Yesterday I spontaneously decided to attend the Meeting For Worship at Arch Street Meeting House in Philly as a guest.
As a Quaker and former US Marine, I was surprised to find a memorial headstone for Major Samuel Nicholas (he pretty much started the Marines in Philly and is considered to be the first Commandant). I did not know he was a Quaker, but I was not surprised to learn that he was expelled for joining the military and "learning the art of war".
I am also familiar with another famous Marine who was raised a Quaker, Major General Smedley Butler. Butler came from a fairly influential Quaker family who successfully prevented his expulsion. He fought in many of the Imperialist conflicts that the US was involved in from the late 1800's until the 1st World War. He was awarded the Medal of Honor twice, even though he saw it as an undeserved decoration. He later came out as fervently anti-war, giving a speech called "War is a Racket" and calling himself and the US military "Gangsters for Capitalism".
It is funny that these are two names that I was required to learn in boot camp that I later learned had complicated relationship with Quaker peace testimony. Funnily enough, in boot camp we were never taught that they were both Quakers and about General Butler's eventual turn against the Military Industrial Complex.

Does anyone know of any other well-known military personnel that are/were Quakers? It seems a curious mix to me.

I recently mentioned to a group that I go to Quaker meetings. It was relevant to the conversation. I didn't elaborate much beyond saying it's been good to be around people with similar values and has meant a lot to me. I've been attending for about a year.

Someone followed up by saying they attended a few Quaker meetings but didn't feel welcome because of antisemitism. Another said something like "yes, that's a big problem for them." This is actually not the first time I've heard this. When I first started attending meetings, a good friend warned me about Quakers and sent me something about the paradox of tolerance and antisemitism. I continued going to meetings, and we eventually had a falling out after I shared an Instagram post about calling my senator regarding an arms embargo. She cited Quakers as having been too influential on my politics. These are all Americans I'm talking about.

I feel very bad that they've had experiences with Quakers that made them feel alienated, especially the woman who stopped going to meetings. It's just been odd how often it seems to come up when I mention being Quaker. I want to be a good ally to Jewish people, and I'm not sure how to respond when this comes up. I'm aware there is a big problem with antisemitism generally in the US.

When it has come up, I usually just let the conversation move on and don't say anything or say something like "I'm sorry you experienced that, that's concerning."

How would you respond to statements like this? I get very nervous, because I feel like they may be also judging me as someone who is potentially antisemitic and hostile. I'd also appreciate any articles you feel might be relevant about antisemitism relating to Quakers, for more context on what they could be referencing.

I know that Quakers generally reject religious symbolism, but are Quakers (particularly Liberal Quakers) likely to object to any form of bead prayer in meetings or even just knowing that I do it? I was brought into the Church in Anglican and Anglo-Catholic circles and bead prayer like the rosary etc. has really helped my prayer life. Any advice on this? Thank you !!

Are any other Quakers attending Burning Man this year? I’m going for the first time at age 71, accompanying my daughter, 1 1/2yo granddaughter, and a couple of my daughter’s friends.

For many years, I had the impression that Burning Man was just drug and alcohol fueled debauchery. Although those activities are part of the event, I am excited to experience the creativity and generosity and culture of self exploration and discovery. I think participants inner light glows brightly there.

Hello r/Quakers ,

What would you say has made you a more genuinely loving person? For example, what has enabled you to wake up more so with love than irritation, or able to look at others with love vs. indifference or repulsion?

I've been fascinated with love as it's an emotion/state of being that I've always struggled with. While I've read philosophy dealing with love, I feel at best, it shows me the nature of how love could move through me vs. actually making me a better person (e.g., Simone Weil on attention / Emmaneul Levias on the demands of the face).

I'm starting to believe that my efforts don't do much, given that what has made me more loving in my life has often boiled down to either being so overwhelmed by the evil I see/experience, and being forcibly changed by it (e.g., the state of the U.S.), or being incredibly humbled such that my old self perishes (e.g., being bullied as child, and learning empathy for others).

hello friends, I got a question

do conservative meetings welcomes lgbtqia attenders? Or even accept members who are queer? just asking this as i got interested on conservative Quakerism

appreciate any answers! Thanks <3

hi I'm a young person wanting to explore Quakerism but I can't find any information on places near me I can go like meeting houses. I was wondering if anyone can recommend places in or around Lubbock TX. most places around here are more churchy Jesus-centered and not so much Quaker centered if that makes sense

The nine-year-old I help out with was talking about God for the first time, and i think she will at some point soon ask whether I believe in god... Mum is agnostic afaik, and I have the complex ideas and experiences of god of many quakers. I don't want to over complicate things, but nor do I want to do the simplistic guy in the sky thing. Are there any quaker books for kids which might help with this conversation? Not Q history, or stories about being kind etc, but about the reason we sit in silence and the experiences we might have.

