Christian revival among liberal Friends

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”:www.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.

200 thoughts on “Christian revival among liberal Friends

  1. Nice work, Martin.
    I think that lib­er­al Friends may not actu­al­ly becom­ing more lib­er­al but that they are becom­ing more open and hon­est and artic­u­late about their beliefs. And this feels like broad­er diver­si­ty but is rather the first step to deep­er faithfulness.
    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
    I espe­cial­ly like this point. This is the ques­tion my anchor com­mit­tee returns to every month.

  2. Dear Mar­tin,
    Thanks for the response and ener­gy. I have read (or in some cas­es scanned) your links.
    I am going to sound neg­a­tive for a moment before I sound positive.
    The neg­a­tive: I don’t know that there is a “new wave” of Chris­t­ian revival com­ing to Quak­erism. Bill Samuel, who is a dear friend of mine, has been at it for decades. I have been a Christ-centered friend (recent­ly much sub­merged) for a decade. Scott Sav­age has been it at it since at least the 1990s. I know of oth­er Chris­t­ian friends, but as you so elo­quent­ly point out, many use cod­ed lan­guage and hide their Chris­tian­i­ty to “pass.” Last year, a cou­ple came to my Quak­er meet­ing. They picked our meet­ing rather than Adel­phi meet­ing because the Adel­phi Web site seemed “too Christ-centered” to them. They said this in front of me. Anoth­er Quak­er point­ed out I was Christ-centered. It nev­er crossed their mind that their state­ment could hurt or offend any­one at a Quak­er meet­ing. They did not intend to hurt me. I men­tion this because it seemed busi­ness as usu­al . (Would they have said (open­ly) “the Adel­phi meet­ing seemed too gay/too black?”) These kinds of inci­dents are not indica­tive to me that there’s a new wave of Christ-centeredness or even con­scious­ness crash­ing through. Maybe a tiny ripple.
    Now to the pos­i­tives: 1. Bill Samuel and Scott Sav­age are still here. Even though Bill has joined an Emer­gent church, he is still part of the Quak­er con­ver­sa­tion. It makes no dif­fer­ence to me that nei­ther Bill nor Scott are not “new” and I imag­ine it does­n’t mat­ter to you either. 2. You have come on the scene and appar­ent­ly have (how many?) cohorts. That’s good news. 3. I was extreme­ly encour­aged by a blog thread in which some­one from the SF meet­ing agreed that it was a mis­take to add a state­ment allow­ing peo­ple to read from texts oth­er than the Bible at their meet­ing for Bible read­ing in the man­ner of Con­ser­v­a­tive Friends. 4. I hear of Ohio Con­ser­v­a­tive Friends grow­ing. I would love to know more about that. 5. Mar­shall Massey: good stuff. 6. A rip­ple is bet­ter than no rip­ple. We know God can speak as a small, still voice.
    I res­onat­ed with your state­ment: “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.”
    I believe Chris­t­ian Quak­ers need to be bold at nam­ing our­selves and pro­claim­ing our­selves. I have been beat­en up over the years for nam­ing my Christ-centeredness but have no regrets for hav­ing done it, only regrets for the times I haven’t and have instead tried to make nice. I would love to see lib­er­al Quak­erism make a big­ger space for Chris­t­ian Friends.

