George gives the camera a steely‐TV‐anchorman‐type look and says, “Hello, this is the evening edition of Fox News. George Fox speaking. For our first story, let’s turn to Will ‘the Quill’ Penn at the sports desk.”

“Good evening,” says Will. “Well, it’s half‐time over at Sierra Friends Center’s outdoor basketball court, and the Woolman Wombats are battling it out with the Quaker Oafs. Both teams just completed the league’s required workshops on nonviolent communication and the Alternatives to Violence Project. The score at half‐time is zero to zero. We have some footage from the second quarter.”

Fox News: George Fox Speaking

Our favorite news anchor goes on location with Will “The Quill” Penn and an assortment of dubiously fact-checked…

Friends Journal

I must admit that the world of YouTube stars is foreign to me. This is essentially a webcam vlog post but the lighting and hair and costuming is meticulous. Her notes include affiliate links for the dress she’s wearing ($89 and yes, they ship internationally), a 8 1/2 minute video tutorial about curling you hair in her vintage style (it has over 33,000 views). If you follow her on Instagram and Twitter you’ll soon have enough details on  lipstick and shoe choices to be able to fully cosplay her.

But don’t laugh too much, because in between the self presentation tips, Kellgren-Fozard tackles really hard subjects–growing up gay in school, living with disabilities–in ways that are approachable and intimate, funny and instructive. And with a quarter million YouTube followers, she’s reaching people with a message of kindness and inclusion and understanding that feels pretty Quakerly to me. Margaret Fell liked herself a red dress sometimes and it’s easy to argue George Fox would be a YouTuber today.

Bonus:  Jessica Kellgren-Fozard will host a live Q&A chat on her Quakerism this coming Monday. If I’m calculating my timezones correctly, it’ll be noon here on the U.S. East Coast. I plan to tune in.

Hello! I’m studying The Friends Church for academic purposes and I’d love to hear from someone with firsthand experience. How easy is it to become a quaker? Do you ever feel people treat you differently because you’re a quaker? Do you think there should be more representation of quakers in the media? Thank you so much for your time. I’m very eager to hear back from you!

Since my experience is just one data point, I hope others will use the comment section below to add their stories.

I found becoming a Quaker to be something of a spiral process. I first walked into a Friends meetinghouse at the age of 20 and only slowly took on an identity as a Friend. At each step of the process, I learned more clearly what that might mean and have strived to grow into deeper faithfulness. I didn’t formally apply for membership until a decade or so after I became a regular attender. This time lag is not unheard of but I don’t think it’s usual. It’s more of an insight into my own carefulness and reticence about joining things than it is an indication of anything the meetings I attended required. When I did finally apply for membership I was quite qualified and wanted the clearness process to be exacting: again, this is an insight into my psyche!

Most people on the street don’t quite know what Quakers are so I can’t say I’m always treated differently. I guess seeing more Quakers in the media would be helpful, though given our overall small numbers I suspect even our fleeting appearances in TV shows and movies are more than we might proportionally expect.

I’m interested to hear how other Friends would answer Ruby’s question.

Update: reader answers by email and commentary

Jessica F: I’ve wanted to be a Quaker since I learned about the Abolitionists who helped with the Underground Railroad and prison reform. Unfortunately, the movie Gentle Persuasion presented Quakers as being against music so I became a Unitarian instead. Eventually I learned that wasn’t true for many Quakers and I found that all of the values I had developed through the years were also Quaker values and so becoming a Quaker gave me a support system and a community of like minds.

We’ve seen seemingly stable countries fall apart under conditions like this. We claim American exceptionalism but history is littered with the corpses of democracies that didn’t make it. This will be the biggest test of our civic values in our lifetimes. We might well experience things the American republic has never seen: the imprisonment of a losing opposition leader, the rise of organized hate crimes, wholesale theft of incredible wealth by a new oligarchy, the divying up of the world back into empires… The model of a kind of alt right soft dictatorship is well developed by this point and Trump has been clear throughout both his career and his candidacy that it’s his vision.

We do not get to choose our era or the challenges it throws at us. Only someone with historical amnesia would say this is unprecedented in our history. The enslavement of millions and the genocide of millions more are dark stains indelibly soaked into the very founding of the nation. But much will change, particularly our naivity and false optimism in an inevitable forward progress of our national story. We must respond with courage and grace. We’re going to get a lesson in what’s really important. Time to engage.

