Quakers and Money
January 14, 2025
Season 4, Episode 2. In this episode, co-hosts Peterson Toscano (he/him) and Miche McCall (they/them) look at how Quaker meetings align their financial practices with their values. The episode features Joann Neuroth sharing how Red Cedar Meeting in Lansing, Michigan, has shifted its financial priorities to work towards racial justice. Alicia Mendonca-Richards discusses how Quakers can embrace mystical knowledge to rethink our economy. You will also hear Brian McLaren from an excerpt of Climate Changed, a podcast by the BTS Center. He considers how to maintain a vibrant life while navigating unavoidable losses and significant uncertainties.Â
Moving From Hand Wringing to Agency: A Quaker Meeting Uses Money as a Vehicle for Action
Joann Neuroth highlights how Quaker meetings can make financial decisions that align with their values. She emphasizes thoughtful stewardship, intentional action, and the potential to contribute to community well-being by using financial resources to address injustice and meet community needs.
Red Cedar Meeting moved its long-term maintenance fund to Liberty Bank, a Black-owned bank in Detroit, to support Black communities. It makes annual payments to The Justice League of Greater Lansing Michigan as reparations, acknowledging that these resources belong to those harmed by slavery, segregation, and white supremacy. Red Cedar Meeting also created a tiny pantry to provide free food to the community. This project began with a few members bringing extra groceries and grew to distribute approximately $11,000 worth of food annually.
Joann Neuroth wrote the article “Putting Our Money Where Our Hearts Are.” It appears in the January 2025 issue of FriendsJournal.org. Joann is a member of Red Cedar Meeting in Lansing, Mich. She has served on the boards of American Friends Service Committee and the School of the Spirit Ministry, where she will co-teach an upcoming spiritual nurture class, “God’s Promise Fulfilled: Encountering and Embodying Grace in the Shadow of Empire.”
How Quakers Can Rethink the Economy
Alicia Mendonca-Richards shares her insights on how Quakers can rethink the economy. She argues that the current system, based on unsustainable growth and competition, distracts from what truly matters. Mendonca-Richards connects economic thought and mysticism, suggesting that mystical knowledge can be a foundation for courageous action and alternative economic models.
The full video featuring Alicia Mendonca-Richards and other QuakerSpeak videos can be found on the QuakerSpeak YouTube channel or at Quakerspeak.com.Â
Life After Doom: Wisdom and Courage for a World Falling Apart by Brian McLaren.
In Life After Doom: Wisdom and Courage for a World Falling Apart, Brian McLaren explores the anxieties and uncertainties many people feel about the future of our planet and civilization. He acknowledges the serious challenges we face, including climate change, social and political divisions, and the decline of traditional institutions. However, instead of dwelling on despair, McLaren focuses on finding meaning and purpose in the face of these challenges. Audio with Brian McLaren comes from the BTS Center‘s podcast, Climate Changed, which offers intimate interviews and conversations around some of the most pressing questions about faith, life, and climate change. Thank you, BTS Center!
Read Pamela Haines’s Friends Journal review. Read more Friends Journal book reviews.
Answers for this month: In last month’s episode, we asked: What are some unexpected ways you find yourself drawn to repair?
Thank you to Callie, Lena, Erin, Micah, Maggie, and Joann for answering!Â
Question for next month: What is your relationship with nature like?
Leave a voice memo or text with your name and the town where you live at +1 317-782-5377. You can also comment on our social media channels or send an email to podcast@friendsjournal.org.
Season Four of Quakers Today is sponsored by American Friends Service Committee and Friends Fiduciary. American Friends Service Committee: Vulnerable communities and the planet are counting on Quakers to take action for a more just, sustainable, and peaceful world. The American Friends Service Committee, or AFSC, works at the forefront of many social change movements to meet urgent humanitarian needs, challenge injustice, and build peace. Find out more about how you can get involved in their programs to protect migrant communities, establish an enduring peace in Palestine, de-militarize police forces worldwide, assert the right to food for all, and more. Visit AFSC.ORG. Friends Fiduciary: Since 1898, Friends Fiduciary has provided values-aligned investment services for fellow Quaker organizations. Friends Fiduciary consistently achieves strong financial returns while witnessing to Quaker testimonies. They also help individuals support organizations they hold dear through giving strategies, including donor-advised funds, charitable gift annuities, and stock gifts. Learn more about FFC’s services at FriendsFiduciary.org. Feel free to email us at podcast@friendsjournal.org with​​ comments, questions, and requests for our show. Music from this episode comes from Epidemic Sound. Follow Quakers Today on TikTok, Instagram, X, and visit us at QuakersToday.org.
