Quaker Oaks (2014) | Hacker News Reader

Quaker Oaks (2014)

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18 pointsLammy8 comments

Not to be confused with Quaker Oats.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaker_Oats_Company

It's an interesting article, but I don't think the premise is likely to be true. There's no particular reverence for trees in Quakerism (though there is a concern for the environment in general, as the author notes) and meeting houses in England and Wales aren't particularly known for having large trees. They're generally quite well kept, and the older ones do often have mature trees, but no more than a parish church or any other similarly old religious building would.

Agreed: trees are nice, but no more a part of Quakerism than other symbology (effective as a metaphor, but not an integral part of the practice).

I would put forth an alternate theory that's a bit more practical. Quaker Meeting takes place on Sunday mornings, some as late as 10 or 11 am while the sun is heading towards peak. Most of these Meeting-Houses were constructed in an era well before air conditioning or fans, so anything that provided shade to keep the building cool in the warmer months would have been worth cultivating and protecting.

Yeah I don't know what to do with the assumption that going to meeting in meetinghouses in what quakers do either. I've been to a lot of quaker meetings and the venue has been pretty evenly split between traditional meeting houses, normal white American protestant-style churches, and like random community centers and shit.

I think this might be different in the historical quaker strongholds like parts of the US east and England, but even having a quaker meeting house to go to is probably not part of the experience of being quaker for most of them. Shit iirc the majority don't even practice the silent worship anymore right?

There are several different branches of Quakers, as a result of various splits over the centuries, with different worship styles and somewhat different theology.

The most evangelical branch (EFCI) often refer to their congregations as 'Friends Churches', and have buildings and service styles that aren't radically different from other protestant churches. At the other end of the scale there are also meetings which hold fast to traditional silent worship, some with a very liberal theological attitude and some (though fewer) with a conservative one. There are a lot fewer Quakers in this 'unprogrammed' tradition in the world, though, partly because the more evangelical and orthodox programmed meetings were quite active in missionary work.

In Britain, FWIW, almost all of us follow the unprogrammed tradition (and would definitely refer to our building as a meeting house, or meet in a community centre or something - the building is not important in our theology). In the US less so, though unprogrammed worship is fairly strong in Pennsylvania and a few other places.

To be clear unprogrammed worship is absolutely still a thing in the US. In my large metro area there are I think five active meetings and two of them of them are unprogrammed.

The reason it was interesting to me is that before I decided to start going to meetings again as an adult, I actually didn't know that ANY quakers anywhere did anything other than silent worship. So to find out that not only does it exist but is probably the majority of quakers today was jarring.

If your into huge old growth trees, and you find yourself in South Carolina USA, you should checkout the Congaree national forest. 26,000 acres of protected flood plain (wet lands) forest, the last of its kind, all the rest were cut down in the span of a hundred years or so.

I shot some video and we only walked the 2 mile boardwalk but I'd go again with a guide for sure. https://youtu.be/_4szw1gzBKc

Shrine grounds in Japan are also a great place for old trees and remnant biodiversity. When the rest of the surroundings got logged in the past, and .. covered in concrete in the present, the shrines just get left alone.

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