In this workshop, we will discuss the basics of Contemplative Pedagogy and break down four types of contemplative practices for how it is and can be used in classrooms.
Friends Association for Higher Education’s Quaker Leadings in Higher Education series presented:
The Soul of Higher Education: Contemplative Pedagogy, Research, and Institutional Life for the 21st Century
How does the current dominant epistemology in higher education mitigate against contemplative teaching, learning, and research? How can a contemplative culture be nurtured in the classroom?
Position is Key for Deepening Faith and Justice Work Among Quakers
Pendle Hill, a Quaker study, retreat, and conference center that seeks to create peace with justice in the world by transforming lives through learning opportunities, retreat, and community is seeking its next Education Coordinator. This role is responsible for a range of educational programs that reflect Pendle Hill’s mission and vision, serving the needs of Friends and other constituents. Pendle Hill’s educational programs include on-campus workshops of varying lengths as well as online learning programs. As the main position tending to educational programs at Pendle Hill, the person in this role has the exciting opportunity to shape programs and their delivery, contributing substantively to the deepening of faith and justice work in the Religious Society of Friends. Highly organized individuals with experience in adult education, appreciation of a wide range of thought and approaches to advance social justice and deepen Quaker faith and practice, and strong alignment with the processes and testimonies of the Religious Society of Friends are encouraged to apply. See the full job posting for more information.
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Call for chapter proposals for Volume 5: Global Quakerism in a Postcolonial Context: 1938 – 2018
The New History of Quakerism series from Penn State Press is the first historical series in Quaker studies in over a century, these volumes offer a fresh, comprehensive, up-to-date treatment of the history of Quakerism from its seventeenth-century origins to the twenty-first century. Using critical methodologies, this limited series emphasizes key events and movements, examines all branches of Quakerism, and explores its global reach.
Stephen Angell, David Watt and Ben Pink Dandelion are editing volume 5 of the series, covering the years 1938 -2018, and we are looking for chapter proposals. We are not wishing to be encyclopaedic in our approach to the events of this period but wish to use the best scholarship to foreground some of the key issues and tropes. The volume will be about 90,000 words long.
This is period of history in which the threads of imperialist political order began to unravel even whilst economic power remained in the global north. This pattern is replicated in Quakerism with British and American Quakerism becoming numerically smaller than the number of Friends elsewhere. It is a period characterised by a transition within unprogrammed Quakerism and the growth and diversification of mission work and indigenous forms of the Quaker faith. We want the volume to reflect, as far as scholarship allows, the diversity of types of Quakerism and Quaker experience. We particularly welcome pieces on previously untold stories and under-researched areas of the Quaker world. Proposals that focus on empire, ethnicity, gender, Quakers in Africa, Quakers in Latin America, race, sexuality, or religious practices are especially welcome, as are proposals that make a conscious effort to critique (rather than re-inscribe) colonialist assumptions.
Chapters can be up to 7000 words long including footnotes, but shorter pieces, perhaps detailing generational experiential accounts will also be considered. We wish to be open to a variety of genres and approaches. If chapters involve specific case studies, we hope the wider implications of the analysis can be highlighted.
If you have an idea for a chapter but would value working alongside someone else, please let us know as we should be able to pair you up with another scholar. Equally, proposals can come from joint authors.
If accepted, first drafts of the chapter would be required by August 30, 2023, with any redrafting completed by December 2023 and January 2024, for publication in 2025.
Please send a 200-word chapter proposal to us with an approximate idea of its length before October 17, 2022. We expect to make a decision on the table of contents of the volume by mid-November and would then submit the book outline to Penn State Press.
Any enquiries and for proposals, please e-mail: ben.dandelion[at]woodbrooke.org.uk
At the close of our 42nd Annual Conference, held online with the generous support of Earlham College and Earlham School of Religion, Friends Association for Higher Education sends our greetings and warm best wishes to Friends throughout the world.
Focused on our theme, “Quakers and Racial Justice,” we were inspired by our plenary speaker, Dr. Amanda Kemp, as well as many workshops and presentations. These ranged from close analysis of “Hamilton the Musical and the 1619 Project,” to “Reflections on Incorporating Diverse and Anti-Colonial Material in Natural Science Classrooms,” to exploring ways of “Dismantling Raci(al/st) Ideology,” and to promoting “Town and Gown” community conversations about race. Our worship and other opportunities for interaction enhanced our understanding of the Friends Equality Testimony and encouraged us to support our fellow faculty, staff and student activists striving for beloved community.
