We’re All Ranters Now: On Liberal Friends and Becoming a Society of Finders

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It’s time to explain why I call this site “The Quaker Ranter” and to talk about my home, the lib­eral branch of Quak­ers. Non-Quakers can be for­given for think­ing that I mean this to be a place where I, Mar­tin Kel­ley, “rant,” i.e., where I “utter or express with extrav­a­gance.” That may be the result (smile), but it’s not what I mean and it’s not the real pur­pose behind this site.

Friends and Ranters

The Ranters were fellow-travelers to the Friends in the reli­gious tur­moil of seventeenth-century Eng­land. The coun­try­side was cov­ered with preach­ers and lay peo­ple run­ning around Eng­land seek­ing to revive prim­i­tive Chris­tian­ity. George Fox was one, declar­ing that “Christ has come to teach his peo­ple him­self” and that hireling clergy were dis­tort­ing God’s mes­sage. The move­ment that coa­lesced around him as “The Friends of Truth” or “The Quak­ers” would take its orders directly from the Spirit of Christ.

This worked fine for a few years. But before long a lead­ing Quaker rode into the town of Bris­tol in imi­ta­tion of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem. Not a good idea. The author­i­ties con­victed him of heresy and George Fox dis­tanced him­self from his old friend. Soon after­wards, a quasi-Quaker col­lec­tion of reli­gious rad­i­cals plot­ted an over­throw of the gov­ern­ment. That also didn’t go down very well with the author­i­ties, and Fox quickly dis­avowed vio­lence in a state­ment that became the basis of our peace tes­ti­mony. Clearly the Friends of the Truth needed to fig­ure out mech­a­nisms for decid­ing what mes­sages were truly of God and who could speak for the Friends movement.

The cen­tral ques­tion was one of author­ity. Those Friends rec­og­nized as hav­ing the gift for spir­i­tual dis­cern­ment were put in charge of a sys­tem of dis­ci­pline over way­ward Friends. Friends devised a method for deter­min­ing the valid­ity of indi­vid­ual lead­ings and con­cerns. This sys­tem rested on an assump­tion that Truth is immutable, and that any errors come from our own will­ful­ness in dis­obey­ing the mes­sage. New lead­ings were first weighed against the tra­di­tion of Friends and their pre­de­ces­sors the Israelites (as brought down to us through the Bible).

Ranters often looked and sounded like Quak­ers but were opposed to any impo­si­tion of group author­ity. They were a move­ment of indi­vid­ual spir­i­tual seek­ers. Ranters thought that God spoke directly to indi­vid­u­als and they put no lim­its on what the Spirit might instruct us. Tra­di­tion had no role, insti­tu­tions were for disbelievers.

Mean­while Quak­ers set up Quar­terly and Yearly Meet­ings to insti­tu­tion­al­ize the sys­tem of elders and dis­ci­pline. This worked for awhile, but it shouldn’t be too sur­pris­ing that this human insti­tu­tion even­tu­ally broke down. World­li­ness and wealth sep­a­rated the elders from their less well-to-do brethren and new spir­i­tual move­ments swept through Quaker ranks. Divi­sions arose over the eter­nal ques­tion of how to pass along a spir­i­tu­al­ity of con­vince­ment in a Soci­ety grown com­fort­able. By the early 1800s, Philadel­phia elders had became a kind of aris­toc­racy based on birthright and in 1827 they dis­owned two-thirds of their own yearly meet­ing. The dis­owned major­ity nat­u­rally devel­oped a dis­trust of author­ity, while the aris­to­cratic minor­ity even­tu­ally real­ized there was no one left to elder.

Over the next cen­tury and a half, suc­ces­sive waves of pop­u­lar reli­gious move­ments washed over Friends. Revival­ism, Deism, Spir­i­tu­al­ism and Pro­gres­sive Uni­tar­i­an­ism all left their mark on Friends in the Nine­teenth Cen­tury. Mod­ern lib­eral Protes­tantism, Evan­gel­i­cal­ism, New Ageism, and sixties-style rad­i­cal­ism trans­formed the Twen­ti­eth. Each fad lifted up a piece of Quak­ers’ orig­i­nal mes­sage but invari­ably added its own incon­gru­ous ele­ments into wor­ship. The Soci­ety grew ever more fractured.

Faced with ever-greater the­o­log­i­cal dis­unity, Friends sim­ply gave up. In the 1950s, the two Philadel­phia Yearly Meet­ings reunited. It was cel­e­brated as rec­on­cil­i­a­tion. But they could do so only because the role of Quaker insti­tu­tions had fun­da­men­tally changed. Our cor­po­rate bod­ies no longer even try to take on the role of dis­cern­ing what it means to be a Friend.

We are all Ranters now

Lib­eral Quak­ers today tend to see their local Meet­ing­house as a place where every­one can believe what they want to believe. The high­est value is given to tol­er­ance and cor­dial­ity. Many peo­ple now join Friends because it’s the reli­gion with­out a reli­gion, i.e., it’s a com­mu­nity with the form of a reli­gion but with­out any the­ol­ogy or expec­ta­tions. We are a proud to be a com­mu­nity of seek­ers. Our com­mon­al­ity is in our form and we’re big on silence and meet­ing process.

