Forum, August 2026

Changing support for vocal ministry

Thank you for Peter Blood-Patterson’s “Speaking with Spiritual Authority” (FJ June-July). Only in the past year, for the first time in 40 years as a Friend, have I felt an ongoing call to vocal ministry, and it’s been somewhat harrowing, even though I’ve been thinking, writing, and obsessing about this for decades.

Self-doubt: am I really called? Social anxiety: what will my meeting think about my speaking relatively frequently? Spiritual dread: who will have my back? If I step through the traces or run past my guide, will some elder help me get back on the path? Where’s the support? Where’s the oversight?

Without a settled and robust culture of eldership for vocal ministry, we ministers are left bereft. It’s not right. We need our meetings’ support, and our meetings need ministers who are being supported—and corrected, when necessary. Who in our meetings is paying proactive attention to emerging ministers and at least asking them what’s going on and what they can do to support their discernment and faithfulness?

Steven Dale Davison
Pennington, N.J.

Thank you for this marvelous article. I also enjoyed re-reading the article by Diane Randall and Debbie Humphries that Friends Journal shared in a recent enewsletter (“Engaging with a Monthly Meeting about Ministry,” FJ Sept. 2008). I am delighted to see the renewed interest in nurturing vocal ministry among unprogrammed Friends. One of the difficulties is that many, perhaps most, Liberal Friends either do not know or are actively in denial about some key historical truths.

First, Friends historically did have an institution of recorded ministry with its own structures and disciplines.

Second, this tradition was one component of a three-part ministry of elders, ministers, and overseers meant explicitly to reflect the three orders of ministry that later Christians discerned in the New Testament churches: in Greek, presbyteroi, diakonoi, and episkopoi, in which they can detect the later English terms presbyter, deacon, and bishop (of course Friends understood these offices very differently from other churches, who likewise had dramatic differences among themselves).

Third, British and American Liberal Friends actively abolished the institution of recorded ministry. Recording ministers is a deep and rich Quaker tradition, not a recent and alien intrusion.

Fourth, until the twentieth century, Quakers never believed that all Friends were ministers. Rather they believed that God could choose any Friend at any time to exercise ministry, whether for a moment, a season, or a lifetime. Ministry was believed to be the gift of God alone, by God’s will alone, by God’s choice alone. The job of meetings was first and foremost not to stand in God’s way by excluding any category of persons (such as women or children or the illiterate) from the exercise of that gift.

If those historical truths were recognized, I believe we would have an excellent basis on which to decide whether and how to rebuild a rich, accountable, inspired public vocal ministry as a key component of our worship that avoids the very real temptations of “hireling” ministry based on human will and inclination rather than divine calling.

Patrick Nugent
Kettering, Ohio

Distracted from economic equality

Capitalism is supposed to be an economic system with checks and balances, like democracy, and we expect these two different systems to interact (“Quakers and Capitalism,” Quakers Today season 6, episode 3). We also expect our markets to be regulated to prevent the worst behaviors of the market mechanism. That’s what I was raised to believe. There are many variations of capitalism: the Nordic Model, Rhine Capitalism, Keynesian Economics, and the New Deal. These versions of capitalism are usually paired with social democracy. The big problem in recent decades is our neglect of those checks and balances. We’ve been distracted from the issues of economic equality, not to mention global warming and pollution, by demagoguery on other issues.

Tom Louderback
Louisville, Ky.

Inspired by Fox’s epistles

Thanks to Ron Hogan for another good Look to the Light message, “To What Will I Compare This Generation?” (Quaker.org, June 29). If I may, on a related note, I just discovered an English Quaker site, Experiment with Light (experiment-with-light.org.uk), with an incredible meditation process based on George Fox’s sermons, which I already tried and must say it’s incredibly wonderful.

The meditation “Mediation on the individual” by Klaus Huber (August 2000) in particular is the one I used, since it’s based on Fox’s own words. I am going to email them to see what sermon in particular that’s based on, but this quote from Epistle 46 from 1653 is related:

Ye have all one eye, which is the light; one fire, which consumes all which the light discovers to be evil; and one spirit, which baptizes all into the one body, where there is no confusion, but pureness and oneness. 

Therefore all Friends, mind the oneness, and that which keeps you in the oneness and unity, it is that which keeps you out of the world; and this one light leads you out of darkness into the everlasting day, where ye see the church of God.

Stan Young

Be examples upon the earth

Steven Dale Davison’s “Nurturing Spiritual Gifts and Concerns” (FJ June-July) speaks my heart, my devotion to the spiritual guide within! I couldn’t agree more completely. We need to step up to recognition and attendance to our wise elders without fear or trepidation. A little group of us has tended to move without the guidance of Spirit. Why? They’ve answered, “because we had no one else to serve.” That is not a reason from Spirit. It’s from a source that I personally never wish from which to draw or drink! God help us here, to see the light and be examples upon the earth of light and love. Then, and only then, walk cheerfully upon our earth!

Marcia V. Ormsby
Annapolis, Md.

Correction

We inadvertently swapped some of the photo captions for Melinda Wenner Bradley’s “How Do You Feel the Light Inside You?” (FJ June-July). On page 16, the photo on the left shows the Faith & Play story “Images of God” shared at West Chester (Pa.) Friends School and was taken by Nancy Hiro; the top right photo shows the Faith & Play story “Prayer and Friends Meeting for Worship” and was taken by Melinda Wenner Bradley; the bottom right photo comes from the Faith & Play story “Loves’s Way” and is also by Melinda Wenner Bradley. On page 17, the photo at the bottom shows the Faith & Play story “Gifts” being shared at Quaker House, Chautauqua Institution in New York.