Communities vs Religious Societies

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Over on Tape Flags and First Thoughts, Su Penn has a great post called “Still Think­ing About My Quaker Meet­ing & Me.” She writes about a process of self-identity that her meet­ing recently went through it and the dif­fi­cul­ties she had with the process.

communitysocietyI won­dered whether this dif­fi­culty has become one of our modern-day stages of devel­op­ing in the min­istry. Both Samuel Bow­nas (read/buy) and Howard Brin­ton (buy) iden­ti­fied typ­i­cal stages that Friends grow­ing in the min­istry typ­i­cally go through. Not every­one expe­ri­ences Su’s rift between their meeting’s iden­tity and a desire for a God-grounded meet­ing com­mu­nity, but enough of us have that I don’t think it’s the foibles of par­tic­u­lar indi­vid­u­als or monthly meet­ings. Let me tease out one piece: that of indi­vid­ual and group iden­ti­ties. Much of the dis­cus­sion in the com­ments of Su’s post have swirled around rad­i­cally dif­fer­ent con­cep­tions of this.

Many mod­ern Friends have become pretty strict indi­vid­u­al­ists. We spend a lot of time talk­ing about “com­mu­nity” but we aren’t prac­tic­ing it in the way that Friends have under­stood it–as a “reli­gious society.” The indi­vid­u­al­ism of our age sees it as rude to state a vision of Friends that leaves out any of our members–even the most het­ero­dox. We are only as united as our most far-flung believer (and every decade the sweep gets larger). The myth of our age is that all reli­gious expe­ri­ences are equal, both within and out­side of par­tic­u­lar reli­gious soci­eties, and that it’s intol­er­ant to think of dif­fer­ences as any­thing more than language.

This is why I cast Su’s issues as being those of a min­is­ter. There has always been the need for some­one to call us back to the faith. Con­trary to modern-day pop­u­lar opin­ion, this can be done with great love. It is in fact great love (Quaker Jane) to share the good news of the directly-accessible lov­ing Christ, who loves us so much He wants to show us the way to right­eous liv­ing. This Quaker idea of right­eous­ness has noth­ing to do with who you sleep with, the gas mileage of your car or even the “cor­rect­ness” of your the­ol­ogy. Jesus boiled faith­ful­ness down into two com­mands: love God with all your might (how­ever much that might be) and love your neigh­bor as yourself.

A “reli­gious soci­ety” is not just a “com­mu­nity.” As a reli­gious soci­ety we are called to have a vision that is stronger and bolder than the lan­guage or under­stand­ing of indi­vid­ual mem­bers. We are not a per­fect com­mu­nity, but we can be made more per­fect if we return to God to the full­ness we’ve been given. That is why we’ve come together into a reli­gious society.

“What makes us Friends?” Just fol­low­ing the mod­ern tes­ti­monies doesn’t put us very squarely in the Friends tradition–SPICE is just a recipe for respect­ful liv­ing. “What makes us Friends?” Just set­ting the stop­watch to an hour and sit­ting qui­etly doesn’t do it–a wor­ship style is a con­tainer at best and false idol at worst. “How do we love God?” “How do we love our neighbor?” “What makes us Friends?” These are the ques­tions of min­istry. These are the build­ing blocks of outreach.

I’ve seen nascent min­is­ters (“infant min­is­ters” in the phras­ing of Samual Bow­nas) start ask­ing these ques­tions, flare up on inspired blog posts and then tail­dive as they meet up with the cold-water real­ity of a local meet­ing that is unsup­port­ive or inat­ten­tive. Many of them have left our reli­gious soci­ety. How do we sup­port them? How do we keep them? Our answers will deter­mine whether our meet­ing are reli­gious soci­eties or communities.

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  • Parise

    thank you friend. your post is sim­ple and well put. you speak as if directly to my meet­ing. i’ve been wrestling with these issues since i came out of the ini­tial “oh i’m so glad i’ve found quak­ers” phase of my spir­i­tual evo­lu­tion. i’d like to use this blog post as a way to begin our next round of con­ver­sa­tions. if noth­ing else, it’s proof that it’s not just me being a pain in their backsides.

