7 ms·

The Zen of Quakerism (2016)

126 points by surprisetalk 1y ago

123sereusername 1y ago
[dead]
bovermyer 1y ago
That's an interesting parallel. I'll admit, I know almost nothing about Quakers and Quakerism.
- giraffe_lady 1y ago
  They're historically very interesting but you have to be careful about what you understand about contemporary quakers based on reading on the internet. Their traditions & cultural impact are attractive to a lot of people, who then write about it. But quakerism as a living religion is extremely small and quite diverse for its tiny size, and groups practicing the traditional silent worship are a small minority even within that. The majority of living quakers experience a religion much closer to the main stream of evangelical christianity than you will expect from reading about it online. IIRC something like half of quakers are african.
  - rimunroe 1y ago
    > But quakerism as a living religion is extremely small and quite diverse for its tiny size, and groups practicing the traditional silent worship are a small minority even within that. The majority of living quakers experience a religion much closer to the main stream of evangelical christianity than you will expect from reading about it online. Could you elaborate on this? This is fairly surprising to me as someone raised as a Quaker and who still attends meeting occasionally despite being an atheist. While I’m aware of a few different sects within Quakerism, I’ve never heard of one which eschews silent worship. I haven’t ever personally encountered an evangelical Quaker, and the thought seems particularly strange to me.
    - giraffe_lady 1y ago
      I attended a silent meeting in the US almost two decades ago and this was my understanding at the time too. I later got interested in the demographics of religion and keep checking on the quakers and it's just not at all what you would extrapolate from this. In the US iirc only about half of meetings are "unprogrammed" which is the traditional silent meeting. The other half more or less follow a normal low church formula, with congregational singing, bible readings, and one or more sermons. Also usually a period of silent worship still but it's not the bulk of the meeting. The doctrine of these churches is still quaker, because nearly anything can be, but people's polled beliefs are basically protestant christian. Outside the US this second style was much more active in evangelism and missionary work and so the "programmed" style is vastly more popular. The majority of silent worshipping quakers are in the US & england, but globally they only represent something like 20% of active quakers. Africa and a few south american countries outnumber them by a huge margin. The numbers are not good or reliable either because it's an extreme minority religion, something that might not be obvious if your exposure was in a large american city (or esp in one of the historical quaker regions) or on the internet. But best counts are less than half a million globally so even by the standards of minority religions just so so small. By comparison with other religious minorities there are more jews in los angeles, more muslims in chicago than there are quakers in the world. So whatever your local expression or personal experience of quakerism is it is probably unique and in some sense a historical outlier.
      - rimunroe 1y ago
        I’m familiar with programmed vs unprogrammed services, but it sounded like you were saying that most Quakers don’t even do silent worship anymore, which sounded bizarre. I’m quite aware of how few Quakers there are, but doesn’t that definitionally mean my experience would be less of an outlier compared to the population? Did you perhaps mean to say that they’re more spread out and thus diverse in practices? Regardless, I’m not surprised my experience isn’t representative of the whole, just that there would be Quakers who aren’t doing silent worship. FWIW I spent part of my youth in a very high density Quaker area (eastern Massachusetts) but for the majority of it was in Virginia where Quakers are much less common
  - JKCalhoun 1y ago
    My experience in the U.S. has only been of the silent worship variety.
sorokod 1y ago
There is considerable cherry picking along with cultural appropriation going on here. Buddhism has flavors that are worlds apart from what is described in the post. A spicy example is discussed in the book "Zen at War"[1]. Myanamar and Sri Lanka[2] have their own ultra nationalistic Buddhists movements. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_at_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_at_War [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinhalese_Buddhist_nationalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinhalese_Buddhist_nationalism
- sctb 1y ago
  Obviously there are many flavours of Buddhism and many flavours of Christianity, but the author is simply relating his own experience. I really don't see how cherry picking or cultural appropriation could possibly apply here.
  - sorokod 1y ago
    The author picks and chooses aspects of a tradition/religion/philosophy and names the result as the original tradition/religion/philosophy. Does that help?
    - jibcage 1y ago
      I think the author is speaking about a specific tradition of Buddhism, Zen, and is drawing parallels between that tradition and Quakerism. The “picking and choosing” point doesn’t make sense to me from that angle. Are you picking and choosing from Christianity when you talk about Protestantism, for example? His thoughts on Zen are pretty on point.
      - sorokod 1y ago
        The author is ultimately speaking of a specific practice, meditation. A practice that predates Buddhism by probably more then a millennium. Zen is not relevant here as it is a latter development.
