spiritual study Posts

I haven't been following the chatter on the new Pew survey on religion. But I like this quote from a Orthodox Jewish rabbi that appeared in a San Diego paper:

"The churches and the synagogues today do not answer the needs of these people," he said. "Unfortunately, a lot of the churches and synagogues are not really places of godliness. They are places of politics, places of social action, places of fellowship, where people come together to meet each other. But in many respects, spirituality is lacking."

It's hard to know what to make of the report. Apparently about one in four Christians aren't sure if God exists and I'd be more worried except that the study found that one in five atheists do believe in God (maybe we should we should arrange a swap on some fog shrouded bridge somewhere). It seems to me the Pew report just confirms the rabbi's explanation that there are a lot of people claiming labels or religious affiliations for reasons other than faith belief.

Visting 1806's "A portraiture of Quakerism: Taken from a view of the education and discipline, social manners, civil and political economy, religious principles and character, of the Society of Friends"

Thomas Clarkson wasn't a Friend. He didn't write for a Quaker audience. He had no direct experience of (and little apparent interest in) any period that we've retroactively claimed as a "golden age of Quakerism." Yet all this is why he's so interesting.

The basic facts of his life are summed up in his Wikipedia entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Clarkson), which begins: "Thomas Clarkson (28 March 1760 – 26 September 1846), abolitionist, was born at Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, England, and became a leading campaigner against the slave trade in the British Empire." The only other necessary piece of information to our story is that he was a Anglican.

British Friends at the end of of the Eighteenth Century were still somewhat aloof, mysterious and considered odd by their fellow countrymen and women. Clarkson admits that one reason for his writing "A Portraiture of Quakerism" was the entertainment value it would provide his fellow Anglicans. Friends were starting to work with non-Quakers like Clarkson on issues of conscience and while this ecumenical activism was his entre--"I came to a knowledge of their living manners, which no other person, who was not a Quaker, could have easily obtained" (Vol 1, p. i)-- it was also a symptom of a great sea change about to hit Friends. The Nineteenth Century ushered in a new type of Quaker, or more precisely whole new types of Quakers. By the time Clarkson died American Friends were going through their second round of schism and Joseph John Gurney was arguably the best-known Quaker across two continents: Oxford educated, at ease in genteel English society, active in cross-denominational work, and fluent and well studied in Biblical studies. Clarkson wrote about a Society of Friends that was disappearing even as the ink was drying at the printers.

Most of the old accounts of Friends we still read were written by Friends themselves. I like old Quaker journals as much as the next geek, but it's always useful to get an outsider's perspective (here's a more modern-day example). Also: I don't think Clarkson was really just writing an account simply for entertainment's sake. I think he saw in Friends a model of christian behavior that he thought his fellow Anglicans would be well advised to study.

His account is refreshingly free of what we might call Quaker baggage. He doesn't use Fox or Barclay quotes as a bludgeon against disagreement and he doesn't drone on about history and personalities and schisms. Reading between the lines I think he recognizes the growing rifts among Friends but glosses over them (fair enough: these are not his battles). Refreshingly, he doesn't hold up Quaker language as some sort of quaint and untranslatable tongue, and when he describes our processes he often uses very surprising words that point to some fundamental differences between Quaker practice then and now that are obscured by common words.

Thomas Clarkson is interested in what it's like to be a good christian. In the book it's typeset with lowercase "c" and while I don't have any reason to think it's intentional, I find that typesetting illuminating nonetheless. This meaning of "christian" is not about subscribing to particular creeds and is not the same concept as uppercase-C "Christian." My Lutheran grandmother actually used to use the lowercase-c meaning when she described some behavior as "not the christian way to act." She used it to describe an ethical and moral standard. Friends share that understanding when we talk about Gospel Order: that there is a right way to live and act that we will find if we follow the Spirit's lead. It may be a little quaint to use christian to describe this kind of generic goodness but I think it shifts some of the debates going on right now to think of it this way for awhile.

Clarkson's "Portraiture" looks at peculiar Quaker practices and reverse-engineers them to show how they help Quaker stay in that christian zone. His book is most often referenced today because of its descriptions of Quaker plain dress but he's less interested in the style than he is with the practice's effect on the society of Friends. He gets positively sociological at times. And because he's speaking about a denomination that's 150 years old, he was able to describe how the testimonies had shifted over time to address changing worldly conditions.