  • Steven Davi­son

    For me, a liv­ing reli­gious com­mu­nity, or society—whatever you want to call it—is what I would call ‘covenan­tal’. By this I mean that the mem­bers are will­ing to really engage with each other to nur­ture indi­vid­ual spir­i­tual growth and min­istry for the meet­ing. I mean a com­mu­nity that under­stands that dis­ci­pline is an essen­tial ele­ment in reli­gious life, that dis­ci­ple­ship isn’t easy and you need help.

    For Quaker meet­ings, the front line of this engage­ment is vocal min­istry in meet­ing for wor­ship. Many meet­ings think of vocal min­istry as “speak­ing in meet­ing,” not as a faith­ful­ness to God’s call to ser­vice, what­ever ‘God’ means in this con­text. And that’s the cru­cial ques­tion: what does God have to do with vocal ministry?

    If you expe­ri­ence vocal min­istry as a call to ser­vice by God (and for the sake of clar­ity, I am using ‘God’ to sig­nify the Real­ity Mys­tery behind our reli­gious expe­ri­ence, what­ever that expe­ri­ence is), then the grav­ity of the call tran­scends the social ner­vous­ness some­one might feel who is ‘speak­ing in meet­ing’; it calls for a cul­ture of elder­ship that is rig­or­ous and continuous.

    My expe­ri­ence is that many lib­eral meet­ings don’t even quite know what this means. Cer­tainly, they find it nigh on impos­si­ble to work with mem­bers proac­tively as well as retroac­tively, pos­i­tively as well as crit­i­cally, to nur­ture vocal min­istry as divine call­ing. To the con­trary, the idea that some­one might be speak­ing on God’s behalf in meet­ing for wor­ship strikes many Friends as pro­foundly arro­gant and dangerous.

    The solu­tion I am try­ing to pur­sue is, on the one hand, to present the vision of min­istry you get from Bow­nas, Lloyd Lee Wil­son, and other tra­di­tional Friends when­ever it seems appro­pri­ate; and, on the other hand, to seek out like-minded Friends in my meet­ing to serve each other as a par­al­lel, infor­mal com­mit­tee for wor­ship and min­istry, to occa­sion­ally dis­cuss each other’s min­istry and call­ing, and to pair off as min­istry part­ners when that looks like it might work.

  • Eric Evans

    Thank you, Mar­tin. I really love your post, and also Steven’s thoughts about what it means to be a “covenan­tal com­mu­nity.” I’m sorry for this long post – it’s hard to put into words!

    Here’s the ten­sion that I’m expe­ri­enc­ing among lib­eral Friends that I can’t quite get my head around: Clearly (to me any­way!), there *are* bound­aries that any com­mu­nity agrees upon, whether openly expressed or not. A sea­soned Friend once told me that all com­mu­ni­ties have a bound­ary line, even if they’re not will­ing to talk about it openly, and that among Quak­ers it usu­ally seems to come up in the mem­ber­ship process.

    I’ve spent time in four dif­fer­ent “spir­i­tual com­mu­ni­ties” at far ends of either spec­trum of “open­ness –vs.- closed­ness” in terms of bound­ary lines. Grew up in a small, very Evan­gel­i­cal Fun­da­men­tal­ist church, spent time among Rad­i­cal Faeries in SF, & was a mem­ber of a UU church before becom­ing a Quaker. The Evan­gel­i­cal Church was very clear (per­haps too clear!) about bound­aries. At the other end of the spec­trum, the RF’s & UU’s were both very “open” and have also strug­gled about where to draw bound­aries around behav­ior, if not the­ol­ogy. (Although, inter­est­ingly, a few years ago my UU Church unan­i­mously approved a “Covenant of Right Rela­tion­ship” which closely mir­rors Matthew 18 — some­thing which I have yet to see many Quaker meet­ings do!)

    I agree with you that this is a huge issue for us, and I see it as a poten­tial even­tual cause of dis­in­te­gra­tion for the RSoF: “The indi­vid­u­al­ism of our age sees it as rude to state a vision of Friends that leaves out any of our members–even the most het­ero­dox. We are only as united as our most far-flung believer (and every decade the sweep gets larger).”