Is it any won­der that almost every­one today seems to be a hyphen­ated Quaker? We’ve got Catholic-Quakers, Pagan-Quakers, Jewish-Quakers: if you can hyphen­ate it, there’s a Quaker inter­est group for you. I’m not talk­ing about Friends nour­ished by another tra­di­tion: we’ve have his­tor­i­cally been graced and con­tinue to be graced by con­verts to Quak­erism whose fresh eyes let us see some­thing new about our­selves. No, I’m talk­ing about peo­ple who prac­tice the out­ward form of Quak­erism but look else­where for the­ol­ogy and inspi­ra­tion. If being a Friend means lit­tle more than show­ing up at Meet­ing once a week, we shouldn’t be sur­prised that peo­ple bring a the­ol­ogy along to fill up the hour. It’s like bring­ing a news­pa­per along for your train com­mute every morning.

But the appear­ance of tol­er­ance and unity comes at a price: it depends on every­one for­ever remain­ing a Seeker. Any­one who wants to fol­low early Friends’ expe­ri­ence as “Friends of the Truth” risks becomes a Finder who threat­ens the nego­ti­ated truce of the mod­ern Quaker meet­ing. If we really are a peo­ple of God, we might have to start act­ing that way. We might all have to pray together in our silence. We might all have to sub­mit our­selves to God’s will. We might all have to wres­tle with each other to artic­u­late a shared belief sys­tem. If we were Find­ers, we might need to define what is unac­cept­able behav­ior for a Friend, i.e., on what grounds we would con­sider dis­own­ing a member.

If we became a reli­gious soci­ety of Find­ers, then we’d need to fig­ure out what it means to be a Quaker-Quaker: some­one who’s the­ol­ogy and prac­tice is Quaker. We would need to put down those indi­vid­ual news­pa­pers to become a Peo­ple once more. I’m not say­ing we’d be united all the time. We’d still have dis­agree­ments. Even more, we would once again need to be vig­i­lant against the re-establishment of repres­sive elder­ships. But it seems obvi­ous to me that Truth lies in the bal­ance between author­ity and indi­vid­u­al­ism and that it’s each generation’s task to restore and main­tain that balance.

* * *

Over the years a num­ber of older and wiser Friends have advised me to live by Friends’ prin­ci­ples and to chal­lenge my Meet­ing to live up to those ideals. But in my year serv­ing as co-clerk of a small South Jer­sey Meet­ing, I learned that almost no one else there believed that our busi­ness meet­ings should be led by the real pres­ence of the liv­ing God. I was stuck try­ing to clerk using a model of cor­po­rate decision-making that I alone held. I would like to think those wiser Friends have more grounded Meet­ings. Per­haps they do. But I fear they just are more suc­cess­ful at kid­ding them­selves that there’s more going on than there is. I agree that the Spirit is every­where and that Christ is work­ing even we don’t rec­og­nize it. But isn’t it the role of a reli­gious com­mu­nity to rec­og­nize and cel­e­brate God’s pres­ence in our lives?

Until Friends can find a way to artic­u­late a shared faith, I will remain a Ranter. I don’t want to be. I long for the over­sight of a com­mu­nity united in a shared search for Truth. But can any of us be Friends if so many of us are Ranters?

In friend­ship,
Mar­tin Kelley

ps: for those inter­ested, “We all Ranters Now” para­phrases (birthright Friend) Richard Nixon’s famous quote about the lib­eral econ­o­mist John May­nard Keynes.

More Read­ing

Bill Samuel has an inter­est­ing piece called “Keep­ing the Faith” that addresses the con­cept of Unity and its wax­ing and wan­ing among Friends over the centuries.

Samuel D. Cald­well gave an inter­est­ing lec­ture back in 1997, Quaker Cul­ture vs. Quaker Faith. An excerpt: “Quaker cul­ture and Quaker faith are… often directly at odds with one another in Philadel­phia Yearly Meet­ing today. Although it orig­i­nally derived from and was con­sis­tent with Quaker faith, con­tem­po­rary Quaker cul­ture in this Yearly Meet­ing has evolved into a bor­ing, peev­ish, repres­sive, petty, humor­less, inept, mar­ginal, and largely irrel­e­vant cult that is gen­er­ally repug­nant to ordi­nary peo­ple with healthy psy­ches. If we try to pre­serve our Quaker cul­ture, instead of fol­low­ing the lead­ings of our Quaker faith, we will most cer­tainly be cast out of the King­dom and die.”

I talk a bit more about these issues in Sodium Free Friends, which talks about the way we some­times inten­tion­ally mis-understand our past and why it mat­ters to engage with it. Some prag­man­tic Friends defend our vague­ness as a way to increase our num­bers. In The Younger Evan­gel­i­cals and the Younger Quak­ers I look at a class of con­tem­po­rary seek­ers who would be recep­tive to a more robust Quak­erism and map out the issues we’d need to look at before we could really wel­come them in.

