Envisioning a Strong Future for Quakerism
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 19 ธ.ค. 2024
- QuakerSpeak is a bi-weekly video series. New video every other THURSDAY!
Learn more about The Listening Project: www.forwardinf...
SUBSCRIBE for a new video every other week! fdsj.nl/QS-Subs...
WATCH all our videos: fdsj.nl/qs-all-...
___
Become a Friends Journal subscriber for only $28
fdsj.nl/FJ-Subs...
Filming and Editing by Rebecca Hamilton-Levi
Music: Here and Now by Caleb Etheridge
___
Transcript:
Johanna Jackson: So I envision a network of really vibrant, interesting people who have the time to be with one another and who have the courage to name gifts in themselves and with each other and live into that. I've met some people in different generations -- when there's a strong support network for faithfulness, for doing something unusual, then the possibility to live faithfully and beautifully just kind of expands. I want to be part of that.
Envisioning a Strong Future for Quakerism
My name is JT Dorr-Bremme. I use he/him pronouns. I live on Susquehannock land in a town known as Huntingdon, PA. I am associated with a number of different Quaker bodies because I've been a nomad and currently I'm most involved with State College Meeting, Huntingdon Meeting, Upper Susquehanna Quarterly Meeting, and Three Rivers in Massachusetts.
My name is Johanna Jackson. I use she/her pronouns, and I live in State College, PA. I worship with several groups including Three Rivers Worship, Upper Susquehanna, and the State College Meeting.
The Listening Project
The Listening Project is a series of conversations we've had with Friends that are rooted in love. It's a kind of ethnography, so we're listening, we're interviewing, and we hold worship sharing sessions with people we know. It began during the pandemic, and we started listening without any specific questions. We wanted to just hear what people wanted to share about and once we noticed certain trends, those started to deepen once we held more interviews with people.
JT: Some of the things that we've learned from The Listening Project so far includes the fact that there are problems out there that people are not aware of. We started talking with people who are closer to us in age and in social association and we heard from them things that we more or less expected but then when we started to go a little further out to circles that were a bit more distant from us in age, experience, and geography, we discovered that the problems that we had experienced ourselves were a little more widespread and that folks who weren't directly experiencing them were surprised to hear that they existed.
Johanna: I think the most difficult learning that I found was that I and people around me are doing things that specifically contribute to our decline. That makes it hard to sleep at night! Like, I want those things to stop! I want to transform or change, but they only transform or change in certain ways as individuals choose to change behavior, and so now that I know what actions are pushing people away I want to be informed about how to live differently in my life.
Envisioning a Vibrant Future
Johanna: Do you have thoughts on the future of Quakerism?
JT: Good lord do I.
Johanna: [Laughing] I do, too. I have some strong opinions.
JT: [Laughing] Yeah.
Johanna: I want to be part of a group that not only exists but is thriving in thirty years, and I think a lot of our conversations right now are caught up on whether we exist in thirty years, whether we go extinct. I want to be part of a group that's creative and rooted in their bodies and thriving, and becoming more relevant in the world. We have so many gifts to offer and we kind of keep them quiet.
More: fdsj.nl/future
___
The views expressed in this video are of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views of Friends Journal or its collaborators.
I’m a new Quaker 🙂 Pleased to meet everyone
I am not a Quaker but I love this channel. Well maybe I am a Quaker in spirit. So true about eternal source. In AA we call it higher power.
I’m a new Quaker too. I am just learning.
Very nice, as far as it goes. We need more information about things that were alluded to in the video, like what specific things Quakers are doing that are contributing to their decline. What changes can we be making that will bring us into that vibrant future? (I say this as a Quaker elder who was interviewed for Johanna and J.T.'s project, which is quite wide-ranging and has brought out some very interesting answers to these questions.)
The boomer-generation Quakers have gone bust. I encourage everyone to engage as led, but 20th century Quakerism basically degenerated into meditation hour for frustrated lleftists who are trying to quell the cognitive dissonance of living lives that are in conflict with their conscience. Political activity is fine when it's Spirit-led, but putting a party label on the Monthly Meetings by supporting lobbying efforts with corporate funds was a terrible idea that lost us so much and gained us nothing. All it did was reduce it to the level of booster clubs for FCNL (who BTW only get 2% of their budget from MM's anyway and would rather have private donations anyway). I think a return to primitive Quakerism has been trying to happen for some time now,...but there are some who won't let it happen because they've been waiting for decades for the WW2 "golden generation" to die off so they could do things their own way.
Amen! Long thrive Quakers! The anti-racist, anti-war, anti-homophobia, anti-hate movements are becoming more and more relevant every day. People need friends.
Hi Johanna! I met you before and you did reiki on me, and you visited me in my group home. Do you remember me? Your spirit is beautiful 😊❤️
Shelly Font, Did you know that Reiki is NEW AGE, not Christian.
@@l.d.d.2062 quakerism isn’t necessarily christian! i’m quaker & muslim
@@aurorarose6678 We have a range!
Cool.
trying to find quaker meetings in Spain. Any tip?
Only Quakers had English heritage.
Start one! :)
As a Friend from the UK I do not know what is meant by Shaker pronouns, please clarify.
"She/her" pronouns, as distinct from "he/him" or "they/them" pronouns. This is a recent convention embodying the idea that it's important to establish one's gender identity during an introduction.
@@dougfishback3116
Dear Doug, thanks for your reply, I am aware of the use of pronouns which are not gender specific. Although in my meeting that has not arisen . Is your approach one where you specifically state a gender identity on meeting, and if so what gender identity would you use.?
In Friendship
Anthony
@@anthonycole4249 My meeting has.not taken up this practice, nor do I think there has been discussion. And personally, I have not adopted this practice. I am a cisgender male with a conventionally male presentation, and while I understand the desirability of having cisgender folks help normalize the idea that you shouldn't make assumptions from appearances, I also have a natural (and perhaps too reactive) reservation about cultural bandwagonism, and I don't consider gender identity to be all that essential to me. I would gain more information from a policy declaration, i.e. "My name is Chris, and I support universal healthcare."
As to the main message of the video, I think Quakerism (esp. the liberal branch) would have widespread appeal to younger generations, but it seems to me that the tradition is mostly happy to fly under the radar without much "proselytizing." (I'm only a year into my exploration of the tradition, by the way.)
In Friendship,
Doug
As someone who's just now come across Quaker beliefs at 42. I have to Echo some of the sentiments in this video. Quakers need to do a much better job at letting the World At Large know what they stand for and their beliefs. Dare I say, they need to take a page out of the Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons handbook; and start going door-to-door or at least pass some pamphlets around or something. lol
Not to be insulting but what drugs do these people take?
How is that not insulting?