Category: News

On Wednesday, August 19 members of the extended Truitt family, led by 103-year-old Margaret Adele McGee, dropped by for a visit to Cropwell Meeting. McGee and her daughter Patti McGee Colston had flown in from California for this special reunion. They were joined by Camden City firefighter Damon Truitt and some cousins, along with Evesham Township mayor Jaclyn Veasy and other municipal officials.

Margaret told stories of worshiping as a small girl at Cropwell in the 1920s. She had fond memories of sitting up high and looking out over everyone, which was very charming as none of the raised platforms for benches is higher than about two feet.

During the visit, Margaret presented the Evesham Township with a donation to support restoration work of Milford Burial Ground. Milford was the name of the historic African African town where the Truitts had lived. The cemetery was neglected and half forgotten for decades and has recently been fading back into the woods. The township has cleared up brush, identified grave sites with ground-penetrating radar, and is installing fencing. The Milford settlement and burial ground was named to the New Jersey Black Heritage Trail in 2025.

The Quaker towns in South Jersey weren’t just stops on the Underground Railroad, but terminals. In the 1830s many self-emancipating enslaved people in Maryland and Delaware joined free Blacks heading north to New Jersey. Local Quakers provided them with land and jobs and a degree of protection. One family that settled in nearby Milford (now Kresson) was the Truitts. Generations of the family worked and lived alongside the Evans family.

The Truitt family’s story was profiled a few years ago by the TV program Roots Leas Traveled, which features Margaret, Patti, Damon, and lifelong Cropwell member Connie Evans. Patti has recently published a book with stories about the family, Margaret Adele: My Truitt Family.

Banner photo: Cropwell clerk Martin Kelley (left) and Damon Truitt (right) listen to Margaret Adele McGee’s stories of worshiping at Cropwell in the 1920s.

On Sunday, August 2, the meeting took a delightful trip to Woodford Cedar Run Wildlife Refuge in nearby Medford for a guided tour by our very own Julia Thomas, who has been working there this summer.

We started the day with 10am worship, of course, then had a potluck in the meetinghouse followed by carpooling to the refuge. The trip allowed some extended family members to join us for the event.

As a special treat, here is a video of Julia introducing the king snake

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Flyer:

On Sunday, April 19, guest speaker Art Hartwick shared a book about Jesus’s most famous sermon and its call to us today.

Many of Jesus’s best known sayings come from the sermon recorded in Matthew 5-7. Starting with the Beatitudes (“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”) to the metaphors of spiritual salt and light, to some of Jesus’s most famous parables, and to his prayer for us, it’s been an inspiration to millions of followers over the centuries.

Hartwick grew up Methodist and married a Friend in a Quaker ceremony. He became a member of Poughkeepsie (N.Y.) Meeting, which at the time had both a pastor and open worship. He shared how his life had been changed by reading Martyn Lloyd-Jones’s 1962 Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, a collection of transcribed sermons.

In his talk, Hartwick focused on the “eight elements” from the Sermon on the Mount, mostly from the Beatitudes. He realized that he had violated each of them to some degree or another and changed his life. Attenders then shared some of their own stories of coming to Quakers and becoming convinced.

Afterwards, everyone moved to the social room to enjoy a particularly bountiful potluck luncheon.

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Cropwell Quaker Meeting is a small-but-growing Friends community in Marlton/Cherry Hill NJ. Come join us for public worship every Sunday at 10am. At Cropwell we treasure our friendliness, our desire for a community grounded in the Holy Spirit, our in-person worship, and our genuine desire for new members. We try to have special events every month, such as introductions to Quakers, speakers demonstrating Quaker faith in action, or all-ages crafts. Learn what to expect if you visit.

On Sunday, March 1, Kathy Devin of the Evesham Historical Society came to share a presentation on the industry of some of the earliest Quaker settlers in the area.