And that's the key. So many of us are trying to understand what it would be like to be "authentically" Quaker in a world that's very different from the one the first band of Friends knew. In the comment to the last post, Alice M talked about recovered the Quaker charism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charism). I didn't join Friends because of theology or history. I was a young peace activist who knew in my heart that there was something more motivating me than just the typical pacifist anti-war rhetoric. In Friends I saw a deeper understanding and a way of connecting that with a nascent spiritual awakening.

What does it mean to live a christian life (again, lowercase) in the 21st Century? What does it mean to live the Quaker charism in the modern world? How do we relate to other religious traditions both without and now within our religious society and what's might our role be in the Emergent Church movement? I think Clarkson gives clues. And that's what this series will talk about.

Technorati Tags: quaker, quakerism, thomas clarkson, anglican, abolition, anti-slavery, joseph john gurney, christian, gospel order, practice, denomination, testimonies, catholic, emergent chruch, charism

Wess Daniels posts about Quaker theology on his blog. I responded there but got to thinking of Swarthmore professor Jerry Frost's 2000 Gathering talk about FGC Quakerism. Academic, theologically-minded Friends helped forge liberal Quakerism but their influenced wained after that first generation. Here's a snippet:

"[T]he first generations of English and America Quaker liberals like Jones and Cadbury were all birthright and they wrote books as well as pamphlets. Before unification, PYM Orthodox and the other Orthodox meetings produced philosophers, theologians, and Bible scholars, but now the combined yearly meetings in FGC produce weighty Friends, social activists, and earnest seekers." ...
"The liberals who created the FGC had a thirst for knowledge, for linking the best in religion with the best in science, for drawing upon both to make ethical judgments. Today by becoming anti-intellectual in religion when we are well-educated we have jettisoned the impulse that created FGC, reunited yearly meetings, redefined our role in wider society, and created the modern peace testimony. The kinds of energy we now devote to meditation techniques and inner spirituality needs to be spent on philosophy, science, and Christian religion."

This talk was hugely influential to my wife Julie and myself. We had just met two days before and while I had developed an instant crush, Frost's talk was the first time we sat next to one another. I realized that this might become something serious when we both laughed out loud at Jerry's wry asides and theology jokes. We ended up walking around the campus late into the early hours talking talking talking.

But the talk wasn't just the religion geek equivalent of a pick-up bar. We both responded to Frost's call for a new generation of serious Quaker thinkers. Julie enrolled in a Religion PhD program, studying Quaker theology under Frost himself for a semester. I dove into historians like Thomas Hamm and modern thinkers like Lloyd Lee Wilson as a way to understand and articulate the implicit theology of "FGC Friends" and took independent initiatives to fill the gaps in FGC services, taking leadership in young adult program and co-leading workshops and interest groups.

Things didn't turn out as we expected. I hesitate speaking for Julie but I think it's fair enough to say that she came to the conclusion that Friends ideals and practices were unbridgable and she left Friends. I've documented my own setbacks and right now I'm pretty detached from formal Quaker bodies.

Maybe enough time hasn't gone by yet. I've heard that the person sitting on Julie's other side for that talk is now studying theology up in New England; another Friend who I suspect was nearby just started at Earlham School of Religion. I've called this the Lost Quaker Generation but at least some of its members have just been lying low. It's hard to know whether any of these historically-informed Friends will ever help shape FGC popular culture in the way that Quaker academia influenced liberal Friends did before the 1970s.

Rereading Frost's speech this afternoon it's clear to see it as an important inspiration for QuakerQuaker. Parts of it act well as a good liberal Quaker vision for what the blogosphere has since taken to calling convergent Friends. I hope more people will stumble on Frost's speech and be inspired, though I hope they will be careful not to tie this vision too closely with any existing institution and to remember the true source of that daily bread. Here's a few more inspirational lines from Jerry:

We should remember that theology can provide a foundation for unity. We ought to be smart enough to realize that any formulation of what we believe or linking faith to modern thought is a secondary activity; to paraphrase Robert Barclay, words are description of the fountain and not the stream of living water. Those who created the FGC and reunited meetings knew the possibilities and dangers of theology, but they had a confidence that truth increased possibilities.