  • Bar­bara Smith

    Mar­tin — I dont know if you remem­ber me or not, but I worked with Jason G., and I remem­ber you when you had red hair. Oddly enuf, I am in the process of becom­ing a Quaker, or, at least I’m explor­ing Quak­erism, and I attend meet­ing. Phil Anthony actu­ally sent me your web­site and I’m look­ing for­ward to read­ing all your ‘rants’. Rock on brother, you are of the faith…where the real fire is. –Barb

  • Mar­tin Kelley

    Yeah!, con­firmed reader #6! What Meet­ing pray tell? That’s cool you’re explor­ing Quak­erism. Sure I remem­ber, I’ll send an email…
    Red hair?, ah yes. I should do just a humor­ous post some­day about the tran­si­tion from bleached hair to plain dress. I’m not sure it’s entirely coincidental–I can think of a cou­ple of plain dressers who were alterna-fashionistas in their pre-plain days.
    And what’s Phil doing just lurk­ing? Come on Phil, here’s the secret: no one reads this site. (No one reads the Quaker stuff at least, I’m sure the Theo page gets lots more hits, lucky guy).

  • Eliz­a­beth Roebling

    This Friend speaks my mind!! How refresh­ing, Friend Mar­tin, to stum­ble upon thy web “rant­i­ngs” — I am a con­vinced Friend,Quaker edu­cated, a life long peace/racial/enviro activist (42 years of it), now in the Asheville, NC Meet­ing. We are under­go­ing a deep spir­i­tual rebirth here in the moun­tains. I, like you, have often been a chal­lenge to my Meet­ing — I just returned from the SOA Watch at Fort Ben­ning — with a notable absence of an offi­cial Quaker pres­ence — except for Wes Cheney from Vir­ginia Beach who rode down there on his bicylce. How do we rec­on­cile the fact that Friends Fidu­ciary holds stock in Wal­marts, Coca –Cola, Dow Chem­i­cal, sev­eral oil com­pa­nies — and also sup­ports FGC, Pen­dle Hill, AFSC etc.….….just a query … I look for­ward to an ongo­ing con­ver­sa­tion — In the light — Elizabeth

  • Mar­tin Kelley

    In First Month 2004, a British Friend started an exten­sive cor­re­spon­dence about the sen­tence of this essay about the Friend who rode into Bris­tol imi­tat­ing Christ. I edited the sen­tence in ques­tion; as the posts have lit­tle to do with this essay, they’ve been archived here.

  • Matt Stromberg

    Inter­est­ing site. I’m a lit­tle con­fused as to your rea­son­ing in call­ing your­self a Ranter though. Ranters, although they shared with Quak­ers the idea of an Inward Light, were quite dif­fer­ent in many ways. Ranters met in tav­erns, cursed freely, smoked tabaco, drank heav­ily, were very promis­cuious, and basi­clly under­mined every con­ven­tional moral­ity. There founder Coppe believed that God was act­ing through him in such a way that he could not sin. Infact he denied the fact that any­thing could be called sin if its done under chris­t­ian faith. They usu­ally call this antin­o­mi­al­ism.
    When you call your­self a Ranter you should be con­cious of all the con­no­ta­tions that comes with that tittle.

  • Mar­tin Kelley

    Hi Matt,
    “Met in tav­erns, smoked tobacco… were very promis­cu­ous… under­minded every con­ven­tional moral­ity,” well yes, that describes Young Adult Friends con­fer­ences. No no, it’s not really like that, though there is some truth in there.
    I think it’s fair to describe many Friends as antin­o­minial­ists. A num­ber of mod­ern Quak­ers don’t really believe in sin. A recent arti­cle in _Friends Journal_ argued that “evil doesn’t exist”:http://​www​.friend​sjour​nal​.org/​c​o​n​t​e​n​t​s​/​2​0​0​4​/​0​1​0​4​/​f​e​a​t​u​r​e​.​htm. A major­ity of Philadel­phia Yearly Meet­ing mem­bers sam­pled in a 2002 sur­vey “strongly dis­agreed with the Fox quote that ”If you turn your back on the Light within, you will be con­demned by it’”:http://​www​.pym​.org/​s​u​p​p​o​r​t​-​a​n​d​-​o​u​t​r​e​a​c​h​/​m​a​k​i​n​g​-​n​e​w​-​f​r​i​e​n​d​s​/​y​m​-​p​r​e​s​8​/​s​l​d​0​1​6​.​htm. Many indi­vid­u­als in the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends today are the­o­log­i­cally closer to Ranter­ism than to Quak­erism.
    “We’re all Ranters now” because our insti­tu­tions have largely aban­doned their roles of set­ting and main­tain­ing stan­dards. Because I have the choice to believe what­ever I want to believe and still be Quaker (the fun­da­men­tal axiom of lib­eral Quak­erism), even my choice to live in a tra­di­tional Quak­erism with set lim­its is self-imposed. If I decided I’d rather _meet in tav­erns, curse freely, smoke tabaco, drink heav­ily, be very promis­cuious, and under­mine every con­ven­tional morality_ no one at my monthly meet­ing would say any­thing (I sus­pect more than one would be relieved actually).

  • Matt Stromberg

    Wow what monthly meet­ing do you belong too haha?
    Your point is well taken and I under­stand what your say­ing about moral real­i­tivism among Mod­ern Lib­eral Friends. I have to say that if I behaved in such a way I think I would be given a talk­ing to by peo­ple in my meet­ing. Per­haps the prob­lem is that one’s behav­ior out­side of meet­ing can remain a secret while that was not the case back in the old days?
    Are mod­ern Lib­eral Quak­ers more like ranters than 17th cen­tury quak­ers were? abso­lutly. Still I haven’t seen any­one at my meet­ing parad­ing in the nude with a pint of ale in both hands haha.

