Jeffrey Hipp: My Feet Are on Solid Ground

A Guest Piece by Jef­frey Hipp
“I take this com­mit­ment of mem­ber­ship very seri­ous­ly – to labor, nur­ture, sup­port and chal­lenge my fel­low Friends; to walk in the Light togeth­er, and to give, receive, and pray with my fel­low sojourn­ers when the next step is unclear. My feet are on sol­id ground.”


I find that we conservative-leaning Friends in Lib­er­al meet­ings are often quick to cry out that our meet­ings must return to our Chris­t­ian roots or seek to know Christ togeth­er. And this is what I per­son­al­ly yearn for in the Soci­ety of Friends in many ways. But it is far too often said with a sen­ti­ment that WE Chris­t­ian Friends have to do this. TODAY. NOW. God can’t wait. And we can’t wait for God. We have to con­vince every­one we are right and Quak­erism with­out Christ is no Quak­erism at all. No won­der James and so many oth­er non-theists some­times wor­ry that Christ-centered Friends are crav­ing an inquisition-like purge!
Cor­po­rate change can only occur with cor­po­rate lead­ing. It will not and can­not come by a few deter­mined, “enlight­ened souls” who will attempt to non-violently twist the arm of the meet­ing until they cry “Jesus!”
I don’t want a purge. And, as a Christ-centered, Lib­er­al Friend, schism is often a tempt­ing day­dream for me to dwell in, but I’m doubt­ful that that is where I will be led any­time soon. We aren’t called to “fix” the Soci­ety of Friends on our own. That’s Christ’s work, and it’s hubris to assume it’s all on our shoul­ders. Our job is to sim­ply bear wit­ness to the mea­sure we’ve been giv­en, open our hearts to receiv­ing the mea­sure giv­en to oth­ers, and hon­or our covenant of mem­ber­ship with one anoth­er as we seek to under­stand the next step in find­ing our shared faith. And it just so hap­pens that that is everyone’s job in meet­ing – Christ-centered, uni­ver­sal­ist, non-theist, or what­ev­er label a Friend might apply to them­selves. We will all be used in this process.
I don’t want to leave this at an abstract lev­el, how­ev­er. Let me offer an extreme­ly per­son­al and dear example:
When I spoke on a pan­el at my meet­ing explor­ing the dif­fer­ences of our community’s lan­guages, expe­ri­ences and beliefs, I bore wit­ness to Christ in my life as a per­son­al, cre­ative Source of Life and Truth. After­wards, a cou­ple came up to me and thanked me for offer­ing my min­istry. One of them said I spoke of Christ with a “prophet­ic voice.” This cou­ple iden­ti­fies them­selves and Jew­ish, non-theist Friends. It meant so much to me.
I con­tin­ued to deep­en my rela­tion­ship in the Spir­it with each of them. When I was wel­comed into mem­ber­ship at a small meet­ing din­ner (months after I had become a mem­ber, in prop­er Quak­er fash­ion), one of the mem­bers of this cou­ple clear­ly expressed her com­mit­ment to my jour­ney, under­stood as fol­low­ing Christ. I voiced my com­mit­ment to them in their spir­i­tu­al journey.
Did I make a mis­take in that moment? To say I am com­mit­ted to another’s spir­i­tu­al jour­ney that doesn’t pro­fess Christ or even God? I think not – because this com­mit­ment was not born when I ver­bal­ized it to them – it began when I became a mem­ber of Friends Meet­ing at Cam­bridge, a mem­ber of the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends, and a mem­ber of these two Friends. And to that I was clear­ly led. Our covenant of mem­ber­ship is a call to be mem­bers of one anoth­er. And I use the word covenant quite inten­tion­al­ly — I believe that one of the ways that God reveals her­self to us is through the mod­el of the beloved com­mu­ni­ty. In seek­ing to hon­or the covenant we have made with our fel­low Friends, we fur­ther under­stand the bless­ings and chal­lenges of seek­ing to hon­or our covenant with God.
This doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t bold­ly and com­pas­sion­ate­ly speak of the lov­ing work of the Light of Christ with­in me. It just means being open to the fact that I might have a lot of spir­i­tu­al wis­dom to receive from search­es for Truth that don’t involve a recog­ni­tion of Christ, and I should sup­port those jour­neys as much as I am clear to. And in doing so, I may find my own under­stand­ing of Truth has grown.
I take this com­mit­ment of mem­ber­ship very seri­ous­ly – to labor, nur­ture, sup­port and chal­lenge my fel­low Friends; to walk in the Light togeth­er, and to give, receive, and pray with my fel­low sojourn­ers when the next step is unclear. My feet are on sol­id ground. Hon­est­ly, I fear my meeting’s are often in sink­ing sand. But to attempt to force our com­mu­ni­ty into the­o­log­i­cal fla­gel­la­tions with­out the hand of the Holy Spir­it active­ly pulling us all up togeth­er will only cause us to sink in deeper.
Fur­ther­more, to lose patience and walk alone towards the light before me is to leave oth­ers behind. And the next time I lose my way, I don’t want to be alone.


bq. Jef­frey Hipp is a mem­ber of Friends Meet­ing at Cam­bridge (MA), and is co-clerk of the Young Adult Friends of New Eng­land Year­ly Meeting.
This piece orig­i­nat­ed as a response to “What’s God Got to Do, Got to Do With it?”:http://www.nonviolence.org/martink/archives/000577.php
. Repro­duced as a fea­ture with per­mis­sion from the author.

