Quaker Ranter

Martin–Your post spoke to me in so many ways! Thank you for the thoughts and sug­ges­tions. I’ve been won­der­ing, myself, if there could be a place for peo­ple like me (non-Christian Friend) in the “Con­ver­gent” renewal, and haven’t yet felt there would be.
To be fair, some­times names take on a life of their own. I think it’s human nature to seek handy ways of say­ing long thoughts in short ways. But I hope we are not wed­ded to the word “Con­ver­gent” as yet another adjec­tive to put in front of the word Quaker (or Friend).
And also, changes do tend to gather steam after one or two (or a small group) start feel­ing the poten­tial. What I hope folks will be wary of is sim­ply jump­ing on the train, assum­ing that some­one else will do all the think­ing and defin­ing.
I love the Con­ver­gent con­ver­sa­tion for hav­ing put some life into the idea of renewal–an idea that I hear peo­ple men­tion and then not men­tion again, or never men­tion at all. At least now, peo­ple have some impulse to think about it, even if they are not so sure they want spe­cific def­i­n­i­tions just yet.
If “Con­ver­gent Friend” becomes yet another branch of the Quaker tree in the US, then I’m not inter­ested. But if the dis­cus­sions and insights lead us to new ways of relat­ing to one another, new ways of bridg­ing the divides already in place, and new ways of wel­com­ing in those who may be fol­low­ing a Spirit who says “Band­wag­ons are not for thee” then we have the begin­nings of some­thing that will enhance us all as a greater body.
For over a year now, I have felt that there is a new day com­ing for Friends. I don’t know what it will look like, but I think the Cov­er­gent con­ver­sa­tion will play a part in shap­ing it. I wouldn’t like to see this one aspect of a greater con­ver­sa­tion over­shadow other ways of envi­sion­ing the future, but it is good that peo­ple have the urge to start the ball rolling and then stick with that par­tic­u­lar ball until oth­ers can get their balls in play.
cath

Hey, Mar­tin–
As always, a thought­ful and insight­ful (incite­ful?) post. …This year at the “annual” inter­est group at FGC’s sum­mer Gath­er­ing, I made it a point to say that while a num­ber of Friends see me as a Con­ver­gent Friend, it’s not a label I use to describe myself. I also added that I don’t iden­tify as a Chris­t­ian but I labor over the Christ-centered nature of our faith.
It also wasn’t lost on me that there still are Friends com­ing to these events, want­ing to under­stand what the heck is going on, can they be a part of it, etc. etc. A cou­ple of Friends made it a point to approach me after the inter­est group and told me how alone they had been feel­ing and/or how unsure they were of how to get their meet­ing to start look­ing at some of the top­ics that the online con­ver­sa­tion has been address­ing.
So why do I par­tic­i­pate in this con­ver­sa­tion? Because there is Life in it for me. Because I grow into a more com­plete under­stand­ing of the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends, across the schisms. Because I started a blog not to be part of an “in” crowd, but to add my voice to the dis­cus­sion that was brew­ing about how to deepen the spir­i­tual nature of our meet­ings with­out (1) blow­ing off the han­dle or (2) dis­ap­pear­ing entirely.
Do I wres­tle with Jesus at the cen­ter of our Quaker tra­di­tion? Yes. Do I see fruits of the love and faith­ful­ness that a num­ber of us have engaged in, since this whole Con­ver­gent con­ver­sa­tion got started? Yes. Do I think the word “Con­ver­gence” should be put on hia­tus for awhile? I don’t know. Let me sit with that…
Thanks for mak­ing me think… and for not (1) blow­ing off the han­dle or (2) dis­ap­pear­ing entirely.
Bless­ings,
Liz Opp, The Good Raised Up

Hi, Mar­tin,
I don’t think we’ve ever con­versed, but I really appre­ci­ate your work with quak​erquaker​.org as well as your own blog. Thanks.
Thanks also for this post. I, too, have been strug­gling with dis­cus­sions about Con­ver­gent Friends. I like this point you made:
If all we’re doing is sit­ting around talk­ing to room­fulls of Quak­ers in our hopeless-inaccessible lingo then we’re fool­ing our­selves that any real renewal is hap­pen­ing.