- corry 1y ago
jonaustin 1y ago
It's surprising it doesn't mention the parallels of how both quaker and buddhists greatly revere and respect nature.
- teaearlgraycold 1y ago
  Quakers often like to worship outside and in forests. I’ve seen and sat in many a set of benches under trees.
antithesizer 1y ago
Buddhism is a lot less "zen" than Quakerism.
- gsf_emergency_2 1y ago
  Less obviously... It's also a lot less antisocial, which translates in many if not most cases to less anti-intellectual Because experts are some of the most resented earthly authority in America, and individual meditation is great for alternate facts. Going viral would be prayers answered
quacked 1y ago
It's always weird to see Quakerism be mentioned somewhere else. I grew up Quaker and still sometimes attend Quaker meeting, and I related to his ceiling-tile counting; I used to count the wooden boards that formed the ceiling of our meetinghouse. The best part about Quakerism, in my opinion, is that it teaches a very hearty disrespect of un-earned authority without teaching disrespect for the concept of authority itself. One of my favorite anecdotes is a group of Quakers who refused to doff their hats for the King, as they only doff their hats for God. There's another old practice of refusing to swear on the Bible before telling the truth, as that would imply that they weren't telling the truth before they were sworn in. I find the inclusion of Zen in this article is interesting, as you won't find the word "Holy" or "God", used, and "Spirit" is only used twice, once to comment on how he felt pressured to receive a message from it. The original purpose of Quaker silent worship was to remove the church-imposed barrier between man and God (the "Holy Spirit") so that anyone could be a mouthpiece for the wishes and desires of the Spirit. Modern American Quakers, especially the ones who write in Friends Journal, tend to be pretty secular.
- whatshisface 1y ago
  The bible does actually say not to swear.
  - neaden 1y ago
    "Let your word be ‘Yes, Yes’ or ‘No, No’; anything more than this comes from the evil one." Mathew 5:37 NRSV
- yjftsjthsd-h 1y ago
  > There's another old practice of refusing to swear on the Bible before telling the truth, as that would imply that they weren't telling the truth before they were sworn in. I've always found it extremely odd that anyone swears on the Bible, since it pretty plainly says not to do that: Matthew 5:33-37 “Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.’ But I say to you, Do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil. https://www.esv.org/Matthew+5/ https://www.esv.org/Matthew+5/
_benton 1y ago
I clicked on this fully expecting it to be about the video game...
- magicalhippo 1y ago
  The name was originally used as an insult[1], however the followers adopted it, thus rendering the insult moot: In 1650, Fox was brought before the magistrates Gervase Bennet and Nathaniel Barton, on a charge of religious blasphemy. According to Fox's autobiography, Bennet "was the first that called us Quakers, because I bade them tremble at the word of the Lord". It is thought that Fox was referring to Isaiah 66:2 or Ezra 9:4. Thus the name Quaker began as a way of ridiculing Fox's admonition, but became widely accepted and used by some Quakers [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quakers#Beginnings_in_England https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quakers#Beginnings_in_England
- aduwah 1y ago
  [dead]
mekoka 1y ago
Having only recently been made aware of Quakerism myself, I also came to the conclusion that it should have a more prevalent mention as a sub-current of Christian Mysticism. That association may potentially create a bridge to other similar mystical contemplative traditions, nowadays sometimes labeled under the umbrella term "nonduality", which includes Zen, Advaita, Daoism, Sufism, among others. As Meister Eckhart said, "Theologians may quarrel, but the mystics of the world speak the same language".
- codemonkey-zeta 1y ago
  If you're interested in that, read up on Shakerism, a now almost-extinct branch of Quakerism that had an even stronger focus on mysticism.
turbofreak 1y ago
Surprisingly this is a very level headed post. I’m not a Buddhist or a Zenist or a Quakerist but I’m glad the author not once beat me over the head with how enlightened they are, or worse, throw pithy quotes my way.
- magicalhippo 1y ago
  At least for the Quakers I know, they are very deliberate in not projecting their beliefs onto others. If you ask they will answer, but they will not try to convince you of neither this nor that.
hansonkd 1y ago
To the point of the article: A lot of Quakers dont label their worship as meditation. The point of quaker worship is to open your heart to "listen". The point of meditation is often mindfulness. there is some overlap but i think it is a different ends from similar means. Another contrast is quaker worship is done in a community looking inward towards the center of the room, Zen meditation when done in a temple is done looking at the wall. for me this is a contrast between the quaker "society of friends" and zen can be done in isolation Quakers for me have a special place in my heart. I'm a bit sad that in California there are very few Quaker communities when compared to Buddhist or Zen communities. The quaker communities that do exist seem to be hanging on from the counterculture movement several decades ago. I've attended a Quaker community for the past couple of years and sadly it is dying out. Almost all of the members are past 60 y/o and almost zero young adult members or younger members attend. I think the Quaker philosophy is powerful and unfortunately i believe it has lead to its downfall. The lack of creed and resistance to structure makes it