overlapping Posts

Liberal Friends today frequently question the meaning of membership. Its necessity and obligations are debated. Does it foster separation? Is it an exclusive club? What cultural norms get in the way of wider fellowship? Why do so many of our meetings have the same limited demographic and why do they look so unlike the larger community. The way we answer these questions affect the way we think of outreach and ministry and what we mean when we think of who "we" are. (Interesting recent discussions from a seeker here and amongst Conservative Friends here.)

Membership is a powerful means of facilitation fellowship, something that most of us need to grow very deep into the Spirit. But the fellowship of our monthly meetings (and of "Quakerism" in general) can easily become a distraction, a means to its own end, a false idol. We need to keep our eyes on the prize and realize that membership in meeting is secondary to membership in the body of Christ and into that Spirit which seeks to build the Kingdom of God in the world.

Here I'll look at three overlapping ways of defining "we": the Church, the Fellowship and the People. They're not mutually exclusive but they're also not identical and its possible to have one without the others. "We" are out of balance and unable to grow into our full measure as individuals and as a faith community when we don't keep our eyes on all three together.


The Church

This is the collective body of all those who have experienced the power of the Inward Christ and turned toward Him. Liberal Friend that I am I'm not going to insist on what name people give to the other side of this encounter (especially at first). The experience of visitation comes in various manifestations and we will be alternately judged, comforted, etc. God loves us and doesn't hide Himself from us and reaches us wherever we are. This is not to say that all religious traditions are equally useful guides to that path, just that God is merciful.

The visitation is not a one-time affair but ongoing. As we respond we will change and we will find ourselves voluntarily re-aligning our lives in ways that let us hear the Spirit more clearly. It is quite possible to be a respectable member of a religious body and stop listening (the root of Friends nervousness about professional ministry). As we mature spiritually and fine-tune the instrument of our discernment, we will be presented with ever more subtle and ingenious temptations and snares to further progress. It becomes almost impossible to progress without the active fellowship of others committed to this journey, who will confirm and challenge us as needed and amplify our praise.

The Fellowship

We organize ourselves into frail human institutions to provide that fellowship. This is fine and necessary at times but comes with its own snares. It is all too easy to raise up ourselves and begin to exalt ourselves. It is easy to think that our purpose is to serve ourselves. We must never forget that the Body of Christ is our first membership and that its boundaries will never match up with our printed directories or membership roles. The primary role of the monthly meeting and lower-case "c" churches is to spread the good news of the spiritual resurrection of Christ and the life and power that exists when we serve God. "The Membership" is always a temporarily illusion, a pale imitation of The Church and a temporary stop-gap as the Kingdom of God aligns itself on the world.  

The People

"Christ has come to teach The People Himself," one of George Fox's most important insights. We're all in this together, spiritual salvation is for us all. Those of us who have felt the workings of the Inward Spirit in our hearts must sing that out to everyone we meet. We must hum the song of God and so let others hear it in their hearts.

In the Bible "the people" are the Jews, a specific social group whose spiritual devotion fades in and out through the centuries. The Old Testament is story after story of the Jewish people falling down and getting back up, usually with the help of a prophet whose role was to remind them of God and show them how far they had fallen out of alignment with His will.

Jesus was prophet extraordinaire. When lawyers asked him to define neighbor--who is it that our religious institutions exist to serve--he gave the story of a despised Samaritan who did the right thing by helping a fellow human in need. A point of this story was to show that the Jewish God works among non-Jews and that faithfulness doesn't depend on one's social station in life.

The People are everywhere. We all have access to the Spirit. And if we are to be the building blocks to God's Kingdom here on Earth we must serve one another across the superficialities that seek to divide us: lines of class, race, ethnicity and yes even sexual orientation. These are snares. We must seek to rise up together, focusing less on perceived failings of those around us than on our own inward call to a greater perfection (communion) with God.

What does this all mean to Friends?

Most Quaker meetings I've visited are good at one or two of these models of we-ness. But without balance they become self-serving.

The Church without Fellowship becomes a "ranterism" where everyone is tempted by the snares of self-delusion. Church without the People becomes a elite spiritualism that detaches itself from the pain of the world and the need to witness and serve our neighbors.

Fellowship without the People becomes a social club uninterested in sharing this good thing we've got going. Fellowship without the Church becomes the shell of an empty form worshiping itself.

