Great resources on Quakers... on YouTube!
I just found a collection of wonderful video shorts on YouTube, that show members of the Quaker meeting (congregation) in Watford, UK, both practicing and talking about Quakerism. They are produced by someone called Chris, I believe Pettit.
I was drawn, first to this 4m40s video in which some Watford Quakers talk about the Quaker testimonies. But then I watched, and really enjoyed, the two 8-minute videos described as "An introduction to Quakers", parts 1 and 2; and this shorter video about our very distinctive form of decisionmaking and (anti-)leadership.
I am so grateful to Chris and the members of Watford meeting for producing and posting these videos. We're a rum lot, Quakers. We have such great respect for integrity and dignity of all other persons that most of us find it very hard to think of doing anything that might suggest "proselytizing."
Well, actually that applies mainly to the Quakers (Friends) who-- like the British Friends and those of us on the east coast of the US-- still hold "unprogramed" meetings for worship... But the further west you go across the US, the more the Quakers become, in many respects, like other Christian churches. Till in the midwest they start calling their congregations "churches", not meetings, and they start having pastors and programing a liturgy for their worship sessions... And then when you get even further west they start being "Evangelical Friends" who-- guess what!-- evangelize... And hence, most Friends (Quakers) in the world today (a) live in Africa, and (b) are Evangelical.
I have worshiped with great joy with Evangelical Friends in Africa. But still, I love our very simple, non- or anti-hierarchical pattern of worship and internal organization. You can find out a lot more about it by watching some of these videos, including, in the first part of the "Introduction to Quakers" the camera will even take you inside a worship session very similar to the ones we have, in Charlottesville.
Check 'em out!
Hi Helena!
My orders are out for your book. I will let you know what the students in my summer course have to say.
I am curious what AFSC is doing on the Iraq war. Why don't they set aside funds for their Iraqi exile in DC residence? He is well connected with people back in Iraq. What would stop AFSC from inviting some Iraqis he suggests to come stage a grass-roots "teach-in" on the mall this summer?
Well, thanks for that. I watched four of them.