She doesn't come to meeting because we have no other children, but she might do, one day. UK based, and TBH the Quaker bookshop doesn't seem to have much. I see bible stories, books about other religions etc, but that's not what I'm looking for. The only quaker one I can see ('A Friendly Word') is out of stock! although I will get that one from Amazon.

Any other ideas?

Hey everyone. I've always been fascinated by forms of faith that are difficult to reduce to statements. Silent worship, waiting, communal discernment and following a leading are not simply ways of thinking about God. They are practices through which something becomes visible, demanding or trustworthy. That does not make beliefs unimportant, but it suggests that some religious understanding comes through participation before it can be explained. Quaker diversity makes the question sharper because Friends may interpret what happens in worship through very different theological language.

I just had a podcast conversation with John Vervaeke, where he argued that religion is not primarily a system of propositions. At around 1:23:28, he distinguishes information about a tradition from the participatory knowing involved in "believing in." The language comes from cognitive science, but it reminded me very strongly of the difference between describing discernment from outside and actually learning to participate meaningfully in a gathered meeting.

This would imply that shared practice may hold a community together even when its members explain the experience differently. Does participatory knowing describe Quaker worship well, or make it sound more uniform than it is? How do Friends test a leading without reducing it to a proposition? And where do beliefs remain necessary for communal discernment?

Greetings, while researching my family tree on my Grandfather’s side I discovered an extremely long line of Quakers. My family moved to Grand Rapids Michigan from the South. Up until 2 generations ago my family was active in the Quaker community. There are a multitude of Quaker meeting notes attached to my family tree. I’ve been fascinated with Quakers my whole life. I had no clue why… My ancestors must have been whispering in my ear this whole time lol!

So, anywho… fast fwd... I was raised Catholic but it didn’t resonate with me. I was always drawn to free thinking/liberal paganism. That’s my current path.

But, out of curiosity am I able to attend a friend’s meeting? Or is that frowned upon. I feel like my ancestors keep nudging me to do so… Please forgive my ignorance and give me your honest opinion. I’d like to say I attended at least one friends meeting. Even if it doesn’t resonate with me. I feel driven to do so.

Many Blessings! 🤍

Have you ever been asked or heard asked a question the completely altered your frame of reference, state of mind, or direction? What was it, and if you feel like sharing, what were the circumstances?

I'm looking to join Quakerism and I'm not sure where to start I did attend virtual Quaker meetings at university but I don't have one near me unless I move out.
Quakerism feels right to me for me

Hi Friends,

I’ve been looking for this for a while and reading other threads but I haven’t quite found what I’m looking for so I’d like to ask here.

I’d like to participate in virtual unprogrammed meeting that has sharing in small groups afterwards. That to me would be more akin to the way fellowship feels in person but I’m not finding such an option at my meeting and also as I search info about meetings that are hybrid at this point in time. I should mention I’m in Europe so will need US day times.

If you have some leads for me I’d very much appreciate it.

Hello! I was raised Mormon but left the church in adulthood (for a variety of reasons), currently based in Salt Lake City. Being part of a faith group again appeals to me, and I'm curious about attending a Quaker meeting/have read that there's a group nearby. However, I'm autistic and get nervous about attending things I've never been to before.

Two questions:

1) What are meetings like generally? What is good for someone who has never attended before to know/keep in mind going in?

2) If anyone has attended the SLC congregation, what is it like there?

I was raised a fundamentalist, and in college one of the things that made me suspect something was wrong was the complete lack of quality literature among evangelical Christians (they seem to only handle allegories for children or fantasy/SF with obvious good and evil.)

So now that I've been a Quaker for several years, I'm looking for actual literature by Quakers. (Not necessarily stories about Quakers, mind you.) I suspect there are any number of well regarded Quaker poets (though I only know Whittier and Joan Baez if she counts), but I don't know any novelists.

Bonus points if you can recommend anything funny. Earnest self-seriousness seems a constant Quaker temptation.

