Paul Parker: 5 ways to make Quaker meeting houses work for the future

August 24, 2018

The record­ing clerk of Britain Year­ly Meet­ing looks at five ways we can keep our wor­ship spaces active and visible:

We can often get very loy­al to our meet­ing places, and I think that’s nat­ur­al. We’ve often had some of our most pro­found per­son­al expe­ri­ences there. They are impor­tant places of com­mu­ni­ty and wor­ship, and they can and do work hard for us. But our loy­al­ty to them does­n’t mean that they’re going to work for every­one, and if they’re not going to become ‘steeple hous­es’, then I think it’s impor­tant that we look at them every now and again and ask our­selves some questions. 

http://www.quaker.org.uk/blog/5‑ways-to-make-quaker-meeting-houses-work-for-the-future

Emily Provance: An Application of Cultural Theory

August 23, 2018

Inter­est­ing appli­ca­tion of busi­ness the­o­ry to dif­fer­ent types of Quak­er cultures:

Did you iden­ti­fy the cul­ture type of your Quak­er faith com­mu­ni­ty — more specif­i­cal­ly, the por­tion of that com­mu­ni­ty where you spend the most time? It’s pos­si­ble that yours might be a pret­ty even tie between two cul­ture types, but it’s less help­ful if you say “we’re not real­ly any of these.” Iden­ti­fy one or two that seem rel­e­vant and work with it for a few min­utes here. Nobody’s look­ing over your shoulder. 

I’m par­tic­u­lar­ly intrigued by her place­ment of the chil­dren’s pro­gram cul­ture out­side of the ones she assigns her meet­ing. I’ve met teens who grew up embed­ded in Quak­er youth cul­ture who are sur­prised when they hit adult­hood and real­ize that they don’t con­nect with any of the adult activ­i­ties. Back in the day I was part of Young Adult Friends pro­grams that were part­ly attempts to con­tin­ue that Young Friends cul­ture in place in a twenty-something con­text. Acknowl­edg­ing that there are some­times fun­da­men­tal cul­tur­al dif­fer­ences at work seems like a good start. Also, don’t miss Emi­ly’s piece in the cur­rent Friends Jour­nal, The Grief and the Promised Land.

Nav­i­gat­ing Dif­fer­ences: An Appli­ca­tion of Cul­tur­al Theory

Isaac Smith: Good soil

August 23, 2018

An obser­va­tion on the soil of God’s work — us:

For many of us, our predica­ment today seems most like the soil with the thorns: We want to draw clos­er to God and walk in God’s ways, but there is so much bad news, so many oblig­a­tions, so many dis­trac­tions. We can be led astray, some­times with­out even know­ing it. The founder of our move­ment, George Fox, once said that “what­ev­er ye are addict­ed to, the Tempter will come in that thing; and when he can trou­ble you, then he gets advan­tage over you, and then ye are gone.” We can be addict­ed to many things: not just, say, alco­hol or gam­bling, but ideas, both about the world and about ourselves. 

Alone, none of us can do much to change the world. But we can allow our­selves to be instru­ments of peace, rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, love. It’s easy to get stuck and tempt­ing in those times to get defen­sive or look toward oth­ers. I’ve found the old Quak­er take on “The Tempter” to be per­son­al­ly very use­ful. I’ve learned to ques­tion and go inward when­ev­er I feel too much pride in some­thing or find myself part of a group that seems self-satisfied with its work. 

Good soil

Cool historical find of the day

August 9, 2018

This is total­ly cool. The His­toric Charleston Foun­dation in South Car­oli­na is restor­ing the Natha­nial Rus­sell House, a remark­able exam­ple of neo­clas­si­cal archi­tec­ture on the Nation­al His­toric Reg­is­ter, and found a frag­ment what they list as 1868 Friends Intel­li­gencer above the kitchen firebox.

More fas­ci­nat­ing dis­cov­er­ies from the walls of the #rus­sell­house­k­itchen – new arti­facts were extract­ed from cav­i­ties above the kitchen fire­box on the first floor! This lat­est batch of arti­facts dates to the 1850’s and 1860’s, which I think we can agree is an inter­est­ing and… frac­tious time in Charleston’s his­to­ry. The most intrigu­ing scrap of paper recov­ered from the walls is pic­tured here: a page ripped from a Quak­er peri­od­i­cal enti­tled “Friends’ Intel­li­gencer,” pub­lished in Philadel­phia in 1868.