  • Mar­lene M. Fitzwater

    I just dis­cov­ered your Web site and read your piece, “We’re All Ranters Now: Lib­eral Quak­ers.” It struck a cord with me. I’ve been a con­vinced Quaker for 12 years after learn­ing that many of my ances­tors were Quak­ers. In fact, Thomas Fitzwa­ter and his famiy came to Amer­ica with William Penn on the ship Wel­come and was an early Quaker min­is­ter. I belong to an unpro­grammed meet­ing which has more atten­ders than mem­bers and many atten­ders who are try­ing to take us in some dif­fer­ent direc­tions (into more of a Unity, no the­ol­ogy, kind of meet­ing). I am enjoy­ing your writ­ings and your views on some impor­tant top­ics. Keep up the good work. (I’m a sixty-something pro­fes­sor who val­ues the fresh think­ing of young adults!)

  • Mike Kings­bury

    Con­ser­v­a­tive Hicksite–Christian, lib­eral, non-literalist, and Spirit-led Friend–I’m not alone!
    I am a long-time atten­der in the Pacific Yearly Meet­ing, a Chris­t­ian (non-dogmatic), homo­sex­ual (more sat­ur­nine than gay), non-leaning lib­er­tar­ian (nei­ther left nor right), and oth­er­wise plain-living guy. I never would have thought I’d find a site the likes of this one!
    Your (Thy) site is great fun and very infor­ma­tive. You (Thee) are an encour­age­ment for me to attend next year’s FGC.
    It often seems, among lib­eral Friends out here, that just about every­one has come out of the closet except the Chris­tians. More than once I have heard a vocal min­istry of Chris­t­ian con­tent in meet­ing met with irri­tated grum­bles, or even a sharp rebuke. Is there tol­er­ance left only for those who are able to wit­ness in explic­itly non-Christian terms? Is that also the way of things on the other side of the divide? Friends Elias, Joel and Hanna would be ‘sore amazed’.
    Luck­ily, the first advice I ever got at meet­ing was that if we were to live accord­ing to Jesus, and in the light of Christ, we would be too busy to find time for dis­agree­ment.
    As to plain­ness, try a broad­brim (I wear a crusher) and a smile. Thee (You) will get more friendly nods and ernest ques­tions than would be imag­ined.
    I may give those Dutch trousers a try.
    Keep on speak­ing thy mind, friend. We’re lis­ten­ing.
    Mike Kings­bury
    Desert Wor­ship Group (PYM)
    Palm Springs, CA.

  • http://www.nonviolence.org/martink Mar­tin Kelley

    >Con­ser­v­a­tive Hicksite—Christian, lib­eral, non-literalist, and Spirit-led
    >Friend—I’m not alone!
    Hi Mike,
    Yes, I’ve been pretty sur­prised myself that I’m not alone. There’s a lot of weirdos around, hmm?
    >Your (Thy) site is great fun and very infor­ma­tive. You (Thee) are an
    >encour­age­ment for me to attend next year’s FGC.
    Hey, just don’t blame me: I tell peo­ple there are excit­ing things hap­pen­ing but of course our band of lib­eral con­ser­v­a­tives make up a tiny frac­tion of the atten­dance at any Quaker gath­er­ing. It’s more a ten­dency than a move­ment. Still, I’d like to meet you there, if only to see what a _saturnine_ per­son­al­ity is like (are you going to ask FLGBTQC to add an “S” to their acronym to account for you?)
    Thy Friend,
    Martin

  • John Edmin­ster

    I love the spirit of what thee writes, Mar­tin, and I believe that if thee remains faith­ful to the voice of thy Guide and keeps thy eyes open, thee will soon see Amer­i­can Quakerism’s anointed elders (by which I mean Friends given an elder’s gifts and com­mis­sion by the Holy Spirit) rise out of the dark earth and shoot up through the dead veg­e­ta­tion of Win­ter like new Spring growth. And those of us that are look­ing for our elders will rec­og­nize them with very lit­tle effort, I think, the way we rec­og­nize wis­dom and good­ness in a good book.
    I’m cur­rently writ­ing a short arti­cle on the Quaker tra­di­tion of elder­ship for the Friends in the Spirit of Christ News. From it I take a lit­tle snip:
    >
    I look for­ward to hear­ing more from thee.
    Thy friend in Christ,
    John Edmin­ster
    Fif­teenth Street Meet­ing
    New York City

  • http://www.nonviolence.org/martink Mar­tin Kelley

    Hi John,
    Well you’re not going to be able to let read­ers know of a pub­li­ca­tion called “Friends in the Spirit of Christ News” with­out telling us what it’s about and where we can see it.
    I’m glad to see the “epis­tle from the Elders at Balby”:http://​www​.qhpress​.org/​t​e​x​t​s​/​b​a​l​b​y​.​h​tml being read for itself (the footnote–“these things we do not lay upon you as a rule or form to walk by”–has been ele­vated to a creed in lib­eral Quak­erism and is extremely over-quoted out of con­text, as if the epis­tle itself weren’t very real rules and forms).
    Let us know where to find your arti­cle when it’s done, I’m sure many of the Quaker Ranter read­ers would be interested!

