QuakerSpeak videos are useful tools for researching the faith. You can post links to them on your social media or website, or embed them in newsletters. Friends enjoy sharing them with the community. They are concise lessons in faith and practice delivered in well edited soundbites.
With over 856,000 video views on YouTube, 2021 saw the most viewers yet in the Quaker video project’s eight-year run. Despite the ongoing pandemic, the QuakerSpeak team created and posted 18 all-new videos, while vigorously promoting classic videos to new audiences.
Let’s take a look back at 2021’s top new QuakerSpeak videos of the year.
Our most viewed video this year featured many Friends sharing their favorite Quaker words and phrases. “That Friend speaks my mind” is one of Jennifer Higgins-Newman’s favorite phrases unique to Quaker faith and practice. “When I hear that as we’re doing business, or I get to use that,” she says, “I think it helps us as a community… tether ourselves or knit ourselves to each other. Like, ‘oh yeah, that’s me, too.’ Or ‘that is what Spirit is calling me to, too.”
Anthony Kirk moved audiences when he shared one of the touchstones in his spiritual journey, the 139th Psalm. “[It’s] brought so much comfort to me and so many people in my life,” he says. “It’s the beautiful reminder that… God knew us and loved us and created us long before society put labels on us and made assumptions, for all of us are fearfully and wonderfully made, and whatever our gender expression or identity, we are made in the image of God, too.”
“I am very, very happy to know that where I worship speaks to many, many aspects of a community that is in need, that is in harm’s way, who are threatened,” shares Debbie Ramsey. She shares how she is able to put her faith into action for not only her Quaker community, but the Baltimore community at large.
Linda Seger reminded audiences that spirituality and creativity can go hand in hand. “In the beginning of Genesis, it says the Spirit of God hovered over the deep.” That pause before the act of creation began became a source of inspiration.
Chris Stern’s reflection on reading the journals of early Friends, including George Fox, resonated with viewers this year. In these journals, Chris, a member of Middletown Friends Meeting (Philadelphia YM), says, “I began to see that George Fox was a young man who was of a similar condition that I was in: confused, hurt, unsure how to respond to the world around him.”
QuakerSpeak videos are currently filmed and edited by Rebecca Hamilton-Levi, a young adult Friend in South Philadelphia. QuakerSpeak will launch its 9th season in March 2022. For more information, visit QuakerSpeak.com.
QuakerSpeak is a project of Philadelphia-based Friends Publishing Corporation (FPC), an independent Quaker nonprofit and the publishers of Friends Journal and Quaker.org. Quaker videographer Jon Watts founded the project at c in 2013 and directed seasons 1-6. Support for QuakerSpeak comes from individual Friends in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting and all over the world.