Transcript for S4E2 Quakers and Money with Joann Neuroth, Alicia Mendonca-Richards, and Brian McClaren
Miche McCall: In this episode of Quakers Today, we ask, what are some unexpected ways you find yourself drawn to repair?
Peterson Toscano: Writer and Speaker Brian McLaren talks about his new book, Life After Doom: Wisdom and Courage for a World Falling Apart.
Miche McCall: Alicia Mendonca-Richards shares how Quakers can rethink the economy.
Peterson Toscano: Joann Neuroth reveals how Quaker Meetings can use money to align with their values. In a world that’s fueled by money, you will learn how to challenge the scarcity mentality and take control of spending. Joanne’s insights about carefully managing resources may just enlighten you about your own personal finances. I’m Peterson Toscano.
Miche McCall: And I’m Miche McCall. This is season four, episode two of the Quakers Today podcast, a project of the Friends Publishing Corporation. This season of Quakers Today is sponsored by Friends Fiduciary and American Friends Service Committee.
Peterson Toscano: As a wise Swedish philosopher once said, “money, money, money must be funny in the rich man’s world.” Oh wait, that’s an ABBA song. But it’s true. Money is definitely a funny thing, especially in our society, where so much money is earned through exploiting others.
Miche McCall: Yeah, I mean, wow, I never thought about ABBA as being a particularly deep band, but you’re, you’re right. That song does get at the heart of something. Money can bring us security, but it can also cause a lot of harm. It can open doors, but money can also build walls and make it a rich man’s world.
Peterson Toscano: And talking about money in a spiritual context, it. It always feels a little weird to me. It feels, I don’t know, like money is worldly and spirituality is not worldly, which I know that’s not true. So this song is making me curious. How do Quakers think about money?
Miche McCall: Yeah, it’s, it’s easy to see money as a separate sphere, but Quakers are known for their intentional approaches to almost everything, and I sure hope our financial practices are no exception.
Peterson Toscano: Well, then, let’s do this. “In my dreams, I have a plan.”
Miche McCall: “To interview Joann.”
Peterson Toscano: Go for it.
Joann Neuroth
Miche McCall: To answer some of our questions about how Quaker meetings steward our resources, I spoke with Joann Neuroth, a member of Red Cedar Meeting in Lansing, Michigan. Her article, “Putting Our Money Where Our Hearts Are,” explores how Red Cedar shifted its financial priorities to work towards racial justice. Joanne’s article appears in the January 2025 issue of Friends Journal.
Joann Neuroth: As a predominantly white meeting, we have really stepped away from sort of helplessness. We don’t know what it would take to get us to racial justice in some large, abstract sense. But we do know specific steps that feel right to all of us to do, aim, uh, toward justice and take some steps.
Peterson Toscano: Quaker meetings have long engaged in thoughtful practices around money. Traditionally, these practices revolved around the careful management of resources and serving the needs of the meeting. But today, many Quaker meetings are asking, how can our financial decisions address injustice?
Joann Neuroth: Our finance committee was the first to offer a way to use our money in service to our testimonies when they proposed that we move our long-term maintenance fund to Black-owned Liberty Bank in Detroit. The committee members read Mehrsa Baradaran’s The Color of Money, which explores the history of black financial institutions and the structural reasons that have caused many to fail.
Miche McCall: The decision to bank with Liberty wasn’t just about supporting a specific institution. It was a statement about our broader financial systems. While depositing funds in black-owned banks can help circulate capital within their communities, Red Cedar didn’t see their work stopping there.
Joann Neuroth: We were mightily gifted with the opening that has flowered into our second financial witness. Annual payments that actually do transfer some wealth from our predominantly white meaning to local People of Color as reparations for generations of racialized harm. This one more than the banking, it’s actually costing us. We’re taking part of our resources and saying, they aren’t ours, they belong there, we’re going to give them back where they belong, but it hasn’t hurt us yet.
