It’s time to explain why I call this site “The Quaker Ranter” and to talk about my home, the liberal branch of Quakers. Non-Quakers can be forgiven for thinking that I mean this to be a place where I, Martin Kelley, “rant,” i.e., where I “utter or express with extravagance.” That may be the result (smile), but it’s not what I mean and it’s not the real purpose behind this site.
Friends and Ranters
The Ranters were fellow-travelers to the Friends in the religious turmoil of seventeenth-century England. The countryside was covered with preachers and lay people running around England seeking to revive primitive Christianity. George Fox was one, declaring that “Christ has come to teach his people himself” and that hireling clergy were distorting God’s message. The movement that coalesced around him as “The Friends of Truth” or “The Quakers” would take its orders directly from the Spirit of Christ.
This worked fine for a few years. But before long a leading Quaker rode into the town of Bristol in imitation of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem. Not a good idea. The authorities convicted him of heresy and George Fox distanced himself from his old friend. Soon afterwards, a quasi-Quaker collection of religious radicals plotted an overthrow of the government. That also didn’t go down very well with the authorities, and Fox quickly disavowed violence in a statement that became the basis of our peace testimony. Clearly the Friends of the Truth needed to figure out mechanisms for deciding what messages were truly of God and who could speak for the Friends movement.
The central question was one of authority. Those Friends recognized as having the gift for spiritual discernment were put in charge of a system of discipline over wayward Friends. Friends devised a method for determining the validity of individual leadings and concerns. This system rested on an assumption that Truth is immutable, and that any errors come from our own willfulness in disobeying the message. New leadings were first weighed against the tradition of Friends and their predecessors the Israelites (as brought down to us through the Bible).
Ranters often looked and sounded like Quakers but were opposed to any imposition of group authority. They were a movement of individual spiritual seekers. Ranters thought that God spoke directly to individuals and they put no limits on what the Spirit might instruct us. Tradition had no role, institutions were for disbelievers.
Meanwhile Quakers set up Quarterly and Yearly Meetings to institutionalize the system of elders and discipline. This worked for awhile, but it shouldn’t be too surprising that this human institution eventually broke down. Worldliness and wealth separated the elders from their less well-to-do brethren and new spiritual movements swept through Quaker ranks. Divisions arose over the eternal question of how to pass along a spirituality of convincement in a Society grown comfortable. By the early 1800s, Philadelphia elders had became a kind of aristocracy based on birthright and in 1827 they disowned two-thirds of their own yearly meeting. The disowned majority naturally developed a distrust of authority, while the aristocratic minority eventually realized there was no one left to elder.
Over the next century and a half, successive waves of popular religious movements washed over Friends. Revivalism, Deism, Spiritualism and Progressive Unitarianism all left their mark on Friends in the Nineteenth Century. Modern liberal Protestantism, Evangelicalism, New Ageism, and sixties-style radicalism transformed the Twentieth. Each fad lifted up a piece of Quakers’ original message but invariably added its own incongruous elements into worship. The Society grew ever more fractured.
Faced with ever-greater theological disunity, Friends simply gave up. In the 1950s, the two Philadelphia Yearly Meetings reunited. It was celebrated as reconciliation. But they could do so only because the role of Quaker institutions had fundamentally changed. Our corporate bodies no longer even try to take on the role of discerning what it means to be a Friend.
We are all Ranters now
Liberal Quakers today tend to see their local Meetinghouse as a place where everyone can believe what they want to believe. The highest value is given to tolerance and cordiality. Many people now join Friends because it’s the religion without a religion, i.e., it’s a community with the form of a religion but without any theology or expectations. We are a proud to be a community of seekers. Our commonality is in our form and we’re big on silence and meeting process.
Is it any wonder that almost everyone today seems to be a hyphenated Quaker? We’ve got Catholic-Quakers, Pagan-Quakers, Jewish-Quakers: if you can hyphenate it, there’s a Quaker interest group for you. I’m not talking about Friends nourished by another tradition: we’ve have historically been graced and continue to be graced by converts to Quakerism whose fresh eyes let us see something new about ourselves. No, I’m talking about people who practice the outward form of Quakerism but look elsewhere for theology and inspiration. If being a Friend means little more than showing up at Meeting once a week, we shouldn’t be surprised that people bring a theology along to fill up the hour. It’s like bringing a newspaper along for your train commute every morning.