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Cropwell Quaker Meeting is a small-but-growing Friends community in Marlton/Cherry Hill NJ. Come join us for public worship every Sunday at 10am. At Cropwell we treasure our friendliness, our desire for a community grounded in the Holy Spirit, our in-person worship, and our genuine desire for new members. We try to have special events every month, such as introductions to Quakers, speakers demonstrating Quaker faith in action, or all-ages crafts. Learn what to expect if you visit.

About fifty people packed into the Cropwell Meetinghouse in Marlton, N.J. on Sunday, December 21, 2025, to experience the return visit of the Greater Philadelphia Choral Society. The meetinghouse was decked in greens and the stove fire was roaring as they performed a beautiful holiday concert, then led everyone in a suite of favorite Christmas songs.

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Cropwell Quaker Meeting is a small-but-growing Friends community in Marlton/Cherry Hill NJ. Come join us for public worship every Sunday at 10am. At Cropwell we treasure our friendliness, our desire for a community grounded in the Holy Spirit, our in-person worship, and our genuine desire for new members. We try to have special events every month, such as introductions to Quakers, speakers demonstrating Quaker faith in action, or all-ages crafts. Learn what to expect if you visit.

Around 30 people came to Cropwell Meeting this past Sunday to hear Quaker peace activist and storyteller George Lakey talk about his long work on Civil Rights, nonviolence, and environmental activism. He came with stories of societies that were able to make changes and mapped out a path forward for the U.S.

A partial list of campaigns George has worked for over the decades includes Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Mississippi Freedom Summer, A Quaker Action Group, Movement for a New Society, Campaign to Stop the B-1 Bomber and Promote Peace Conversion, Men Against Patriarchy, Jobs with Peace, Training for Change, and Earth Quaker Action Team. He is the subject of the documentary Citizen George (you can read a review here).

More Links

• Lakey’s Wikipedia Page
• Recent Friends Journal articles by Lakey include “Loyalty and War,” “Equality among Today’s Vikings,” and “Allowing Ourselves to be Bold.”
• Lakey is a frequent author at Waging Nonviolence.
• “How We Win” is a QuakerSpeak interview with Lakey.

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Cropwell Quaker Meeting is a small-but-growing Friends community in Marlton/Cherry Hill NJ. Come join us for public worship every Sunday at 10am. At Cropwell we treasure our friendliness, our desire for a community grounded in the Holy Spirit, our in-person worship, and our genuine desire for new members. We try to have special events every month, such as introductions to Quakers, speakers demonstrating Quaker faith in action, or all-ages crafts. Learn what to expect if you visit.

After the end of worship services today, a group of Cropwell members and attenders drove to Mount Holly to visit the Woolman Memorial. A museum dedicated to Quaker abolitionist John Woolman, it is located in a house he built for his daughter. Woolman director Charles Bruder gave a detailed tour of the house and surrounding grounds, which are full of interesting trees and an early twentieth-century amphitheater that in the process of being cleared out.

Bruder visited Cropwell last year as John Woolman.

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Cropwell Quaker Meeting is a small-but-growing Friends community in Marlton/Cherry Hill NJ. Come join us for public worship every Sunday at 10am. At Cropwell we treasure our friendliness, our desire for a community grounded in the Holy Spirit, our in-person worship, and our genuine desire for new members. We try to have special events every month, such as introductions to Quakers, speakers demonstrating Quaker faith in action, or all-ages crafts. Learn what to expect if you visit.

For the second year in a row, members of Cropwell Meeting in Marlton, N.J. ,had a table at the popular Marlton Day Festival . Hundreds of area visitors ambled up and down Main Street taking in vendors, food trucks, live music and community organizations. It was a beautiful day, if a little windy.

The Cropwell Friends table included snacks, juices, and giveaway fidget toys for kids; the dog water bowls were very popular with the canine set. Eight Cropwell regulars staffed the table on and off for the four-hour event.

Something new this year is a flyer inviting people to visit next weekend, when the meeting plans to show an introductory QuakerSpeak video after the rise of worship. A fair amount of passersby at Marlton Day expressed interest in visiting “some day” and it is hoped that this opportunity might convince them to make that day next Sunday.