  3. What does it mean…to car­ry the cross? I posit that none of us can ful­ly car­ry Christ’s cross,as his cross was his unique cross (altho. we can car­ry it for awhile, like the one that came for­ward at Christ’s lone­ly stag­ger down the Via Dolorosa – sta­tions of the cross any­one?). So maybe the cross that we are to car­ry is our own death, a stake to dri­ve into our vam­pire desires, our own con­tin­u­ing joy­ful ash Wed. that par­tak­ers in Christ get to have.
    In my expe­ri­ence of lib­er­al (wish they were more silent) quak­erism, there is def­i­nite­ly no cross, and no crown (what would you do with a crown any­way?). This makes it hard for those of us that do wit­ness to the death and res­ur­rec­tion. And to a Sav­iour man-God. Dont ask, I cant explain it myself, but I have expe­ri­enced that Fire and know of its real­i­ty. I am a pari­ah whether I go to church or to meet­ing. I can­not stand the mil­lenia old re-enacting of rit­u­als (church), (Civ­il war re-enactors,anyone?) rigid recita­tions, for­mu­la wor­ship. And I cant stand to hear what pass­es for ‘con­tin­u­ing rev­e­la­tion’ if that’s what you call it, when some­one gives a ‘mes­sage’ at Meet­ing. At least Quak­ers are inter­est­ing in their own inward/intellectual/neurotic way. How­ev­er, Quak­ers do not worship…they dont know how or what, to bow down to. For some, it seems, ‘wor­ship’ is just a dis­till­ing of themselves…an inter­est­ing (some­times) but all con­sum­ing dead end. All the fine lan­guage of our Quak­er for­bear­ers wash­es over, as if WE now have the ben­e­fit of sci­ence, knowl­edge of oth­er reli­gions, and sophis­ti­ca­tion (sor­ry, no bow­ing down here). What hum­bug! What a detestable and digestible, thor­ough­ly rea­son­able reli­gion. Instead of silent wor­ship, I pro­pose call­ing it, “being silent togeth­er’, as Wor­ship is not what we seem to be doing on our quaint, anti­quat­ed benches.
    In my first few years as a atten­der and then a mem­ber of a Meet­ing, I con­stant­ly won­dered, “Am I a Quak­er?” So I read a bunch, did Spir­i­tu­al For­ma­tion, pil­grim­age, became a com­mit­tee mem­ber, etc. Now I know I am a Quak­er, because now I con­stant­ly ask, “Should I leave the Quak­ers?” This seems to be the often asked inner ques­tion that we all car­ry. I have become a Quak­er because I ques­tion whether I should leave? Any­way, I am leav­ing. But I am indeed a Quak­er, inspite of and not because of most of the Q’s I’ve encoun­tered. I am going to an inter­ac­tive Methodist Church in No’ Philly, with black and white unabashed­ly, open­ly Wor­ship­ping!! I will aslo seek out anoth­er Mtg.(to sup­ple­ment and bal­ance my dietary needs), where (close your eyes now lib­er­als, I’m about to write a series of dirty words) GOD and Christ and the Holy Spir­it are, if not Wor­shipped, then not open­ly grum­bled at.
    I’ve been told that there once was a Wor­ship (?) and Min­istry (?)com­mit­tee with an on-going dis­cus­sion on whether they should lay down the Wor­ship part of the Mtg, just keep­ing the Business/community part going (tax exempt sta­tus should be revoked at this point). It turns out, this is my cur­rent Mtg. A pari­ah where ever I go. Some­thing about that cross.….smells like…something dead..?

    1. @Robin: I’m still see­ing fringe move­ments with no con­nec­tion to his­toric Quak­erism com­ing into lib­er­al Friends meet­ings and quick­ly becom­ing inter­est groups that demand respect. And a few months ago I saw a new lev­el of obfus­ca­tion of divine lan­guage in a lib­er­al Quak­er fundrais­ing appeal. I see the bound­aries con­tin­u­ing to move outward.
      Which brings us to Diane’s obser­va­tion: just because there’s a deep­en­ing of Chris­t­ian under­stand­ing by many of those in lead­er­ship posi­tions in lib­er­al Quak­erism does­n’t mean it will fil­ter down. These Friends code their pub­lic lan­guage so care­ful­ly that their wit­ness is lost on most of their lis­ten­ers. Their hope is that the care­ful prac­tice of Quak­erism will work as a wit­ness. While it is true that we will be known by our fruits, if we don’t name our Lord and talk about the nec­ces­si­ty of divine obe­di­ence we’re hid­ing the trea­sure we’ve been giv­en. Relgion-by-osmosis does­n’t work any bet­ter than religion-by-creed.
      I’m writ­ing from the Bar­nesville library now. There’s a good feel here, a lot of min­istry and mes­sages that fit togeth­er. I’m not sure just where Ohio Friends are head­ed but there seems to a sense that they’re head­ed some­where and that plant­ed seeds are sprouting.
      Hi “B”: you can say what­ev­er you want, my blog is about putting down the Quak­er mask to shar­ing our sto­ries and wit­ness to the doubts and joys of our lives fol­low­ing and run­ning from Christ, both alone and togeth­er. I think the denial of the exis­tence of sin and the desire for self-fulfillment are at the roots of the mis­tak­en ideas of many con­tem­po­rary Friends.
      I should go, seek out more oppor­tu­ni­ties for shar­ing before I have to leave Bar­nesville this evening.