Peterson Toscano: Red Cedar didn’t come to these payments without wrestling with questions like, what do reparations actually mean?
Joann Neuroth: There were years of trying to get people to understand what reparations involved. You know, we haven’t been in any really tight financial pinches where we think, ooh, I don’t know if we can afford to keep doing this reparations thing or if that was just kind of a luxury. So we still have bumps, I’m sure coming. One of Red Cedar’s college students had come home for Christmas and observed to her dad that tiny pantries modeled after tiny free libraries were beginning to show up around town where people could leave food for others to take what they needed, no questions asked. Why, she asked, couldn’t Red Cedar do the same?
Miche McCall: The tiny pantry started with a few members bringing in extra groceries to their meeting house. But quickly Red Cedar noticed the level of need in their community.
Joann Neuroth: It just kind of grew. And we found out that it takes about $25 to $30 a day to put it in the pantry. And we were doing okay with that. But then we added it up and we realized that $25 to $30 a day of 365 days a year, is $11,000. We said, whoa. If somebody had come to us and said, let’s start an $11,000 project to put food out there, we would have said, are you nuts? Our whole budget is $80,000. We don’t have 11,000 more to give to this. It just kind of one can of soup at a time, it grew until we are in fact, sustaining $11,000 a year.
Peterson Toscano: The tiny pantry turned into a true loaves and fishes story where a small amount of food miraculously multiplies to feed a large crowd.
Joann Neuroth: What I hope these stories inspire people to say is you do have a lot of learning to do. There’s nothing wrong with taking your time to learn. But eventually it’s time to stop learning from others experience and step into this. Start bumbling your way toward your understanding of truth, even if you make mistakes along the way. We didn’t know where we were going with any of these, but by following faithfully sort of the one next step that was apparent to us, we have figured stuff out and it’s possible to do that.
Peterson Toscano: Red Cedar Meeting’s tiny pantry is a testament to small steps.
Joann Neuroth: If you’re looking for a uh, one big fix answer which white supremacy culture teaches us we should all have like uh, get the right thing and then get behind it and implement it. We are going to feel handwringy, but we don’t have to.
Miche McCall: Whether it’s how we earn our money or how we spend it, our financial resources have the potential to reflect our deepest values. Not just to meet our own needs, but to contribute to the well-being of our communities and the planet.
Peterson Toscano: It’s about more than just paying the bills. It’s about aligning our actions with our beliefs. That was Joann Neuroth, author of the article “Putting Our Money Where Our Hearts Are.” It appears in the January 2025 issue of Friends Journal. You can also read it at friendsjournal.org.
Alicia Mendonca-Richards
Alicia Mendonca-Richards: We live in a in this sort of structure of never-ending growth and consumption and production and that it’s always better to produce more, to consume more. Even if, like me, you come from a rich country, you will see the extent to which economics sort of now infiltrates every area of your life. My name is Alicia Mendonca Richards. I’m from Welwyn Garden City Quaker Meeting, which is in Hertfordshire, just outside London in the UK. So whenever there are these attempts to try and think about alternative ways to live or to create an economic system that is less destructive and more just, there’s very often this response of that’s impossible. That’s just not true. We can look at the earth around us and we can look at how nature sustains itself and we can see that a system of never-ending growth on a limited planet, a system that doesn’t allow for reciprocity and, you know, a sustainable way of life just can’t be the best way to live. But we can also see it because human beings have for millennia lived in different types of social structures and they haven’t always organized in a capitalist system. And we are here. As humans we’ve always relied on forms of knowledge that are not only rational and empirical. One of those forms of knowledge is spiritual knowledge and I would say mystical knowledge and knowledge of what we know to be true. When we tap into that guidance, when we listen to that still small voice within us, we know what we need to do. We know what is true, we know what is good, we know what is wrong. When we take the right action, things will unfold from there. So, we are able to be courageous and imagine new ways of life without necessarily being able to explain exactly how things are going to pan out. So when we make economic arguments and people say, well, no one’s done that, so you can’t prove it’s going to work. When we know something to be true mystically and we take courageous action in truth, we are able to do that in faith. So using mystical knowledge is about really taking the time to tune into your relationship with the truth of the reality in which you live and then listening to how that guides you in your life and what it teaches you.
