Sometimes it seems as if moderns are looking back at history through the wrong end of the telescope: everything seems soooo far away. The effect is magnified when we’re talking about spirituality. The ancients come off as cartoonish figures with a complicated set of worked out philosophies and prohibitions that we have to adopt or reject wholesale. The ideal is to be a living branch on a long-rooted tree. But how do we intelligently converse with the past and negotiate changes?
Let’s talk Friends and music. The cartoon Quaker in our historical imagination glares down at us with heavy disapproval when it comes to music. They’re squares who just didn’t get it.
Getting past the cartoons
Thomas Clarkson, our Anglican guide to Quaker thought circa 1700, brings more nuance to the scruples. “The Quakers do not deny that instrumental music is capable of exciting delight. They are not insensible either of its power or of its charms. They throw no imputation on its innocence, when viewed abstractly by itself.” (p. 64)
“Abstractly by itself”: when evaluating a social practice, Friends look at its effects in the real world. Does it lead to snares and tempations? Quakers are engaged in a grand experiment in “christian” living, keeping to lifestyles that give us the best chance at moral living. The warnings against certain activities are based on observation borne of experience. The Quaker guidelines are wikis, notes compiled together into a collective memory of which activities promote – and which ones threaten – the leading of a moral life.
Clarkson goes on to detail Quaker’s concerns about music. They’re all actually quite valid. Here’s a sampling:
- People sometimes learn music just so they can show off and make others look talentless.
- Religious music can become a end to itself as people become focused on composition and playing (we’ve really decontextualized: much of the music played at orchestra halls is Masses; much of the music played at folk festival is church spirituals).
- Music can be a big time waster, both in its learning and its listening.
- Music can take us out into the world and lead to a self-gratification and fashion.
I won’t say any of these are absolute reason to ban music, but as a list of negative temptations they still apply. The Catholic church my wife belongs to very consciously has music as a centerpiece. It’s very beautiful, but I always appreciate the pastor’s reminder that the music is in service to the Mass and that no one had better clap at some performance! Like with Friends, we’re seeing a deliberate balancing of benefits vs temptations and a warning against the snares that the choice has left open.
Context context context
In section iv, Clarkson adds time to the equation. Remember, the Quaker movement is already 150 years old. Times have changed:
Music at [the time of early Quakers] was principally in the hands of those, who made a livelihood of the art. Those who followed it as an accomplishment, or a recreation, were few and those followed it with moderation. But since those days, its progress has been immense… Many of the middle classes, in imitation of the higher, have received it… It is learned now, not as a source of occasional recreation, but as a complicated science, where perfection is insisted upon to make it worth of pursuit. p.76.
Again we see Clarkson’s Quakers making distinctions between types and motivations of musicianship. The laborer who plays a guitar after a hard day on the field is less worrisome than the obsessed adolescent who spends their teen years locked in the den practicing Stairway to Heaven. And when music is played at large festivals that lead youth “into company” and fashions, it threatens the religious society: “it has been found, that in proportion as young Quakers mix with the world, they generally imbibe its spirit, and weaken themselves as members of their own body.”
Music has changed even more radically in the suceeding two centuries. Most of the music in our lives is pre-recorded; it’s ubiquitious and often involuntary (you can’t go shopping without it). Add in the drone of TV and many of us spend an insane amount of time in its semi-narcotic haze of isolated listenership. Then, what about DIY music and singalongs. Is there a distinction to be made between testoterone power-chord rock and twee singer-songwriter strums? Between arenas and coffeehouse shows? And move past music into the other media of our lives. What about movies, DVS, computers, glossy magazines, talk shows. Should Friends waste their time obsessing over American Idol? Well what about Prairie Home Companion?
Does a social practice lead us out into the world in a way that makes it hard for us to keep a moral center? What if we turned off the mediated consumer universe and engaged in more spiritually rewarding activities – contemplative reading, service work, visiting with others? But what if music, computers, radio, is part of the way we’re engaging with the world?