Who were the Friends in Charleston in the years right after the Civ­il War? Was the Intel­li­gencer hid­den or just recy­cled to plug up a draft? I won­der if this could be relat­ed to Quak­er relief work in South Car­oli­na. The most well-known exam­ple was the Penn School on St Hele­na Island, found­ed by north­ern Uni­tar­i­ans and Quak­ers in 1862 to edu­cate freed Gul­lah after the slave­own­ers fled Union troops.

Curi­ous about the frag­ment, I typed a few of its leg­i­ble words into Google and sure enough, they’ve scanned that vol­ume of the Intel­li­gencer (hat­tip to my FJ col­league Gail, who found this link). It shows a date of Fourth Month 20, 1868, though curi­ous­ly FI also repub­lished it in 1874, which I first found. The poem is cred­it­ed to Bessie Charles, the Eng­lish poet also cred­it­ed as Eliz­a­beth Bun­dle Charles; it seems to have been pub­lished in var­i­ous col­lec­tions around that time. The Intel­li­gencer con­tin­ues today of course.

A New Quakerism

July 30, 2018

A cyn­ic might file this under “hope springs eternal”:

A phrase that keeps com­ing to mind is “a new Quak­erism,” and odd­ly enough, I’ve been hear­ing oth­er Friends unknow­ing­ly echo this phrase back to me. It seems to me that many Friends, even those who con­sid­er them­selves “con­vinced,” are hun­gry for more than what the Soci­ety has to offer.

Of course it’s part of our tra­di­tion that it needs to be for­ev­er reborn. You can’t recy­cle ser­mons or use the prop of your uni­ver­si­ty learn­ing as a crutch. We are nev­er to know what might hap­pen when wor­ship starts, since the idea is that it’s direct­ly led in the moment by Christ. It’s also a part of our tra­di­tion that forms are for­ev­er cal­ci­fy­ing and that we need to remem­ber why we’re here and who’s brought us togeth­er. Glad to see the work continue.

A New Quakerism

Peterson Toscano is a reluctant minister

July 12, 2018

This week’s fea­tured arti­cle over at Friends Jour­nal is Peter­son Toscano’s “A Reluc­tant Min­is­ter.”

Satire and irony, espe­cial­ly when it is sub­tle, done in char­ac­ter, or relies on tone can be mis­un­der­stood when tak­en lit­er­al­ly. Friends can get so caught up in the words that we miss the point. It is nev­er fun explain­ing a joke to a Friend, but even that inter­ac­tion is part of the work of pre­sent­ing per­for­mance art for Quak­ers. We are com­mit­ted to fair­ness and love. Com­e­dy can be used to hurt oth­ers or to make light of seri­ous issues. Unpack­ing a joke can lead to rich dis­cus­sion. I seek to use com­e­dy to shed light on impor­tant issues. Still, some Friends pre­fer the straight­for­ward mes­sage over the com­ic performance. 

I real­ly appre­ci­ate the care and hon­esty that Peter­son has put into defin­ing his work. It would be so easy for him to label his per­for­mance art as min­istry and wear it as a cloak of respectabil­i­ty. Much of his work does indeed act as min­istry and he uses a clear­ness com­mit­tee as a Quak­er dis­cern­ment tool. But he wants to keep a space open for what you might call artis­tic con­fu­sion and so describes him­self as a “the­atri­cal per­for­mance activist.”

When the pen­du­lum began trend toward re-embracing the ideas of min­istry with­in Lib­er­al Quak­erism some years back, many forms of pub­lic work start­ed being labeled min­istry. It might be a sign of the incom­plete­ness of our follow-through that few of the peo­ple com­ing for­ward with min­istries felt com­fort­able call­ing them­selves min­is­ters. I like the idea of keep­ing middle-ground spaces that we don’t try to arti­fi­cial­ly kludge into clas­sic Quak­er models. 

