Noli Irritare Leones

Chris M. has organized a Quaker blog carnival about our experiences of QuakerQuaker, and the Quaker blogosphere in general. So, here goes.

When I first started blogging, I was the only Quaker blogger that I knew about, and was mostly interacting with Catholic bloggers (several of whom I still read regularly). So it was cool when Martin Kelley showed up (I think I first found out about him when he left a comment on my blog), found all the Quaker blogs, and started letting us know about each other. I have taken part in other forms of Quaker discussion online, mainly mailing lists.

One thing that’s cool about the blogs is the way it gives us a chance to interact with different sorts of Quakers, so someone like me from liberal Beanite PYM can talk with Conservative Friends (for non-Quakers, “Conservative” has a very particular meaning in Quaker terminology, and doesn’t refer to politics), pastoral Friends, etc. This has happened on the mailing lists, as well, but to me the conversation feels easier on the blogs, I think because, on a mailing list, every point of dispute threatens to dominate the whole mailing list. In blogs, you can more easily come and go from the topics you want, and so you don’t worry as much about the whole discussion being dominated by one difference (whether about theology or practice).

A second good thing is the ability to talk with Quakers from many meetings and churches about the practicalities of Quakerism: teaching First Day School, handling meeting business, etc. For example, I’ve just been asked to serve on Ministry and Oversight Committee, so it was very timely to find, through QuakerQuaker.org, Richard’s post on Oversight.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 19th, 2007 at 7:33 am and is filed under Quaker Practice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.