The People without the Church give us a consumer culture which exists for the next fashion, for the next sale at the Mall. The People without Fellowship becomes a flock of sheep dispersed, easy targets for the wolves of temptation whispering in our ears.

Human fellowships like a Quaker monthly meeting exist solely to bridge the Church and the People. Some of that work involves learning our ministry and service, facilitated by monthly meetings and helped along by the tools of our Friends tradition. But most of the work of the Church is its daily witness to the world of the transformative power of the Spirit in our lives. If we're doing our job right our meetings should constantly buckle and break under the weight of new members and our worship will spill out into our lives. We will care more about our neighbors than our fellowship. "Outreach," "Inreach," "Ministry" and "Witness" will all be the same work.

I tried to post this as a comment on this piece by James Riemermann on the Nontheist Friends website but the site experienced a technical difficulty when I tried to submit it (hope it's back up soon!). James describes his post as a "rant" about "conservative-leaning liberal Friends," and one theme that got picked up in the comments was how he and others felt excluded by us (for that is a term I use to try to describe my spiritual condition). Rather than loose the comment I'll just post it here.

Hi James and everyone,
Well, I think I was one of the first of the Quaker bloggers to talk about conservative-leaning liberal Quakers back in July 2003. I too am not sure it's anything worth calling a "movement."

I hear this feeling of being excluded but I'm not sure where that's coming from. When James had a really wonderful, thought-provoking response to my "We're All Ranters Now" piece, I asked him if I could "reprint" the comment as its own guest piece. It got a lot of attention, a lot of comments. I didn't realize you were using nontheistfriends.org as a blog these days but Robin M of What Canst Thou Say did and has added a link to your post from QuakerQuaker.org, which again is a validation that yours is an important voice (I can pretty much guarantee that this is going to be one of the more followed links). You and everyone here are part of the family.

Yes, we have some disagreements. I don't think Quakerism is simply made up of whoever makes it into the meetinghouse. I think we have a tradition that we've inherited. This consists of practices and values and ways of looking at the world. Much of that tradition comes from the gospel of Jesus and the epistles between the earliest Christian communities. Much of what might feel like neutral Quaker practice is a clear echo of that tradition, and that echo is what I talk about that in my blogs. I think it's good to know where we're coming from. That doesn't mean we're stuck there and we adapt it as our revelation changes (this attitude is why I'm a liberal Friend no matter how much I talk about Christ). These blog conversations are the ways we share our experiences, minister to and comfort one another.

That people hold different religious understandings and practices isn't in itself inherently exclusionary. Diversity is good for us, right? There's no one Quaker center. There's mulitiple conversations happening in multiple languages, much of it gloriously overlapping on the electronic pathways of the internet. That's wonderful, it shows a great vitality. The religious tradition that is Quakerism is not dead, not mothballed away in a living history museum somewhere. It's alive, with its assumptions and boundaries constantly being revisited. That's cool. If a particular post feels too carping, there's always the "eldering of the back button," as I like to call it. Let's try to hear each other from where we are and to remain open to the ministry from those who might appear to be coming from a different place. Love is the first movement and love is unconditional and accepts us for who we are.

I better stop this before I get too mushy, with all this talk of love! See what I mean about being a liberal Quaker?
Your Friend, Martin

Hi QuakerRanter friends: I've been busy today covering the Quaker response to the Christian Peacemakers Teams hostages. Two sites with a lot of overlapping content:

• Quaker Blog Watch page focused on the hostages
• Nonviolence.org statement and list of responses

Both of these feature a mix of mainstream news and Quaker views on the situation. I'll keep them updated. I'm not the only busy Friend: Chuck Fager and John Stephens have a site called Free the Captives -- check it out.

It's always interesting to see the moments that I explictly identify as a Friend on Nonviolence.org. As I saythere, it seems quite appropriate. We need to explain to the world why a Quaker and three other Christians would needlessly put themselves in such danger. This is witness time, Friends. The real deal. We're all being tested. This is one of those times for which those endless committee meetings and boilerplate peace statements have prepared us.

It's time to tell the world that we live in the power that takes away the occasion for war and overcomes our fear of death (well, or at least mutes it enough that four brave souls would travel to dangerous lands to witness our faith).