    I sense there’s con­fu­sion among lib­eral Friends around what it means to be “Wel­com­ing.” Does being wel­com­ing of diver­sity in terms of Friends of Color, LGBTQ Friends, AYFs, also mean that we wel­come *every* belief and behav­ior? What, actu­ally, is *not* okay with us as Quak­ers? I’ve heard Friends say that talk­ing about these kinds of things is just “divi­sive”, but not talk­ing about these issues seem to leave us divided and unpre­pared when they appear. When we speak of “Quak­erism,” is there actu­ally a “THERE” there? Or are we really just one giant tent with con­stantly mov­ing “poles”?

    The ten­sion that I’ve expe­ri­enced from the other end of the spec­trum (the “closed” end) is that, like refus­ing to draw bound­ary lines, draw­ing bound­ary lines can be very hard to stop! I see this in both the numer­ous splits within Quak­erism, and even in my tiny child­hood church. Gar­ri­son Keillor’s jokes about his own lit­tle church split­ting down to “The Church of the No-Women-Wearing-Pants Breth­ern” feel­ing sadly true in my first church’s case.

    I think the begin­ning of an answer lies in the com­mu­nity, as a whole, being will­ing to address issues of belief and bound­ary lines openly and lov­ingly. As the Friend I spoke of ear­lier more-or-less put it, “We can usu­ally agree about the very far­thest edges of tol­er­ance — most of us would agree on that we wouldn’t, say, allow can­ni­bal­ism in the meet­ing.” Where we get into trou­ble is in the “in-between” spaces.

    - Eric Evans, CPMM

    • http://www.martinkelley.com/ Mar­tin Kelley

      @Eric: Good points. There’s also an issue of integrity around hid­den bound­ary lines. I’ve heard plenty of new­com­ers get con­fused when they over­stepped some piece of undoc­u­mented Quaker protocol.

      There’s cer­tainly a bal­ance between over– and under-drawing bound­aries. I don’t think the bal­ance is main­tained by process or pro­grams but by love and open­ness and by hon­est dia­logue that isn’t afraid of express­ing uncom­fort­able sen­ti­ments. In my post I tried not to assert par­tic­u­lar bound­aries because these vary between yearly meet­ings and even among monthly meet­ings. My main inter­est is that we find ways to sup­port those who might be drawn to that work.

      I love that your old UU Church took up Matthew 18. I see this as the essen­tial core of Quaker gospel order–of our con­flict res­o­lu­tion process. We don’t fol­low it nearly enough. I’ve seen a cou­ple of meet­ings lose mem­bers (me included) because of the detri­men­tal effects on com­mu­nity when a meet­ing doesn’t fol­low Matthew 18.

  • Mag­dale­naperks

    These issues aren’t unique to Quak­ers. All Chris­tians face these prob­lems and issues, each in their own lan­guage. Issues about sex­u­al­ity and sin, women in min­sitry, and prop­erty rights are pulling my own com­mu­nion, the Angli­cans, apart in sev­eral directions.

    We are try­ing to write a “Covenant” for Angli­cans, but I am wary of such. It stands to be a vow of alle­giance, an agree­ment to avoid dis­sent — and what we have never had — a Book of Dis­ci­pline or a Con­fes­sion. It has been one of the strengths of the Angli­can Church was that it could adapt — Quak­ers inher­ited that from their mother church.

    I am more than Quaker friendly as an Angli­can. God knows that I have tried to leave the Com­mu­nion for the Friends, but He keeps dri­ving me back in!

    All I’m say­ing, I sup­pose, is that we are all on the same jour­ney; thee may need to look past thy meet­ing for support!

  • http://valiantforthetruth.blogspot.com Micah Bales

    I appre­ci­ate this post. Thanks, Martin.

  • If I trusted you I’d tell you

    Not being a Chris­t­ian I am nei­ther a bible reader nor bible scholar but the pas­sage of Matthew 18 strikes me as a bit pater­nal­is­tic, cast­ing the Chris­tians against the hea­thens, espe­cially given the remarks about the need to share Christ with Friends. It assumes that Non-Christian friends do not have valid rela­tion­ships with God and do not need to have “Good news” shared with us in the con­text of evan­ge­lism. It seems to be a very 17th cen­tury colo­nial­ist out­look. Our meet­ing­houses are not exotic lands filled with peo­ple who need to be con­verted. Come in to a lib­eral friends meet­ing­house and expect God to show up, but don’t expect to use it as a sanc­ti­mo­nious place where you can ele­vate your­selves above others.

