Thee Quaker Podcast: Season 4

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Zack Jackson  

I’m Zack Jackson.

Jon Watts

And I’m Jon Watts.

Zack Jackson

And we’re the team behind Thee Quaker Podcast. And we are so excited to announce that season four is just two weeks away.

Jon Watts  

Yeah, just two weeks away. We’ve been working hard in the off season, and we can’t wait to share with you what we’ve been putting together.

Zack Jackson  

If you’re new to the show, we explore stories of Quakers, both past and present. We talk about big ideas as well as quiet individual practices.

Jon Watts  

Each season has a theme, and the show runs from the fall into the late spring. This year, we’re exploring what happens when the optimistic spiritual vision of Quakerism meets the messy reality of the world. Zack, do you have like an example soundbite from the upcoming season we could play here? 

Zack Jackson

Yeah, I keep thinking about this one quote from Jim Rupert.

Jim Rupert

Quakerism was founded in a moment like this, the English Civil Wars, and levels of brutality that the people of that moment had not encountered in their lifetimes, and so Quakerism began out of that same, I think, sense of shock, and and an anguished desire to find the right way to respond to it that I am feeling now. 

Zack Jackson  

Each season, we center a main character of sorts who embodies what the season is all about.

Jon Watts  

Season One was James Nayler and the early Quakers. Season Two was Bayard Rustin and the Civil Rights Movement.

Zack Jackson  

Season Three was Benjamin Lay and prophetic witness,

Jon Watts  

and Season Four will feature Lucretia Mott and the Quakers who worked for universal suffrage.

Zack Jackson  

One of the things I’ve really appreciated as I’ve learned more about Lucretia Mott is how deeply her faith fueled her activism. For her, spirituality and social justice were just two sides of the same coin, and she believed that if you were truly following the spirit in a broken society, you were going to make waves.

Carol Faulkner

She says the early Quakers were agitators; they were disturbers of the peace, and that’s what we should be, right? If we want to get our message out about anti-slavery or women’s rights, we have to be disruptive.

Jon Watts  

So we’ve got some new things coming your way in Season Four to help us tell these stories and lift up voices you might not have heard before. We’ve got some collaborations in the works.

Zack Jackson  

Yeah, the first of which is a new voice to the podcast. For the first time ever, Season Four will have a guest producer, traveling minister Emily Provance is joining us to produce and co-host four episodes this season.

Jon Watts  

I’m so psyched about this. Emily has been traveling among friends in the ministry for over a decade. This year, we asked her to make a little bit of room in her suitcase for a microphone, so she’s bringing us some interesting and moving Quaker stories that only a traveling minister could tell.

Emily Provance  

I think that the reason to be traveling from one group to another to another is because Quakers have this really deep theological understanding of interdependence, and there needs to be something that can help us to weave together. And because this group and that group and that group are not all necessarily going to encounter each other in daily life, there is an important function about the person who can say, “I know that group of people over there. I can tell stories about them. I have relationships there, and can help do some of that weaving together”.

Zack Jackson  

This season, we’re also collaborating with the Friends Committee on National Legislation, and FCNL is giving us inside access to their advocacy work in Washington D.C. as they expertly explore this balance between Quaker values and political action.

Jon Watts  

Right, FCNL’s work has never been more important. I cannot wait to hear the episodes that you’re working on with them, Zack.

Zack Jackson  

Yeah, we are just so excited to share these stories of spiritual courage with you, and to make sure that we can keep doing it at a sustainable pace. We’re making a small change to the schedule.

Jon Watts  

So, starting on October 20th, we’ll release a new episode every other week. So you can look for us in your feed on the first and third Tuesdays of the month

Zack Jackson  

Gives us the time that we need to really craft these stories well, and gives the episodes a little more room to breathe on your feed.

Jon Watts  

So Season Four starts in just two weeks. Make sure you subscribe at quakerpodcast.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you, dear listeners, for being with us on this journey of Quaker podcasting, we can’t wait to get into these stories.

Hosted, produced, and edited by Zack Jackson.

Original music by Jon Watts (Listen to more of Jon’s music here.)

This season’s cover art is by Joey Hartmann-Dow.

Supported by listeners like you (thank you!!)