How to decide?
Finally, in Clarkson’s days Friends had an elaborate series of courts that would decide about social practices both in the abstract (whether they should be published as warnings) and the particular (whether a particular person had strayed too far and fallen in moral danger). Clarkson was writing for a non-Quaker audience and often translated Quakerese: “courts” was his name for monthly, quarterly and yearly meeting structures. I suspect that those sessions more closely resembled courts than they do the modern institutions that share their name. The court system led to its own abuses and started to break down shortly after Clarkson’s book was published and doesn’t exist anymore.
We find outselves today pretty much without any structure for sharing our experiences (“Faith and Practice” sort of does this but most copies just gather dust on shelves). Monthly meetings don’t feel that oversight of their members is their responsibility; many of us have seen them look the other way even at flagrantly egregious behavior and many Friends would be outraged at the concept that their meeting might tell them what to do – I can hear the howls of protest now!
And yet, and yet: I hear many people longing for this kind of collective inquiry and instruction. A lot of the emergent church talk is about building accountable communities. So we have two broad set of questions: what sort of practices hurt and hinder our spiritual lives in these modern times; and how do we share and perhaps codify guidelines for twenty-first century righteous living?
Martin,
Every thought I have about this contains a paradox, and at least one point that can be argued against. I am going to send this anyway, because I would like to think that we are capable of being open to the Spirit and being taught how to live with paradox as we build our community.
The practices that hurt and hinder include, I think, the ways in which we watch ourselves and each other in matters of practice.
The regular honest response to queries can help. Tricky parts are wiping one´s mental slate clean from thoughts like, “I answered this LAST year. No one is going to listen to this. This takes so much time.” I find that listening to and responding to queries is very helpful. It is also helpful to really listen to the responses of other members of my meeting.
If a person has decided to participate, in the interest of strengthening the meeting and individuals of the meeting, queries can start some useful communication. It can get at some of the dirt that can get swept under the rug.
Another tricky part is getting Friends to see themselves as people who can help the community become healthier (this includes moral behavior). Many of us seem stuck in a Peter Pan (pardon the worldly literary reference) persona — we do not feel grown up enough to address behaviors that may be wounding individuals or the community. Ignoring harmful behaviors hinders our spiritual lives.
At times it seems we misinterpret the golden rule to mean, “leave me alone and I will leave thee alone.”
If I am going to get the speck out of someone´s eye, my own log must be removed. The admonition Jesus gave did not, I think, imply that I can never get the log removed from my own eye. I think it implies that that is job number one, not that it is impossible.
I think that log removal is a painful process. But after it has been done, it can leave a person very sensitive to the needs of people who could use some guidance, and therefore reduces the likelihood that instruction will be tainted with pride or power lust.
It helps if there is agreement that the spiritual health and maturity of the meeting (at any level — monthy, quarterly, yearly) is a BIG priority. If it matters to me, then I will be more receptive to correction or instruction or redirection, because that is helping me get somewhere I want to go. So another hindrance is failure to discuss and come to agreement on the importance of health and maturity of the society.
I find a number of practices helpful spiritually. One is making time to wander over to the neighbors´ and visit, especially if I can bring a gift, like garlic just out of the garden, or berries or flowers. Another is limiting exposure to pop culture. In my case, the choice of songs I learn and play on my evoharp (chorded zither) matters. I prefer gospel songs and hymns. But some other songs speak spiritual truth and I include them in my repertoire. I think very hard about venue. Most of my playing has been for worship services. Once I played at a wedding, once for a couple of hundred inner city high school students as part of Diversity Day (I´ll Fly Away and Jesus Keep Me Near the Cross).
Chopping wood and growing food are very helpful to me. Just the sense of how much labor goes into obtaining the basics has given me better perspective.
Time to send this on. Thanks for the posts on this. It matters to me (as thee may have guessed).
Martin
Thank you for your thoughtful post. I’m looking forward to hearing more about Thomas Clarkson’s take on Quakers.