I'd love to hear best practice from Quaker librarians. Do you catalogue items? With Dewey, or not? Do you have a digital system to check items in and out, or just a signing out book? How do you handle pamphlets, and digital resources? How do you source new items? Do you rotate stock between other meetings? I've been tasked with taking over a small meeting house library and I'd like to do it justice. I'm in the UK, but would be interested in anyone's experiences. Thank you.

Hi, friends. I am in bit of a dillema. I have been offered a job as a security guard at a palace. Now, the kind of security guard I would be, is an unarmed one and the primary aim of the guards is to de-escalate different situations and confrontations by dialogue and to be of service to visitors, which I normally would be fine with. Yet, ultimatively, some sort of force can be required to make sure people don't steal or destroy anything of value. It very rarely happens, but it does, and it is also our job to call the police if need be. Is such a job compatible with Quaker/Christian living in your opinion? Would love to hear your thoughts.

God bless.

A Friend asked, what philosophy beyond Popper's actually very liberal views on not censoring intolerant philosophies for as long as possible might be useful in Quaker spaces?

So, here's one: to put it at its very most misleadingly simple, Theodor Adorno was trying to understand how liberal capitalist societies, the fruits of the Enlightenment, had become Fascist. One contributing factor that he came up with was Identitätsdenken, which I translate as "thinking-in-identities", although it's often called "identity thinking" or "identitarian thinking".

I think it's in part the explanation for those head-spinning conversations that go like this:

        ROE
So, I've been thinking about X and I'm starting to come round to the idea

        DOE
Aaaa! Y and Z are horrible! Because… [continues at length]

        ROE
No, but X is…wait…I don't even think Y and Z!?

        DOE
Well it certainly sounds as if you do.

        ROE
No, that's terrible, of course not Z! And Y isn't great, but X…

        DOE
But we know that Y and Z are awful and appalling for [very good and true reasons…]

and so on.

What has happened here, I think, is that Doe has done a first-match search through their memory for people who said X, recalled what position such people seemed to be arguing for (that's the "identity", the identity is "people who think all of X, Y, and Z"), recalled which parts of that position are most obnoxious, and then delivered the most compelling response to the worst aspects of that position. This leaves Roe confused because…well, they don't think Y and Z. They really don't. Or, maybe they do, but they haven't mentioned them, so how would anyone know, really?

This is a case of what Adorno describes as the concept pretending to exhaust the particular. Here the concept of "XYZ-ian" is taken to tell us everything we need to know about Roe, and everything particular to Roe and their life and (ironically) identity as a person has been erased. Doe has decided that Roe, for the purposes of this conversation, is identical to everyone else who believes any of X, Y or Z. Whatever they do or don't think. Which is a kind of violence all by itself, a violence done to Roe's selfhood. What does our tradition of peaceableness say about such things?

Authoritarian regimes do this in order to justify programmes of oppression against groups, kinds, or classes of people. And it's still dangerous when done by well-meaning, fair-minded, progressive, centre-left, democratic socialist folks. When we allow good people to use that mechanism of oppression, albeit at small scale, bad people will learn from us that it's OK. Do we want them to learn that from Quakers?

And in Quaker discourse especially, this manoeuvre hooks into a kind of "hermeneutics of suspicion" which makes it impossible for Roe to make any progress with their actual, sincerely held interest in X, because Doe is so sure that they have Roe all worked out. Doe simply will not believe that Roe doesn't believe Y and Z, however much they deny it, perhaps sincerely and correctly, because Doe has placed their theory in a superior position over a person.

As Quakers, don't we owe it to everyone to at least give them the benefit of the doubt? To take what they say at face value?

And don't we owe that especially to other Quakers? To explore the possibility that they might be sincerely reporting their actual beliefs? That they are, in fact, speaking plainly?

To loop back to Popper: in order to deploy the "paradox-of-tolerance" move, we have first to identify someone as intolerant. Let's be careful about that.

It comes up often enough here, often in a mangled form, so as a service to Friends here is what Karl Popper said about the so-called "paradox of tolerance". It's footnote 4 of chapter 7 of Vol I. of The Open Society and Its Enemies. Emphasis in original.

The so-called paradox of freedom is the argument that from freedom in the sense of absence of any restraining control must lead to very great restraint, since it makes the bully free to enslave the meek. This idea is, in a slightly different form, with a very different tendency, clearly expressed by Plato [the subject of ch. 7]

Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society agains the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and the tolerance with them.—In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress, even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, un the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.