9 thoughts on “Jeffrey Hipp: My Feet Are on Solid Ground

  1. Thanks Jef­frey Hipp, great post.
    I’m com­ment­ing most­ly on a tiny point: thanky­ou so much for using “her” for G‑d. At the moment for me G‑d is He, and I need to use that lan­guage when I speak. But there is a wound in me of under­val­u­a­tion of the fem­i­nine and it is soothed to hear She used for the Divine. I just want­ed to say how much I appre­ci­ate you using that lan­guage, and how impor­tant it is for me that both pro­nouns are present in our talk about the Divine, as well as the lan­guage of peo­ple who con­scious­ly avoid using a pro­noun for G‑d which I think is great too.

  2. This Friend speaks my mind – and does so with greater grace and elo­quence than I could, for which I am tru­ly grateful.
    And this is why I think we need that on-line jour­nal: we need a prophet­ic Quak­er wit­ness for those of us who are liberal/Christian/Renewal Friends and our com­pan­ions. A new Friend­ly Intel­li­gencer for a new intel­li­gent Friends.
    Melynda

  3. We stand — and have always stood — for the pos­i­tives found in social diversity.
    If we dis­al­low it in our meet­ing­hous­es… we are hypocrites.

  4. Jef­frey, as long as there are hearts like yours in the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends, I will find my home among Friends. And there are so many such hearts! My own heart, for what it’s worth, I offer up to you. To all of you.
    I feel the covenant you speak of as sure­ly as I feel the sun on a sum­mer day. It seems we dif­fer as to the source of that covenant, but as long as we are both com­mit­ted to liv­ing in it, we are Friends together.

  5. Thanks for a won­der­ful arti­cle, Jef­frey! I, too, con­sid­er myself a con­se­v­a­tive lib­er­al Friend. By hav­ing Jesus as my foun­da­tion does not exclude oth­ers who have found their foun­da­tion in oth­er paths. Truth is one…paths are many.
    By the way, Alice, I just read some­thing some­where (I don’t real­ly remem­ber where) that we only use pro­nouns for people/things when they are not present. He/She as pro­nouns for God are real­ly not need­ed that often as God is here, liv­ing among us. When I speak of God I use “You” as it bet­ter reflects my the­ol­o­gy. How­ev­er, there are times that pro­nouns are nec­es­sary when speak­ing of God. In those times I alter­nate between he and she (most times I just say God).
    I remem­ber a hymn I heard once which puts it beau­ti­ful­ly, “Our God is not a woman. Our God is not a man. Our God is both and nei­ther. God is the great I AM.”
    Peace,
    Craig
    http://​www​.ngfm​.org

  6. Thank you for this writ­ing, Friend Jef­frey. I have been read­ing a lot about Friends call­ing for more Christ-centeredness in Friends Meet­ings, and often it has made me uncom­fort­able. I am still search­ing for Christ’s place in my heart and the­ol­o­gy. For many, many years such Chris­t­ian lan­guage made me turn away in extreme dis­com­fort; so many claimed the Chris­t­ian name for things that I found to be hurt­ful, vio­lent, or hyp­o­crit­i­cal. I am just now feel­ing com­fort­able enough to explore the con­cept of Christ.
    Some­times when Friends call for more Christ-centeredness on the grounds that Friends are slip­ping away from true Quak­erism, it makes me feel as if I am “less” of a Quak­er, or not a true Friend. Your post artic­u­lat­ed clear­ly both sides of the sto­ry and was com­fort­ing for me to read.
    We must wait and lis­ten to the Spir­it rather than tak­ing it upon our­selves to “force” any such change either way.

  7. Hi Claire, Good to see you over here! Yes, I can’t imag­ine how any­one could hear Jesus’s Ser­mon on the Mount and think that Chris­tian­i­ty could be forced on any­one. You know, the meek shall inher­it and all that…
    Some­times I think the work is like going out to a field with friends some night to look for shoot­ing stars. Inevitably there’s some­one who’s good at spot­ting them. They’ll say, “Look! There! See?” Even­tu­al­ly you get bet­ter at see­ing them and you start point­ing them out.
    The Spir­it’s pres­ence is all around us. Often­times our most faith­ful work is sim­ply gath­er­ing with Friends and gaz­ing for signs of that grace: “Look! There! See?”

  8. As a Chris­t­ian Friend, I have always tak­en it that, should I want to see more Christ-centeredness in meet­ings, I should prob­a­bly think about start­ing with myself. That would seem to be most con­sis­tent with the teach­ings we Chris­tians hold as our core values.
    The shooting-star anal­o­gy works for me, Martin.

  9. Jeff — Wise, wise Jeff. I nev­er took you for a Chris­to­cen­tric Quak­er, so much did I see of Christ in you that it becomes sec­ond nature — label­ing it as one thing over anoth­er just seemed point­less to me. What­ev­er it was, you had it.
    You live in a light of bold kind­ness. That you fol­low Christ among Quak­ers is some­how even more bold — yet I know you do not do it to be bold, but because this is how the spir­it has lead you. It just makes sense.
    I’ve nev­er ques­tioned where you came from before, it seemed log­i­cal — and now it seems even more log­i­cal and spelled out. Thank you for you wit­ness, thank you for your friend­ship, and thank you for inform­ing me that the most valu­able thing in any meet­ing­house is the cof­feepot. (oops — did I just tell a secret?)

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