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Cropwell Quaker Meeting is a small-but-growing Friends community in Marlton/Cherry Hill NJ. Come join us for public worship every Sunday at 10am. At Cropwell we treasure our friendliness, our desire for a community grounded in the Holy Spirit, our in-person worship, and our genuine desire for new members. We try to have special events every month, such as introductions to Quakers, speakers demonstrating Quaker faith in action, or all-ages crafts. Learn what to expect if you visit.

On March 2, over two dozen people came to Cropwell Meeting in Marlton, N.J. to hear David Cherby give a presentation on Hawaiian spirituality and some of the values which it shares with the Friends tradition. David began studying this spirituality after a search that took him into Buddhism and various Christian churches. He felt that none of them addressed the core issues going on in the world.

Hawaiian spirituality dates back to when Polynesians first settled the islands in waves between 400 and 900 A.D. Tahitians also came and introduced ideas as well. When European missions came in the 1870s, it was detrimental to the native culture and a lot of cultural practices, such as hula and surfing were banned. Throughout the changes, the people have held on to a practice of compassion.

One of the aspects of Quaker spirituality that has drawn David to our fellowship is the idea of an Inner Light, similar to the Hawaiian concept of mana. The word aloha translates as “presence” and “breath” and means the breath of life (as a professional massage therapist, David pays close attention to breath). Aloha has been broken down into an acronym reminiscent of Quaker SPICES:

• “Akahai“, meaning kindness to be expressed with tenderness;
• “Lōkahi“, meaning unity, to be expressed with harmony;
• “ʻOluʻolu” meaning agreeable, to be expressed with pleasantness;
• “Haʻahaʻa“, meaning humility, to be expressed with modesty;
• “Ahonui“, meaning patience, to be expressed with perseverance.

To live in this state is to do good with no conditions attached. It welcomes the stranger and loves others even when the love is not returned.

Everyone enjoyed a potluck lunch and informal discussion after the end of the presentation.

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Cropwell Quaker Meeting is a small-but-growing Friends community in Marlton/Cherry Hill NJ. Come join us for public worship every Sunday at 10am. At Cropwell we treasure our friendliness, our desire for a community grounded in the Holy Spirit, our in-person worship, and our genuine desire for new members. We try to have special events every month, such as introductions to Quakers, speakers demonstrating Quaker faith in action, or all-ages crafts. Learn what to expect if you visit.

On Sunday, January 26, a presentation at the Cropwell Friends Meetinghouse in Marlton, N.J., attracted nearly two dozen people to hear about Quaker work in the United Nations. The program featured Sarah Clarke, director of the Quakers United Nations Office (QUNO) in New York, and Bo Méndez, QUNO’s communications and engagement lead.

Sarah Clarke began the presentation with a bit of history and context about the United Nations, pointing out the difference between the UN General Assembly (the collection of all participating nations) and the UN Security Council (smaller body that includes five permanent members including the United States). In addition to the governing bodies, there are a number of organizations under the UN who do its work.

The New York UN office is the home to the Security Council, while the Geneva, Switzerland office hosts its Human Rights Council as well as a number of specialized agencies such as the World Health Organization and disarmament groups.

The history of Quaker involvement goes back to the time of the formation of the United Nations. From the beginning Friends wanted to be engaged with its work, as many of the ideas in the UN Charter resonated with Quaker ideals on race and equality. Quakers are one of the oldest accredidated non-governmental organizations at the UN, granted this status in 1948.

QUNO, the Quakers United Nations Office, has offices in both New York City and Geneva. Sarah Clark told the group that the New York office partners with UN diplomats and officials working on lasting peace. QUNO’s work is quiet and behind the scenes. Since 1954 QUNO has owned a four-story house a few blocks from the New York UN headquarters and they offer the space as a place where UN officials and partners “on the ground” can have informal conversations.

Sarah brought a number of photos showing the contrast between official UN spaces (formal, microphoned, brightly lit) and QUNO’s Quaker House (homey, with sofas, soft lighting, and spaces meant for conversation). She told us that “food and hospitality are two of our secret ingredients.” Their goal is “bringing people together for conversations that otherwise wouldn’t be happening.”