For a full-on early Quaker critique of music from a ‘reformed musician’ (as in ‘reformed alcoholic’), you could try Humphrey Smith’s ‘To the musicioners’ (http://home.att.net/~quakart/texts/hs-orig.htm). Amidst the rant (the blogosphere has nothing on the pamphleteers of the English Republic) it’s just about possible to make out the thread of an argument, or at least an association of ideas: Music and dancing are the products of a violent, urban, luxurious society and a sign of the stiff-necked pride of people who have forgotten their Lord and instead idolatrously worship God’s creatures. “When the Harp and the musike goe they must worship the Image in the world’s figure.” What would he make of MTV?
Smith only really considers music in its wild, uproarious, good-time aspect, and he finds it natural that the Israelites in exile should have hung up their harps in sorrow. It doesn’t seem to occur to him that music could also be sorrowful, calming, gentle, or an expression of human solidarity. Something as essential to human wellbeing as well, erm, ritual.
For these reasons I can’t go along with him, or the early Quakers generally, when it comes to music. Did they really not sing lullabies or dandling-songs or counting-rhymes to their children? I’m currently separated from my wife and daughter (thanks to UK immigration rules), and whilst having a coherent conversation over the phone with a two-year-old is very difficult, singing instantly re-establishes the bond between us.
Having said that, I think you’re right in suggesting that the Quaker critique of music still has something to teach us. For a start, much music-making seems to be bound up with idolising oppressive social hierarchies, as Smith clearly sensed. With classical music it’s the mystique of the aristocracy and the old high bourgeoisie. With popular music it’s the tyranny of cool, of the beautiful, sexy people over everyone else. And of having to conform to this or that consumer tribe so that I can give a street-credible answer to the questioners who ask, “What music do you like, then?” Next time I’ll be tempted to answer, “I’m a Quaker, so I don’t listen to worldly music.”
Jeremiah
Thanks to both Raye and Jeremiah for interesting additions.
I do want to reiterate that I personally don’t feel led to give up music. Being the typical GenX Quaker male I play the guitar enough to bang out chords and I like singing out loud when the house is empty. I try to keep up with musical trends and actually talk a lot about music over on my Twitter feed. My interest in Clarkson’s dissection of Quaker scruples around music was his explanation of its rationales. I do think we should be conscious of how we consume media, not just music but now TVs and computers, and how our participation active and passive strengthens or hinders our spiritual journey.
For what it’s worth, Jeremiah, I’ve stricken from my vocabulary the argument that starts “I’m a Quaker, so I [do or don’t].” If I can’t explain it without appeal to authority then I have a myth on my hands! Ah but I’m getting ahead of myself once more: plain dress will probably be next and will talk about lifestyle & authority more.
Martin
Only joking! I’m not even a Quaker (yet), only an attender. And the “I’m a Quaker, so I [do or don’t]” line probably contributes to the Quakers’ reputation for self-righteousness.
I too long for a community practising collective inquiry, instruction and accountability. And that did it without falling under the yoke of oppressive legalism, (think of the Brethren in Lake Wobegon placing each other under the ban over hot baths and women wearing slacks…)
Jeremiah
Music is deeply important to me (perhaps too important), and especially the experience of singing or playing with others: this creates a powerful sense of community that can have positive effects elsewhere.
Too, music can be a way of expressing truths and articulating lived experience through the body. I’m thinking for example of what Du Bois called the “sorrow songs” of African-Americans in the 19th century, who saw in music a powerful way to make sense of their tragedy of captivity.
So I’m committed to a vision of music as meaningful and spiritually grounded. That said, I also cherish the Quaker tradition of critique you’re exploring here, and see it as a necessary partner in that internal dialogue I will continue to have about the relationship between aesthetics and faith. I do think that these aesthetic questions are really important for a spiritual life, and I thank you for directing me to a text (Clarkson) that can further my exploration of the theme.
Thanks,
Andy