hard for new members to feel comfortable and make it easy to be more casual about your membership. this leads to people just dropping out. also the structure of quaker practices can seem offputting for people from more conventional religious backgrounds. For example christmas "celebrations" are done entirely in silence from the moment you enter to when you leave. this is a staggering contrast to almost every other celebration. (also in contrast to most of christianity a lot of quakers dont believe jesus was "holy" but rather an ordinary man who was more in touch with the "light", underscoring the intensity of their egalitarian beliefs) I think Quaker has a branding problem. People think of quaker oats or amish. (amish have nothing to do with quakers). Zen is more trendy and "mystical". If quakerism was "rebranded" a lot more people would be attracted to it. My heart yearns for more Quaker communities. Its so sad to see them die out.
- raphlinus 1y ago
  Have you attended recently, as in the past few months? Maybe our meeting is special because it's Berkeley, but we have a solid core of young people regularly attending. I was on Nominating Committee last cycle, and we've gotten a number of Young Friends, where in the recent past it's been pretty much aging members. You might be right about rebranding, but to me a lot of what appeals is the focus on the substance rather than perceptions.
hermitcrab 1y ago
I'm an Atheist, but I greatly respect Quakers for starting many important movements and organizations including Amnesty International, Oxfam and Greenpeace.
yapyap 1y ago
Would be nice if they explain what the heck a Quaker is, I thought this was gonna be an article on the peace of playing Quake and when I released it wasn’t that I thought of the Quaker oats but not much more than that
- wolfgang42 1y ago
  Expecting Friends Journal to explain quakers is like wanting the IETF to tell you what a computer is; the target audience for this article are people who are way beyond needing an introduction to the topic, though of course on the Internet articles can end up in unexpected places. A brief and reductive explanation: The Religious Society of Friends (colloquially “Quakers”) are a religious movement (nominally Christian, in practice often agnostic) which originated in England circa 1650. A core part of the theology is that God might speak to anyone, so worship generally consists of sitting around in silence until someone hears from Him and stands up to repeat the message, hence why the article is drawing parallels between that practice and Zen Buddhism.
gandalfian 1y ago
If you are young and give the silence a decent go it's OK to fall back on a book after a bit, or if you are too young to read yet, quietly working on some lego under your seat will not bother anyone. Adults are a little trickier but comtemplating a bible or Faith and Practice works. And, you know, it is meant to be voluntary.
monkeycantype 1y ago
Some influential people in my life were quakers, which has given me a lifelong interest in quakerism, but in my one interaction with a quaker meeting, I was surprised that it seemed much closer to bible based church than I had expected. I think I had expected a skepticism about holy texts as literary/cultural creation rather than the direct word of god, a philosophical attitude of god as an abstract anthropomorphism because 'god may be addressed but never comprehended', but apart from the chairs and egalitarianism, it could have been any other bible group. Did I misunderstand something, what's your better informed take?
- doom2 1y ago
  There are a few different varieties of Quakerism and their forms of worship differ accordingly. Some worship in silence, with members of the congregation providing vocal ministry. Some are more like traditional churches, with a pastor leading the service. Others still are more like evangelical Christian denominations. If you're in the US or Canada and interested in experiencing silent worship, Friends General Conference maintains a directory of meetings here: https://www.fgcquaker.org/find-a-meeting/ https://www.fgcquaker.org/find-a-meeting/
  - monkeycantype 1y ago
    Thank you. Is there somewhere I can read about the different theological viewpoints/practices of different branches?
kmoser 1y ago
> In meditation, I was relieved of the burden of being moved by the Spirit to speak and say something spiritually profound. I find it interesting that the author felt pressure to be moved to speak. In the eight years I attended a Quaker school and attended thousands of meetings for worship, I never felt that vibe. Whenever there was any discussion about the expectations of behavior in a meeting (such discussion usually being done offline, i.e. not during the actual meeting), it was always quite clear that not only was speaking completely voluntary, but also you were free to say whatever moved you, as long as it was suitable for the entire group; there was no need to be "spiritually profound," whatever that means. Granted, the daily meetings I attended were for the student and faculty (the vast majority of whom were not Quaker). But on the few occasions we got to attend the "real" meeting for worship on Sunday (held in the school's meeting house), I found it to have exactly the same tenor, only with fewer kids (and about 40 minutes longer).
wiseowise 1y ago
I always more of a Quake guy than Doom. Probably because I started with it first.
- bravesoul2 1y ago
  So you are a Quaker not a Doomer
- Fishkins 1y ago
  Early on at my first full-time job I requested a week off to attend a Quaker conference. My manager approved the request without comment. After I returned from vacation he asked how the competition went. He'd never heard of Quakers and had genuinely assumed I was attending some Quake tournament.

