disciples Posts

Apologies to Ralph DiGia, RIP, for the morbid link title. I met him a number of times in my associations with the War Resisters League (first through co-publishing books with New Society Publishers, then through a two year stint on the WRL National Committee). Ralph was an oasis in meetings packed to overflowing with outsized egos and self-important agendas. He was a warm guy, curious, always willing to lend a hand, a hard-working gem in the pacifist world.

• Derek @ Speaking truth: Burundian evangelical Quake jump boogie gospel (Video)
  DeRich Mullin's much loved '93 hit: "Our God Is An Awesome God" is also loved in Bujumbura, Burundi, central Africa.
  (tags: quaker quaker.videos quaker.africa)
• New DVD: Finding Our Voices
  Eight stories of civil dissent and resistance are woven together in 80 minutes of action to remind us that passionate individuals can take stands to persuade others to follow.
  (tags: nonviolence)
• Lifelong war resister Ralph DiGia, 1914-2008
  An associate of A. J. Muste, Bayard Rustin, Dave Dellinger, Barbara Deming, and many others. While Ralph was not a public speaker or a writer, he played a key a role and was central to many of the major antiwar actions of the past six decades.
  (tags: nonviolence)
• New Blog: a quaker's flourishing faith
  I am currently working on a Ph.D. in which two of my passions intersect - Quaker history and Christian higher education. How do we navigate the postmodern matrix as Christians? How do we live as disciples of Christ today and into tomorrow?
  (tags: quaker quaker.blogs)
• LizOpp on mixed weddings and Qr peer pressure
  Recently I shared with a committee on which I serve that as a Quaker, I'm not called to be faithful to other Friends in the meeting: I am called to be faithful to how God leads me, and I seek support to help me in my faithfulness and obedience.
  (tags: quaker quaker.convergent)

There's an interesting discussion in the comments from my last post about Convergent Friends and Ohio Conservatives. and one of the more interesting comes from a commenter named Diane. My reply to her got longer and longer and filled with more and more links till it makes more sense to make it its own post. First, Diane's question:

I don’t know if I’m “convergent,” (probably not) but I have been involved with the emerging church for several years and with Quakerism for a decade. I also am aware of the house church movement, but my experience of it is that is is very tangentially related to Quakerism.

I really, really hope and pray that Christian revival is coming to liberal Friends, but personally I have not seen that phenomenom. Where do you see it most? Do you see it more as commitment to Christ or as more people being Christ curious, to use Robin’s phrase?

As I wrote recently I think convergence is more of a trend than an identity and I'm not sure whether it makes sense to fuss about who's convergent or not. As with any question involving liberal Friends, whether there's "Christian revival" going on depends on what what you mean by the term. I think more liberal Friends have become comfortable labeling themselves as Christ curious; it has become more acceptable to identify as Christian than it was a decade or two ago; a significant number of younger Friends are very receptive to Christian messages, the Bible and traditional Quaker testimonies than they were.

These are individual responses, however. Turning to collective Quaker bodies there are few if any beliefs or practices left that liberal Friends wouldn't allow under the Quaker banner if they came wrapped in Quakerese from a well-connected Friend; the social testimonies stand in as the unifying agent; it's still considered an argument stopper to say that any proffered definition would exclude someone.

I'd argue that liberal Quakerism is becoming ever more liberal (and less distinctively Quaker) at the same time that many of those in influence are becoming more Christian. It's a very proscribed Christianity: coded, tentative and most of all individualistic. It's okay for a liberal Friend to believe whatever they want to believe as long as they don't believe too much. Whether the quiet influence of the rising generation of conservative-friendly leadership is enough to hold a Quaker center in the centrifuge that is liberal Quakerism is the $60,000 question. I think the leadership has an inflated sense of its own influence but I'm watching the experiment. I wish it well but I'm skeptical and worry that it's built on sand.

Some of the Christ-curious liberal Friends are forming small worship groups and some of these are seeking out recognition from Conservative bodies. It's an achingly small movement but it shows a desire to be corporately Quaker and not just individualistically Quaker. With the internet traditional Quaker viewpoints are only a Google search away; sites like Bill Samuel's Quakerinfo.com and blogs like Marshall Massey's are breaking down stereotypes and doing a lot of invaluable educating (and I could name a lot more). It's possible to imagine all this cooking down to a third wave of traditionalist renewal. Ohio Yearly Meeting-led initiatives like the Christian Friends Conference and All Conservative Gatherings are steps in the right direction but any real change is going to have to pull together multiple trends, one of which might or might not be Convergence.

Our role in this future is not to be strategists playing Quaker politics but servants ready to lay down our identities and preconceptions to follow the promptings of the Inward Christ into whatever territory we're called to:

From that time forth began Jesus to shew unto his disciples, how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day. Then Peter took him, and began to rebuke him, saying, Be it far from thee, Lord: this shall not be unto thee. But he turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men. Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. Matthew 16:21-28.

Lazy guy I am, I'm going to cut-and-paste a comment I left over at Rich the Brooklyn Quaker's blog in response to his post What This Christian Is Looking For In Quakerism. There's been quite a good discussion in the comments. In them Rich poses this analogy:

During the Great Depression and World War II, I have been told that Franklin Roosevelt rallied the spirits of the American people with his "fireside chats". These radio broadcasts communicated information, projected hope, and called for specific responses from his listeners; including some acts of self-sacrifice and unselfishness... Often people would gather in small groups around their radios to hear these broadcasts, they would talk about what Roosevelt had said, and to some extent they were guided in their daily lives by some of what they had heard.

Over on the Evangelical side of Friends is Simple Churches, a movement of "organic" church planting. It's a project of Harold and Wendy Behr, recorded by Northwest Yearly Meeting and now working with Evangelical Friends Church Southwest. The core values are ones I could certainly sign off on: Leadership over Location, Ministry over Money, Converts over Christians, Disciples over Decisions, People over Property, Spirit over Self, His Kingdom over Ours. I particularly like their site's disclaimer:

As your peruse the links from this site please recognize that the Truth reflected in essays are often written with a "prophetic edge", that is sharp, non compromising and sometimes radical perspective. We believe Truth can be received without "cursing the darkness" and encourage you to reflect upon finding the "candle" to light, personally, as you apply what you hear the Lord speaking to you. In Body life, often the most powerful opponent of the "best" is the "good".

They're leading a conference next month in Richmond, Indiana, with members of Friends United Meeting. How tempting is this?

See also:

• Emergent Church Movement: The Younger Evangelicals and Quaker Renewal

In late January 2004, I went to a gathering on "Quaker Faith and Practice: The Witness of Our Lives and Words," co-sponsored by the Christian Friends Conference and the New Foundation Fellowship. Here are some thoughts about the meeting.