This is a cool painting of the 1840 Anti-Slavery Society Convention that we’ll be using to accompany an upcoming Friends Journal article on Lucretia Mott.
Lots of cool things about this. #1 is that we made positive ID of the picture via Google Goggles mobile image search (technology FTW!). #2 is that the image map on the linked page lets you pick out a number of the participants; Lucretia’s not labeled but presumably she’s the woman next to James Mott, who’s near the right side looking down. #3 is that the fiery speaker is none other than Thomas Clarkson, the Anglican whose Portraiture of Quakerism is a must-read for the Quaker geek set.
Template:Anti-Slavery Society Convention 1840 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
From the Friends Speaks My Mind podcast
“Doug Gwyn, author of several books on the theology of early Friends including Apocalypse of the Word, and Conversation with Christ, is currently writing and teaching at Pendle Hill outside of Philadelphia. I caught up with him to discuss the history of Friends and social justice. What was it that made Friends so radical in England during the 1650s? How did circumstance and personality shape the movement? And what can we learn from early Friends’ missteps?”
Fox News: Second Occupy Camp evicted from Philly. Sharon G, the second Quaker interviewed, said that after the reporter interviewed her he said “what you do to the least of these…”
She writes:
Over the past decade I have attempted to help tell the stories of my generation, Quaker youth living their faith in inspiring contemporary ways. Tags: quaker youth midwest witness http://dlvr.it/zYQGx
If we’re not participants in that promise and in that hope of a God present to us now, we are in a dead religion. If so, we’re in a religion of people who have come and gone; it does not belong to us; it is meaningless to us except as “pie in the sky by and by.” Tags: quaker evangelical oregon blogs http://dlvr.it/zJ4hD
Hidden City Philly on early Quaker cave-dwellers.
Teaching First Day School in a liberal unprogrammed Friends meeting is a strange and wonderful business. Somehow you have to transmit whatever it is that is going on mostly in silence among the adults in the next room, without any hint of indoctrination… You soon find yourself navigating between Scylla and Charybdis, your sails flapping ineffectually before the feeble winds of your own insecurity. This has led to some of my most distressing episodes as an FDS teacher and some of the funniest. Tags: quaker youth ministry seeker firstdayschool http://dlvr.it/zF7X9
Our Quaker tradition can help bring about that change: in answering that of God in us, it can open our eyes to the marginalized reality of the Christ-power in our hearts. That power, as we attend to it, begins to rend, to tear open, the closed world in which we have been living. Tags: quaker baltimore liberal theology http://dlvr.it/zDtXL
From the editor: “We are building a team with sufficient numbers that no volunteer needs to commit more than a few of hours per month.”
We wrestled considerably with the issue for over an hour. Quaker process gives every attender a voice, which is fair and democratic, but also time consuming. An issue is not said to reach consensus…
I gave a talk to Abington’s First-day school program this morning and took some pictures beforehand. This was my first meeting, which I first walked into almost a quarter century ago (gasp!)
Post: http://dlvr.it/mjhjK
“Our words can get in the way of hearing each other” was a comment and a sentiment that was expressed by many Friends. If there was a theme to emerge from this years activities at Yearly Meeting then it was about the limitations of language… We make assumptions, use words sloppily or too carelessly, to attack or silence each other or that have this unintended effect on each other.
A pioneering educator and Friend from South Jersey, she apparently developed a precursor to modern Quaker worship sharing:
After 1941, a greater effort was made my Dr. DuBois and her associates to involve adults and teachers in the programs of the Workshop. A “new social invention” called the “Neighborhood Home Festival” or “Group Conversation” technique was developed, which became the stock-in-trade of the Workshop. In brief, this technique called for the gathering together of 20 to 40 individuals of diverse backgrounds and the collective recall of childhood memories touching on such universal themes as the change of seasons, work, holidays, home customs, etc. The technique was used in a number of “tension areas” of New York City to promote more amicable relations between parents of different ethnic and racial groups. The story of one such program at Public School 165 was chronicled by Dr. DuBois in her book Neighbors in Action (1950).
Worship sharing is the least of it though. It sounds like she practically started ethnic appreciation school assemblies and worked with folks like Martin Luther King Jr. Sounds like a pretty neat lady and I’m ashamed she’s just one of those “kind of familiar” names.
And an update: Bill Rushby over on QuakerQuaker found this 2003 article on DuBois on the FGC website—and guess what, I was the one who posted it and the picture way back when. That’s why it’s a “kind of familiar” name to me! Bill also shared about being in a worship sharing session led by DuBois in the early 1960s and gives a very fine testimony to its power!
"So why did early Friends actually engage in corporate discernment? They already had community, without seeking it, amongst themselves. Early Friends understood that God does not just address and teach individuals as individuals: God also addresses and teaches His people as a people."
"Thou me, thou my Dog! If thou thou’st me, I’ll thou thy Teeth down thy Throat."