In her moving, multi-media plenary, Amanda Kemp shared with us the deep personal stresses accompanying her racial justice activism. After police killed Michael Brown in 2014, the cumulative impact of ever-increasing numbers of sacrificed Black lives, along with the wearing responsibilities of participating in visible protests and the daily interpreting of events for Whites often thoughtlessly invading her personal space, opened Amanda to the pressing need for self-compassion. Since 2020, she has found relief from relentless discourse “where there is no liberation” by accepting the unconditional love around her, in particular through her communion with trees. By listening to the trees, surrounding us everywhere, we can “feed the core” of our being, experience corresponding joy, and nourish the outward expression of our well-being; a practice well-understood and practiced by indigenous peoples throughout the world.
Friends’ paper presentations and workshops provided scholarly explorations and personal reflections on racial issues and dynamics ranging from Quaker slaveholding, to daunting modern urban segregation, to the need to challenge inequalities on our Quaker campuses. While expanding the awareness and knowledge of the sessions’ participants , the impact on the presenters of their own work was apparent. It’s clear that our thoughtful scholarship changes our lives, often leading to meaningful activism.
This year’s Presidents’ Panel, hosted by Earlham President Anne Houtman, featured a new twist, including three Quaker women presidents from non-quaker Colleges, along with Malone University’s incoming president, Greg Miller. They were Sarah Bolton from the College of Wooster (soon moving to Whitman College), Sarah Manglesdorf from the University of Rochester and Marlene Tromp from Boise State University. The challenges of leadership, guided by Quaker values, during these financially and politically challenging times, were thoughtfully explored.
Finally, during our annual business meeting we accepted the invitation from Haverford College’s President Wendy Raymond, pandemic allowing, to gather in person in June 2023. Please join us in the continuation of this good work.
As we depart from our gathering, we stand ready to share with Friends and our colleagues in higher education a renewed sense that we must all further commit to seeking racial justice within and outside of our colleges. To this end, the vitality of our Quaker colleges and study centers remains a central concern of FAHE.
43rd Annual Meeting of the Friends Association for Higher Education
On June 14-15, 2022, FAHE held its annual conference virtually via Zoom, hosted remotely by Earlham College and Earlham School of Religion. The conference Epistle can be found at this link.
Meanwhile, here is a recap of the conference events:
The Friends Association for Higher Education was conceived in 1979 by a group of educators seeking to bring together faculty, staff and administrators at historically Quaker colleges and universities, as well as Friends teaching at other institutions. Since its founding, FAHE has met annually at Friends institutions of higher education around the US and beyond, engaging educators and scholars in ongoing dialogue around Quaker concerns in higher education. From the very beginning, Friends have embraced a strong commitment to education, and Friends schools and colleges have attracted and welcomed both Quaker and non-Quaker educators alike who resonate with the historic Friends commitment to educating the whole person, guided by the Quaker testimonies of simplicity, peace, integrity, community, equality, and (especially in recent decades) sustainability.
The Quaker Institute for the Future’s 2022 Summer Research Seminar will take place by Zoom from August 8-12. QIF Summer Research Seminars create a venue for spirit-led research using Quaker methods of discernment and reflection. In QIF, “research” goes beyond the usual academic methods and definitions to include any area of personal exploration that grows from spiritual roots, often pursued collaboratively with others in the context of action.
The Summer Research Seminars are centered around research presentations for the whole group that include time for questions, clarification, and discussion, followed by a period of discernment conducted as a meeting for worship. Time is also reserved for theme-based discussions, worship sharing, artistic and other creative sharing, and informal interactions among participants. Both presenters and attenders are welcome.
More information about QIF Summer Research Seminars, including a registration form, is available at quakerinstitute.org. Registration is free; voluntary contributions are welcome. Proposals for presentations should be made by registering before July 15.
Stipends for young scholars — Again, this year, QIF is offering $300 stipends to applicants aged 18 to 35 years old to make a presentation on research that resonates with the QIF mission. Application details can be found at Summer Research Seminar 2022 – Quaker Institute for the Future. Stipend applications are due July 1. With questions, contact Gray Cox at gray@coa.edu or #207-460-1163.