  • http://www.angelfire.com/pa/barbquin/ Bar­bara Quintiliano

    Hi Mar­tin,
    When on earth (or in heaven) do you find the time to keep up two web­sites while work­ing and rais­ing lit­tle Theo? (He’s adorable, by the way. I have two boys, now ages 14 and 17.)
    I’ve been an atten­der for about a year and a meet­ing in the sub­urbs of Philadel­phia. I’m addicted to the web and a com­pul­sive surfer, before that I was just a com­pul­sive reader. I just started a blog at http://​www​.com​pul​sivereader​.blogspot​.com –basi­cally, just to see how you go about set­ting up a blog … Of course, now that I’ve started it I find that I don’t really have any­thing com­pelling to say to the world. As soon as I decide to post some­thing, my words all just seem like fluff to me. So for the moment there’s just a recent poem that I wrote there.
    Any­way, I’m try­ing to get my mind around all this “what’s a real Quaker and what isn’t” stuff. I was briefly sub­scribed to Quaker-L (I’m sure you know it) but just qui­etly unsub­scribed after sev­eral attempts at dis­cussing some cur­rent “lib­eral Chris­t­ian” (term used on the list) authors kept going around in a cir­cle because some­one on the list reserved to him/herself the right to define what the word “Chris­t­ian” meant. Mar­tin, I work at a uni­ver­sity. That’s not to brag (as librar­i­ans, we don’t have the same sta­tus as the pro­fes­sors. We’re way below them … but per­son­ally, I think that we rank just “a lit­tle less than the angels” any­way :-) It’s just that when there are debates or dis­cus­sions on cam­pus, no one, sin­gle per­son gets to for­mu­late all the def­i­n­i­tions.
    Even on Quaker-P there’s a lot of this liberal/conservative stuff. I guess it’s a sign of the times. The polar­iza­tion of the pub­lic dis­course in our soci­ety is so extreme at this moment that I don’t think it’s some­thing we’ll dis­cuss our way out of. I think it’s going to take some earth-shattering not lit­er­ally, I hope) event to really shift the way we talk to … or maybe around… or maybe past one another. For right now, each of us seems to move in his/her own sphere, lib­eral or con­ser­v­a­tive. We all seem to lis­ten to one another just long enough to fig­ure out whether we can pin the “lib­eral” or “con­ser­v­a­tive” tag on the speaker, no mat­ter what the con­text (but then it usu­ally seems to come down to either pol­i­tics or reli­gion these days) … and then we stop lis­ten­ing.
    Any­way, what I really wanted to say is that the mem­bers of our meet­ing seem quite inno­cent of all this “what’s a real Quaker and what’s not” con­tro­versy. We have a cou­ple of birthright Quak­ers, and then there’s our clerk (I don’t know if he’s birthright or not), and they just seem to know how to keep the meet­ings for busi­ness focused. And there are a cou­ple of mem­bers who are just won­der­ful about main­tain­ing a rev­er­ent, wor­ship­ful atmos­phere dur­ing the meet­ing for busi­ness. When there are seri­ous dis­agree­ments, the dis­cus­sion get con­tin­ued till the next meet­ing.
    That said, I have to admit that there isn’t much men­tion of Christ at our meet­ing for wor­ship either. “God” quite a lot. But I didn’t hear the name “Christ” until I read a pas­sage from one of Paul’s epis­tles. Is this sup­posed to bother me? It doesn’t. And to be per­fectly hon­est, I myself no longer believe the same things con­cern­ing Christ that I was taught as a child (in Catholic school).
    I cer­tainly under­stand that this wan­ders far from what the first Quak­ers believed. But for some rea­son, I’m not as con­cerned about it, and nei­ther is any­one at our meet­ing. No one seems to think that it’s panic time or any­thing. For the first time, I belong to a con­gre­ga­tion where every­one actu­ally knows every­one by name, where we visit those mem­bers who are dying, where we recently sup­ported (finan­cially and spir­i­tu­ally) the college-age daugh­ter of a mem­ber who went to spent the sum­mer in Mex­ico work­ing with a group called Sede­pac (Ser­vi­cio, Desarollo y Paz), which recruits vol­un­teers through the AFSC. I’ve begun to write for our lit­tle monthly newslet­ter, and I’ve joined the ama­teur writ­ers group that meets in the social room once a month (most but not all of the mem­bers are asso­ci­ated with the meet­ing). And I find relief and refuge at our meet­ing from the bel­li­cose nature of the Chris­tian­ity that seems to per­me­ate Amer­ica. (Actu­ally, it wasn’t the peace tes­ti­mony but the tes­ti­monies of integrity and equal­ity that brought me to Quak­erism. But I won’t go into that, as it’s too auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal.) And do you know what the men did on Mother’s Day? They made a huge break­fast for the women. I had never, ever, in all my years as a Roman Catholic, seen a group of men cook for women! I really can’t express what it means to me to be in the com­pany of men whose sense of mas­culin­ity isn’t some­how tied up in what they’ve accom­plished or the rank they’ve risen to in the world.
    So any­way, I guess that I just wanted to say that I think our meet­ing is where it should be. I don’t feel a lack of any­thing just because we’re not con­stantly pro­claim­ing the name of Christ. We recently started a dis­cus­sion forum on what it means to be a mem­ber of a Quaker com­mu­nity (yes, I saw your blog: Oh no, you’re say­ing to your­self, another group dis­cussing the con­cept of com­mu­nity). And we have been dis­cussing the under­ly­ing con­vic­tions and beliefs that Quak­ers have in com­mon — that it’s not just every­one with his/her own beliefs. We’re using the pam­phlet Mem­bers One of Another by Thomas Gates (a Pen­dle Hill pam­phlet) as the basis of dis­cus­sion, as well as Faith and Prac­tice. The dis­cus­sions will con­tinue after the Christ­mas hol­i­days.
    Maybe we’re all very loosely con­nected, but maybe it’s just the pen­du­lum swing­ing the other way for a lot of us who came from extremely struc­tured, hier­ar­chi­cal churches, where we were told in no uncer­tain terms what was ortho­dox and what was heresy — and where very few of us (and none of the women) had any­thing to say about the reli­gious rules that were made to gov­ern our lives.
    So any­way, that’s all I wanted to share with you: my befud­dle­ment over things that I read about whether Quak­ers are really Chris­t­ian or not, and my sense of peace and joy in par­tic­i­pat­ing in the meet­ing where I’ve been an atten­der.
    A blessed Christ­mas to you, your fam­ily, and espe­cially Theo.
    –Bar­bara
    Malvern, PA