  4. Mar­tin,
    Thank you for keep­ing this con­ver­sa­tion going. I belong to a very lib­er­al meet­ing, but I am for­tu­nate to be able to occa­sion­al­ly spend some soul-refreshing time among con­ser­v­a­tive Friends.
    There are some things relat­ed to Chris­tian­i­ty and lib­er­al Friends that have been weigh­ing on my mind late­ly. First of all, my meet­ing has been known to be at least unwel­com­ing if not hos­tile towards Chris­t­ian lan­guage, although I have not expe­ri­enced that per­son­al­ly. In fact, peo­ple are con­tin­u­al­ly sur­pris­ing me with rev­e­la­tions that they iden­ti­fy them­selves as Chris­t­ian, and also lament the state of Quak­erism. Some­times I won­der if we are a silent major­i­ty in the meeting.
    The oth­er thing is that I have been reflect­ing on my own spir­i­tu­al path, which is one I hear echoed in many Friends who now con­sid­er them­selves Chris­t­ian. There were Chris­t­ian phras­es that would make my insides twist, an expe­ri­ence I often had when wad­ing through some of the lat­ter parts of the New Tes­ta­ment. But over time, as I remained open to the Holy Spir­it, I have felt myself open­ing up, and re-connecting with the faith I grew up with. Has­n’t it been that way for a num­ber of peo­ple? Late­ly I have felt that George Fox’s con­stant admo­ni­tions to “wait in the Light” seem like they are an impor­tant key for the soci­ety to open itself back up to Christ. In my cur­rent spir­i­tu­al state, I feel that if I tru­ly love those I am wor­ship­ping with, I should not wor­ry so much about how I think every­thing should be, and do my best to help peo­ple hear the gospel. That some­times means try­ing to phrase things in a way that won’t cause as many ears to stop lis­ten­ing. Per­haps this is some­thing along the lines of what you were refer­ring to about fol­low­ing the Inward Christ into what­ev­er ter­ri­to­ry we’re called to?
    With love,
    Mark

  5. Hi Mark,
    Your sto­ry sounds like my sto­ry sound like the sto­ry of most of those unpro­grammed Friends who would call them­selves Chris­t­ian these days: entre into a lib­er­al Quak­erism that was ten­der to their con­di­tion and gave them the space to explore their spir­i­tu­al­i­ty though a Quak­er per­spec­tive. Even some of the hardest-core Friends in Ohio Year­ly Meet­ing men­tioned first meet­ing each oth­er at FGC Gath­er­ings! I’ve seen inter­nal sur­veys of lib­er­al Quak­er bod­ies where a sur­pris­ing amount of respon­dents labeled them­selves as Christian.
    I don’t know what Jesus’s plan for all of us is but I have to agree that lib­er­al Quak­erism is serv­ing as a won­der­ful gate­way to greater faith­ful­ness for those who have been hurt by false Chris­tian­i­ty. My ongo­ing con­cern is that those of us in lib­er­al Quak­erism who iden­ti­fy as Chris­t­ian are being a bit too secre­tive about it. We’re trans­lat­ing our own inter­nal lan­guage before speak­ing it, which ulti­mate­ly is dis­re­spect­ful to lis­ten­ers. We assume non-Christian Friends are inca­pable of hear­ing a tra­di­tion­al Quak­er Chris­t­ian lan­guage. We should give them more cred­it and be more hon­est about our own spir­i­tu­al openings.
    For my part I don’t always speak with the same lan­guage. We are called to min­is­ter to the con­di­tion of the flock. I don’t con­scious­ly dumb down my mes­sage; rather I lis­ten to the Inward Guide (Christ) for instruc­tions on just what to say. Some­times the words I’m giv­en will be baby steps: tra­di­tion­al Quak­erism with only a sprin­kling of “hot but­ton” phras­es. But just as often I’m called to give a Chris­t­ian mes­sage that I know will alien­ate lis­ten­ers. We nev­er know that some­thing we say might not lodge in some­one’s heart for years and be some­thing that Christ uses.
    As in all things Quak­er, the process is to lis­ten to that direct, imme­di­ate Inward Christ and be as faith­ful to His voice as we can be, with­out wor­ry about effect. The warmth, joy, and out­ward friend­li­ness we show one anoth­er the 98% of the time we’re not min­is­ter­ing will be that out­ward fruit that shows that love and char­i­ty are virtues as impor­tant to us as truth.