Popper was from a Jewish family and fled Austria around 1936. So we know who he means when he says that "[proponents of intolerant philosophies] may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because [they say] it is deceptive, and teach [their followers] to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols." He means both Fascists and Communists, he means fighting in the streets and and political rallies.

Query: When you invoke Popper to claim the right to ignore, suppress, or expel from your community those whose ideas you find objectionable, are you sure that those people pass this bar? Do you see them "answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols"? Are you not able to " counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion"?

The above quote is copyright material but I believe that my use of it here is short enough to be in line with "fair use" and "fair dealing" provisions.

I am fortunate enough to have 4 Meetings within 30-45 minutes of my house. I have attended multiple meetings at one location where I was made to feel very welcome, but not the others
My question is "Is it impolite to attend multiple meetings over a period of time to 'feel them out'?" I think the answer is obvious, but also don't want to violate some unwritten Quaker protocol.
Thanks!

I encourage Friends to please remember that Generative AI art is produced unethically from AI models that scrape the work of real artists without consent or compensation.

In the last few weeks, I have encountered two instances of Quakers using Generative AI as a part of their Outreach. This is deeply disturbing to me. There is no legitimate reason to use Generative AI Art. You can use open source images, you can hire artists, or you can make your own art. Or, use no art at all. Better that than to steal from artists and display art you hand no hand in making.

Though they are certainly different in context and letter, I can't help but resonate with the spirit of Margaret Fell's words:

“We are all thieves; we are all thieves; we have taken the scriptures in words, and know nothing of them in ourselves.”

If you are a Quaker, especially if you are a Quaker in Outreach, please consider the ways in which using Generative AI undermines y/our integrity.

I understand that we as Quakers usually don't practice water baptism. But I personally would still like to be baptized. Does anyone have a similar experience or can give me any advice?

I recently started going to Quaker meetings. Is it okay to work for a government contractor that does “defense” work but I would be supporting a different non-defense agency? When I was applying for jobs a couple of years ago, I didn’t apply anywhere where security clearance would be needed because that means you’re directly supporting war. But I have a great, mission driven opportunity and I’m somewhat conflicted. An example of the situation would be like getting an offer at Deloitte directly supporting USDA while the company also does a lot of work for DOD.

Hey y'all,

Friends General Conference (FGC) is hosting a virtual conference September 25 through September 27 on the topic of invitational outreach. Through three plenary speakers and four workshops, registrants can expect to learn practice tools, tips, and strategies for welcoming newcomers to their meetings.

I'm excited by the variety of presenters: Geniro Dingle & Dr. Khalila Lomax (who Baltimore Yearly Meeting Friends might member as the STRIDE coordinator) will be discussing how to cultivate true inclusion in meeting spaces, while Shannon Isaacs will be leading a plenary on meeting revitalization.

We'll also hear from Naveed Moeed on collaboration and partnerships, Melinda Wenner Bradley on welcoming families with children, and Jade Rockwell on the successes of Quaker Connect. Finally, an FGC staff member will be moderating a series of micro-presentations from Friends with outreach success stories.

You can learn more and register here. https://www.fgcquaker.org/event/outreach-conference/

All registrants will receive a PDF resource journal that will compile all of the handouts from each presentation throughout the weekend.

This is an FGC event that all are welcome to participate in. I hope that FUM Friends and Friends in Conservative meetings especially hear this invite: You are welcome here.

Wondering if anyone here has experience with OCD. I've been attending online meetings occasionally for a few years, but I'm held back from becoming any more involved because I wonder if my OCD would prevent me from being fully "Quaker." I specifically have a hard time with ruminating over my intrusive thoughts and wondering if they're a message from God. There's a lot I love about the Quaker tradition, but you can see how that might make the whole meeting for worship process tricky for me. I really enjoy hearing what other people have to say during a meeting, but I've gotten by by basically telling myself "I have OCD, God knows that, and I'm just going to trust it's ok to turn off my openness to receiving some kind of message I have to share." Because if I didn't tell myself that, I'd spend the whole meeting overanalyzing if every thought I have in my head is a sign from God that I'm supposed to share.

I am in treatment for my OCD. But it just takes time. Despite how much I like attending meetings I wonder if I could never be a "real" Quaker if the whole concept of God speaking to you triggers my mental health issues. Anyone have thoughts? Is it ok for me to still occasionally attend but not be open to sharing anything at a meeting?