Miche McCall: That was Alicia Mendonca-Richards in an excerpt from the QuakerSpeak video titled “How Quakers Can Rethink the Economy.” You will find this QuakerSpeak video and the Quakerspeak channel on YouTube or visit Quakerspeak.com.
Brian McLaren
Peterson Toscano: Now it’s time for our Friends Journal book review. This month we’re looking at a timely and deeply reflective book, Brian McLaren’s Life After Doom: Wisdom and Courage for a World Falling Apart. Pamela Haines reviews it in the January 2025 issue of Friends Journal. Pamela Haines highlights McLaren’s unique perspective as a minister addressing big questions that religious and economic fundamentalism often ignore. Let’s hear directly from Brian McLaren as he shares his insights and reflections on some of the themes in his book. The following audio comes from Climate Changed. It’s a podcast by the BTS center, and we’re grateful to the BTS center for allowing us to share this with you.
Brian McLaren: The doom in the book is not the end of the world. The doom is the feeling many of us feel now and have been feeling some time. The institutions we’ve trusted to get us this far do not seem capable to get us where we need to go. Hope is when you see a way to reach your goal and you have the will to get there. It’s willpower and way power we could say in the book what I try to do is to say we are in a complex situation and the feeling of doom is unavoidable for those of us with our eyes open. I try to explain what people are often calling our multi-crisis or poly-crisis and then I try to offer four scenarios of how things might turn out for us. We know we have a problem in how we live with the planet. Climate change is a super obvious and urgent expression of that, but there are so many expressions of it. We are not living with the planet in a way that is sustainable. Our political systems are not equipped to help us deal with a problem of this magnitude. Our political systems are more polarized than they’ve ever been and there is this pull toward authoritarianism. And the authoritarians are people who instead of using authority to help us face reality, they gain power by helping people deny reality and shift the blame. Our economic system doesn’t know how to stop doing what it’s doing, and what it’s doing is destroying the planet. And our economic system keeps giving more money and power to a tiny group of super, super, super rich people who use that money to buy media and buy political influence to keep their interests first and foremost. Finally, right when we might hope that our religious communities would give us some sanity and wisdom, very often they’re either part of the problem, sucked into the vortex of polarization and so on, or they’re actually aiding and abetting the worst elements of our situation. So when you put all those together, that’s when you realize, gosh, uh, just glibly saying everything will be fine does not feel like being upbeat. It feels like being in denial.
Peterson Toscano: You can hear more of Brian McLaren on the BTS Center’s podcast Climate Changed. Visit climatechangedpodcast.org and you can read Pamela Haines’ full review of Brian McLaren’s book Life After Doom: Wisdom and Courage for a World Falling Apart. It appears in the January 2025 issue of Friends Journal. Or just visit friendsjournal.org for this review and more. Thank you for joining us for this episode of Quakers today. Season four of Quakers today is sponsored by American Friends Service Committee. Vulnerable communities and the planet are counting on Quakers and others to take action for a more just, sustainable and peaceful world. The American Friends Service Committee, or AFSC, works at the forefront of many social change movements to meet urgent humanitarian needs, challenge injustice, and build peace. Find out more about how you can get involved in their programs to protect migrant communities, establish an enduring peace in Palestine, demilitarize police forces around the world, assert the right to food for all, and more at afsc.org that’s afsc.org.
Miche McCall: This season is also brought to you by Friends Fiduciary. Since 1898, Friends Fiduciary has provided values-aligned investment services for fellow Quaker organizations. Friends Fiduciary consistently achieves strong financial returns while witnessing to Quaker testimonies. They also help individuals support organizations they hold dear through strategies including donor-advised funds, charitable gift annuities, and stock gifts. Learn more about FFC’s services friendsfiduciary.org.
Peterson Toscano: To see our show notes and a full transcript of this episode, visit QuakersToday.org. And if you stick around after the closing, you will hear listeners responses to the question “what are some unexpected ways you find yourself drawn to repair?”
Miche McCall: Thank you friend for listening.
Listener Voicemails
Peterson Toscano: In a moment, you will hear listeners voicemails about some unexpected ways they find themselves drawn to repair.
Miche McCall: But first I will share next month’s question with you. “What is your relationship with nature, like? What is your relationship with nature like?