  6. Hi Mar­tin,
    This is all so inter­est­ing and reas­sur­ing, except I have a prob­lem with the labels of lib­er­al and con­ser­v­a­tive. I con­sid­er myself major­ly lib­er­al but also am iden­ti­fy­ing myself as Chris­t­ian in Meet­ing and in my life. At first it was hard when I returned to Meet­ing after many years and dis­cov­ered the lack of Christ, but that is part of what drove me away in the first place. I kept my mouth shut for a long time and then God pushed me to my feet one day to share that I had been more wor­ried about what peo­ple in Meet­ing thought of me than I was about what my Sav­ior thinks of me and that I was real­ly sad­dened to think that we were not invit­ing Christ into our Meet­ing for Wor­ship. The response has been very inter­est­ing. Our Meet­ing is chang­ing and much of that change is pos­i­tive for Christ’s sake. I think we need to keep pray­ing for the Holy Spir­it to revive our Meet­ings and not to label one anoth­er, as it is very off-putting. I see my job of lead­ing peo­ple to Christ as one of attrac­tion, not osmo­sis. I am try­ing to live in a way that makes oth­ers want what I have. I did feel I had to make Meet­ing a safe and com­fort­able place to speak Jesus’ name or I would not be able to stay. For­tu­nate­ly it has been a pos­i­tive response. I do feel I am there to plant seeds. I believe most Quak­ers are fer­tile soil.
    Emily

  7. Emi­ly,
    Why do you feel the need to lead oth­ers to Christ?
    I absolute­ly agree with you that our Meet­ings must be a safe and com­fort­able place to speak Jesus’ name. Speak it with how that name moves you, what it means to you, how it helps you grow, love, heal and transform.
    But I believe there should not be any to “need” lead oth­ers to what exists in the pri­va­cy of our soul. I believe it is that “need to bring oth­ers to where we are” that strains our Quak­er Community.
    But then you must answer “Why do you feel the need to lead oth­ers to Christ?” for your own self.
    In love,
    Jim

  8. Indulge a bit of day­dream­ing please…without build­ing a new denom­i­na­tion or school or sect, I think there’s a need to move to plant­i­ng small neigh­bor­hood meet­ings with a Christ-centric focus. But I also think there are some ways to raise the “Christ Quo­tient” in an affirm­ing way that embraces others.
    For exam­ple, take the Bible (please!) Maybe we need to rethink how Bibles are used (and abused) in Chris­tian­i­ty. There’s a new for­mat Bible that might be use­ful — Inter­na­tion­al Bible Soci­ety’s TNIV The Books of the Bible. It does sev­er­al things that could dis­arm those fear­ful of evangelism.
    It does not have Chap­ter and Verse num­bers, it does not have reams of com­men­tary, or nar­row columns with small print. It also reorders the Bible’s books so that books with com­mon lit­er­ary types are grouped togeth­er. It makes read­ing and learn­ing the Bible’s nar­ra­tive more inter­est­ing. And in read­ing the Bible, rather than rote mem­o­riza­tion of proof texts, folks are more like­ly to under­stand George Fox and the ear­ly Quak­er’s under­stand­ing of Christ With­in Us.
    Local prepar­a­tive meet­ings with inten­tion­al size lim­its that require meet­ings to split and spread local­ly are a good approach, as is focus­ing on local needs and con­cerns first. Look at the Stephen Min­istries pro­grams — isn’t this very much a Quak­er wit­ness where Friends could bring the Christ Light to the world?
    Thoughts?

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