When I first heard about Con­ver­gent Friends (in Robin’s arti­cle in Friends Jour­nal) I was beside myself with joy. I had been feel­ing for some time the move­ment of the Spirit towards a renewal among Friends, and here was con­fir­ma­tion that I was not alone. Oth­ers were being blown in a sim­i­lar direc­tion, and from many dif­fer­ent places. Praise God! was my imme­di­ate reac­tion.
But our paths have not been made to cross just so we can sit back and mar­vel that our paths are cross­ing! We are called to live more authen­tic lives of faith and thereby help to bring about the King­dom of God right here and now. We have been brought together to kick each of us out of our com­fort zones and open us up to the pres­ence of the Liv­ing Christ among us. We need each other for spir­i­tual growth and encour­age­ment. We don’t need each other for debat­ing what we should be called or who should be con­sid­ered “in” or “not in.“
Thanks for open­ing up this con­ver­sa­tion in a way that encour­ages me. I am 100% aligned with the (Lib­eral Christian/Conservative Quaker/Progressive Evan­gel­i­cal) renewal that is upon us. I’m just find­ing no life in con­tin­u­ing to dis­cuss “Con­ver­gent Friends” as if that should be our com­mon goal. It is a con­ve­nient label so we can find each other, but then the label needs to be set aside so we can do the impor­tant task set before us: work­ing for the King­dom of God.
Cathy Hab­schmidt
Ohio Val­ley YM
Rich­mond, Indiana

Mar­tin, great thoughts and I com­pletely agree with you on your main point/amendment. To be entirely evan­gel­i­cal there’s a sense in which the great com­mis­sion needs to be behind this. That sense of “go” (or mis­sion as shar­ing the good news) is to be the fun­da­men­tal start­ing point for all the church not just this lit­tle group. While you call it an Amend­ment, I do want to sug­gest that this has been an impor­tant part of this entire thing for at least some of us. The very rea­son why I per­son­ally got inter­ested in this is because of the point you make, and I know you, robin and oth­ers have been on the same page the whole time. Regard­less, it’s a good cor­rec­tive and reminder.
Bill — I’m a bit sur­prised by your com­ment. It’s weird to me that you want to draw some kind of line between “emerg­ing Quaker con­gre­ga­tions” and the con­ver­gent Friends. For one, there’s no more than 10 con­gre­ga­tions we could rightly call emerg­ing (so far as I know) and it’s a pretty early phe­nom­ena. I know of peo­ple who con­sider them­selves con­ver­gent friends within at least some of these groups.
Plus, there’s hun­dreds of con­ver­gent friends, enough to say it’s a strong gath­er­ing of Quak­ers rep­re­sent­ing all the branches of Friends. I just did a work­shop at wood­brooke for FAHE on the sub­ject and there were pro­fes­sors and fac­ulty there from Fox, Earl­ham, Haver­ford, Swarth­more and Guil­ford, all say­ing they have stu­dents who are inter­ested in con­ver­gent friends and want to know more. That’s why they came to the work­shop. Lots of pas­toral Friends present, so I guess I’m mak­ing a bit of an apolo­getic and say­ing there’s more really excit­ing things hap­pen­ing than you may real­ize.
In my mind, from the very begin­ning of this entire con­ver­sa­tion and the shape it now has, has always been about the emerg­ing church and Quak­erism. That is what con­ver­gent friends started as — a group of Friends (pas­toral and unpro­grammed) say­ing, “hey there’s some­thing to this!” Yes, we also stress the impor­tance of con­ser­v­a­tive friends (that part where they seek to be faith­ful too and con­serve the lively parts of our tra­di­tion) but this stress­ing gets played out in the con­text of post­mod­ernism. In my recent blog post I dis­cussed the impor­tance of hold­ing “mis­sion” and “tra­di­tion” together — here I would switch out the word “mis­sion” for “emerg­ing” or that sense of being con­tex­tual and organic and say this needs to be played out in the con­text of a faith­ful and liv­ing tra­di­tion. This ten­sion is some­thing that is essen­tial in my view. If you have one with­out the other then we’re not doing some­thing right. A lot (most in the US) of emerg­ing churches are non-denominational, multi-traditional churches and this is a left­over of the indi­vid­u­al­ism of moder­nity. I am truly inter­ested in what it means to be an authen­ti­cally Chris­t­ian Quaker within our cur­rent cul­tural con­text.