I had an interesting opportunity last Thursday. I skipped work to be talk with two Quakerism classes at Philadelphia's William Penn Charter School (thanks for the invite Michael and Thomas!). I was asked to talk about Quaker blogs, of all things. Simple, right? Well, on the previous Tuesday I happened upon this passage from Brian Drayton's new book On Living with a Concern for Gospel Ministry:

I think that your work will have the greatest good effect if you wait to find whether and where the springs of love and divine life connect with this opening before you appear in the work. This is even true when you have had an invitation to come and speak on a topic to a workshop or some other forum. It is wise to be suspicious of what is very easy, draws on your practiced strengths and accomplishments, and can be treated as an everyday transaction. (p. 149).

Good advice. Of course the role of ministry is even more complicated in that I wasn't addressing a Quaker audience: like the majority of Friends schools, few Penn Charter students actually are Quaker. I'm a public school kid, but it from the outside it seems like Friends schools stress the ethos of Quakerism (here's Penn Charter's statement). Again Drayton helped me think beyond normal ideas of proseltyzing and outreach when he talked about "public meetings": "We are also called, I feel to invite others to share Christ directly, not primarily in order to introduce them to Quakerism and bring them into our meetings, but to encourage them to turn to the light and follow it" (p. 147). What I shared with the students was some of the ways my interaction with the Spirit and my faith community shapes my life. When we keep it real, this is a profoundly universalist and welcoming message.

I talked about the personal aspect of blogging: in my opinion we're at our best when we weave our theology with with personal stories and testimonies of specific spiritual experiences. The students reminded me that this is also real world lesson: their greatest excitement and questioning came when we started talking about my father (I used to tell the story of my completely messed-up childhood family life a lot but have been out of the habit lately as it's receded into the past). The students really wanted to understand not just my story but how it's shaped my Quakerism and influenced my coming to Friends. They asked some hard questions and I was stuck having to give them hard answers (in that they were non-sentimental). When we share of ourselves, we present a witness that can reach out to others.

Later on, one of the teachers projected my blogroll on a screen and asked me about the people on it. I started telling stories, relating cool blog posts that had stuck out in my mind. Wow: this is a pretty amazing group, with diversity of ages and Quakerism. Reviewing the list really reminded me of the amazing community that's come together over the last few years.

One interesting little snippet for the Quaker cultural historians out there: Penn Charter was the Gurneyite school back in the day. When I got Michael's email I was initially surprised they even had classes on Quakerism as it's often thought of as one of the least Quaker of the Philadelphia-area Quaker schools. But thinking on it, it made perfect sense: the Gurneyites loved education; they brought Sunday School (sorry, First Day School) into Quakerism, along with Bible study and higher education. Of course the school that bears their legacy would teach Quakerism. Interestingly enough, the historical Orthodox school down the road aways recently approached Penn Charter asking about their Quaker classes; in true Wilburite fashion, they've never bothered trying to teach Quakerism. The official Philadelphia Quaker story is that branches were all fixed up nice and tidy back in 1955 but scratch the surface just about anywhere and you'll find Nineteenth Century attitudes still shaping our institutional culture. It's pretty fascinating really.

Over the past few weeks I've been kind of proud of myself for a better discipline of spiritual study. My train commutes have been full of Quaker reading and regular Bible reading. This morning's ride made the reason for that now-lost discipline clear: two weeks ago I lost my Palm Pilot. Today's commute was the first with all my software finally reloaded into a new one and I found myself replacing Brian Drayton for the New York Times, Isaiah for Liz Phair's "Why can't I sneeze whenever I think about you" somehow sneaked into some mix I downloaded (rest assured, there's no Christian Rock pretense that the "you" was "Him" when she belts out the lines). Oh, for the snares of modernity!

I was given permission to pass along this data from the FGC-sponsored Youth Ministry Consultation that took place Third Month. A number of goals and projects had been brainstormed beforehand. The thirty-or-so participants at the Consultation were each given ten stars, which they were asked to put next to the projects they thought should be pursued. Every star acted as a vote that there was one person interested in that topic. The stars were coded to indicate the age range of the voter: High-Schooler, Adult Young Friend (18-37 years old) and older Friends.

Just stumbled on the website of the National Study of Youth and Religion.