  • http://www.nonviolence.org/martink Mar­tin Kelley

    Hi Bar­bara. You don’t just work at _a_ uni­ver­sity I see. So first off, big hello to Vil­lanova and the Falvey Memo­r­ial Library. Your resume says you started there in 87, so our paths have surely crossed. I’m VU class of 89, a Hon­ors Dept major back when all our classes met in the fourth floor of Falvey. Four years of my life took place largely in that build­ing. My first blog was there (okay, it wasn’t a blog but my pho­to­copied zine “THE VACUUM,” but cul­tur­ally it was a blog).
    It sounds like your monthly meet­ing is pretty together, with all the com­raderie, care and love. That’s pretty pre­cious. Isn’t that what Jesus’s mes­sage was all about?
    Those dis­cus­sion boards are for the birds, gen­er­ally. They’re very con­tentious, peo­ple just want­ing to hear them­selves shout. I don’t think real lis­ten­ing hap­pens on them. These are Quak­erly argu­ments and I don’t think a lot of the loud­est posters are actu­ally very involved in Quak­erism. It’s about being in a lived com­mu­nity, too.
    If your meet­ing is read­ing the Gates pam­phlet and agree­ing that there is some­thing Quaker and that it’s not all about believ­ing any­thing, then it’s more together than most meet­ings. I don’t advo­cate con­fes­sions of faith, just an ongo­ing engage­ment and wrestling with our faith and tradition.

  • http://blog.russnelson.com Rus­sell Nelson

    If you were wrong about this, your meet­ing would have read you out of meet­ing. Because you are right, your meet­ing is unable to read you out of meet­ing.
    –russ

  • http://www.nonviolence.org/martink Mar­tin Kelley

    Hi Russ! Isn’t that the beauty of the sit­u­a­tion? My acknowl­edged Ranter­ism should get me in trou­ble but there’s really no get­ting into trou­ble for just about any­thing so I skate free. But does that make this a win-win or lose-lose sit­u­a­tion? Great to see you here. Martin