It’s also the case that just because a group or meet­ing calls itself “emerg­ing” doesn’t mean it is. Because the “is” is much more dif­fi­cult to get at, and there’s no model or par­a­digm from which to import in, and if there were it’d hardly be emerg­ing. My sense is that there’s a lot of meet­ings that don’t call them­selves emerg­ing who may be even more than those who do us the term. Just about every emerg­ing church of the hun­dred sur­veyed in the Bol­ger and Gibbs text (2005) does not use that term within their name, or even as self-descriptors. So, I think the work needs to be done first on what it even means and looks like to have an “emerg­ing quaker meet­ing” before we appeal to those who have a recog­ni­tion of the term as our author­ity on the mat­ter.
If any­thing I see the con­ver­gent friends and emerg­ing meet­ings being two-sides of the same coin, and for some of us (who are con­ver­gent and in one of these meet­ings it may not even be sep­a­rate sides!). Con­ver­gent Friends applaud these kinds of inno­v­a­tive meet­ings, we’re excited about them and hope to be a resource for them (It’s not the only thing we’re con­cern­ing our­selves with, but I think it’s fair to say we’re all excited it’s hap­pen­ing). The Lord knows we’ve cov­ered a lot of lit­er­a­ture on the sub­ject! But fur­ther, what we’re doing is try­ing to open up the cracks in the insti­tu­tional walls, the cobb-webby meet­ings, and the dis­pas­sion­ate Friends in our tra­di­tion to help peo­ple dream and have imag­i­na­tion about what our faith and prac­tices can look like in the 21st cen­tury. So for me, it’s hard to imag­ine how there really could be one with­out the other.
I feel like we have seen, or at least I have (I don’t want to speak for oth­ers), a notice­able impact already. If con­ver­gent friends dropped off the face of the planet tomor­row I will feel like it would have been all worth it, and I feel like it will have left enough of an impres­sion to hope­fully keep the sparks fly­ing. No rea­son to write it off from where I’m sit­ting.
On the other hand, and fol­low­ing Martin’s cue, let’s not take either of these terms “con­ver­gent” or “emer­gent” to seri­ously. They’ll both be out, and who really cares? The king­dom of God is what mat­ters, that’s what remains, not terms or lit­tle groups, or what-have-you. These are help­ful now, because we believe their a response to the stir­rings of the king­dom, but if we think it will be the same in 10–15 years then we’re already revert­ing back to a Chris­ten­dom model of church.

Hi Mar­tin,
I was think­ing about the ques­tion at the end of your post and the con­ver­sa­tion about con­ver­gence at Free­dom Friends Church (or, really, lack of a con­ver­sa­tion) and it turned into a post instead of a com­ment:
http://​quest​forad​e​quacy​.blogspot​.com/​2​0​0​8​/​0​7​/​i​n​-​g​o​d​s​-​h​a​n​d​s​.​h​tml
Thank you for chal­leng­ing us to do more with con­ver­gence than just talk about it!
–Ashley

To me the attrac­tion and the truth of the idea of “con­ver­gent Friends” is this: that the “con­ser­v­a­tive” branch of Friends has got it more right than either the evan­gel­i­cal branch or the FGC branch, par­tic­u­larly in its “con­serv­ing” of unpro­grammed wor­ship on the one hand and the pri­macy of scrip­ture and Jesus Christ on the other, and that there­fore both the evan­gel­i­cal branch and the FGC branch should learn from and “con­verge” towards the con­ser­v­a­tive branch, and on this basis seek greater unity. On the other hand, there are things about the con­ser­v­a­tive branch that seem non-essential and pecu­liar, such as their pecu­liar style of “plain dress” and “plain speech. Not that I don’t see the value in such pecularities/hedges/distinctions, but there are good rea­sons on the other side for not adopt­ing them, and there­fore such things should not be a focus point in our con­ver­gence, and indi­vid­ual Friends and Friends meet­ings can fol­low their own lead­ings in such mat­ters.