    • http://www.martinkelley.com/ Mar­tin Kelley

      Hi Petey: You seem to toss out a lot of stereo­types in these anony­mous com­ments you make. If you have a beef with me, I’d rather you just email me directly. Which goes directly to the point of what Eric brought up with his aside of Matthew 18, more specif­i­cally Matthew 18:15–18. That’s where Jesus talks about how to do con­flict res­o­lu­tion. It’s an emi­nently prac­ti­cal set of steps and is eas­ily adapt­able for non-Christians and non-Theists. I’ve heard peo­ple attribute these steps to ancient Bud­dhist wisdom–it works.

      The heart of it is that you don’t talk to peo­ple behind their back. It dis­rupts com­mu­nity. It starts fac­tion­al­ism. If we are to grow together we have to be hon­est with each other. I’d say that one way to start is by using your name in your com­ments. I don’t bite. I’ve tried to reach out to you at var­i­ous Gath­er­ings and remem­ber some good con­ver­sa­tions. If I’ve ever inad­ver­tently been a jerk to you, then my apolo­gies; I’ve always wanted to be friends, despite our dif­fer­ences. By the way have you read Joyce Kettering’s arti­cle in Chuck’s Quaker The­ol­ogy? I’d be curi­ous to hear your reaction.

      • P.W.

        Mar­tin — I am extremely leery of the moniker “Con­ver­gent Friends” — you’ll have to for­give me if it seems akin to the moves afoot in Main­line denom­i­na­tions by con­ser­v­a­tives involved with the Insti­tute on Reli­gion & Democ­racy (IRD). It seems designed to talk at us rather than talk with us. It con­verges upon us rather than con­verses with us.
        I went to the con­fer­ence at Earl­ham some years ago…was it 2008 or 2007? And I came away with this feel­ing that Lib­eral, uni­ver­sal­ist friends such as myself are less-than in the eyes of the Con­ver­gent move­ment. Not every­one feels this way, but I came away with this feel­ing like the move­ment was more about sub­du­ing lib­eral friends than it is about con­vers­ing with us.
        I hap­pily count Micah Bales and Betsy Blake as friends of mine, but we under­stand that we view spir­i­tu­al­ity dif­fer­ently — and I love what they do with their Christ-infused Quaker faith, but I don’t share it, and I don’t feel the need to. What I do feel the need to do is encour­age them and be their friend and share good times and bad, and pray with them in my own way. The dif­fer­ence between them and some of the other folks at earl­ham that week­end is that we are equals.

        I’ve been think­ing about the idea of one body of Quak­ers… and I don’t think it is for the best. Con­ser­v­a­tive Friends have their strengths, and lib­eral friends have their strengths… and I think that merg­ing it together would be like mix­ing BBQ sauce into your mint ice-cream… I love mint ice-cream and I love BBQ, but they squab­ble too much in my mouth when I eat them together.
        Quak­erism and Chris­tian­ity both share one thing… we don’t need new buzz­words or the­olo­gies or cat­e­gories. What we do need is peo­ple who can live out their faith the best they know how and under­stand that oth­ers are try­ing to live out their faith the best they know how.

        I accept your desire for our friend­ship and I gen­uinely wish you all the best. I apol­o­gize for not post­ing by my own name, but I’m sure you under­stand that my desire to not have my name plas­tered on Google does not mean I am try­ing to deceive you.

        For the record, I have not posted here in some time — per­haps maybe even over a year or two. I have read but have not felt lead to post because I do not want to appear to be going into some one else’s church and telling them how to wor­ship. That’s not what I am about.

        My bot­tom line is this — While we may share the same umbrella name “quak­erism” we expe­ri­ence it dif­fer­ently and I do not want to detract from your expe­ri­ence but rather to empha­size that per­haps we might feel com­fort­able hav­ing cof­fee together, but for the sake of both our con­ver­sa­tions with God, it might be best if we wor­shipped apart.

        • http://www.martinkelley.com/ Mar­tin Kelley

          Hi Petey: good to hear your real voice. One thing that’s good about direct dia­logue is that we can dis­pel stereo­types. One of those is the idea that Con­ver­gent Friends are try­ing to bring the RSOF back into one body. I’m not. I’ve said I’m not. I’ve writ­ten post after post about it. So have many others.

