Dear Friends,

This is the first and last letter from the Radical Quakers of Minneapolis.

Radical Quakers were a worship group — and briefly, a monthly meeting — that met in so-called-Minneapolis in 2017 and 2018. We were exclusively open to marginalized people; our goal was to re-center Quakerism around the people on the edges, turning our communities inside out. Our meeting was disbanded on April 22nd this year. In this letter, we hope to offer some encouragement to oppressed Friends, especially those who feel isolated in their faith communities.

Our meeting started when three Friends came together with a shared bitter taste in our mouths. All three of us had been taking a break from worship. One Friend found that she had to bear the task of convincing people of her humanity at meetings. One of us was unsafe at the mainstream meetings in town. One was just tired of being the only trans woman and the only sex worker at meetings, time after time after time.

Quakerism is powerful. Silent, non-dogmatic worship gives Light to all of us, no matter who we are. And yet, Quakers are only human. Dominant culture seeps into our meetings. Marginalized Friends get pushed out, accidental ballast.

We decided to hold our worship exclusively for marginalized people. We needed a space where our humanity and our shared radical politics would be simply witnessed, without question or need for explanation. A space that was safe — physically and emotionally — from intruders. In safety, we could find the transcendent power of communal worship. We built a community where we were centered, always and forever.

We chose to be completely unaffiliated from any other meeting, yearly or otherwise. You may call this separatism, or schism. We do not argue. There is a special power in centering ourselves, rather than working within mainstream meetings to sway the culture to a more supportive and understanding one.

Because we did not need to explain ourselves, we could let our meeting take any shape it needed and re-invent our traditions. We had the chance to dig up the root of our faiths. We had incredible, challenging conversations about the Quaker testimonies, the nature of divinity, the role of faith in our own lives. Imagine how far down we would have gotten if we had to spend so much time and energy explaining basic things about our lives, our politics? (Not very.)

One of the most crucial changes was that we met for worship in the afternoon. For marginalized people who mostly rely on public transit, have generally chaotic lives, and have various mental and physical health situations, meeting at 11am (“late” for mainstream meetings) is a stretch.

Together, we found a great joy that none of us had felt at any other meeting. Some of us remember the Great Giggling Incident of 2017, where order was lost halfway through meeting and never restored.

When we told mainstream meetings about our worship, they were wholly mostly supportive. Friends seemed to understand why we needed our own space. We were offered fellowship at a respectful distance, which was so much more valuable than any kind of overlyenthusiastic “allyship” ever would have been. Thanks to the shared respect, we built connections across the lines of difference that had previously isolated us. If this was a schism, then it was a gentle and loving one.

Our attendance grew slightly in our time together. People found their way to us through word of mouth. Our attendees were almost exclusively queer or and mostly trans. While most meetings struggle to retain younger queer Friends, we would go weeks without seeing a single cis person at worship. (Also noteworthy: our attendees were almost exclusively white, revealing the segregation of Quakerism and of the Twin Cities queer community. We will keep working to do better.) We had somewhere around 10 or 15 different Friends roll through our little meeting.

As we are disbanding, we sow this seed: the work of re-centering will continue. As we find other faith communities, we will carry this seed in our hearts and we will find the same seed in the hearts of others. Let us continue to dig up the roots and shake the leaves of the tree that is Quakerism, growing in ways new and old and unexpected. We will continue this work through our whole lives, caring for each other, keeping each other safe, and always, always witnessing each other in our full humanities without question, with no for explanation.

Dear readers, dear marginalized Friends, surely you have gone through the same shit. Enduring the invasive questions, the not-so-coded racism, the pro-cop bootlicking, the handwringing whorephobia, the quiet disregard of your very safety; the bullshit that always comes up. We get it.

Some of you have wonderful mainstream meetings that you call home. We’ve been there, too. Many Radical Friends found loving and supportive meetings as we started worship, and were sorely disappointed when we found that not all meetings are like that. But for the rest of us, we offer some encouragement:

If you have no community, you can build it. We met in a bookstore, a church basement, living rooms, the public library, anywhere we could find. We never had a budget. It only took three of us. Find your Friends, start your own weird little house church, make it whatever you need it to be. It will be hard, discouraging at times, but the Light will always be there when you return. Magic will happen. We did it, you can too.

We leave you with our testimony: Fuck the church! We’re doing this ourselves!

We hope the seed we offer will find fertile ground with you, dear reader.

Goodbye for now.

With all love and light,

The Radical Quakers of Minneapolis 2018

full pdf of the radical quakers letter w/ signatures