Tag Archives ⇒ time

Worship Sharing and Vocal Ministry

July 9, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Wor­ship Shar­ing and Vocal Ministry

Very often, if we had just heard the les­son with­out its per­son­al and often anec­do­tal pre­am­ble, it would have felt much more like Spirit-led vocal min­istry. So why quib­ble about it? Because, by the time we get the les­son, it is so sat­u­rat­ed with “I” that it has trou­ble lift­ing off the ground to trans­form the We. Our con­scious­ness has been so deeply drawn into per­son­al­i­ty that it hin­ders the transper­son­al char­ac­ter we hope for in vocal ministry.

Wor­ship Shar­ing and Vocal Ministry

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.

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by inQuak­ers

Introduction to “The Christian Universalism of George Fox”

June 2, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Intro­duc­tion to “The Chris­t­ian Uni­ver­sal­ism of George Fox”

Since Benson’s time, denominational-mindedness has gained ground among Quak­ers, and a diver­si­ty of philoso­phies is now seen as valid not only for those out­side of the Soci­ety but for those with­in. A tight­en­ing con­for­mi­ty to the doc­trine of indi­vid­u­al­ism has accel­er­at­ed the pro­lif­er­a­tion of ide­olo­gies with­in the Soci­ety. Resist­ed by most is the obser­va­tion that human nature is intrin­sic and uni­ver­sal, the same in every time and place, and that Jesus Christ speaks to this uni­ver­sal condition.

https://​patradall​mann​.word​press​.com/​2​0​1​8​/​0​6​/​0​2​/​i​n​t​r​o​d​u​c​t​i​o​n​-​t​o​-​t​h​e​-​c​h​r​i​s​t​i​a​n​-​u​n​i​v​e​r​s​a​l​i​s​m​-​o​f​-​g​e​o​r​g​e​-​f​ox/

Creativity and the Arts

June 1, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Hap­py first of the month. The new issue of Friends Jour­nal is up and it’s a great one: Cre­ativ­i­ty and the Arts. This is actu­al­ly the first issue on the arts since the mag­a­zine went to col­or in 2013. Here’s a bit of the intro­duc­to­ry Among Friends col­umn writ­ten by yours tru­ly:

This overt dis­trust of the arts fad­ed away a long time ago. Today, the sheer vol­ume of cre­ativ­i­ty among Friends is impres­sive. When we put out a call for this issue, we had far more sub­mis­sions than we could pos­si­bly print. A dozen more artists told us they would love to write some­thing but were too busy cre­at­ing to do so at this time. Faced with a bit of a dilem­ma, we’ve cre­at­ed a sam­pler: each of the arti­cles in these pages rep­re­sents a dif­fer­ent facet of cre­ativ­i­ty among Friends.

Through­out the diverse dis­ci­plines of visu­al arts, music, writ­ing, pho­tog­ra­phy, community-based art, and per­for­mance art, a com­mon thread harks back to the con­cerns of those ear­li­er Friends: there’s still a con­sci­en­tious­ness around art.

I’ll talk more about indi­vid­ual arti­cles as we fea­ture them but in the mean­time, feel free to leave me your ini­tial thoughts in the com­ments below. Bummed that you did­n’t write any­thing? The issue on Meet­ings and Mon­ey is look­ing for sub­mis­sions.


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Page not found — Friends Journal 

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Skeletons (not even) in the closet

May 22, 2018
· Martin Kelley

This is a bit a gru­some sto­ry, though not as shock­ing at it should be. Louellen White, a researcher look­ing for bur­ial records of Native Amer­i­can chil­dren stum­bled on a Native Amer­i­can skull just sit­ting in a dis­play case of a old Philadel­phia meeting.

As White searched for grave­yard ledgers in the library — crammed with stuffed birds, cloth­ing, shells and books — she came upon the skull. Her legs wob­bled. And her stom­ach dropped. Arsenault-Cote offered advice and reas­sur­ance. “You’re out there look­ing for them, and now they’re show­ing them­selves to you,” she told White. “He’s been wait­ing a long time.” His­tor­i­cal­ly, Philadel­phia Quak­ers were “incon­sis­tent friends” to Indi­ans, engaged in the same col­o­niz­ing projects as oth­er faiths while see­ing them­selves as unique­ly able to edu­cate natives.

Incon­sis­tent is an apt word. Paula Palmer has been trac­ing the his­to­ry of Quak­er Indi­an Board­ing Schools: high-minded enter­pris­es that often for­ca­bly stripped her­itage from their pupils in ways that were as cul­tur­al­ly impe­r­i­al as they were unaware.

Byber­ry Meet­ing dates to the 1690s and the meet­ing­house grounds are full of abo­li­tion­ist his­to­ry. The skull was appar­ent­ly dug up in the mid-nineteenth cen­tu­ry as part of a near­by canal project and is thought to have come to the meet­ing­house as part of a col­lec­tion from a shut­tered his­tor­i­cal soci­ety. Its pres­ence on the shelf rep­re­sents the atti­tudes of Friends many decades ago who thought noth­ing of plac­ing a Lenape skull in a case. There’s also the sad sub­text that the meet­ing library is said to be so unused that most of the meet­ing’s con­tem­po­rary mem­bers had no idea it was there. It’s a shame that it took an out­side researcher to notice the skele­tons in our dis­play case.

https://​www​.philly​.com/​p​h​i​l​l​y​/​n​e​w​s​/​4​8​3​0​7​2​5​7​1​.​h​tml

President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminiary on Simon Jenkins article

May 15, 2018
· Martin Kelley

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

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

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

Mon­day, May 14, 2018

Letting your life speak in digital spaces

May 8, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Kath­leen Wooten has some tips on min­is­ter­ing in social spaces with­out “los­ing your san­i­ty”):

Devel­op per­son­al rules: These are spe­cif­ic to you. A few of mine…. Nev­er respond to an angry mes­sage from my phone. Always open a com­put­er, sit down inten­tion­al­ly, and if pos­si­ble wait 24 hours. ON social media – this might be a short­er time frame, but still, not until I can sit and cen­ter and not speak out of anger.


Letting your life speak in digital spaces (without losing your sanity)

Let­ting your life speak in dig­i­tal spaces (with­out los­ing your sanity) 

The inter­net is a very effec­tive tool.  Con­nect­ing, shar­ing, work, social inter­ac­tions – all can and do happen…

QuakerKathleen QuakerKathleen 

I’m not sure if I’ve ever writ­ten down my per­son­al guide­lines. Some of these are gener­ic to being a good online cit­i­zen (don’t feed trolls, don’t punch down, don’t respond in anger, dis­en­gage when a con­ver­sa­tion is obvi­ous­ly run­ning in circles).

Oth­er guide­lines of mine arguably come from Quak­er val­ues. For exam­ple, in gen­er­al I won’t men­tion some­one else on a forum in which they don’t appear. I’m espe­cial­ly wary on pri­vate Face­book groups, as they can eas­i­ly become forum for detrac­tion and us/them peer pres­sure.  The Tract Asso­ci­a­tion pam­phlet on detrac­tion is real­ly a must-read. It’s actu­al­ly prob­a­bly some­thing worth re-reading every six months. Read­ers: what kind of prac­tices have you devel­oped to be a respon­si­ble Quak­er online?