I'm at the Kamala rally in Wilkes-Barre. About 500 people here in first hour after they started letting people in and the line to get in runs at least three city blocks. Sounds like a fun time! I hope you enjoy the rally.

This is why you are Chronicler, because of excellent chronicling.

Well you know I got the nickname Chronicler when I was a graduate student in History in the late 1980s. One other student had a lot of strong opinions about historic events but little inclination to examine primary source documents first. I wanted to base my conclusions on a sound methodology even if that meant that my initial assumptions had to be set aside. We often reached similar conclusions but in my mind, the difference was that the lack of adequate background work opens one up to accepting the latest whims or propaganda and not having a sound basis for a refutation or recalibration.

Hey Chronicler. Hopefully you read this in the next couple of days. Hoping you can help with something I'm working on if you have some time. Please respond here or to my e-mail BrentGrantinCO @ gmail.com - whatever you prefer. And if you'd rather not respond - I respect that too. I teach Sunday School at Church. I'm giving a talk about "Friends" to adults this Sunday Oct 13. The inspiration is John 15:14-15 14 - Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you. 15 - I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. My question for you - as a member of the Society of Friends, is the "Friends" name of the Church rooted in some biblical meaning or practice of the Church? I think it may be that reference above if what Wiki says is accurate. Curious if you can expand on it to help me better understand how and why "Friends" is important to Quakers. Anyway....thanks in advance. I'm grateful for all you do here and if you want and are able to give me some of your thoughts on this, I'd like to work it into what I teach about Christlike friendship. Thanks so much, Brent G.

Hi Brent - thank you for the question. I think I will answer here - this got a little longer than I originally envisioned so maybe we should do any follow-up by e-mail (sethhinshaw @ yahoo.com) since comparative religions is not the theme of OC. The name does come from the two passages quoting Jesus in John 15. Our historic worship is based on I Corinthians 14:26-33. The phrase "Society of Friends" emerged in the early 1700s at a time when some non-Anglican religious groups wanted to be considered an alternative culture - at that time, the Methodists often called themselves the "Methodist Society" but they seem to have dropped that terminology around 1800. 300 years ago, several non-Anglican faiths believed that religious leaders were directly inspired by God during their sermons. For example, among Baptists (the General Baptists), an elder would open a Bible at random and choose a verse, and the person giving the sermon would read the verse chosen and then speak extemporaneously based on that verse. Most of the groups with this type of vocal ministry agreed that what was said needed to be consistent with that group's interpretation of Scripture. The only group I have heard of that didn't care if the message was consistent was a group called the Ranters that existed in England in the 1650s. Also an independent congregation called the Grindletonians kept a Bible they would use to keep track of verses that had been revealed to be inspired. The point of all this is that 99% of the groups with extemporaneous ministry believed that inspiration from Jesus would be consistent with the Bible. Having said all that, Quakers splintered in the mid-1800s. My group, the Wilburites, is the most traditional and maintains worship the closest to that of Quakers in the 1700s. The liberal Friends (Friends General Conference) have extemporaneous ministry that is not necessarily expected to be religious in nature or consistent with the Scriptures. We have two evangelical groups that hold worship very similar to Wesleyan Methodists (meaning in this case a prepared sermon). Our group (the Wilburites) also maintain the practice of reading short tidbits of wisdom called the Advices. One that I find enlightening follows - for some reason some modern Quakers have a big problem with it even though you don't have to think about it very long to recognize the truth in it. Here it is: "Let all in their spoken testimonies be cautious of using unnecessary preambles, and of asserting too positively a Divine impulse, the baptizing power of Truth accompanying their words being the true evidence." Hence you can tell if the Holy Spirit inspired the message for you because you can feel the words making an impact on your heart. I don't understand why anyone would disagree with this because it is a universal religious experience.

You rock Chronicler. And I'll follow-up with some questions. Probably late tonight LOL when I am doing more work on the talk. Thanks!

One thing that surprised me when I began gravitating towards the Friends several years ago was that while I theoretically was 100% into the idea of the Liberal, unprogrammed meeting, in practice I didn't find it nearly as fulfilling. Fortunately, there's an unaffiliated meeting about 90 minutes away that isn't exactly Conservative but has a flexible programmed meeting that has been a great experience for being somewhere between the schools of thought.

Wow Ralphie - that's great to hear! We used to have another Quaker here from Oregon but his name escapes me right now.

The Green kid from way back? That's the only Oregonian I really remember, ha. Yeah, after holding a casually positive view for quite a while and becoming frustrated with feeling spiritually unfulfilled I actually bothered to study on what it means to be Quaker and was surprised to find how well it matched both my values and views on how a religion should be structured (non-dogmatic, non-hierarchical). Going to meeting after that only confirmed that it fits me well. Still reconciling practicality of dress with having an appreciation for vintage fashions, though. Haha.