Sarah explained the unique structure of the Quakers United Nations Office. It’s status at the UN is held by the international Quaker body, Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC), but its day-to-day work is administered by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). QUNO also has its own governance body made up of representatives appointed by FWCC and AFSC.

Bo Méndez also presented. He is the global communications lead, who works for the offices in both New York and Geneva. His background is in digital communications and outreach and he handles QUNO’s social media and website (a new design is on the way).

QUNO is largely supported by charitable donations. Sarah told the group that ““In doing this work we’re representing you.”

The talk was followed by a Question and Answer period and then a Cropwell potluck, full of good food and further conversation about the values and work of Friends both in Marlton and around the world.

Learn more:

• Quakers United Nations Office website
• American Friends Service Committee
• Friends World Committee for Consultation World Office
• A 2021 profile of Sarah Clarke in Friends Journal magazine

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Cropwell Quaker Meeting is a small-but-growing Friends community in Marlton/Cherry Hill NJ. Come join us for public worship every Sunday at 10am. At Cropwell we treasure our friendliness, our desire for a community grounded in the Holy Spirit, our in-person worship, and our genuine desire for new members. We try to have special events every month, such as introductions to Quakers, speakers demonstrating Quaker faith in action, or all-ages crafts. Learn what to expect if you visit.

This Sunday, over 70 Friends, neighbors, and carolers packed into Cropwell Quaker Meeting in Marlton, NJ to sing classic Christmas songs. The Greater Philadelphia Choral Society came back for a second year to share their music. They had selections from “Gesu Bambino,” G.F. Handel’s “Messiah” and a version of the Lord’s Prayer sung by GPCS artistic director William Gorton. They also led us in a group sing-along, with popular favorites that included “O Come, All Ye Faithful,” “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” and “Silent Night.”

Sweets, hot mulled cider, and other light refreshments were provided after the event and many visitors stayed to talk. Earl Evens presented his locally famous handmade cutting boards to choir members. Every family received Christmas ornaments handmade by Debbie Sutton .

Outreach

There were 71 people in the meetinghouse this year, 13 more than last year’s event. About 30 of the visitors were members of the choir or their families (as the choir is based in nearby Cherry Hill, these are neighbors who might consider visiting or recommending Cropwell Meeting for worship). One local family returned from our Halloween event and brought relatives. Perhaps a dozen people were family members of Cropwell members while others were friends of theirs invited to attend.

Between visitors at 10am worship and visitors at the Christmas sing, 10 people signed up for the Cropwell events email list.

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Cropwell Quaker Meeting is a small-but-growing Friends community in Marlton/Cherry Hill NJ. Come join us for public worship every Sunday at 10am. At Cropwell we treasure our friendliness, our desire for a community grounded in the Holy Spirit, our in-person worship, and our genuine desire for new members. We try to have special events every month, such as introductions to Quakers, speakers demonstrating Quaker faith in action, or all-ages crafts. Learn what to expect if you visit.

Learn More:

• Greater Philadelphia Choral Society
• Last year’s Christmas choral event

About thirty Friends came together at Cropwell Friends on Sunday, November 3, to hear about miracles from Diane Allen. Allen is well known as a former Philadelphia TV anchor and for long service in the New Jersey State Senate. She is also a Quaker who worships at nearby Mt. Laurel Meeting. Cropwell Meeting is a Friends community in Marlton/Cherry Hill, N.J.

Diane Allen told the audience she sees miracles as “signposts to God” and shared a survey that said 70 percent of Americans believe in miracles. She then told stories, roughly divided into sections.

The first set of miracles came from the Old Testament and included Moses’s parting of the Red Sea to save the fleeing Israelites (Exodus 14) and of the prophet Elisha being swept back to heaven in chariots of fire (2 Kings 2:1-12).

