Entrepreneurship among Quakers

Earlham School of Religion (ESR) is hosting a conference this weekend called "Risk, Courage, and the Entrepreneurial Spirit."

I went to the keynote address yesterday morning, by Samir Selmanović, an evangelical entrepreneur who now pastors in New York City. The talk, called "That Fierce Heat of Living," elaborated on what it means to be spiritual and an entrepreneur. "Entrepreneurs believe that God is everywhere," said Selmanović. He said there does not need to be a sense of urgency in the entrepreneur's activity - she is simply charged with paying attention. 

Paying attention, just like Christ did.

"Let's talk about Christ," said Selmanović. "He lived an ordinary life. He went to work, opened the shop, cut the wood, made the pieces of furniture, sold them, cleaned the shop, closed the shop, and went home. The thing was, he was absolutely present in his life - he paid attention." 

Selmanović said that he has done experiments in which he's taken long passages of New Testament scripture and replaced the name Jesus with the name Steve. The religious participants in his worships have been at a loss to identify who Steve is, so ordinary does this man sound. 

What made Jesus different was that he saw the Kingdom of God on earth, not something far in the future. Early Friends were the same. Jesus behaved, in his moments of teaching and truth-telling, as if he were already living in God's Kingdom, which is probably the most proactive way of bringing that vision to light. Therein lies the message for entrepreneurs: start acting according to your vision, and let others join in. 

In order to illustrate this concept of acting first, in a way that is in accordance with your vision, regardless of the attitudes of others toward you, Selmanović showed a short video. (I recommend watching without the sound).

I wish I could find a version of the video without the voiceover, which we had during the address. You can powerfully draw your own conclusions without the narration. Then take a listen with the narration. 

Are we willing to be foolish? Many participants in the conference have the difficult task of bridging religious and non-religious fields in the entrepreneurial efforts. It might be difficult to sell a spiritual endeavour to those who are biased against religion. At the same time, to hush-up the spiritual side of a vision would be to dance in a straight jacket: it seems to me it would feel inauthentic. 

Youth groups have this problem. There are so many kids who want to participate in extra-curriculars, but youth groups do not draw substantial numbers. Why not? Youth groups are not cool? Kids are wary of a religious group because of the stigma which might be attached? The activities are uninteresting or inauthentic? 

I'm reminded of my Ramallah Colleague Olivia's drama project with the Friends School students. She involved over 50 students in a play production which involved all kinds of skills: acting, directing, set designing, instrument playing, makeup artistry, dancing, video-making (for the trailer), and front-of-house hosting. It was amazing to watch come together, and overwhelming to consider as an undertaking. 

Maybe that's where religious education can start - drama. Kids work together, create something peacefully, and produce something they're proud of to the community. 

Religious education

What should religious education be?


Yesterday, Margaret Fraser, the interim pastor at West Richmond Friends, delivered a message called "'I've had enough.' - God". The scripture was Isaiah 1:10-20.


At first God admonishes the people of Sodom and Gemorrah for their excessive sacrifices, which are detestable to him, and their prayers, which he doesn't hear. He tells them he will not commune with them because their hands are full of blood. Then he offers directions:


16 Wash and make yourselves clean.
Take your evil deeds out of my sight;
stop doing wrong.

17 Learn to do right; seek justice.
Defend the oppressed.
Take up the cause of the fatherless;
plead the case of the widow.

18 “Come now, let us settle the matter,”
says the Lord.

This is the part of the scripture which stuck with me. A clear instruction to seek justice and defend the oppressed.

Before the message Margaret raised a joy: two members of the meeting had had their gifts in ministry recorded the day before at the sessions of the New Association of Friends. They were among six people to be recorded as ministers, and all six had graduated from Earlham School of Religion. "Exactly what the school was founded for," said Margaret. I appreciated her emphasis on ESR as a place where gifts in ministry are identified, cultivated, and encouraged, not just a place where people learn about scripture and engage in thoughtful contemplation. They are being prepared to go out and create God's kingdom on earth.


I think this should be the mission of religious education at every stage. I believe there should be an emphasis on helping children/adults gain a sense of what their gifts are, and on providing opportunities to practice using these gifts.

Another element of religious education should be a training in dialogue. My experience as a literature teacher and among Friends tells me that peace comes from understanding, and understanding comes from dialogue. And successful dialogue takes careful training and practice. Some of the most important and productive (in terms of building understanding) classes I taught in Ramallah were ones in which I hardly spoke at all, and students, in discussion, spoke to each other. My ear was not even important, except as a moderating force. The direct conversation among students was what counted.