126 points by surprisetalk 1y ago

123sereusername 1y ago

[dead]

bovermyer 1y ago

That's an interesting parallel. I'll admit, I know almost nothing about Quakers and Quakerism.

giraffe_lady 1y ago
They're historically very interesting but you have to be careful about what you understand about contemporary quakers based on reading on the internet. Their traditions & cultural impact are attractive to a lot of people, who then write about it. But quakerism as a living religion is extremely small and quite diverse for its tiny size, and groups practicing the traditional silent worship are a small minority even within that. The majority of living quakers experience a religion much closer to the main stream of evangelical christianity than you will expect from reading about it online. IIRC something like half of quakers are african.
- rimunroe 1y ago
  > But quakerism as a living religion is extremely small and quite diverse for its tiny size, and groups practicing the traditional silent worship are a small minority even within that. The majority of living quakers experience a religion much closer to the main stream of evangelical christianity than you will expect from reading about it online. Could you elaborate on this? This is fairly surprising to me as someone raised as a Quaker and who still attends meeting occasionally despite being an atheist. While I’m aware of a few different sects within Quakerism, I’ve never heard of one which eschews silent worship. I haven’t ever personally encountered an evangelical Quaker, and the thought seems particularly strange to me.
  - giraffe_lady 1y ago
    I attended a silent meeting in the US almost two decades ago and this was my understanding at the time too. I later got interested in the demographics of religion and keep checking on the quakers and it's just not at all what you would extrapolate from this. In the US iirc only about half of meetings are "unprogrammed" which is the traditional silent meeting. The other half more or less follow a normal low church formula, with congregational singing, bible readings, and one or more sermons. Also usually a period of silent worship still but it's not the bulk of the meeting. The doctrine of these churches is still quaker, because nearly anything can be, but people's polled beliefs are basically protestant christian. Outside the US this second style was much more active in evangelism and missionary work and so the "programmed" style is vastly more popular. The majority of silent worshipping quakers are in the US & england, but globally they only represent something like 20% of active quakers. Africa and a few south american countries outnumber them by a huge margin. The numbers are not good or reliable either because it's an extreme minority religion, something that might not be obvious if your exposure was in a large american city (or esp in one of the historical quaker regions) or on the internet. But best counts are less than half a million globally so even by the standards of minority religions just so so small. By comparison with other religious minorities there are more jews in los angeles, more muslims in chicago than there are quakers in the world. So whatever your local expression or personal experience of quakerism is it is probably unique and in some sense a historical outlier.
    - rimunroe 1y ago
      I’m familiar with programmed vs unprogrammed services, but it sounded like you were saying that most Quakers don’t even do silent worship anymore, which sounded bizarre. I’m quite aware of how few Quakers there are, but doesn’t that definitionally mean my experience would be less of an outlier compared to the population? Did you perhaps mean to say that they’re more spread out and thus diverse in practices? Regardless, I’m not surprised my experience isn’t representative of the whole, just that there would be Quakers who aren’t doing silent worship. FWIW I spent part of my youth in a very high density Quaker area (eastern Massachusetts) but for the majority of it was in Virginia where Quakers are much less common
- JKCalhoun 1y ago
  My experience in the U.S. has only been of the silent worship variety.