Allen then shared New Testament stories, such as Jesus healing a man let down through the roof of a house (Luke 5:17-39), Jesus healing two blind men (Matthew 9:27-31), and the bleeding woman being healed by touching Jesus’s cloak (found in Matthew, Mark, and Luke). Allen pointed out that one commonality in these stories was at it was the people’s faith that healed. As Jesus said to the woman: “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”

Early Quakers were also involved in healing. Allen told the audience about George Fox’s Book of Miracles, a collection of stories about the founder of Quakerism that was later suppressed and lost and which survives only as fragments. One is the story of John Banks, who suffered paralysis of the arm and hand until he had a dream concerning Fox. Another concerned a traveling companion of Fox’s who was thrown off a horse and apparently killed until Fox held him up by the head and brought him back to life (both stories are told in a recent Friends Journal article by Marcelle Martin.)

Diane Allen then turned her attention to more modern miracles, many from a CBS television program she produced in the 1980s. These included stories from the Knock Shrine in Ireland; Lourdes in France; the remarkable healing of Cheryl Prewitt, who suffered a disfiguring automobile accident as a child but recovered so completely that she was crowned Miss America in 1980; astronaut Jim Irwin of the Apollo 15 mission, who heard a voice that helped him diagnose a mechanical failure in the lunar rover; and healings associated with Mother Katherine Drexel.

Finally, Allen told her own story of being diagnosed with Stage 3 cancer in the head and neck. Doctors told her that necessary tongue surgery meant she would never be able to talk again, a particularly horrible prognosis for a TV anchor and politician, but one that paled with the sadness of her no longer being able to read stories to her grandchildren. Resigned to her fate, she decided to pray and “give it to God.” Upon waking from surgery she learned that doctors found that the cancer didn’t need as extensive surgery as expected. After some speech therapy Allen recovered her voice completely. Her doctor had no explanation for this and told her that this was his “own miracle.”

The audience was rapt throughout the talk, alternatively laughing and gasping as Allen told her incredible stories. As is Cropwell’s tradition, Diane Allen was given one of Earl Even’s handmade wooden cutting boards as thanks. Friends then retired to the next room to share a bountiful potluck meal and fellowship and to share their own stories of miracles to one another.

Many members from Mt. Laurel Meeting attended the worship, talk, and meal. It was one of the most special aspect of the day and there was much discussion of doing more visiting between the two meetings.

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Publicity:

Most of the publicity of the event happened over the usual channels of Facebook and the Cropwell website. About half of the audience came because of announcements at Allen’s home meeting of Mt. Laurel.

This Sunday, Cropwell Friends Meeting, a Quaker community in Marlton and Cherry Hill, N.J., hosted a Halloween party from 1:30-3:00 p.m. Around 45 neighbors visited and enjoyed pumpkin decorating, games, snacks, a truck-or-treat, and tours of the meetinghouse.

Publicity before the event including flyering the neighborhood behind the meetinghouse, hanging posters in local establishments, and creating an event page on Facebook. When asked how they heard about the event families mentioned all of these. Inquiries revealed that the information on one of the print flyers was shared on a parents’ group text associated with Sharp Elementary, a public school in the Cherry Hill School District around the corner.

Most of the visitors came from the neighborhoods surrounding the meetinghouse and had always been curious about the building and graveyard.

As always, tours of the meetinghouse itself were popular. Visitors enjoyed the roaring fire and the historical pictures in the social room, especially one from 1909 that was full of carriages and Quakers all dressed up (it was the centennial celebration of the meetinghouse). Lots of questions were asked about Quaker worship. Many families said they planned to come back for the Dec. 22 Christmas Caroling, with a few signing up for the meeting email announcements list.

The meeting held a similar family outreach event in 2022.

After the last families left meeting members wished an early happy birthday to Earl Evens, who more than anyone else is responsible for the recent rebirth of the Cropwell community.

Cropwell Friends Meeting attended the popular “Marlton Day” event in town for the first time this Sunday, letting the town know we exist and are growing. Only a few years ago Cropwell Meeting had dwindled down to two regularly attending members. Through concerted effort and the help of Friends in nearby meeting, it has grown in size (today’s worship, for example, had thirteen people, pretty typical for us these days).

