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.
I 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.
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.
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.
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
@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.
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!
I appreciate this post. Thanks, Martin.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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”.
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.
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.
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.