Henry Cadbury’s 1934 speech and us

June 28, 2018

In 1934, Philadel­phia Friend and co-founder of the Amer­i­can Friends Ser­vice Com­mit­tee Hen­ry Cad­bury gave a speech to a con­fer­ence of Amer­i­can rab­bis in which he urged them to call off a boy­cott of Nazi Ger­many. A New York Times report about the speech was tweet­ed out last week and has gone viral over the inter­net. The 1930s does­n’t look so far away in an era when author­i­tar­i­ans are on the rise and lib­er­als wor­ry about the lines of civil­i­ty and fairness.

Make no mis­take: Cad­bury’s speech is cringe­wor­thy. Some of the quotes as report­ed by the Times:

You can prove to your oppres­sors that their objec­tives and meth­ods are not only wrong, but unavail­ing in the face of the world’s protests and uni­ver­sal dis­ap­proval of the injus­tices the Hitler pro­gram entails.

By hat­ing Hitler and try­ing to fight back, Jews are only increas­ing the sever­i­ty of his poli­cies against them.

If Jews through­out the world try to instill into the minds of Hitler and his sup­port­ers recog­ni­tion of the ideals for which the race stands, and if Jews appeal to the Ger­man sense of jus­tice and the Ger­man nation­al con­science, I am sure the prob­lem will be solved more effec­tive­ly and ear­li­er than otherwise.

The idea that we might be able to appease Hitler was obvi­ous­ly wrong-headed. To tell Jews that they should do this is patron­iz­ing to the extreme.

But in many ways, all this is also vin­tage Quak­er. It is in line with how many Friends saw them­selves in the world. To under­stand Cad­bury’s reac­tion, you have to know that Quak­ers of the era were very sus­pi­cious of col­lec­tive action. He described any boy­cott of Nazi Ger­many as a kind of war­fare. They felt this way too about union­iza­tion – work­ers get­ting togeth­er on strike were war­ring against the fac­to­ry owners.

When John Wool­man spoke out about slav­ery in the 1700s, he went one-on-one as a min­is­ter to fel­low Quak­ers. Dur­ing the Civ­il War, Friends wrote let­ters one-on-one with Abra­ham Lin­coln urg­ing him to seek peace (they got some return let­ters too!). Cad­bury naive­ly thought that these sorts of per­son­al tac­tics could yield results against author­i­tar­i­an twentieth-century states.

Miss­ing in Cad­bury’s analy­sis is an appre­ci­a­tion of how much the con­cen­tra­tion of pow­er in indus­tri­al­iz­ing soci­eties and the growth of a man­age­r­i­al class between own­ers and work­ers has changed things. Work­ers nego­ti­at­ing one-on-one with an owner/operator in a fac­to­ry with twen­ty work­ers is very dif­fer­ent than nego­ti­at­ing in a fac­to­ry of thou­sands run by a CEO on behalf of hun­dreds of stock­hold­ers. Ger­many as a uni­fied state was only a dozen years old when Cad­bury was born. The era of total war was still rel­a­tive­ly new and many peo­ple naive­ly thought a rule of law could pre­vail after the First World War. The idea of indus­tri­al­iz­ing pogroms and killing Jews by the mil­lions must have seen fantastical.

Some of this world­view also came from the­ol­o­gy: if we have direct access to the divine, then we can appeal to that of God in our adver­sary and win his or her heart and soul with­out resort to coer­cion. It’s a nice sen­ti­ment and it even some­times works.

I won’t claim that all Friends have aban­doned this world­view, but I would say it’s a polit­i­cal minor­i­ty, espe­cial­ly with more activist Friends. We under­stand the world bet­ter and rou­tine­ly use boy­cotts as a strate­gic lever. Cad­bury’s Amer­i­can Friends Ser­vice Com­mit­tee itself piv­ot­ed away from the kind of direct aid work that had exem­pli­fied its ear­ly years. For half a cen­tu­ry it has been work­ing in strate­gic advocacy.

Friends still have prob­lems. We’re still way more stuck on racial issues among our­selves than one would think we would be giv­en our par­tic­i­pa­tion in Civ­il Rights activism. Like many in the U.S., we’re strug­gling with the lim­i­ta­tion of civil­i­ty in a polit­i­cal sys­tem where rules have bro­ken down. No AFSC head would give a lec­ture like Cad­bury’s today. But I think it’s good to know where we come from. Some of Cad­bury’s cau­tions might still hold lessons for us; under­stand­ing his blind spots could help expose ours.