          I don’t expect the Quaker branches to come together. It’s not a goal of mine. If you look at where Quak­erism is health­i­est, it’s usally in those parts of the coun­try where there are mul­ti­ple yearly meet­ings over­lap­ping. I’m in agree­ment with your ice-cream/BBQ anal­ogy. I’m also not nec­es­sar­ily in spir­i­tual unity with the other Con­ver­gent blog­gers. What we share is a cul­ture and style. The point-of-interest Quaker-wise is that we’re inter­ested in the Quaker roots of our par­tic­u­lar tra­di­tion. In a lib­eral yearly meet­ing that might mean look­ing harder at the Chris­t­ian stuff; among Evan­gel­i­cals, it’s re-evaluating the rela­tion­ship of the pas­tor and con­gre­ga­tion. Con­ser­v­a­tives might look harder at out­reach. Stuff like that. There are peo­ple in every branch that don’t care about look­ing back from where they came and that’s cool. It’s not a one-size fits all kind of thing. It’s just a con­ver­sa­tion. There’s no mem­ber­ship, orga­ni­za­tion, bylaws, board, epis­tles or mis­sion statement.

          Your point to talk over cof­fee but not force a uni­for­mity of wor­ship is exactly what the Con­ver­gent con­ver­sa­tion has been all about. The “typ­i­cal” Con­ver­gent Friends meet­ing is pizza and cook­ies after an FWCC meet­ing. Not very rabid. “Con­ver­gent” has become well-known enough that there’s half-a-dozen peo­ple who build them­selves up by knock­ing down stereo­types about it. I don’t get it. There’s enough real bat­tles and wit­nesses to have in the world that we don’t need to be scar­ing each other with tales of Quaker mon­sters under the bed.

          FYI: I have the com­ment you posted in Feb­ru­ary. It was rude and signed in a way to deceive. I don’t really care. I expect peo­ple to act out some­times. We all do. The way we keep the com­mu­nity intact is to for­give each other for being human beings with feel­ings. Peo­ple give me that grace and I extend the cour­tesy to oth­ers. But don’t treat me like an idiot.

  • Eric Evans

    Hi Petey(?) – I’m sorry Matthew reads so fiercely for you!

    It’s true that the book of Matthew was writ­ten in a dif­fer­ent time. This was a time when *not* being the­o­log­i­cally plu­ral­is­tic was what could get you killed! For the early Chris­t­ian church, it was cer­tainly true that they were try­ing to under­stand them­selves within the con­text of Judaism (and also as a new “Way”), and as some­thing sep­a­rate from Roman the­ol­ogy – both of which got them in a heap of trouble!

    It was also a time of great evan­ge­lism and mis­sion­ary work – these peo­ple had a mes­sage to share about this new Way of being, much like early Quak­ers. But it’s also impor­tant to remem­ber when look­ing at it through our mod­ern eyes that when these words were first writ­ten, Chris­tian­ity was about two cen­turies away from becom­ing insti­tu­tion­al­ized under Con­stan­tine and was def­i­nitely not the dom­i­nant reli­gion (the state reli­gion could be prob­a­bly described as Roman pagan­ism and “Caesar-worship.”) Declar­ing one­self a Chris­t­ian could actu­ally get you branded as an “Athe­ist” since you were deny­ing the gods and the Roman Emperor as a god. So I don’t think one could accu­rately say that the writer of Matthew was being colo­nial­ist, although that could cer­tainly be said of the Chris­t­ian church in later times.

    But I think Martin’s point here is not about col­o­niz­ing other churches, but that in gen­eral, and even through the lens of our own time, Mathew 18 is still a good set of guide­lines for healthy com­mu­nity. For instance, I don’t think you can read Matthew 18 and stop where Jesus sug­gests toss­ing out the unre­pen­tant. Jesus pro­ceeds to talk to Peter in the next verses about for­give­ness: “Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, ‘Lord, how many times shall I for­give my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?’ Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times”, and then goes on to tell the story of what hap­pens to the “unmer­ci­ful Ser­vant” – mercy was an incred­i­bly impor­tant part of Jesus’ teach­ings (along with jus­tice, com­pas­sion, gen­eros­ity, etc.)