Given these two emphases, on gifts and on dialogue, I think religious education could look like this.

For young ones: Play! Play that allows them to get to know their own strengths, physical and mental, and to ascertain the strengths and limitations of other children in their community, and accommodate for them. They would learn how to be with others - an important precursor to dialogue.

For middle school and high school students: Study of the Bible, so they can discuss with each other the ideas presented their in the context of their own lives. Scripture study would provide fodder for discussion and dialogue among the group. I'd also be interested to practice Socratic seminar methods with students of this age, giving them a text, not necessarily a religious text, to read and then to discuss according to Socratic Seminar methods, which encourage listening, drawing each other out, bringing in quieter voices, and working collectively toward common understanding, if not common opinion.

I also think middle/high school students should get involved in a social justice issue of their choice. They should decide how they want to use their gifts and their skills in dialogue to answer God's call to "seek justice and defend the oppressed." They might raise awareness within the meeting or within their schools on an issue; organise a benefit of some kind; contact and meet with local and state legislators; approach a certain company or organisation with advice on how to better serve the community; launch a campaign to fight injustice in law enforcement or labor practices... whatever they were drawn to. In the MAT we talk about the importance of giving students real tasks with a real audience for their work. Getting students of religious education involved in the Quaker practice of social justice work would, I hope, rouse their energies.

For adults, it seems religious education should be about seeing how we can live more like Jesus each day. Scripture study and spiritual fellowship, in which members are built up and encouraged and tested by their fellow students, seems a good route for keeping up focused on God when life provides many other legitimate distractions (family, jobs, community).

Last week in a sermon I listened to the pastor drew attention to Leviticus 19:18 with this oft-referenced commandment:

18 Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the Lord.

The pastor then said, "Don't forget the commandment that immediately precess this one: (Lev 19:17)

"Do not hate a fellow Israelite in your heart. Rebuke your neighbour frankly so you will not share in his guilt."

Galatians 6:1 tells us to "restore a person gently" when she is in sin. We need to be there for each other, to listen with sympathy, then to resolutely turn that person's attention to God. We need to subject ourselves to this same scrutiny by opening up in small group study, I believe.

Religious education should build us up and challenge us. It should be joyful and painful. It should bring us closer to one another and closer to God.

Persuasion

In the introduction to the Penguin Classics edition of Jane Austen's Persuasion, the editor quotes Dr Johnson, who wrote one of the most influential dictionaries, published in 1755. It's definition of persuasion, therefore, gives us a glimpse into what Austen and her readers would have understood by the term. Dr Johnson quotes Paradise Lost:

The Serpent with me
Persuasively hath so prevailed, that I 
Have also tasted.

Persuasion is morally fraught, or certainly was for her readers. The editor notes that in Plato's Gorgias, Socrates says that rhetoric "is the craftsman of persuasion, which yields conviction but does not teach about the just and the unjust."

I am fascinated by Plato's observation, given the extent to which persuasion plays a role in every relationships. Rhetoric is used at the political rally, but it is much more commonly used in daily interaction, within the family, within the classroom, from parents to children, teachers to students, bosses to workers, leaders to followers. Plato points out that all of this, which may appear to be successful parenting and teaching, in fact teaches nothing about right and wrong. 

Our adolescent psychology course indicated that the increased brain plasticity which makes adolescents so impressionable (and such good language learners) tapers off by age 25. I still feel quite impressionable though. I suppose there are points on which I would stand firm, or have a stronger sense of my own belief than I would have five or ten years ago, but I remain amazed at the effect that one comment or opinion from someone I respect can have on me.



In light of Plato's thought, the real hope is that my mentors would make their opinions known and then engage in conversation so we may determine what is right and wrong, or at least consider from several angles the pros and cons of an action. Teaching a certain text, highlighting a certain element of history, these are teacher's actions which involve an implicit persuasive act (well, perhaps its coercive: read this. But really, I can't coerce my students to read (scores on well-publicised reading quizzes attest to this), so I'm trying to persuade them to take seriously what I have the class read, and to see merit in the practice of reading it, even if they don't like it. 

So then, as a teacher, I must ask them, what do you think about this text? Is what Anne does right? Who is in the right? Is the money that was earned dirty money? Is the film adaptation maker's decision significant, to include images of the common English people working below the nobility who serve as protagonists? What is motivating Austen's choices? What is motivating the film-maker? Are they not also trying to persuade us? Indeed, I am persuaded by this novel not to try to persuade anyone. Though the introduction points out that one can be right in having succumbed to persuasion, while the persuader was not right to have interfered (thus is Anne's case). 

Have I persuaded you to read the book?