https://www.quakerranter.org/friends_and_theology_and_geek/ A Weekly Newsletter and Blog from Martin Kelley Wed, 28 Sep 2016 16:51:18 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 https://www.quakerranter.org/friends_and_theology_and_geek/#comment-1235 Thu, 14 Jun 2007 01:41:07 +0000 http://www.quakerranter.org/?p=269#comment-1235 Dear Marshall,
I’m not sure where I (Julie) come into the conversation or the story here, so I’m not even going to try to scratch the surface of my experiences in and opinions of Quakerism, whatever they may be. But with regard to the kitchen stove, at least it works. Without saying much else, I think if you’re presuming that I once thought a Quaker meeting something other than it is (the food rather than the cooker), you’re wrong. I am not that easily confused. Also, I of course don’t agree that “we bring edible things into existence by our own collective labor.” There is but one God, the Lord Jesus Christ and He alone is our Food. As for whatever “criticisms” *I* have of the RSOF, since I haven’t spoken any of them nor have I had any conversations with you, I think it’s jumping the gun for you to assume they “miss the point.” I don’t think Martin’s miss the point either. Continual patronizing dismissiveness is one of the many (though not the main) reasons I no longer find myself among Quakers.
In Charity,
Julie

]]> https://www.quakerranter.org/friends_and_theology_and_geek/#comment-1234 Wed, 13 Jun 2007 08:44:44 +0000 http://www.quakerranter.org/?p=269#comment-1234 Hallo, Martin!
Okay, let’s replace “ideals” with “Gospel Order”. If we do that, it no longer makes sense to me to say that “Friends ideals [in the sense of “Gospel Order”] and practices were unbridgable”. “Gospel Order” simply means “the practices explicitly taught by Christ and the Holy Spirit in the Bible” — practices such as those laid out in Matthew 18:15–17, and the more difficult ones laid out in the Sermon on the Mount — and those practices are quite obviously doable. And the “bridge” here is simply to do them — and Julie, or you, or I, or anyone else who wants, can do them whenever she or he pleases, without waiting on the monthly meeting either to give her/him permission or to do them itself first.
And yes, oh I do agree, there is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to our condition. And yes, a church of fallible human beings cannot substitute for Christ Jesus in that capacity. But that isn’t the real purpose of the church in any case, now, is it?
Christ brought the church into existence, back when he was walking the earth, not as a substitute for him — a place where each of us can find what her or his heart is hungering for, already prepared and waiting to be consumed — but rather, as a body of disciples, a place where we as disciples can practice that discipline that he himself called us to practice, and where those around us who are our fellow disciples will understand and support and respond to what we are doing with some small measure of comprehension.
So in answer to your question — “Yes, I have a natural tendency to want to live closer to an ideal—God’s ideal—but ain’t that the point?” — I’d say, yes, you’re absolutely right, the point is to live closer to that ideal. But I’d add that we live closer to that ideal by we ourselves practicing that ideal: by ourselves doing those Gospel Order practices one choice at a time. That’s the only possible way to bring that ideal into existence. The ideal is not the sort of thing that we can just go and pick up a serving of in some church or meeting somewhere.
Reproaching the Quaker church for not living up to our ideals, seems to me to be kinda like reproaching the stove in the kitchen for not being edible. The stove is not supposed to be edible. It’s supposed to be a place where we bring edible things into existence by our own collective labor, following the methods we have been taught for doing so.
The virtue of the Quaker church, a.k.a. the Religious Society of Friends, as distinguished from (say) the Roman Catholic Church, is not that the Quaker church hands us a better meal; it’s that the Quaker church provides us with a better structure for practicing, our own selves, the cooking skills that our Lord commanded us to practice. In the Quaker church it is easier for us to focus on being baptized with fire not water; it is easier for us to focus on worship not on the mountain nor in the temple but in Spirit and in Truth; it is easier for us to practice calling no man Rabbi, in an organization where we do not have leaders as the Gentiles have, who lord it over them; it is easier for us to practice Gospel disciplines like integrity and peace, because those we are among keep reminding us over and over of the importance of doing so.
So in a nutshell, it still seems to me that your criticism, and Julie’s, of the RSoF, holds some very important truth, and yet misses the point.
— Or am I missing the point? (Sometimes I am very obtuse.)

