Religious education has always been public ministry. Following Pentecost, Jesus’s disciples became apostles, students became teachers — the foremost religious educators of the early church. 17th century Friends traveled in the ministry sharing an emergent faith and developing practices. The 19th century invention of “First Day School” moved formation outside the home and family and placed religious education in the public community of the meeting. If Quaker public ministry is

Mary Crauderueff is the Curator of Quaker Collections in Haverford College Quaker & Special Collections. She’s an archivist, a teacher, and a fierce advocate for access. She doesn’t just preserve Quaker history in the basement of the library. She helps people meet  it. The beautiful parts. The damning parts. The parts we quote at each other like scripture. And the parts we try to slide past, hoping nobody notices. Public ministers from left to right: Christy Randazzo, Windy C

The Friends Incubator for Public Ministry is grateful to announce our first cohort of Fellows! This cohort represents a shared commitment to reclaiming public ministry as a communal practice rooted in worship, sustained by relationship, and accountable to the body. It includes the participation of five-yearly meetings on the East Coast of the United States. Baltimore, New England, New York, Philadelphia and Southeastern Yearly Meetings are represented in this cohort of fello

Over the past several months, as we have walked with Tom Hamm on the blog through the long, uneven landscape of Quaker public ministry, something surprising has taken shape. Taken together, these ministers George Fox , Priscilla Hunt Cadwallader , John Woolman , Lucretia Mott , Joseph Hoag , Elias Hicks , Joseph John Gurney , J ohn Wilbur , and David B Updegraff do not simply offer a string of biographies. They create a living field of tension and possibility, a kind of sp

Tom Hamm’s Thanksgiving Series on Public Ministers, Part Four of Four… well, let’s just say we are getting there in our own good time. If Monday’s post left you both grateful and slightly overwhelmed by the 19th-century Quaker world... Today Tom introduces us to David B. Updegraff (1830–1894), the man who helped turn one of the new branches of American Quakerism inside out again. Updegraff’s story is fiery, dramatic, and almost unbelievable to Friends formed in the quiet rh