But the appearance of tolerance and unity comes at a price: it depends on everyone forever remaining a Seeker. Anyone who wants to follow early Friends’ experience as “Friends of the Truth” risks becomes a Finder who threatens the negotiated truce of the modern Quaker meeting. If we really are a people of God, we might have to start acting that way. We might all have to pray together in our silence. We might all have to submit ourselves to God’s will. We might all have to wrestle with each other to articulate a shared belief system. If we were Finders, we might need to define what is unacceptable behavior for a Friend, i.e., on what grounds we would consider disowning a member.
If we became a religious society of Finders, then we’d need to figure out what it means to be a Quaker-Quaker: someone who’s theology and practice is Quaker. We would need to put down those individual newspapers to become a People once more. I’m not saying we’d be united all the time. We’d still have disagreements. Even more, we would once again need to be vigilant against the re-establishment of repressive elderships. But it seems obvious to me that Truth lies in the balance between authority and individualism and that it’s each generation’s task to restore and maintain that balance.
Until Friends can find a way to articulate a shared faith, I will remain a Ranter. I don’t want to be. I long for the oversight of a community united in a shared search for Truth. But can any of us be Friends if so many of us are Ranters?
More Reading
For those interested, “We all Ranters Now” paraphrases (birthright Friend) Richard Nixon’s famous quote (semi-misattributed) about the liberal economist John Maynard Keynes.
Bill Samuel has an interesting piece called “Keeping the Faith” that addresses the concept of Unity and its waxing and waning among Friends over the centuries.
Samuel D. Caldwell gave an interesting lecture back in 1997, Quaker Culture vs. Quaker Faith. An excerpt: “Quaker culture and Quaker faith are… often directly at odds with one another in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting today. Although it originally derived from and was consistent with Quaker faith, contemporary Quaker culture in this Yearly Meeting has evolved into a boring, peevish, repressive, petty, humorless, inept, marginal, and largely irrelevant cult that is generally repugnant to ordinary people with healthy psyches. If we try to preserve our Quaker culture, instead of following the leadings of our Quaker faith, we will most certainly be cast out of the Kingdom and die.”
I talk a bit more about these issues in Sodium Free Friends, which talks about the way we sometimes intentionally mis-understand our past and why it matters to engage with it. Some pragmantic Friends defend our vagueness as a way to increase our numbers. In The Younger Evangelicals and the Younger Quakers I look at a class of contemporary seekers who would be receptive to a more robust Quakerism and map out the issues we’d need to look at before we could really welcome them in.
Martin — I dont know if you remember me or not, but I worked with Jason G., and I remember you when you had red hair. Oddly enuf, I am in the process of becoming a Quaker, or, at least I’m exploring Quakerism, and I attend meeting. Phil Anthony actually sent me your website and I’m looking forward to reading all your ‘rants’. Rock on brother, you are of the faith…where the real fire is. ‑Barb
Yeah!, confirmed reader #6! What Meeting pray tell? That’s cool you’re exploring Quakerism. Sure I remember, I’ll send an email…
Red hair?, ah yes. I should do just a humorous post someday about the transition from bleached hair to plain dress. I’m not sure it’s entirely coincidental – I can think of a couple of plain dressers who were alterna-fashionistas in their pre-plain days.
And what’s Phil doing just lurking? Come on Phil, here’s the secret: no one reads this site. (No one reads the Quaker stuff at least, I’m sure the Theo page gets lots more hits, lucky guy).
This Friend speaks my mind!! How refreshing, Friend Martin, to stumble upon thy web “rantings” — I am a convinced Friend,Quaker educated, a life long peace/racial/enviro activist (42 years of it), now in the Asheville, NC Meeting. We are undergoing a deep spiritual rebirth here in the mountains. I, like you, have often been a challenge to my Meeting — I just returned from the SOA Watch at Fort Benning — with a notable absence of an official Quaker presence — except for Wes Cheney from Virginia Beach who rode down there on his bicylce. How do we reconcile the fact that Friends Fiduciary holds stock in Walmarts, Coca ‑Cola, Dow Chemical, several oil companies — and also supports FGC, Pendle Hill, AFSC etc.….….just a query … I look forward to an ongoing conversation — In the light — Elizabeth
In First Month 2004, a British Friend started an extensive correspondence about the sentence of this essay about the Friend who rode into Bristol imitating Christ. I edited the sentence in question; as the posts have little to do with this essay, they’ve been archived here.
