Two new videos are on my mind as this week opens:
The first was made last week, when three of us opened the door to what hopefully will become a much broader set of conversations about recent Quaker history, conflicts, and current issues.
We gathered for the Earlham School of Religion’s Authors discussion of our three-volume set, “The Separation Generation, “ charting a series of five recent schisms in American Quaker yearly meetings.
More than one hundred Friends and visitors joined us in person and via Zoom. They had lots of good questions, more than we could deal with in our limited time.
One of the most frequent questions, in Zoom chat and later messages, was, “When will a video recording be available?”
I’m happy to say that the answer is, “Right now.”
The hour-long recording of the session is now on Vimeo, here.
So if you missed it, or want to go over it again, now’s your chance. And you can still send in questions and comments to us, via this blog.
The Separation Generation series recounts events from 2003 to 2018, the reverberations from which are still being felt among Quaker groups from coast to coast.
The books raise issues which have seldom been dealt with before (e.g., what to do about Cheating Clerks?) as well as some which have been with us for a long time (e.g., what’s the proper form of church governance among Friends? How is the Bible to be interpreted, and who gets to do it? And is it time, or past time, to welcome and even marry same sex couples in Friends meetings?)
Because there is so much to unpack, the coauthors are now consulting about ways to expand and follow up on this exciting initial session. Watch this space for updates as these consultations take concrete shape.
Now to the second video: Chuck Fager was recently interviewed at some length by Kyla Cassidy and Ann Medlock, two students from Elon University, about his half-century-plus career(s) as a writer, especially about Quakers, and an activist on various issues.
Kyla and Ann have very skillfully boiled down the interview into a 13-minute summary. Those who are interested in that work, can watch it here.
Hi Chuck,
I tried watching your Elon University video and got this error message: An error occurred. Please try again later. (Playback ID: qCqphNSoGIM8qo0P) It was trying to play from a Google Drive link. Do you have a direct YouTube link?
I am watching on Vimeo and Gretchen refers to the video of the three of you that was made. Will that full video be made available? Thanks for your reporting on the “messes” among Friends. There are lessons to be learned; I hope we will learn them while it is yet day!
Adria,
Here’s what happened, and what I know: the coauthors were interviewed on 11/08 for a hour by Tom Hamm for ESR, with the interview recorded. We were told that the interview recording would be edited down to 30 minutes or less, for use as part of the 11/11 event. For reasons unknown to me, the editing did not get done, so a short chunk of the latter part of the video was shown on 11/11. What will happen to the full hour of interview video is up to ESR. I’d like to see the whole interview made available; but through the magic of Zoom, I took part from Durham NC, while ESR is, as you know, in eastern Indiana.