  • http://www.tcfm.org James Riemer­mann

    Mar­tin & all,
    There is much expressed in these pages which I can heartily sup­port. Cer­tainly, if Friends are reluc­tant to speak of God or Christ in the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends for fear of dis­ap­proval or cen­sure, some­thing needs to be cor­rected. We can­not build deep, lov­ing com­mu­nity in an atmos­phere of anx­i­ety and mis­trust.
    I also dis­cern a sense that the author and many vis­i­tors to this site feel that many Friends are more inter­ested in an easy, com­fort­able, unchal­leng­ing social and polit­i­cal club, than a place for seri­ous spir­i­tual growth and chal­lenge. If you wish to call that being “con­victed in our sin,” so be it. The phrase does not speak to me, but I think its mean­ing does.
    At the same time, I dis­cern a sense here–rarely explicit, but fre­quently implied–that what lib­eral Quak­ers need is a good purg­ing, a removal of those Friends who don’t believe what “we” think Friends should believe. Who “we” are, and pre­cisely which beliefs are accept­able and unac­cept­able, is very much in ques­tion.
    I don’t believe in God, and have spent the last 15 years among Friends try­ing to under­stand, among many other things, why I feel so irrestibly drawn to a com­mu­nity and reli­gious soci­ety in which the cen­tral term is God. My rela­tion­ship with that com­mu­nity is at the cen­ter of my life, and has trans­formed and improved me in ways that make me deeply grate­ful and rev­er­ent for what­ever it is we expe­ri­ence or cre­ate together. It has not made me a the­ist.
    In my large and very lib­eral meet­ing, a fair num­ber of mes­sages in meet­ing for wor­ship invoke the name of God or Christ or Jesus. Per­haps a larger per­cent­age do not, includ­ing many from Friends I know to be Chris­tians of var­i­ous sorts. That a mes­sage does not invoke the name of God, does not prove or even sug­gest that God is not present in the mes­sage. If I am mis­taken and God does exist, surely he is man­i­fest in all cre­ation and human­ity, and not merely at those moments when we invoke his name. If I am mis­taken and God does exist, surely he is man­i­fest in me, and in what I bring to my meet­ing, and what my meet­ing brings to me. Surely your con­cep­tion of God is not that he is only present in the lives of those who hold cer­tain the­o­log­i­cal propo­si­tions to be true. Or am I mis­taken about this as well?
    I do expe­ri­ence some­thing mys­te­ri­ous and pro­found and life-changing in my reli­gious life among Friends. I have a hard time describ­ing it, though I occa­sion­ally try in my flawed and halt­ing lan­guage. Per­haps the expe­ri­ence I have is the same as, or deeply sim­i­lar to, that which you call God. For me to use that term would be mis­lead­ing, even dis­hon­est, because, mys­te­ri­ous as my expe­ri­ence some­times is, noth­ing about it strikes me as unnat­ural. It is some­thing beyond me, nat­u­rally, as it springs not from my own doing, but from the encounter or rela­tion­ship between me and oth­ers, between me and the world. It is nei­ther here nor there, but a liv­ing bond that comes from being alive in the world with other liv­ing beings. There is some­thing sacred in that bond, and act­ing in ways that tend to vio­late it is not right­eous. I depend on my com­mu­nity for many things, and one of those things is to keep me hon­est to that bond. I sub­mit myself to that dis­ci­pline freely and joy­fully, and my will­ing­ness springs from the faith I have in the good­ness of that com­mu­nity. I do not and can­not, how­ever, sub­mit my mind, my beliefs–my mea­sure of the light–to any author­ity. To do so would be a vio­la­tion of my integrity, and it is not in the tra­di­tion of George Fox or the founders to demand this sort of obe­di­ence, nor to deny the bless­ing of our com­mu­nity to those who will not state agree­ment with cer­tain the­o­log­i­cal propo­si­tions.
    I am con­fi­dent that Fox and his fol­low­ers would have been shocked to see the the­o­log­i­cal diver­sity that is the real­ity of mod­ern lib­eral Friends. He also would have been shocked, I sus­pect, to learn that the cre­ation story/stories of Gen­e­sis, taken lit­er­ally, would soon be proven by sci­ence to be clearly and absolutely false. Given his unshake­able integrity, given the rad­i­cal nature of his min­istry, given 300 more years of light and learn­ing, I think his beliefs would have changed in many ways that are hard to imag­ine. Should we have not changed dur­ing this period?
    My goal is not to change Friends, though my pres­ence among them will prob­a­bly have some small effect. Like Pop­eye and Luther, I am what I am. At the same time, I applaud and honor the Chris­tians and oth­ers whose faith in God is utterly cen­tral to every­thing of value in their lives. It would grieve me deeply if you were reluc­tant to speak your faith in wor­ship to avoid offend­ing me. Some­times your lan­guage about God speaks to me very deeply, though on a metaphor­i­cal level. Other times, not so much. In any case, your beliefs are impor­tant to me. I want to know you. I would like for us to remain Friends.
    Either way, I’m here. I’m not going any­where.
    [Editor’s Note: I lifted up James’s com­ment as it’s own post, “I Am What I Am”:/martink/archives/000567.php. Com­ments to it specif­i­cally should prob­a­bly go there.]

  • http://ofthebest.blogspot.com Amanda

    Friend John,
    I find your tes­ti­mony very mov­ing and beau­ti­ful, and it speaks very much to my heart. Thank you.

  • Harold

    I some­how just found this site today, and I have to once again express appre­ci­a­tion for all those folks who do not for­get about Christ’s cen­tral place in the Soci­ety.
    I really do fear that in a hun­dred years we won’t be a Reli­gious Soci­ety at all any­more, but a miss-match of vary­ing reli­gious thoughts and philoso­phies, includ­ing athe­ism and even Satanism (it sounds rather sen­sa­tion­al­ist, I know, but I have met a per­son who claims to be mem­ber of the RSOF and The Church Of Satan and sees no con­tra­dic­tion in that–I sus­pect many of my lib­eral friends would feel the same way). It’s sad.
    I fear that peo­ple will come to Quak­erism sim­ply for com­mu­nity (with­out reli­gion), or worse, turn it into a social club of sorts. Christ is already slowly being taken out of our Soci­ety in the name of “diver­sity”.
    I don’t think diver­sity is a bad thing at all, to a point. But after a cer­tain point (and I think many of us have an innate sense of where that point is, even if we can­not sharply pin­point it) it becomes self-defeating and we are no longer the Soci­ety that we wish to be.