Interesting site. I’m a little confused as to your reasoning in calling yourself a Ranter though. Ranters, although they shared with Quakers the idea of an Inward Light, were quite different in many ways. Ranters met in taverns, cursed freely, smoked tabaco, drank heavily, were very promiscuious, and basiclly undermined every conventional morality. There founder Coppe believed that God was acting through him in such a way that he could not sin. Infact he denied the fact that anything could be called sin if its done under christian faith. They usually call this antinomialism.
When you call yourself a Ranter you should be concious of all the connotations that comes with that tittle.
Hi Matt,
“Met in taverns, smoked tobacco… were very promiscuous… underminded every conventional morality,” well yes, that describes Young Adult Friends conferences. No no, it’s not really like that, though there is some truth in there.
I think it’s fair to describe many Friends as antinominialists. A number of modern Quakers don’t really believe in sin. A recent article in _Friends Journal_ argued that “evil doesn’t exist”:http://www.friendsjournal.org/contents/2004/0104/feature.htm. A majority of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting members sampled in a 2002 survey “strongly disagreed with the Fox quote that ”If you turn your back on the Light within, you will be condemned by it’ ”:http://www.pym.org/support-and-outreach/making-new-friends/ym-pres8/sld016.htm. Many individuals in the Religious Society of Friends today are theologically closer to Ranterism than to Quakerism.
“We’re all Ranters now” because our institutions have largely abandoned their roles of setting and maintaining standards. Because I have the choice to believe whatever I want to believe and still be Quaker (the fundamental axiom of liberal Quakerism), even my choice to live in a traditional Quakerism with set limits is self-imposed. If I decided I’d rather _meet in taverns, curse freely, smoke tabaco, drink heavily, be very promiscuious, and undermine every conventional morality_ no one at my monthly meeting would say anything (I suspect more than one would be relieved actually).
Wow what monthly meeting do you belong too haha?
Your point is well taken and I understand what your saying about moral realitivism among Modern Liberal Friends. I have to say that if I behaved in such a way I think I would be given a talking to by people in my meeting. Perhaps the problem is that one’s behavior outside of meeting can remain a secret while that was not the case back in the old days?
Are modern Liberal Quakers more like ranters than 17th century quakers were? absolutly. Still I haven’t seen anyone at my meeting parading in the nude with a pint of ale in both hands haha.
I just discovered your Web site and read your piece, “We’re All Ranters Now: Liberal Quakers.” It struck a cord with me. I’ve been a convinced Quaker for 12 years after learning that many of my ancestors were Quakers. In fact, Thomas Fitzwater and his famiy came to America with William Penn on the ship Welcome and was an early Quaker minister. I belong to an unprogrammed meeting which has more attenders than members and many attenders who are trying to take us in some different directions (into more of a Unity, no theology, kind of meeting). I am enjoying your writings and your views on some important topics. Keep up the good work. (I’m a sixty-something professor who values the fresh thinking of young adults!)
Conservative Hicksite – Christian, liberal, non-literalist, and Spirit-led Friend – I’m not alone!
I am a long-time attender in the Pacific Yearly Meeting, a Christian (non-dogmatic), homosexual (more saturnine than gay), non-leaning libertarian (neither left nor right), and otherwise plain-living guy. I never would have thought I’d find a site the likes of this one!
Your (Thy) site is great fun and very informative. You (Thee) are an encouragement for me to attend next year’s FGC.
It often seems, among liberal Friends out here, that just about everyone has come out of the closet except the Christians. More than once I have heard a vocal ministry of Christian content in meeting met with irritated grumbles, or even a sharp rebuke. Is there tolerance left only for those who are able to witness in explicitly non-Christian terms? Is that also the way of things on the other side of the divide? Friends Elias, Joel and Hanna would be ‘sore amazed’.
Luckily, the first advice I ever got at meeting was that if we were to live according to Jesus, and in the light of Christ, we would be too busy to find time for disagreement.
As to plainness, try a broadbrim (I wear a crusher) and a smile. Thee (You) will get more friendly nods and ernest questions than would be imagined.
I may give those Dutch trousers a try.
Keep on speaking thy mind, friend. We’re listening.
Mike Kingsbury
Desert Worship Group (PYM)
Palm Springs, CA.
>Conservative Hicksite — Christian, liberal, non-literalist, and Spirit-led
>Friend — I’m not alone!