    - Eric Evans, CPMM

  • TheYel­low­Dart

    I am par­tic­u­larly struck by this last part…

    “… nascent min­is­ters… start ask­ing these ques­tions… then tail­dive as they meet … real­ity of a local meet­ing that is unsup­port­ive or inat­ten­tive. Many of them have left our reli­gious soci­ety. … How do we keep them? … are [we] reli­gious soci­eties or communities.”

    This mir­rors my own expe­ri­ence in the evan­gel­i­cal church in Amer­ica. I found myself ques­tion­ing and agi­tat­ing for change in what I saw as the stray­ing from the orig­i­nal mes­sage of Jesus in the prac­tices of the church. Of course this has been going on for cen­turies in the church, but it’s my turn now to be the prophet Jesus has called me for to my com­mu­nity today.

    Dur­ing this period in my life, I was drawn to Quak­ers as I believe they are orga­nized and prac­tice cor­po­rately a more faith­ful early church model. Sadly, many actual Quak­ers (at least where I am) do not know the Jesus whose pat­tern is fol­lowed to get the prac­tices and inspi­ra­tion for the orga­ni­za­tional style. The egal­i­tar­ian, non-hierarchical, non-institutional, non-consumeristic, unpro­grammed, sacrament-less, grace­ful style of meet­ing looks more to me like the early church than any other group out there. But alas at the cen­ter (at least as I see it) is miss­ing — Jesus.

    As those who are flee­ing the Quak­ers after hav­ing their con­cerns fall on deaf ears, they are pop­u­lat­ing more typ­i­cally evan­gel­i­cal style churches bring­ing with them what could be a fab­u­lous and nec­es­sary mes­sage for the church, namely that of Quaker orga­ni­za­tion and some prac­tices espe­cially peace, sim­plic­ity, egal­i­tar­i­an­ism, and no sacraments.

    The peace tes­ti­mony should speak to the peo­ple in these churches recov­er­ing from neocon/hawk stance that their fel­low­ships come out of. And the sim­plic­ity tes­ti­mony should speak to the con­sumerism that is crush­ing the churches effec­tive­ness as the mis­sional com­mu­nity that they should be reach­ing out­side their own doors. The egal­i­tar­i­an­ism should speak to the overly hier­ar­chi­cal insti­tu­tional church putting pastors/priests/teachers (let alone those higher insti­tu­tional offices) on a dif­fer­ent level than every­one else. Every fol­lower of Jesus has the same respon­si­bil­ity to love God and love each other and reach out to rest of the com­mu­nity inside and out­side the church with that mes­sage and the fur­ther spe­cific lead­ing of Jesus today. The sacramental-lessness of the Quaker style should speak to the churches prob­lem with seg­re­gat­ing sacred and sec­u­lar. There is wheat and weeds inside the church, and there is wheat and weeds out­side the church. No space, object, prac­tice, etc. is sacred and none are pro­fane. All can be employed by our Cre­ator for his good will. Jesus can speak to us in the most mun­dane activ­i­ties of every­day, on a nature walk, in a gath­er­ing of fol­low­ers, or through less than pro­duc­tive behav­iors and places. Jesus came to end the tem­ple the­ol­ogy of his day. — The veil was rent in two! — We are no longer sep­a­rated from our cre­ator whether we know him or not. All can access God directly. The priest and the tem­ple are obsolete.

    This is a great mes­sage that Quak­ers can take to the insti­tu­tional church.

    And on the flip side I see myself as bring­ing to the Quaker meet­ing the one mes­sage that the insti­tu­tional church (at least where I am from) does have right — Jesus!

    For those in meet­ing who are athe­ists, Bud­dhists, pagans, and pro­gres­sive sec­u­lar human­ists (to the exclu­sion of fol­low­ing Jesus), I can bring a mes­sage of cen­ter­ing on the ground­ing of our being. The lover of our soul is Jesus. He is the Inner Light that George Fox ref­er­enced in his jour­nal. “In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the dark­ness, but the dark­ness has not under­stood it” John 1:4,5

    Quak­ers, I come to announce to you that the “unknown god” (as Paul refers to in Acts 17, in the next Kelly post) that you seek is (as Fox said) “one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition”.

    • http://robertcfischer.com Robert Fis­cher

      Amen!

      What is inter­est­ing about Quak­ers is that they draw in all dif­fer­ent kinds of peo­ple: as long as you’re will­ing to live like us, we’re will­ing to have you in our com­mu­nity. The real­ity of Jesus is a truth that can and will come out, but it’s going to need to start with those within the Quaker fold speak­ing the name of Jesus con­fi­dently to our broth­ers and sis­ters, and teach­ing our truth to them in the spirit of love.

      Quite frankly, as long as they’re liv­ing Christ’s love, I’m will­ing to count it a win. Many non-Christian Quak­ers are much bet­ter at express­ing Chris­t­ian love than most steeple-house atten­ders I’ve known, and that is a del­i­cate flower we need to not harm while bring­ing the truth forth.

  • http://robertcfischer.com Robert Fis­cher

    This arti­cle really caught my atten­tion. Although raised Pres­by­ter­ian, I left the Pres­by­ter­ian church about the same time I acted on the lead­ing to attend Duke Divin­ity School. Here in Durham, I dis­cov­ered Durham Friends Meet­ing, which was the first time I truly felt at home in a reli­gious com­mu­nity. With that back­ground, here’s a few thoughts with no par­tic­u­lar organization.Before mov­ing to Durham, I had attended a lib­eral Quaker meet­ing and found it lack­lus­ter and pro­foundly dis­ap­point­ing. My vision of Quak­ers as inher­i­tors of a long tra­di­tion of thought­ful con­sid­er­a­tion and activism gave way to a dis­ap­point­ing real­ity. The mes­sages that came out from the silent wor­ship were politically-charged sec­u­larisms, and did not have the feel­ing of inspi­ra­tion behind them. So I gave up on the Quak­ers, and only reluc­tantly gave Durham Friends Meet­ing a chance. When I did, I found some­thing very, very dif­fer­ent. And I loved it.One of the things that Durham Friends Meet­ing (via their par­tic­u­lar take on con­ser­v­a­tive Quak­erism) has taught me is that being a reli­gious com­mu­nity not about beliefs and other intel­lec­tual assent: it’s about action and focus of atten­tion. It’s about how the com­mu­nity lives, and where the com­mu­nity draws strength from. If you are will­ing to act as a Quaker along the lines of the com­mu­nity, then you are a Quaker at that meet­ing house.This does mean that the role of the estab­lished mem­bers of the meet­ing is huge: it is their job to set exam­ples and norms for the meet­ing. If the estab­lished mem­bers treat the meet­ing as a weekly Sun­day morn­ing med­i­ta­tion group, then that is all the Quaker meet­ing is. If they treat it as a place where the Holy Spirit punc­tu­ates our life, then that is what the Quaker meet­ing will be.Moving from one meet­ing to another may result in encoun­ter­ing some­thing totally for­eign which goes around under the same name—as far as I’m con­cerned, that’s fine. In fact, that’s prefer­able, because it means that there is a kind of energy cre­ated through diver­sity and engagement.Being a stu­dent at Duke Divin­ity School and a con­ser­v­a­tive Quaker pro­vides an inter­est­ing contrast—it’s astound­ing to see how divi­sive abstract doc­tri­nal issues are even at the inter­per­sonal level, and how much time, effort, and money goes into the pas­torate and church hier­ar­chy. The wis­dom of unpro­grammed wor­ship and ortho­praxy instead of ortho­doxy seems really pro­found. Because of that, I very much appre­ci­ate that the ques­tions you are ask­ing are “How do we love…” vari­ety, because ques­tions like “What makes us Friends?” seem to trig­ger knee-jerk efforts to define and shore up doc­tri­nal bound­aries, which is really coun­ter­pro­duc­tive to the entire enter­prise of liv­ing God’s truth.

  • James

    Mar­tin:
    The last para­graph of your post has res­onated with me for weeks now. The expe­ri­ence of “cold water real­ity” you describe here speaks to my con­di­tion, as a rel­a­tively new atten­der at two meet­ings in two vastly dif­fer­ent regions of the US.

    I said to a Friend in my meet­ing recently some­thing like “I don’t want to move on, look­ing yet again for a respon­sive spir­i­tual com­mu­nity. I want to work with the com­mu­nity I have, even when I feel pained or iso­lated here. I want to take the time to see my rela­tion­ships– with Friends and with God– develop and deepen.” But that cold water numbs the fin­gers, and the heart.