  • Pam

    I strug­gle with this quite a bit in my meet­ing. I find myself in the odd posi­tion of hav­ing a sim­i­lar ten­dency to want to “purge” folks who aren’t “real quak­ers” — though I myself am not a chris­t­ian, or even nec­es­sar­ily a the­ist, and there­fore my ideas (sense) of what a “real quaker” is doesn’t fit most of what is dis­cussed here.
    And I am a mem­ber of James’ meet­ing, and another iden­ti­fied non-christian (I iden­ti­fied as an athe­ist for a while, but really, I find that there aren’t words, or a big enough com­mu­nity with sim­i­lar views to find words, for what I am)
    I think that some of us who do not cen­ter our faith / prac­tice / ethics / spir­i­tual life (such as it is) around christ bring as much or more spir­i­tual open­ness, yearn­ing and insight as (than) some who pro­fess them­selves chris­tians.
    I am ardently in favor of labor­ing with each other in order to ver­bal­ize a core of Quak­erism. I am very wary of draw­ing lines in the sand or try­ing to pick out who is worth wor­ship­ping with and who is not, espe­cially based on how they access god (or awe)

  • Mont­gomery Stephen Fitzwater

    “The law of faith the law of the Spirit of Life is the love of G-d.This comes by The Lord Christ”. “Flesh and blood did not reveal this to you only My Father in heaven”.“I will put My Laws into their minds and write them upon their hearts,I will be their G-d they shall be My peo­ple and they shall not teach every­one his fel­low or every­one his brother,saying,Know the Lord.”“For I desire stead­fast love not sacrifice,the knowl­edge of G-d not burnt offerings.“This is the Quaker tes­ti­mony to which I cling.This is the rock that hell shall not pre­vail against.I have wit­nessed an assort­ment of quaker rant­i­ngs over these years from uni­tar­ian to evangelical.Self will and self pos­ses­sion prevail.m

  • http://nancysapology.blogspot.com Nancy A

    Mar­tin, I think it’s because we don’t talk to each other that we become so spir­i­tu­ally estranged from each other. And that leads to being afraid to talk to each other. There has to be silence, but there also has to be study, dia­logue, explo­ration, and lis­ten­ing. I’m start­ing to feel very strongly that silent meet­ing is only half of what total Quak­erism should be.
    If peo­ple in our meet­ings have any faith at all, then they real­ize that what­ever they style their per­sonal reli­gion as, it’s all talk­ing about the same thing. Dif­fer­ent words, same ideas. So we need to get open­ing our mouths and our books (and our minds).
    Too many Quak­ers think of quak­erism as a reli­gion of indi­vid­u­al­ity — but it’s not. It’s a col­lec­tivist reli­gion. We meet to silently come together with the Eter­nal, to sub­mit to it, and to do so with each other. If Quak­ers are doing the indi­vid­u­al­ism thing, then they are way off. So then, give them some books to read.
    How­ever, this is not to advo­cate for any kind of writ­ten com­mon ground. I’ve seen what the Rich­mond Dec­la­ra­tion has become for some branches of Quak­erism.
    Peo­ple arrive a var­i­ous stages of their spir­i­tual jour­ney, and we don’t want to close the door on those who are just timidly start­ing out. As long as we fos­ter growth in a col­lec­tive sense, with plenty of talk and read­ing and a sin­cere sub­mis­sion to the nudg­ings of the Spirit, then peo­ple with thinly defined spir­i­tu­al­ity will deepen and grow with us.

  • http://kennchaplin.blogspot.com Kenn Chap­lin

    Were it not for the love of my faith com­mu­nity, a con­gre­ga­tion of the United Church of Canada which is at the left side of this left­ist denom­i­na­tion, I would more fre­quently attend my local Friends’ meet­ing — just up the street from my con­gre­ga­tion.
    I am blessed to have found your site. For more years than I can count I have thought of myself as a ‘seeker’ far more than a finder. As I read your writ­ings I am chal­lenged to express myself a litle more gen­tly than I some­times do.

  • Thomas Ride­nour

    I agree with some­one way up the line there that a com­par­i­son of hon­est seek­ers with the orig­i­nal Ranters is unfair. Some­one in another tra­di­tion labeled uncom­mit­ted seek­ers “Free­lance Chris­tians” some years ago. Again, it is unfair.
    I was once aso­ci­ated with Friends, believ­ing that after years of seek­ing I had finally found my spir­i­tual home. But the Spirit con­tin­ued to lead me into truth, and that truth did not square with Quaker the­ol­ogy. The Quak­erly response was to turn a deaf ear toward what I tried to share.
    As for author­ity and tra­di­tion, every­thing I recieve as Truth must have it’s root in Scrip­ture as under­stood by Chris­tians of ancient times. I am not into nov­elty. The prob­lem is, no group today prac­tices all these things. And I am sure I have not yet arrived at the per­fec­tion of knowl­edge either. But i believe in being open-minded and desire a place where I can hold my con­vic­tions and express them as the Spirit gives utterance.

  • Mar­tin Kelley

    @Thomas: the inter­est­ing ques­tion is whether Friends not being faith­ful Friends (faith­ful to their own tradition/theology/understanding) or whether you had irrec­on­cil­able and dif­fer­ences of the­ol­ogy, per­haps around the source of spir­i­tual author­ity. If your mem­ber­ship was just not a good match, then I can under­stand how even­tu­ally there might be that deaf ear. Of course I’ve been around Friends long enough to know that we often don’t like any­one who asks good ques­tions or chal­lenges our some­times too-easy pieties and it’s a shame when we lose peo­ple who play this role.

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