Hi Mike,
Yes, I’ve been pretty surprised myself that I’m not alone. There’s a lot of weirdos around, hmm?
>Your (Thy) site is great fun and very informative. You (Thee) are an
>encouragement for me to attend next year’s FGC.
Hey, just don’t blame me: I tell people there are exciting things happening but of course our band of liberal conservatives make up a tiny fraction of the attendance at any Quaker gathering. It’s more a tendency than a movement. Still, I’d like to meet you there, if only to see what a _saturnine_ personality is like (are you going to ask FLGBTQC to add an “S” to their acronym to account for you?)
Thy Friend,
Martin
I love the spirit of what thee writes, Martin, and I believe that if thee remains faithful to the voice of thy Guide and keeps thy eyes open, thee will soon see American Quakerism’s anointed elders (by which I mean Friends given an elder’s gifts and commission by the Holy Spirit) rise out of the dark earth and shoot up through the dead vegetation of Winter like new Spring growth. And those of us that are looking for our elders will recognize them with very little effort, I think, the way we recognize wisdom and goodness in a good book.
I’m currently writing a short article on the Quaker tradition of eldership for the Friends in the Spirit of Christ News. From it I take a little snip:
>
I look forward to hearing more from thee.
Thy friend in Christ,
John Edminster
Fifteenth Street Meeting
New York City
Hi John,
Well you’re not going to be able to let readers know of a publication called “Friends in the Spirit of Christ News” without telling us what it’s about and where we can see it.
I’m glad to see the “epistle from the Elders at Balby”:http://www.qhpress.org/texts/balby.html being read for itself (the footnote – “these things we do not lay upon you as a rule or form to walk by” – has been elevated to a creed in liberal Quakerism and is extremely over-quoted out of context, as if the epistle itself weren’t very real rules and forms).
Let us know where to find your article when it’s done, I’m sure many of the Quaker Ranter readers would be interested!
Hi Martin,
When on earth (or in heaven) do you find the time to keep up two websites while working and raising little Theo? (He’s adorable, by the way. I have two boys, now ages 14 and 17.)
I’ve been an attender for about a year and a meeting in the suburbs of Philadelphia. I’m addicted to the web and a compulsive surfer, before that I was just a compulsive reader. I just started a blog at http://www.compulsivereader.blogspot.com –basically, just to see how you go about setting up a blog … Of course, now that I’ve started it I find that I don’t really have anything compelling to say to the world. As soon as I decide to post something, my words all just seem like fluff to me. So for the moment there’s just a recent poem that I wrote there.
Anyway, I’m trying to get my mind around all this “what’s a real Quaker and what isn’t” stuff. I was briefly subscribed to Quaker‑L (I’m sure you know it) but just quietly unsubscribed after several attempts at discussing some current “liberal Christian” (term used on the list) authors kept going around in a circle because someone on the list reserved to him/herself the right to define what the word “Christian” meant. Martin, I work at a university. That’s not to brag (as librarians, we don’t have the same status as the professors. We’re way below them … but personally, I think that we rank just “a little less than the angels” anyway 🙂 It’s just that when there are debates or discussions on campus, no one, single person gets to formulate all the definitions.
Even on Quaker‑P there’s a lot of this liberal/conservative stuff. I guess it’s a sign of the times. The polarization of the public discourse in our society is so extreme at this moment that I don’t think it’s something we’ll discuss our way out of. I think it’s going to take some earth-shattering not literally, I hope) event to really shift the way we talk to … or maybe around… or maybe past one another. For right now, each of us seems to move in his/her own sphere, liberal or conservative. We all seem to listen to one another just long enough to figure out whether we can pin the “liberal” or “conservative” tag on the speaker, no matter what the context (but then it usually seems to come down to either politics or religion these days) … and then we stop listening.
Anyway, what I really wanted to say is that the members of our meeting seem quite innocent of all this “what’s a real Quaker and what’s not” controversy. We have a couple of birthright Quakers, and then there’s our clerk (I don’t know if he’s birthright or not), and they just seem to know how to keep the meetings for business focused. And there are a couple of members who are just wonderful about maintaining a reverent, worshipful atmosphere during the meeting for business. When there are serious disagreements, the discussion get continued till the next meeting.
