day I had lunch with an old friend of mine, a thirty-something Quak­er very involved in nation-wide paci­fist orga­niz­ing. I had lost touch with him after he entered a fed­er­al jail for par­tic­i­pat­ing in a Plow­shares action but he’s been out for a few years and is now liv­ing in Philly.

We talked about a lot of stuff over lunch, some of it just move­ment gos­sip. But we also talked about spir­i­tu­al­i­ty. He has left the Soci­ety of Friends and has become re-involved in his par­ents’ reli­gious tra­di­tions. It did­n’t sound like this deci­sion had to do with any new reli­gious rev­e­la­tion that involved a shift of the­ol­o­gy. He sim­ply became frus­trat­ed at the lack of Quak­er seriousness.

It’s a dif­fer­ent kind of frus­tra­tion than the one I feel but I won­der if it’s not all con­nect­ed. He was drawn to Friends because of their mys­ti­cism and their pas­sion for non­vi­o­lent social change. It was this com­bi­na­tion that has helped pow­er his social action wit­ness over the years. It would seem like his seri­ous, faith­ful work would be just what Friends would like to see in their thirty-something mem­bers but alas, it’s not so. He did­n’t feel sup­port­ed in his Plow­shares action by his Meeting.

He con­clud­ed that the Friends in his Meet­ing did­n’t think the Peace Tes­ti­mo­ny could actu­al­ly inspire us to be so bold. He said two of his Quak­er heroes were John Wool­man and Mary Dyer but real­ized that the pas­sion of wit­ness that drove them was­n’t appre­ci­at­ed by today’s peace and social con­cerns com­mit­tees. The rad­i­cal mys­ti­cism that is sup­posed to dri­ve Friends’ prac­tice and actions have been replaced by a bland­ness that felt threat­ened by some­one who could choose to spend years in jail for his witness.

I can relate to his dis­ap­point­ment. I wor­ry about what kinds of actions are being done in the name of the Peace Tes­ti­mo­ny, which has lost most of its his­toric mean­ing and pow­er among con­tem­po­rary Friends. It’s invoked most often now by sec­u­lar­ized, safe com­mit­tees that use a ratio­nal­ist approach to their decision-making, meant to appeal to oth­ers (includ­ing non-Friends) based sole­ly on the mer­its of the argu­ments. NPR activism, you might say. Reli­gion isn’t brought up, except in the rather weak for­mu­la­tions that Friends are “a com­mu­ni­ty of faith” or believe there is “that of God in every­one” (what­ev­er these phras­es mean). That we are led to act based on instruc­tions from the Holy Spir­it direct­ly is too off the deep end for many Friends, yet the peace tes­ti­mo­ny is fun­da­men­tal­ly a tes­ti­mo­ny to our faith in God’s pow­er over human­i­ty, our sur­ren­der to the will of Christ enter­ing our hearts with instruc­tions which demand our obedience.

But back to my friend, the ex-Friend. I feel like he’s just anoth­er eroded-away grain of sand in the delta of Quak­er decline. He’s yet anoth­er Friend that Quak­erism can’t afford to loose, but which Quak­erism has lost. No one’s mourn­ing the fact that he’s lost, no one has bare­ly noticed. Know­ing Friends, the few that have noticed have prob­a­bly not spent any time reach­ing out to him to ask why or see if things could change and they prob­a­bly defend their inac­tion with self-congratulatory pap about how Friends don’t pros­e­ly­tize and look how lib­er­al we are that we say noth­ing when Friends leave.

God!, this is ter­ri­ble. I know of DOZENS of friends in my gen­er­a­tion who have drift­ed away from or deci­sive­ly left the Soci­ety of Friends because it was­n’t ful­fill­ing its promise or its hype. No one in lead­er­ship posi­tions in Quak­erism is talk­ing about this lost gen­er­a­tion. I know of very few thirty-something Friends who are involved nowa­days and very very few of them are the kind of pas­sion­ate, mys­ti­cal, obedient-to-the-Spirit ser­vants that Quak­erism needs to bring some life back into it. A whole gen­er­a­tion is lost – my fel­low thirty-somethings – and now I see the pas­sion­ate twenty-somethings I know start­ing to leave. Yet this exo­dus is one-by-one and goes large­ly unre­marked and unno­ticed (but then I’ve already post­ed about this: It will be in decline our entire lives).

 

Update 10/2005

I feel like I should add an adden­dum to all this. As I’ve spo­ken with more Friends of all gen­er­a­tions, I’ve noticed that the atten­tion to younger Friends is cycli­cal. There’s a thirty-year cycle of snub­bing younger Friends (by which I mean Friends under 40). Back in the 1970s, all twenty-year-old with a pulse could get recog­ni­tion and sup­port from Quak­er meet­ings; I know a lot of Friends of that gen­er­a­tion who were giv­en tremen­dous oppor­tu­ni­ties despite lit­tle expe­ri­ence. A decade lat­er the doors had start­ed to close but a hard-working faith­ful Friend in their ear­ly twen­ties could still be rec­og­nized. By the time my gen­er­a­tion came along, you could be a whirl­wind of great ideas and ener­gy and still be shut out of all oppor­tu­ni­ties to serve the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends.

The good news is that I think things are start­ing to change. There’s still a long way to go but a thaw is upon us. In some ways this is inevitable: much of the cur­rent lead­er­ship of Quak­er insti­tu­tions is retir­ing. Even more, I think they’re start­ing to real­ize it. There are prob­lems, most notably tokenism — almost all of the younger Friends being lift­ed up now are the chil­dren of promi­nent “com­mit­tee Friends.” The biggest prob­lem is that a few dozen years of lax reli­gious edu­ca­tion and “roll your own Quak­erism” means that many of the mem­bers of the younger gen­er­a­tion can’t even be con­sid­ered spir­i­tu­al Quak­ers. Our meet­ing­hous­es are seen as a place to meet oth­er cool, pro­gres­sive young hip­sters, while spir­i­tu­al­i­ty is sought from oth­er sources. We’re going to be spend­ing decades untan­gling all this and we’re not going to have the sea­soned Friends of my gen­er­a­tion to help bridge the gaps.

Relat­ed Reading

  • After my friend Chris post­ed below I wrote a follow-up essay, Pass­ing the Faith, Plan­et of the Quak­ers Style.
  • Many old­er Friends hope that a resur­gence of the peace move­ment might come along and bring younger Friends in. In Peace and Twenty-Somethings I look at the gen­er­a­tional strains in the peace movement.
  • Beck­ey Phipps con­duct­ed a series of inter­views that touched on many of these issues and pub­lished it in FGCon­nec­tions. FGC Reli­gious Edu­ca­tion: Lessons for the 21st Cen­tu­ry asks many of the right ques­tions. My favorite line: “It is the most amaz­ing thing, all the kids that I know that have gone into [Quak­er] lead­er­ship pro­grams – they’ve disappeared.”