sorokod 1y ago

There is considerable cherry picking along with cultural appropriation going on here. Buddhism has flavors that are worlds apart from what is described in the post. A spicy example is discussed in the book "Zen at War"[1]. Myanamar and Sri Lanka[2] have their own ultra nationalistic Buddhists movements. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_at_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_at_War [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinhalese_Buddhist_nationalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinhalese_Buddhist_nationalism

sctb 1y ago
Obviously there are many flavours of Buddhism and many flavours of Christianity, but the author is simply relating his own experience. I really don't see how cherry picking or cultural appropriation could possibly apply here.
- sorokod 1y ago
  The author picks and chooses aspects of a tradition/religion/philosophy and names the result as the original tradition/religion/philosophy. Does that help?
  - jibcage 1y ago
    I think the author is speaking about a specific tradition of Buddhism, Zen, and is drawing parallels between that tradition and Quakerism. The “picking and choosing” point doesn’t make sense to me from that angle. Are you picking and choosing from Christianity when you talk about Protestantism, for example? His thoughts on Zen are pretty on point.
    - sorokod 1y ago
      The author is ultimately speaking of a specific practice, meditation. A practice that predates Buddhism by probably more then a millennium. Zen is not relevant here as it is a latter development.
corry 1y ago

jonaustin 1y ago

It's surprising it doesn't mention the parallels of how both quaker and buddhists greatly revere and respect nature.

teaearlgraycold 1y ago
Quakers often like to worship outside and in forests. I’ve seen and sat in many a set of benches under trees.

antithesizer 1y ago

Buddhism is a lot less "zen" than Quakerism.

gsf_emergency_2 1y ago
Less obviously... It's also a lot less antisocial, which translates in many if not most cases to less anti-intellectual Because experts are some of the most resented earthly authority in America, and individual meditation is great for alternate facts. Going viral would be prayers answered

quacked 1y ago

It's always weird to see Quakerism be mentioned somewhere else. I grew up Quaker and still sometimes attend Quaker meeting, and I related to his ceiling-tile counting; I used to count the wooden boards that formed the ceiling of our meetinghouse. The best part about Quakerism, in my opinion, is that it teaches a very hearty disrespect of un-earned authority without teaching disrespect for the concept of authority itself. One of my favorite anecdotes is a group of Quakers who refused to doff their hats for the King, as they only doff their hats for God. There's another old practice of refusing to swear on the Bible before telling the truth, as that would imply that they weren't telling the truth before they were sworn in. I find the inclusion of Zen in this article is interesting, as you won't find the word "Holy" or "God", used, and "Spirit" is only used twice, once to comment on how he felt pressured to receive a message from it. The original purpose of Quaker silent worship was to remove the church-imposed barrier between man and God (the "Holy Spirit") so that anyone could be a mouthpiece for the wishes and desires of the Spirit. Modern American Quakers, especially the ones who write in Friends Journal, tend to be pretty secular.