That said, I have to admit that there isn’t much mention of Christ at our meeting for worship either. “God” quite a lot. But I didn’t hear the name “Christ” until I read a passage from one of Paul’s epistles. Is this supposed to bother me? It doesn’t. And to be perfectly honest, I myself no longer believe the same things concerning Christ that I was taught as a child (in Catholic school).
I certainly understand that this wanders far from what the first Quakers believed. But for some reason, I’m not as concerned about it, and neither is anyone at our meeting. No one seems to think that it’s panic time or anything. For the first time, I belong to a congregation where everyone actually knows everyone by name, where we visit those members who are dying, where we recently supported (financially and spiritually) the college-age daughter of a member who went to spent the summer in Mexico working with a group called Sedepac (Servicio, Desarollo y Paz), which recruits volunteers through the AFSC. I’ve begun to write for our little monthly newsletter, and I’ve joined the amateur writers group that meets in the social room once a month (most but not all of the members are associated with the meeting). And I find relief and refuge at our meeting from the bellicose nature of the Christianity that seems to permeate America. (Actually, it wasn’t the peace testimony but the testimonies of integrity and equality that brought me to Quakerism. But I won’t go into that, as it’s too autobiographical.) And do you know what the men did on Mother’s Day? They made a huge breakfast for the women. I had never, ever, in all my years as a Roman Catholic, seen a group of men cook for women! I really can’t express what it means to me to be in the company of men whose sense of masculinity isn’t somehow tied up in what they’ve accomplished or the rank they’ve risen to in the world.
So anyway, I guess that I just wanted to say that I think our meeting is where it should be. I don’t feel a lack of anything just because we’re not constantly proclaiming the name of Christ. We recently started a discussion forum on what it means to be a member of a Quaker community (yes, I saw your blog: Oh no, you’re saying to yourself, another group discussing the concept of community). And we have been discussing the underlying convictions and beliefs that Quakers have in common — that it’s not just everyone with his/her own beliefs. We’re using the pamphlet Members One of Another by Thomas Gates (a Pendle Hill pamphlet) as the basis of discussion, as well as Faith and Practice. The discussions will continue after the Christmas holidays.
Maybe we’re all very loosely connected, but maybe it’s just the pendulum swinging the other way for a lot of us who came from extremely structured, hierarchical churches, where we were told in no uncertain terms what was orthodox and what was heresy — and where very few of us (and none of the women) had anything to say about the religious rules that were made to govern our lives.
So anyway, that’s all I wanted to share with you: my befuddlement over things that I read about whether Quakers are really Christian or not, and my sense of peace and joy in participating in the meeting where I’ve been an attender.
A blessed Christmas to you, your family, and especially Theo.
–Barbara
Malvern, PA
Hi Barbara. You don’t just work at _a_ university I see. So first off, big hello to Villanova and the Falvey Memorial Library. Your resume says you started there in 87, so our paths have surely crossed. I’m VU class of 89, a Honors Dept major back when all our classes met in the fourth floor of Falvey. Four years of my life took place largely in that building. My first blog was there (okay, it wasn’t a blog but my photocopied zine “THE VACUUM,” but culturally it was a blog).
It sounds like your monthly meeting is pretty together, with all the comraderie, care and love. That’s pretty precious. Isn’t that what Jesus’s message was all about?
Those discussion boards are for the birds, generally. They’re very contentious, people just wanting to hear themselves shout. I don’t think real listening happens on them. These are Quakerly arguments and I don’t think a lot of the loudest posters are actually very involved in Quakerism. It’s about being in a lived community, too.
If your meeting is reading the Gates pamphlet and agreeing that there is something Quaker and that it’s not all about believing anything, then it’s more together than most meetings. I don’t advocate confessions of faith, just an ongoing engagement and wrestling with our faith and tradition.
If you were wrong about this, your meeting would have read you out of meeting. Because you are right, your meeting is unable to read you out of meeting.
‑russ
Hi Russ! Isn’t that the beauty of the situation? My acknowledged Ranterism should get me in trouble but there’s really no getting into trouble for just about anything so I skate free. But does that make this a win-win or lose-lose situation? Great to see you here. Martin
Martin & all,
There is much expressed in these pages which I can heartily support. Certainly, if Friends are reluctant to speak of God or Christ in the Religious Society of Friends for fear of disapproval or censure, something needs to be corrected. We cannot build deep, loving community in an atmosphere of anxiety and mistrust.