Metropolis is a “news, analysis and commentary” site from veteran Philadelphia reporter Tom Ferrick (Wikipedia). An alum of The Philadelphia Inquirer, Tom’s spent the last half-dozen years talking to everyone who will listen about the future of print and Philly news. He’s done talking and is showing what can be done on a budget budget. From “This is Metropolis,” the lead article:

Local newspapers, TV and radio stations are retreating from in-depth coverage of regional news either due to economic or audience considerations.

The retreat has been gradual, but no one expects it to stop. The company that owns the region’s largest newspapers — the Inquirer and Daily News — is in bankruptcy. The size of the editorial staffs at the papers continues to shrink. The prognosis for metro dailies here and elsewhere is not good. The journalism practiced by these papers is still robust, but the economic model that has sustained it is eroding. If these traditional sources of news falter or fail what will take their place?

The site was built in Movable Type. The most prominent feature is the slideshow display of featured articles. Tom has seen a similar effect on another journalism site and a search found the “Sliding Horizontal Banner Rotator” at Active Den, a great site to purchase pre-built Flash files. Movable Type entries are outfitted with custom fields to enter images and links. Movable Type then creates a custom XML file for the “Main Stories” feed, which is then picked up and displayed by the Flash banner. In addition, the site uses Google Adsense to provide income.

Visit: Philadelphia Metropolis

Client Testimonial:

“The list allowed me to click only three attributes, but for Martin I wanted to check them all. He is a wonderful, personable, creative person who also happens to be unflappable. I highly recommend his for web design.“
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Hired Martin as a Graphic/Web Designer in 2009
Top Qualities: Great Results, Personable, Good Value.

Father went to college (he was secretive about past, he might have done a semester at St Joe’s)
Father finished college
Mother went to college (two year secretarial program)
Mother finished college
Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor.
Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers
Had more than 50 books in your childhood home
Had more than 500 books in your childhood home
Were read children’s books by a parent
Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18
Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18
The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively (because we’re good assimilationists)
Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18
Had to take out less than $5000 in student loans in order to go to college
Didn’t need student loans to go to college out of high school
Went to a private high school
Went to summer camp (day camp at the Y for a few summers)
Had a private tutor before you turned 18
Family vacations involved staying at hotels
Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18 (pride kept us out of second-hand stores until we later crossed that class boundary where thrifting is cool precisely because its not a necessity)
Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them
There was original art in your house when you were a child
Had a phone in your room before you turned 18
You and your family lived in a single family house
Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home
You had your own room as a child (I was the only child at home after age 7)
Participated in an SAT/ACT prep course (my mom thought they were cheating)
Had your own TV in your room in High School (mostly as monitor for Radio Shack Color Computer she bought me junior year of high school)
Owned a mutual fund or IRA in High School or College
Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16
Went on a cruise with your family
Went on more than one cruise with your family
Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up (we were more zoo/county fair/Independence Hall tour types (hey, they’re all free/low-cost!))
You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family (n/a: included in apt rent, besides my mom would never let on that things were tight)

A list like this can never be all inclusive but it seems there are some big omissions. Where’s anything about family structure and finances, like “You had two parental figures living in your house” and “Both parents contributed to family income” or “One parent stayed home or worked part-time”? In my own instance, my father had a secret other family and never paid for anything other than the occasional trip to Roy Rogers (secret family to “Little Marty” at least, the women and older children presumably noitced he was only around half the time and constructed some mental run-around to explain it away).

The other omission is social networks. I have no memory of family friends. I cannot name one friend of my father and my mother’s friends were limited to a handful of “girls” at the office. By the time I got to high school I started to see how certain classmates were able to work the system to get the best teachers and classes and this was mostly accomplished by parents swapping notes after Hewbrew class or at church or at hockey practice. Friends are rightly noted for the strength of their social networks and I suspect these provide a social privilege that is far more valuable than parental salary.

Jeanne promises to write a part two to her post explaining what this all means to Friends. I’m looking forward to it though I’m unsure just what easy generalization can be made if we’re looking at origins. One of the few surveys trying to be comprehensive found Philadelphia-area Friends don’t reflect American averages yet for many convinced Friends our participation has mirrored (and perhaps been unconsciously motivated by) an upward class mobility. Keep an eye on Social Class & Quakers for more!

For fairness sake, here’s “Theo”:/theo with the Thomas/Gordan song: