QuakerRanter.org

I guess folks might wonder why the son of the quaker Ranter is getting baptized in a Roman Catholic church…

Mel Gibson’s movie The Passion of Christ is a challenge for many modern quakers. Most of the rich metaphors of co-mingled joy and suffering of the early Friends have been dumbed-down to feel-good cliches. Can the debate on this movie help us return to that uncomfortable place where we can acknowledge the complexities of being fervently religious in a world haunted by past sins and still in need of conviction and comfort?

Yet another group of Friends (doesn’t matter which, it could be any) is planning a program on “community.” I wish we would more more actively engage with our tradition and not just selectively edit out a few words which makes Fox sound like a seventeen century Thich Nhat Hanh. We poor humans are looking for ways to transcend the crappiness of our war- and consumer-obsessed world and quakerism has something to say about that.

Interesting short post from Kwakersaur about the different ways Friends have related to God circa 1660, 1950 and today. A snippet

[The first generation of Friends’] language lacked the me-an-Jesus kind of spirituality that marks the 1955 minutes and characterizes a lot of Christian spirituality of today. For early quakers — and I suspect early Christians — it was not so much Jesus as a friendly affable fellow who loved us in a warm and comfy positive-strokes-I’m-OK-You’re-OK kinda way.

A lot has been written about Intelligent Design (creationism without the G-word) because of the trial in Pennsylvania’s Dover Area School District. An excellent New Yorker article about it a few weeks ago mentioned that one of the school board members pushing Intelligent Design is a Quaker. Who would have guessed? But should I be so surprised?

Now, I absolutely don’t think it should be taught in science classes at all. I’m with the judge that the ID argument is religious and not scientific. Students shouldn’t be forced to listen to Christian propaganda in a public school. But what if we take the debate out of the schoolhouse and bring it into the meetinghouse? A core principle of Friends is Fox’s opening that Christ has come to teach the people himself. The era of divine agency in human affairs didn’t end in the early 30s A.D. but continues. When we pray for discernment in our business meetings, we’re asking for a very real presence (common metaphors are the still small voice and a “nudge from the Spirit”). If God guides us as individuals and a Society of Friends into the mystery of a direct, Christ-centered contact, then it’s not much of a stretch to suppose God at least occassionally tips the scales on the evolutionary front as well.

We are a religious people who believe in God’s active agency in our lives: isn’t that pretty much the Intelligent Design argument? As a science geek, I don’t buy it at all but as a Friend it seems to make sense. Is anyone else out there struggling with this seeming-contradiction?

ps: yes I know there are some liberal Friends who don’t buy into anything dealing with God, which seems to be to be a different issue. What are those of us who do look for direct guidance to make of Intelligent Design?
pps: Things so Small Sarah skirted by this issue last week in a great post.