I also discern a sense that the author and many visitors to this site feel that many Friends are more interested in an easy, comfortable, unchallenging social and political club, than a place for serious spiritual growth and challenge. If you wish to call that being “convicted in our sin,” so be it. The phrase does not speak to me, but I think its meaning does.
At the same time, I discern a sense here – rarely explicit, but frequently implied – that what liberal Quakers need is a good purging, a removal of those Friends who don’t believe what “we” think Friends should believe. Who “we” are, and precisely which beliefs are acceptable and unacceptable, is very much in question.
I don’t believe in God, and have spent the last 15 years among Friends trying to understand, among many other things, why I feel so irrestibly drawn to a community and religious society in which the central term is God. My relationship with that community is at the center of my life, and has transformed and improved me in ways that make me deeply grateful and reverent for whatever it is we experience or create together. It has not made me a theist.
In my large and very liberal meeting, a fair number of messages in meeting for worship invoke the name of God or Christ or Jesus. Perhaps a larger percentage do not, including many from Friends I know to be Christians of various sorts. That a message does not invoke the name of God, does not prove or even suggest that God is not present in the message. If I am mistaken and God does exist, surely he is manifest in all creation and humanity, and not merely at those moments when we invoke his name. If I am mistaken and God does exist, surely he is manifest in me, and in what I bring to my meeting, and what my meeting brings to me. Surely your conception of God is not that he is only present in the lives of those who hold certain theological propositions to be true. Or am I mistaken about this as well?
I do experience something mysterious and profound and life-changing in my religious life among Friends. I have a hard time describing it, though I occasionally try in my flawed and halting language. Perhaps the experience I have is the same as, or deeply similar to, that which you call God. For me to use that term would be misleading, even dishonest, because, mysterious as my experience sometimes is, nothing about it strikes me as unnatural. It is something beyond me, naturally, as it springs not from my own doing, but from the encounter or relationship between me and others, between me and the world. It is neither here nor there, but a living bond that comes from being alive in the world with other living beings. There is something sacred in that bond, and acting in ways that tend to violate it is not righteous. I depend on my community for many things, and one of those things is to keep me honest to that bond. I submit myself to that discipline freely and joyfully, and my willingness springs from the faith I have in the goodness of that community. I do not and cannot, however, submit my mind, my beliefs – my measure of the light – to any authority. To do so would be a violation of my integrity, and it is not in the tradition of George Fox or the founders to demand this sort of obedience, nor to deny the blessing of our community to those who will not state agreement with certain theological propositions.
I am confident that Fox and his followers would have been shocked to see the theological diversity that is the reality of modern liberal Friends. He also would have been shocked, I suspect, to learn that the creation story/stories of Genesis, taken literally, would soon be proven by science to be clearly and absolutely false. Given his unshakeable integrity, given the radical nature of his ministry, given 300 more years of light and learning, I think his beliefs would have changed in many ways that are hard to imagine. Should we have not changed during this period?
My goal is not to change Friends, though my presence among them will probably have some small effect. Like Popeye and Luther, I am what I am. At the same time, I applaud and honor the Christians and others whose faith in God is utterly central to everything of value in their lives. It would grieve me deeply if you were reluctant to speak your faith in worship to avoid offending me. Sometimes your language about God speaks to me very deeply, though on a metaphorical level. Other times, not so much. In any case, your beliefs are important to me. I want to know you. I would like for us to remain Friends.
Either way, I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.
[Editor’s Note: I lifted up James’s comment as it’s own post, “I Am What I Am”:/martink/archives/000567.php. Comments to it specifically should probably go there.]
Friend John,
I find your testimony very moving and beautiful, and it speaks very much to my heart. Thank you.
I somehow just found this site today, and I have to once again express appreciation for all those folks who do not forget about Christ’s central place in the Society.
I really do fear that in a hundred years we won’t be a Religious Society at all anymore, but a miss-match of varying religious thoughts and philosophies, including atheism and even Satanism (it sounds rather sensationalist, I know, but I have met a person who claims to be member of the RSOF and The Church Of Satan and sees no contradiction in that – I suspect many of my liberal friends would feel the same way). It’s sad.
I fear that people will come to Quakerism simply for community (without religion), or worse, turn it into a social club of sorts. Christ is already slowly being taken out of our Society in the name of “diversity”.
I don’t think diversity is a bad thing at all, to a point. But after a certain point (and I think many of us have an innate sense of where that point is, even if we cannot sharply pinpoint it) it becomes self-defeating and we are no longer the Society that we wish to be.
