Martin Kelley's Library tagged → View Popular, Search in Google
As I prepare for this venture, through study and building friendships (with people I have little connection with other than the word Quaker), through prayer and waiting on the prompting of the Spirit to move forward, I am more and more aware of how much I have to learn from my un-programmed f/Friends and how much they can learn from the little spark of light that I bear
In other churches that first wave Fundamentalism (the doctrine - not the process) was being replaced with a second waved Fundamentalism that emphasized lists of behavioral rules. Arthur considered Friends to be outside of this stream. - That’s right - they were the progressives in that place and time, emphasizing response to the Spirit and abundant grace.
George Fox University is a Quaker college, one of about fifteen colleges or universities that are affiliated with Friends Association for Higher Education (FAHE). (There are also two study centers that are affiliated with FAHE.) What it means to be a Quaker College, however, is as varied as what it means to be a Presbyterian or Catholic college. Today, George Fox is going through a time of trial about what it means to be a Quaker college.
Not that I'm signing any manifestos. I've already explicitly refused to lay any claim on being able to define "real" Friends. But I still want to know, does anyone care if you or I are Friends? Do you? Does God? Is any person's life made more whole by the fact that you or I identify with Quakers?
I see you are trying to nurture and edify women. Important work.bBut when you try and do that, and you include language that talks about "Real women in pain" and links "domestic abuse, eating disorders and same sex attractions" you fail at your goals.
We Quakers are in a good position to respond to the Christmas season. With our dual nature of being both Friends of Jesus and those who quake in the presence of the living God, at our best we bring together both the imminence and transcendence of God.
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."
These “forms” were the very thing a young George Fox subversively exposed when he encountered the active, living Christ whose voice enlivened a soul thirsty for something more than the unimaginative and oppressive church of his time.
I had this kind of existential experience where I realized there's this who Christian tradition that's actually tried to live out the kinds of things I'd come to believe. And in some strange way I'd always been a Quaker but didn't know it. I learned that Friends actually sought to put it into practice the way of Jesus in the world, and actually rejected the kind of Christianity that was based on simply believing "the right things." I learned that they'd become dissatisfied with the lip service of the church and set out to do something about it, and what had arisen from that was movement in the 17th century I found very compelling as a 22 year old.
Many churches in the United States are dying, and I wonder if this has something to do with it. I'm not the first to note that churches often seem like just another social club--a place you go be with people with a shared interest, like a soccer team or a country club.
Selected Tags
Related Tags
Top Contributors
Groups interested in evangeli...
-
en
text text text text text tex...
Items: 2 | Visits: 5
Created by: peter kellinghusen
-
Gay Evangelical
Items: 3 | Visits: 4
Created by: mtaglier
-
EVANjellySPINES
The cowards, cash-mad and po...
Items: 13 | Visits: 8
Created by: Malachi Smith
Highlighter, Sticky notes, Tagging, Groups and Network: integrated suite dramatically boosting research productivity. Learn more »
Join Diigo
