Martin Kelley, Ranter

Martin runs the Nonviolence Web and works for Friends General Conference. I originally met him through my friend Barbara and New Society Publishers. He has a blog that includes writings on Quakerism. Here’s a great post: The Younger Evangelicals and the Younger Quakers

Unfortunately most Friends in leadership positions don’t really understand the problems facing Quakerism. Well, that’s not true: they do, but they don’t understand the larger shifts behind them and think that they just need to redouble their efforts using the old methods and models. The Baby Boom generation in charge knows the challenge is to reach out to seekers in their twenties or thirties, but they do this by developing programs that would have appealed to them when they were that age. The current crop of outreach projects and peace initiatives are all very 1980 in style. There’s no recognition that the secular peace community that drew seekers in twenty years ago no longer exists and that today’s seekers are looking for something deeper, something more personal and more real.