Evan Draper

Dear Editor: I loved William Matchett’s delicately profound “Notes on Quaker Speech.” I share his sentiment that locutions like “Meeting for Worship with Attention to Business” are tortured and twee. It has been said that Friends abolished creeds, but couldn’t exterminate the creedal impulse. So if Friends are resistant to propound any set of beliefs, it must be all the more tempting for us to cherish certain phrases that signify group identity instead. Sadly, I’ve met people who equated “understanding Quakerism” with “speaking fluent wishy-washy.” In the interest of spiritually immediate language, here are a few more Quaker phrases I wouldn’t mind never hearing again.