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Friends Association for Higher Education’s Quaker Leadings in Higher Education series presented:
Rethinking the Holy Experiment: Decolonizing Quakerism
What is the work of decolonization? How might it impact Quakerism, our testimonies, and our organizations?
Tuesday, May 24, 2022 7:30-9 pm, eastern
Presenters: Cherice Bock M.Div., Princeton Theological Seminary M.S., Antioch University New England Ph.D. candidate, Antioch University New England Adjunct Professor Portland Seminary Creation Justice Advocate Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon
Christy Randazzo PhD, University of Birmingham Adjunct Professor Montclair State University, NJ University of St. Joseph, CT
Moderator: Ada Jaarsma Professor of Philosophy Mount Royal University
This panel focused on addressing the necessity of reimagining Quakerism at its foundations, with an explicitly decolonial focus. This included offering a brief explanation of what the work of decolonizing entails generally, along with an examination of the potential ways that this process could be applied to Quakerism in terms of our theology, our testimony, as well as the practical impacts of such an approach on our institutions. Cherice Bock and Christy Randazzo discussed both the challenges and opportunities they encountered as they organized a recent panel on decolonizing the Quaker Peace Testimony for the Quaker Theological Discussion Group (QTDG), with an eye to offering those in attendance some potential frameworks for continuing this work within their own meetings, churches, and institutions.
Bios:
Cherice Bock lives in Oregon, on the lands of the Kalapuya (now part of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde). She is adjunct professor of ecotheology at Portland Seminary, and she leads Oregon Interfaith Power & Light at Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon. She began teaching in the theology department at University of Portland in the fall of 2020. In the 2018–2019 school year, she served as visiting professor of environmental studies at The Oregon Extension. Bock holds an M.Div. from Princeton Theological Seminary and an M.S. in environmental studies from Antioch University New England, and she is a Ph.D. candidate in environmental studies at Antioch University New England. Bock edits the Barclay Press curriculum Illuminate, edited the environmental studies journal Whole Terrain for three volumes, and curates web content for the watershed discipleship website, a ministry of Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries. She is the co-chair for the Quaker Theological Discussion group and is the social media editor for Quaker Religious Thought.
Christy Randazzo (PhD, University of Birmingham) teaches at both Montclair State University (New Jersey, USA) and the University of St. Joseph (Connecticut, USA), where they offer courses on religious peacemaking, introduction to religious studies, and the intersections between theology and peace work. They have also done ministry across multiple religious communities in diverse settings, including youth ministry, religious education, and social ministries amongst unhoused populations. They have written in a variety of both academic and popular settings, including the Quaker biblical studies series Illuminate, and two books for the Brill Quaker Studies series, including the upcoming A Quaker Ecotheology of Light. Christy is both an editor for the Politics of Scripture on the Political Theology Network, and the co-chair of the Quaker Theological Discussion Group.
New Pendle Hill Job Openings: Expanding Fundraising Capacity
Pendle Hill has several job opportunities available for those interested in joining a multi-faceted, community-centered, organization. Most recently, the following openings in the Advancement department have been published:
The Advancement Associate is responsible for the administration and oversight of Pendle Hill’s donor database, Raiser’s Edge. In addition, the Advancement Associate supports Pendle Hill’s fundraising team by providing administrative and operational support to advance Pendle Hill’s annual fund, planned giving, grants, and major gift programs.
The Grants Writer is primarily responsible for identifying and securing grant resources (from foundations and other grant-making entities). Key to success in this role is developing and writing grant proposals, relationship building with foundations, persuasively communicating Pendle Hill’s mission and vision to well-matched funders, and stewarding related plans, records, and communications.
These positions will contribute to an expanding fundraising team at this Quaker study, retreat, and conference center that seeks to create peace with justice in the world by transforming lives through learning opportunities, retreat, and community created on our beautiful 24-acre campus in unceded Lenni-Lenape territory and in virtual settings. This is a highly collaborative staff community featuring responsive leadership and partial work-from-home arrangements for office-based employees. Community-building among staff is highly prized with monthly fun activities as part of staff meeting and two longer staff retreat days a year for fun, growth, and connection among all staff. For more information about these positions and working at Pendle Hill, please visit the full job postings, linked above, or the Employment page of the Pendle Hill website.
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Friends Association for Higher Education 