whatshisface 1y ago
The bible does actually say not to swear.
- neaden 1y ago
  "Let your word be ‘Yes, Yes’ or ‘No, No’; anything more than this comes from the evil one." Mathew 5:37 NRSV
yjftsjthsd-h 1y ago
> There's another old practice of refusing to swear on the Bible before telling the truth, as that would imply that they weren't telling the truth before they were sworn in. I've always found it extremely odd that anyone swears on the Bible, since it pretty plainly says not to do that: Matthew 5:33-37 “Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.’ But I say to you, Do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil. https://www.esv.org/Matthew+5/ https://www.esv.org/Matthew+5/

_benton 1y ago

I clicked on this fully expecting it to be about the video game...

magicalhippo 1y ago
The name was originally used as an insult[1], however the followers adopted it, thus rendering the insult moot: In 1650, Fox was brought before the magistrates Gervase Bennet and Nathaniel Barton, on a charge of religious blasphemy. According to Fox's autobiography, Bennet "was the first that called us Quakers, because I bade them tremble at the word of the Lord". It is thought that Fox was referring to Isaiah 66:2 or Ezra 9:4. Thus the name Quaker began as a way of ridiculing Fox's admonition, but became widely accepted and used by some Quakers [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quakers#Beginnings_in_England https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quakers#Beginnings_in_England
aduwah 1y ago
[dead]

mekoka 1y ago

Having only recently been made aware of Quakerism myself, I also came to the conclusion that it should have a more prevalent mention as a sub-current of Christian Mysticism. That association may potentially create a bridge to other similar mystical contemplative traditions, nowadays sometimes labeled under the umbrella term "nonduality", which includes Zen, Advaita, Daoism, Sufism, among others. As Meister Eckhart said, "Theologians may quarrel, but the mystics of the world speak the same language".

codemonkey-zeta 1y ago
If you're interested in that, read up on Shakerism, a now almost-extinct branch of Quakerism that had an even stronger focus on mysticism.

turbofreak 1y ago

Surprisingly this is a very level headed post. I’m not a Buddhist or a Zenist or a Quakerist but I’m glad the author not once beat me over the head with how enlightened they are, or worse, throw pithy quotes my way.

magicalhippo 1y ago
At least for the Quakers I know, they are very deliberate in not projecting their beliefs onto others. If you ask they will answer, but they will not try to convince you of neither this nor that.

hansonkd 1y ago

To the point of the article: A lot of Quakers dont label their worship as meditation. The point of quaker worship is to open your heart to "listen". The point of meditation is often mindfulness. there is some overlap but i think it is a different ends from similar means. Another contrast is quaker worship is done in a community looking inward towards the center of the room, Zen meditation when done in a temple is done looking at the wall. for me this is a contrast between the quaker "society of friends" and zen can be done in isolation Quakers for me have a special place in my heart. I'm a bit sad that in California there are very few Quaker communities when compared to Buddhist or Zen communities. The quaker communities that do exist seem to be hanging on from the counterculture movement several decades ago. I've attended a Quaker community for the past couple of years and sadly it is dying out. Almost all of the members are past 60 y/o and almost zero young adult members or younger members attend. I think the Quaker philosophy is powerful and unfortunately i believe it has lead to its downfall. The lack of creed and resistance to structure makes it hard for new members to feel comfortable and make it easy to be more casual about your membership. this leads to people just dropping out. also the structure of quaker practices can seem offputting for people from more conventional religious backgrounds. For example christmas "celebrations" are done entirely in silence from the moment you enter to when you leave. this is a staggering contrast to almost every other celebration. (also in contrast to most of christianity a lot of quakers dont believe jesus was "holy" but rather an ordinary man who was more in touch with the "light", underscoring the intensity of their egalitarian beliefs) I think Quaker has a branding problem. People think of quaker oats or amish. (amish have nothing to do with quakers). Zen is more trendy and "mystical". If quakerism was "rebranded" a lot more people would be attracted to it. My heart yearns for more Quaker communities. Its so sad to see them die out.