This whole idea of “con­serv­ing” has a much longer and more ven­er­a­ble his­tory of wider and more fun­da­men­tal appli­ca­tions than this pecu­liar idea of “con­ver­gence,” and so per­haps our empha­sis should be — more sim­ply — on re-affirming the essen­tial role of “con­ser­vatism” in reli­gious faith and prac­tice. While Chris­tian­ity and Quak­erism is a liv­ing faith, it is a faith that is nec­es­sar­ily passed on from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion, and so it depends for its con­tin­ued vital­ity upon the basic “con­ser­v­a­tive” prin­ci­ple that (in the for­mu­la­tion of the con­ser­v­a­tive anar­chist Albert Jay Nock) when it is not nec­es­sary to change, it is nec­es­sary not to change. Of course, dis­cern­ment will still be needed to see when in fact it really is nec­es­sary to change, and dis­agree­ments on such points will still inevitably occur, but it seems to me that Quak­erism as a liv­ing faith would be much more vital and its iden­tity clearer if we shared this basic “con­ser­v­a­tive” pre­sump­tion against unnec­es­sary change (and if changes that have already been made unnec­es­sar­ily were rolled back to seek our cen­ter.) Unfor­tu­nately, the word “con­ser­v­a­tive” under­stand­ably car­ries neg­a­tive con­no­ta­tions for many Friends. This is some­thing we’ll have to work to get over in order to regain among Friends a truer under­stand­ing of what it means to “con­serve,” and to forge more unity with the branch of Friends who already describe them­selves as “con­ser­v­a­tive.“
On the other hand, I am also attracted to the other idea con­veyed by the label “con­ver­gent” — namely, the idea that the so-called “Emer­gent Church“‘s embrac­ing of post­mod­ernism and evan­ge­lism has a lot to offer Quak­ers. I espe­cially find con­ge­nial the post­mod­ern idea that truth is found in expe­ri­ence rather than propo­si­tions. But I won­der — isn’t this an insight that has already been empha­sized by Quak­ers from the very begin­ning? It appears to me that the Emer­gent Church move­ment, while offer­ing valu­able insights for our times, has much more of the fla­vor of a “fad” than does the peren­nial idea of “con­ser­vatism,” and so I am much more skep­ti­cal of the wis­dom of empha­siz­ing it. As a fad, it has a lot of poten­tial to turn peo­ple off and cre­ate arti­fi­cial divi­sions. As for the Emer­gent Church’s empha­sis on evan­ge­lism — this like­wise has been some­thing that Quak­ers did from the begin­ning, and is some­thing that is clearly enjoined in the gospels. A renewed empha­sis on con­ser­vatism there­fore should be enough to help Friends redis­cover its impor­tance. Indeed, the “offi­cial” con­ser­v­a­tive branches of Quak­erism in Ohio and North Car­olina already appear to be redis­cov­er­ing its impor­tance with their efforts at out­reach.
The peren­nial Quaker insight (redis­cov­ered by post­mod­ernism and the Emer­gent Church) that truth is found in expe­ri­ence rather than propo­si­tions cre­ates a ten­sion that has existed from the begin­ning. I myself have to admit that, while I can say that I know from expe­ri­ence that God exists and that He loves us, I am merely per­suaded (by a pre­pon­der­ance of the evi­dence), and there­fore “believe” in only a con­tin­gent fash­ion, that Jesus rose from the dead and is the incar­na­tion of God him­self. I can’t say that I know these propo­si­tions about Jesus to be true, and can’t say that I believe our sal­va­tion hinges on those propo­si­tions being true or on our believ­ing those propo­si­tions to be true. Think­ing of those self-described “non-Christian” Quak­ers who worry that they would be excluded from a more con­ser­v­a­tive Quak­erism, I won­der why the “offi­cial” dec­la­ra­tions of belief of a more con­ser­v­a­tive Quak­erism couldn’t be along the lines I’ve just described, acknowl­edg­ing the con­tin­gent nature of belief in propo­si­tional state­ments while affirm­ing that as a cor­po­rate body we nev­er­the­less are “per­suaded” and “believe” that Jesus rose from the dead and is God incar­nate, and that we strive to live accord­ing to his mes­sage. Even the more dog­matic churches do not shut their doors to doubters. On the other hand, for the sake of the integrity and vital­ity of our Soci­ety, I would like to see a Quak­erism in which a “Friend” who was actu­ally con­vinced that the Chris­t­ian gospel is hog­wash would be a walk­ing con­tra­dic­tion.
John K.