Marlton Day is sponsored by the Marlton Business Association and takes place every June on Main Street, just down the road from the Cropwell Meetinghouse (a modern highway interchange blocks the direct route). It is one of two annual festivals in the town and features entertainment, local businesses, and area nonprofits.

To prepare, we purchased a canopy tent (the Crown Shades 10×10 foot pop-up) and had a tablecloth made up that said “CROPWELL QUAKER MEETING” with our web address below and peace doves on the side. We made a poster of some Quaker values (though not in the SPICES order). To bring in passersby, we had a tray full of bags of fish crackers and pretzels, and beside it had a tray full of magnets with uplifting spiritual messages.

For literature we had stacks of newly-purchased pamphlets from Quakerbooks of FGC. Additionally, we recently discovered a whole box full of outdated hardback copies of Philadelphia Faith and Practice and offered them to anyone who seemed interested. We had a sign-up list for emails and did get a few. (The PYM blog has a recent article all about the nuts and bolts of tabling of an event like this.)

Marlton Day was hot but a lot of fun. There was a band from School of Rock Cherry Hill playing nearby. Alice Paul was a famous South Jersey women’s rights activist and the Alice Paul Institute had a table nearby (we visited each other a bunch of times). We also spent some time with the folks tabling for the Evesham Historical Society, which naturally has a lot of Quaker crossover.

We’re looking forward to repeat our tabling at the Evesham Township Harvest Fest in September and also plan to host a second Truck or Treat in October.

On May 4, members of Cropwell and Medford Meetings gathered with around 40 other participants to conduct a ground blessing ceremony with elders of the Lenni Lenape at nearby Black Run Preserve. Many of the Quakers there were extended members of the Evans and Wills families, among the earliest English settlers in Evesham Township (home of Cropwell Meeting).

Ty Gould-Jacinto of the Nanticoke Lenape Nation invited people into the circle, burning herbs and welcoming elders of each constituency. Quaker family elders included Larry Klotz, Connie Evans, Sue Evans Ashton, and Alice Andrews.

In addition to being a member of Cropwell, Connie Evans is also vice president of the Evesham Historical Society. Remarkably the original deed of purchase between Thomas Evans and Lenape leader King Himolin still survives. She told a more-modern story of Quakerly responsibility for the common good, the choice of her father to have the family land go to the township for public purposes (both the Marlton Middle and Cherokee High Schools are situated on this land).

A high point of the ceremony was the return of the trove of Lenape artifacts that have been found by members of the Evans and Wills families over the past 300 years. These included arrowheads and axe heads. These will become part of the collection of the Cohanzick Nature Reserve in Bridgeton, N.J., a center of Nanticoke Lenape culture in Cumberland County, N.J.

Black Run Preserve is a remarkable 1,300-acre wooded landscape saved by Evesham Township from developers in the early 2000s. The site of old Quaker-run cranberry bogs and an abandoned airfield, it is a maze of wooded trails and beaver ponds just minutes from busy shopping corridors and housing developments. The Friends of Black Run Preserve were hosts of the land blessing; their founder and chairperson John Volpa MC’ed the event.

There were a remarkable number of constituencies represented int the ceremony. In addition to the Lenni Lenape and Quakers, participants included former members of the Evesham Township Human Rights Advisory Council as well as the district superintendent and students of the local high school.

At the end, Ty Gould-Jacinto led participants in a social round dance (fortunately it was a two-step and even Friends managed it well). The event was truly a blessing for all of these people of different backgrounds to come together to dance for peace and reconciliation.

Bonus: Ty Gould-Jacinto recorded the event and uploaded it to YouTube channel.

Rick Bushnell of ReClam the Bay gave a presentation on his environmental group’s activities to a small group at Cropwell Meeting in Marlton, N.J., this past Sunday. RTC grows and maintain millions of baby clams and oysters in the Barnegat Bay Watershed, which helps increase biodiversity and shoreline stabilization and restoration.

