Earlham School of Religion Assistant Professor and Director of the Ministry of Writing Program Ben Brazil delivers the message during the Opening Convocation for ESR and Bethany Theological Seminary. You can view the entire event…

The two hemispheres of my waking life are diametrically opposite. Finding intersection in my work can be managed, even as I notice the contradictions. The feminist and activist side of me wants to shake the world out of its complacency. Feminist discourse can be incredibly forceful, sometimes to the point of being hurtful. My audience is comprised of women who…

The hashtag #ClimateMarchQuakers has been created to facilitate conversation among Friends leading up to the People's Climate March, and to facilitate communication amongst marchers during the March itself. The People's Climate March will be held in Manhattan on Sunday, September 21, 2014, beginning at 11:30 am.

New York Yearly Meeting is a participating organization in the March and members of the Yearly Meeting are working hard to organize a large Quaker presence, marching with the…

At the time of the early debates regarding the Eucharist, the all-too-commercial desire for a win-win arrangement was harnessed by having/controlling the Real Presence of Christ. The Catholic Church claimed an ordained mandate to "Transubstantiation". In particular, a "win" for priests having the ability to change bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ, as well as a "win" for communicants receiving/possessing Christ - by hand rather than by heart.

Wrongly interpreting Luke…

Communion, rarely do you hear this word around Quakers. These words from the New England Yearly Meeting of Friends, Faith & Practice put it succinctly; "The absence from Friends' worship of the outward observance of the sacraments is due to emphasis on the reality of inward experience...With full…

Con: "With" the Court of Quaker Opinion, we hold to the innate capacity for human perfection.

In: You mean the human complexity for God-given perfection.

Con: Not if you have a Testimony of Simplicity.

In: You mean Plain-ness, which reflects the Original Poverty, as need rather than capacity, of humanity.

Con: It is Simplicity when you have moved from poverty.

In: You mean a move next to or across from it - like the flight to the ever-expanding…

A Testimony Many Quakers Past, Present, and Future will not abide. George Fox in his own words unfiltered by agenda testifying to Presence.

Now, reader, whosoever thou art that readest this following volume, if thy mind be sober, and thy heart right towards God, thou may come to a good understanding of the ground and cause of this great controversy, between the priests and the professorship of this nation, and us who are in scorn called Quakers, for it is not unknown to…

One of the largest reasons I was first attracted to the Religious Society of Friends was the life and ministry of George Fox. I’ve told people before that if I ever strike it rich, I want to have a quality film made about Fox, Fell, Nayler, and Penn. It is a shame how poorly documented the English…

I am the eternal Presence that liberates consciousness from identity with outward ideals and institutions. I am a new and different idenitity. In me there is neither man nor woman, Quaker nor Pentecostal, rich nor poor. I am identity and meaning itself; lived  in immediacy. When the self-conscious ego releases attachment with all outward things ... the inward light shines ... I am.

In gratitude and thankfulness for life in the Life.

Abstract intellectual discussions and theoretical interpretations are the incantations of the reflective consciousness that bewtiches and enchants the natural mind into a lack of faith in the direct immediacy of my presence. This consciousness holds firm to outward institutional, ideological constructs, and practices as a basis for spirituality. It does not know or speak another way. It must rest in outward thoughts, feelings, and desires about me rather than rest in me directly. 

I…

A few hundred years ago, many legitimate critiques could be made of religion. It was often punitive, restrictive, bloodthirsty, hypocritical, and two-faced. Heretics were tortured or burned at the stake, convicted in show trials that would be the envy of Stalin. Some of the more metaphorical and symbolic beliefs of Christianity were…

ESR student Tracy Davis shares her thoughts about Intermountain YM's 2014 Annual Gathering as a poem:…

Hearth and home have been replaced by microwave and house; "help me, please" and "that hurts" replaced by drama and endurance training.

Result: Heads in the sand, hearts on the sleeve, hands on the wheel AND phone, and health on drugs.

The very first volume of American poetry(published in England), like the youth programs sponsored by the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, hit upon the formula for complementarity: Four Elements, Seasons, Ages of Man and Freedoms(illustrated by Norman…

Dear Friends,

I hope you will allow me to cross-post an article that I did not write myself. It has made a quick an impression on me. The original source is here.

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I am freedom from dependency on natural consciousness; needing the outward mirrors of thoughts, emotions, desires, philosophies, theologies, institutions, and objects in the world to be conscious. I am salvation from the fear of the loss of the body. Spellbound to the mirrored consciousness, there is nothing but oblivion in the death of the body. Imagine no body, no brain to mirror thought and emotion, no eyes to see outward objects, no ears to hear outward sounds, no tougue to taste, no…

I want to thank readers of my blog for being tolerant and accepting of my posts about organized religion. It is a pleasure to write among fellow Quakers and fellow believers. You have shown a kind of intellectual maturity and tolerance I rarely experience. I have occasional rubbed a few people the wrong way, but it has never been difficult to smooth over rough edges…

As my experience of Quaker Faith and Practice has deepened I have become steadily more attracted to the period of Quietism; its teachings, its way of life.  At the same time I have become gradually more estranged by contemporary Quaker Faith and Practice both liberal and evangelical.  I plan to put up a few posts expressing why I think contemporary Quaker Faith and Practice has lost more than it has gained.  From a certain perspective, I view these posts as a kind of ‘Critique of…

O.R.: Not to subject the Court of Quaker Opinion to a long song and dance, we strive for rhythm and rhyme in the individual experience of the sacred.

O.B.: Deaf, however, to the eruption and thunderclap of the sacred - that you are too busy justifying your experience of.

O.R.: God is heard in the soft breeze and in the silence.

O.B.: Yet, God is reverenced, OR not, in the cross-purposes of the individual life.

O.R.: Obviously, we are not playing with the same…

I am the living liquid that flows in and through each moment in your life. I am both the chalice and the liquid itself. In all things turn your mind to my presence and it will be renewed and transformed by my light candling your conscious and conscience.I am the living Word that the abstracted mind rejects in favor of outward ideas, conceptual frameworks, and insitutions.

I am non-conceptual. I am not an object ... I am life eternal experienced directly. I am in the living present,…

“Let us begin where Quakers claim to be most comfortable when tackling difficult questions – with our own personal spiritual experience.  Quaker discussions traditionally start from this point, or are recalled to it if the discussion seems to be losing its way.”

–      Margaret Heathfield, Swarthmore Lecture 1994

When I think about the word discernment, I realize it is a shiny new word for me.  Previously, I might have…