Peterson Toscano: Ah, I love this question because I had a major shift in my relationship with nature about a year ago.
Miche McCall: Mhm.
Peterson Toscano: I was in some like online whatever and they had us draw this diagram of ourselves at the very center was like me in concentric circles going out other parts of me like family and community. I thought to myself, if I lived in a different culture that wasn’t so individually centered, what could be at the center besides me? And then I wondered what if nature was like the very core of who I am? That I am nature. Not connected to nature, or I’m a part of nature, or I long to be a part of nature. But I am nature. And it’s true. I mean we’re natural beings and we house millions of organisms in our bodies that assist us. I mean we are a giant walking colony of all kinds of things. And just that shift in language, instead of saying I’m natural, I’m a, you know, I’m connected to nature. I am nature. What changes for me? That is one shift that I have of seeing myself as nature.
Miche McCall: Yeah, and you host all sorts of critters in your home as well. I think you just saw a mouse.
Peterson Toscano: I did. Should have heard me shriek. We didn’t, we weren’t recording at that moment.
Miche McCall: Yeah. For me, this question holds so much. My, I think my entire spiritual life has been built on finding awe while outside. Many of the times when I was small, those experiences really happened, seeing deer while hiking or seeing the waves of ocean while I was at the beach, those are the places where I really saw God. Um, and even as I changed faiths and lost my faith and came back to it, that awe of how beautiful the world is never left me.
Peterson Toscano: Yeah. And you live in New York City, which is a place that actually has an extraordinary amount of nature for a city. I lived in New York for 10 years, and although I grew up in the rural part of New York State, it was actually in Central Park that I spent a lot of time in nature and helped me kind of reconnect with the natural world.
Miche McCall: Absolutely. Before I moved here, I thought nature had to be something untouched by humans. So, my definition of nature was very specific.
Peterson Toscano: Mhmm.
 Even though, as we can learn, most of this planet is not untouched by us. And so coming to New York City and realizing every single part of this city is touched, but there is still that nature here was a really important shift of learning how to be outside. So, listener, what is your relationship with nature like?
Peterson Toscano: Leave a voice memo with your name and the town where you live. Just call us at the following number 317-Quakers. That’s 317-782-5377. 317-Quakers. +1. If calling from outside the USA, you can also send an email podcast@friendsjournal.org or comment on our social media page. We have all of these contact details in our show notes over at quakerstoday.org. And now we hear your answers to the question, what are some unexpected ways you find yourself drawn to repair? Now, Miche, this time we did not receive a single voicemail answering this question. I don’t know, maybe it’s intimidating, but you have received a bunch of responses personally.
Miche McCall: Yes! Instagram was all the rage this month and we have a few responses. Lena wrote, “nothing brings me more joy than fixing things. I feel like we have such a weird, disconnected relationship with the physical objects in our lives. Like everything is disposable and fixing things makes me feel like I’m fighting that culture a little bit and caring for something that’s cared for me. And I also feel like a badass when I figure out how to fix something.” Erin wrote, “I’m drawn to wanting to fix broken things on the car when I think I can figure out how to do it. Refilling the AC, changing a windshield wiper, etc.”
Peterson Toscano: Way to go, Aaron. I struggle to just put petrol in the tank.
Miche McCall: Petrol.
Peterson Toscano: Petrol. It’s weird that we call it gas, right? Because it’s actually a liquid.
Miche McCall: It’s a liquid. It’s true. Maggie wrote. Sustainability and autonomy. I love repair. I love the right to repair.” Callie wrote “I like to try and repair men personally.”
Peterson Toscano: Good luck.
Miche McCall: Us too, Callie. And Micah Nicholson wrote “I’ve yet to darn socks, but I love getting to the clothes that have tears or rips after they’ve sat on the injured reserve bench for a time. Makes me appreciate the pieces I love all the more.”Â
Peterson Toscano: Wow, these are great answers. Yeah. What great responses. Many thanks to everyone who answered this question. And I’m definitely curious to hear your thoughts about nature. What is your relationship with nature like?
Miche McCall: Be brave and leave us a voicemail at 317-Quakers or comment on our social media pages. You can even email us podcast@friendsjournal.org. Thanks friend! Bye!
Peterson Toscano: Bye!