I struggle with this quite a bit in my meeting. I find myself in the odd position of having a similar tendency to want to “purge” folks who aren’t “real quakers” — though I myself am not a christian, or even necessarily a theist, and therefore my ideas (sense) of what a “real quaker” is doesn’t fit most of what is discussed here.
And I am a member of James’ meeting, and another identified non-christian (I identified as an atheist for a while, but really, I find that there aren’t words, or a big enough community with similar views to find words, for what I am)
I think that some of us who do not center our faith / practice / ethics / spiritual life (such as it is) around christ bring as much or more spiritual openness, yearning and insight as (than) some who profess themselves christians.
I am ardently in favor of laboring with each other in order to verbalize a core of Quakerism. I am very wary of drawing lines in the sand or trying to pick out who is worth worshipping with and who is not, especially based on how they access god (or awe)
“The law of faith the law of the Spirit of Life is the love of G‑d.This comes by The Lord Christ”. “Flesh and blood did not reveal this to you only My Father in heaven”.“I will put My Laws into their minds and write them upon their hearts,I will be their G‑d they shall be My people and they shall not teach everyone his fellow or everyone his brother,saying,Know the Lord.”“For I desire steadfast love not sacrifice,the knowledge of G‑d not burnt offerings.“This is the Quaker testimony to which I cling.This is the rock that hell shall not prevail against.I have witnessed an assortment of quaker rantings over these years from unitarian to evangelical.Self will and self possession prevail.m
Martin, I think it’s because we don’t talk to each other that we become so spiritually estranged from each other. And that leads to being afraid to talk to each other. There has to be silence, but there also has to be study, dialogue, exploration, and listening. I’m starting to feel very strongly that silent meeting is only half of what total Quakerism should be.
If people in our meetings have any faith at all, then they realize that whatever they style their personal religion as, it’s all talking about the same thing. Different words, same ideas. So we need to get opening our mouths and our books (and our minds).
Too many Quakers think of quakerism as a religion of individuality — but it’s not. It’s a collectivist religion. We meet to silently come together with the Eternal, to submit to it, and to do so with each other. If Quakers are doing the individualism thing, then they are way off. So then, give them some books to read.
However, this is not to advocate for any kind of written common ground. I’ve seen what the Richmond Declaration has become for some branches of Quakerism.
People arrive a various stages of their spiritual journey, and we don’t want to close the door on those who are just timidly starting out. As long as we foster growth in a collective sense, with plenty of talk and reading and a sincere submission to the nudgings of the Spirit, then people with thinly defined spirituality will deepen and grow with us.
Were it not for the love of my faith community, a congregation of the United Church of Canada which is at the left side of this leftist denomination, I would more frequently attend my local Friends’ meeting — just up the street from my congregation.
I am blessed to have found your site. For more years than I can count I have thought of myself as a ‘seeker’ far more than a finder. As I read your writings I am challenged to express myself a litle more gently than I sometimes do.
I agree with someone way up the line there that a comparison of honest seekers with the original Ranters is unfair. Someone in another tradition labeled uncommitted seekers “Freelance Christians” some years ago. Again, it is unfair.
I was once asociated with Friends, believing that after years of seeking I had finally found my spiritual home. But the Spirit continued to lead me into truth, and that truth did not square with Quaker theology. The Quakerly response was to turn a deaf ear toward what I tried to share.
As for authority and tradition, everything I recieve as Truth must have it’s root in Scripture as understood by Christians of ancient times. I am not into novelty. The problem is, no group today practices all these things. And I am sure I have not yet arrived at the perfection of knowledge either. But i believe in being open-minded and desire a place where I can hold my convictions and express them as the Spirit gives utterance.
@Thomas: the interesting question is whether Friends not being faithful Friends (faithful to their own tradition/theology/understanding) or whether you had irreconcilable and differences of theology, perhaps around the source of spiritual authority. If your membership was just not a good match, then I can understand how eventually there might be that deaf ear. Of course I’ve been around Friends long enough to know that we often don’t like anyone who asks good questions or challenges our sometimes too-easy pieties and it’s a shame when we lose people who play this role.
Sharing is caring and now I read your article. Even 10 years passed the article is great. I’m so happy that I’m here being part of this piece of history. Pure extract hearts are the ones that makes us joyful
Permanent results are made with permanent lifestyle changes, it is only fair and makes perfect sense.