raphlinus 1y ago
Have you attended recently, as in the past few months? Maybe our meeting is special because it's Berkeley, but we have a solid core of young people regularly attending. I was on Nominating Committee last cycle, and we've gotten a number of Young Friends, where in the recent past it's been pretty much aging members. You might be right about rebranding, but to me a lot of what appeals is the focus on the substance rather than perceptions.

hermitcrab 1y ago

I'm an Atheist, but I greatly respect Quakers for starting many important movements and organizations including Amnesty International, Oxfam and Greenpeace.

yapyap 1y ago

Would be nice if they explain what the heck a Quaker is, I thought this was gonna be an article on the peace of playing Quake and when I released it wasn’t that I thought of the Quaker oats but not much more than that

wolfgang42 1y ago
Expecting Friends Journal to explain quakers is like wanting the IETF to tell you what a computer is; the target audience for this article are people who are way beyond needing an introduction to the topic, though of course on the Internet articles can end up in unexpected places. A brief and reductive explanation: The Religious Society of Friends (colloquially “Quakers”) are a religious movement (nominally Christian, in practice often agnostic) which originated in England circa 1650. A core part of the theology is that God might speak to anyone, so worship generally consists of sitting around in silence until someone hears from Him and stands up to repeat the message, hence why the article is drawing parallels between that practice and Zen Buddhism.

gandalfian 1y ago

If you are young and give the silence a decent go it's OK to fall back on a book after a bit, or if you are too young to read yet, quietly working on some lego under your seat will not bother anyone. Adults are a little trickier but comtemplating a bible or Faith and Practice works. And, you know, it is meant to be voluntary.

monkeycantype 1y ago

Some influential people in my life were quakers, which has given me a lifelong interest in quakerism, but in my one interaction with a quaker meeting, I was surprised that it seemed much closer to bible based church than I had expected. I think I had expected a skepticism about holy texts as literary/cultural creation rather than the direct word of god, a philosophical attitude of god as an abstract anthropomorphism because 'god may be addressed but never comprehended', but apart from the chairs and egalitarianism, it could have been any other bible group. Did I misunderstand something, what's your better informed take?

doom2 1y ago
There are a few different varieties of Quakerism and their forms of worship differ accordingly. Some worship in silence, with members of the congregation providing vocal ministry. Some are more like traditional churches, with a pastor leading the service. Others still are more like evangelical Christian denominations. If you're in the US or Canada and interested in experiencing silent worship, Friends General Conference maintains a directory of meetings here: https://www.fgcquaker.org/find-a-meeting/ https://www.fgcquaker.org/find-a-meeting/
- monkeycantype 1y ago
  Thank you. Is there somewhere I can read about the different theological viewpoints/practices of different branches?

kmoser 1y ago

> In meditation, I was relieved of the burden of being moved by the Spirit to speak and say something spiritually profound. I find it interesting that the author felt pressure to be moved to speak. In the eight years I attended a Quaker school and attended thousands of meetings for worship, I never felt that vibe. Whenever there was any discussion about the expectations of behavior in a meeting (such discussion usually being done offline, i.e. not during the actual meeting), it was always quite clear that not only was speaking completely voluntary, but also you were free to say whatever moved you, as long as it was suitable for the entire group; there was no need to be "spiritually profound," whatever that means. Granted, the daily meetings I attended were for the student and faculty (the vast majority of whom were not Quaker). But on the few occasions we got to attend the "real" meeting for worship on Sunday (held in the school's meeting house), I found it to have exactly the same tenor, only with fewer kids (and about 40 minutes longer).

wiseowise 1y ago

I always more of a Quake guy than Doom. Probably because I started with it first.

bravesoul2 1y ago
So you are a Quaker not a Doomer
Fishkins 1y ago
Early on at my first full-time job I requested a week off to attend a Quaker conference. My manager approved the request without comment. After I returned from vacation he asked how the competition went. He'd never heard of Quakers and had genuinely assumed I was attending some Quake tournament.