My experience of Quakerism has always been tinged with a palpable awareness of its impending demise. When I first became a Quaker during my time living in Mexico City, I remember walking with a respected elder from Pacific Yearly Meeting who confided in me, I don’t know whether Quakerism will survive. This question of denominational…
Have you ever studied another language? You memorize vocabulary and verb conjugations. You get ready for quizzes and drills. If you’re a particularly good student, you may get these basics down well enough that you’re able to have real conversations and write passable essays in your new language. This is where most of us stop….
Stand still in that which shows and discovers, and then does strength immediately come. And stand still in the light, and submit to it, and the other will be hushed and gone. And then contentment comes. – from George Fox’s Epistle X At our Fall Gathering this past weekend, the Friends of Jesus Fellowship had…
When I was a kid, my family was part of what I would consider a fairly traditional Quaker church. We attended for a couple of hours every Sunday morning. On a typical Sunday, there would be about 200 of us in the sanctuary (that was our word for the room where we held worship). We…
Quaker Life Magazine just published an excellent article by David Johns, entitled Moving Forward, or Circling the Wagons? In his essay, David challenges the tendency of modern Friends to make Quakerism the center and focus of our faith. He writes: All along the spectrum of Quakerism, from evangelical to liberal to everything in between and…
One of the core teachings of the Quaker movement is that Christ is inwardly present in all times and all places. In seventeenth-century England, when holiness was restricted the tightly controlled religious rituals of an elite clergy, Friends made the bold claim that the real presence of Jesus was not to be found in the…
Throughout the gospel accounts, Jesus tells us that good works are an essential demonstration of faith. Good trees cannot bear bad fruit, and every branch that is connected to the True Vine will bear fruit. We know that bearing fruit involves a process of pruning, transforming all those things that get in the way of…