Bushnell started off by explaining how everything is connected:

The water in the estuary, like the water around the globe, is connected. We’re an environmental group. I’m a sailor, sail many parts of the world. I wanted to know about the water I was next to after moving to Long Beach Island.

Cropwell Meeting is on the edge of the Pinelands Natural Reserve. Bushnell explained how the Pinelands act as a “great big filter that brings water into the estuary, where the salt and fresh water meet. It’s shallower so warmer. Ninety percent of the things that live in the ocean live in an estuary in their juvenile state.” The Pinelands are protected by the state and federal government.

Pollution in the water going into an estuary causes a number of environmental problems. Excess nitrogen from car exhaust and nonporous surfaces create algae blooms which make the water cloudy. Sunlight doesn’t get to the eel grass (which Bushnell called “natures nursery”), a critical habitat for juvenile creatures to hide. Bushnell reported that we’ve lost a shocking 85 percent of eel grass in New Jersey estuaries.

Reclam the Bay is using clams and oysters to stabilize the shoreline and clean the waters. Oysters are inner tidal; they like to be dry sometimes. Clams stabilized the sea floor. Ribbed mussels filter a lot of water. By stabilizing shoreline we increase biodiversity. Just 15 feet of marsh cuts back 50 percent of waves. A lot of the work is done by volunteers.

As per Cropwell custom, Rick Bushnell was presented with one of Earl Even’s custom-made cutting boards after the presentation. A potluck lunch followed.

Links:

• Reclam the Bay
• New Jersey Pine Barrens Wikipedia page

Promotional material

Download and print here.

A very special guest gave ministry to Cropwell Meeting in Marlton, N.J. this Sunday. It was Quaker abolitionist John Woolman, looking good despite having recently celebrated his 300th birthday.

The part was really played by Charles Bruder, of the John Woolman Memorial, who dressed in period garb to share ministry taken from the Journal of John Woolman. Originally published two years after his death in 1774, it has remained in print for the past 250 years. The Journal is included in The Harvard Classics along with William Penn’s Fruits of Solitude and Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography. Woolman lived in nearby Mt. Holly, N.J., and frequently traveled in the ministry with Joshua Evans, a member of Cropwell Meeting’s Evans’s family.

Clockwise from left: Bruder talks with a visitor after the talk; about sixteen people were there for the presentation, including eight first-time visitors to Cropwell; Friends assembling for the talk.

Before beginning the presentation, Bruder explained that John Woolman was a spiritual person and interest in the spiritual well-being of his Quaker meeting. He asked everyone to imagine that it was the year 1770 and were sitting together in a Quaker meeting for worship. “John Woolman has just gotten up to speak” he told us as he went into the eighteenth-century minister’s persona.

“I believe God wants me to walk [on his religious travels] so I can understand the condition of the poor and oppressed and enslaved and be an example of humility and lowliness. Walking in obedience to God is agreeable to my state of mind because I know it is God’s will. I am uplifted by the sight of birds in the bushes and the sheep and the cows in the field because I know they are also being obedient to the will of God.

“When people are practicing and participating in the corrupted spirit of this world they are trading for God’s Light. Seeing this has cause me in many occasions to suffer from an inward spiritual poverty. You know the part in the Bible about loving God with all your heart and all your soul? Well, God really meant it. And you know when you’re supposed to live your neighbor as yourself? God really meant that too.”

In persona, Bruder told the audience that one of Woolman’s favorite books was William Penn’s No Cross No Crown and shared some insight from it. His Woolman character left us with a prayer “that your children and your children’s children will inherit a world free of war and crime and racism.” Releasing himself from the Woolman character, Bruder asked us now, in 2024, “to look around this world” and tell him “how that prayer worked out.”

Afterwards Friends gathered for a particularly bountiful Cropwell potluck lunch.

Further Reading:

• John Woolman Memorial Association
• Journal of John Woolman from the Christian Classics Etherial Library
• “Learning from John Woolman” by Helene Pollock in the Dec. 2018 issue of Friends Journal.

On Saturday Cropwell hosted the gathering of Haddonfield Quarterly Meeting. “The Quarter” is a group of 9 Quaker Meetings in Burlington, Camden, and Atlantic Counties that meets four times a year. Around two dozen Friends scrapped off the effects of a small snow storm the night before to travel to Marlton, with some coming in remotely via Zoom on a screen we installed for the event.

We began with half an hour of worship, then a period of open worship sharing on Rex Ambler’s pamphlet Living in Dark Times. The Quarter had delivered a small supply of copies to each meeting. It was also available as a YouTube of the original speech (see below).

After a pizza lunch, the Quarter came back for its meeting for business. A treasury report from Steve Willis of Medford Meeting led to an approved budget for the next year. An environmental report from Ruth Darlington outlined a number of initiatives taking place in the yearly meeting and quarter. We also had an update on the Faith and Play initiative, a project to expand children religious-education programs in meetings (Cropwell is participating in this and hopes to offer some First-day school classes in the near future).

Almost 60 people came to Cropwell Meeting this past Sunday to welcome Christmas at our second annual sing. About a third of them were featured singers from the Greater Philadelphia Choral Society (GPCS).

The meeting was happy to be joined by a carload of visitors from Barnegat (N.J.) Meeting, another small South Jersey meeting with a passion for outreach. Cropwell was also .delighted to learn that some of the GPCS singers were residents of Medford Leas, the nearby Quaker retirement community where some of our members live.

Greenery and wreathes were hung around the meetinghouse:

The singers began with breathtaking solos:

Perhaps the most tender moment was the entire group singing “Silent Night” together. The sounds reverberated through the meetinghouse, as if the walls themselves were humming along:

After the concert, everyone enjoyed sampling from two large tablefuls of sweets, from mulled cider, to brownies, to an assortment of cookies. One Cropwell attender made beautiful pine cone Christmas ornaments to give away to visitors (they were all different too, some with bells, others with berries!).

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It is important to have regular events advertised and open to the public. As usual, Cropwell Meeting publicized the concert on local Quaker calendars, Eventbrite, and Google listings. We also gave flyers to all of the households in the Marlton Village homeowners association adjacent to the meetinghouse.

Flyer for the event:

This last year at Cropwell has brought about some very large changes. Our beloved longtime clerk, Earl Evens, has decided to retire from his clerkship duties. Earl’s tenure has seen a rebirth of a meeting that had dropped down to two regular members. Six new members have joined in the last 18 months and former regulars have been returning. Earl’s gentle and steady guidance about the form and role and content of Friends’ worship has helped create something special on Sunday mornings. A life-long Quaker who attended Cropwell Meeting as a child, Earl will continue to be an integral part of our spiritual community.

I’m one of the new members, transferred from another meeting, and I’m humbled that you all are letting me serve as incoming clerk. Earl’s shoes are big ones to fill!

In a world full of turmoil and lives full of surprises and challenges, Quaker worship and the calm, unadorned space of our historic meetinghouse provide us with solace and comfort. As we look ahead to 2024, we renew our commitment to our beloved Cropwell community.

I’d like you to consider supporting Cropwell Meeting this year. As Paul wrote in his second letter to the Corinthians, “Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.”

I love the image of the cheerful giver! An annual donation of $500 from members and attendees (less than $10 a week) would help us better share the good news we’ve found at Cropwell with even more neighbors. We’ve got a lot of ideas on our wish list, from providing children’s education, to fixing up our kitchen, to making the fellowship side of our meetinghouse more useful for programs and social events. Arrangements can be made for members who may wish to donate monthly, quarterly, or semi-annually.

Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or concerns. I’d love to hear your dreams for our meeting!

Yours in the Light,
Martin Kelley, Clerk
Email: cropwellquakermeeting@gmail.com

Cropwell Friends Meeting
802 Cropwell Road
Marlton, NJ 08053

Learn more about donating to Cropwell, including our new system for setting up recurring monthly donations.