]]> https://www.quakerranter.org/friends_and_theology_and_geek/#comment-1233 Mon, 11 Jun 2007 21:45:33 +0000 http://www.quakerranter.org/?p=269#comment-1233 @Rich: I understand My Good Wife Julie emailed back when your comment came in. I think you now understand that its only very practical work-related activity that’s been taking up my Sunday mornings for the last few months and keeping me from regular attendance at Middletown Meeting which I think of as “my” meeting now even though I haven’t (yet) transfered membership. I too hope this situation changes soon and I get my Sunday mornings back!

]]> https://www.quakerranter.org/friends_and_theology_and_geek/#comment-1232 Fri, 08 Jun 2007 11:10:15 +0000 http://www.quakerranter.org/?p=269#comment-1232 Hi, Martin.
I unite with an important point Forrest made “But I think an important element of the Quaker path is to stay in there and wrestle with the imperfect group of people that we’ve been given—including of course our own self.” Although you responded to Forrest’s comment, I don’t think you responded to this part of it. If I read what Forrest is saying correctly, he’s gently challenging the wisdom of letting yourself get “…pretty detached from formal Quaker bodies” as you put it.
I too, am pretty detached from the “formal Quaker bodies” that seem to get most often mentioned in the Quaker blogosphere: FUM, FGC, FWCC, AFSC, etc. But for me a strong ongoing relationship to my local Friends Meeting (in my case that’s 15th Street Meeting in New York) is an essential dimension of my spiritual life. It’s hard for me to imagine what it would be to call myself a Quaker without that connection.
From this perspective I often see the supposed “big issues” of Quaker polity in quite different terms than those being widely discussed. For example, I am much less exercised about how my Yearly Meeting relates to FUM and FGC than how my unprogrammed monthly meeting relates to the pastoral meeting that also worships in our building.
In the local Meeting Friends with different theologies and different conceptions of witness can get to know each other on a personal level. Then when they do discuss differences it can be done (not that it always is, but it can be) with a greater degree of mutual trust and understanding than when Friends at a conference adopt position papers or decide on policies.
I don’t find my local meeting to be overwhelmingly “anti-intellectual”, though that strain does exist. Many Friends come to us with a lot of intellectual sophistication developed independently of Quakerism per se. This can be combined with a rather shallow knowledge of Quaker history and tradition, but that can be cured with study and discussion — an activity that Friends in the local meeting seem to value.
One value of participation in the local meeting is its tendency over time to undermine personal self-righteousness. It’s hard for me to climb on my high horse in the company of Friends who have seen me fall off its back before.
So, bottom line, If you are saying here that you no longer attend a Quaker Meeting regularly, I rather think it would be a good thing both for the lucky meeting and for you if you could reconnect.
But there I go, on that high horse again… Proceed as led.
— - Rich

]]> https://www.quakerranter.org/friends_and_theology_and_geek/#comment-1231 Fri, 08 Jun 2007 08:47:10 +0000 http://www.quakerranter.org/?p=269#comment-1231 @Forrest: I agree with what you say. There’s nothing wrong with inner spirituality. But I think I agree with Frost that modern “FGC style” Friends have become unnecessarily anti-intellectual and cut off from spiritual thought. By and large we’re ignorant of contemporary trends in Christian thought, by and large we’ve stopped reading the Bible or Barclay or Quaker Journals, by and large we have trouble talking to one another about our deepest spiritual openings. We look solely to our own experience, as if any kind of social interaction (past or present) would somehow dilute the purity of our exerience. Theology–how we process our experiences into an understanding of God, the world, and the role of the church–happens whether we want it to or not. There’s more to say about this but words aren’t coming so I’ll stop here.
@Marshall: got to watch my language with you. Okay, replace “ideal” with “gospel order.” Both Julie and I are quite happy in the messiness and ironic inconsistencies of living, breathing communities–just look where I worked for the last eight years! Just look at the blogosophere. Hey, just look at her family (kidding Julie!). Yes, I have a natural tendency to want to live closer to an ideal–God’s ideal–but ain’t that the point? And isn’t there a role for Friends who stand on the crossroads and point the way back home?
I have been deeply involved in a number of Quaker communities, local, professional, associational (I’m thinking young adult Friends) and virtual. In my current moment in life a bizarre part time work schedule and complicated First Day morning childcare arrangements are keeping me from as active participation in a local meeting as I would like but this should be temporarily (Lord, I hope this current schedule is temporary!).
My warning for Friends to “not to tie this vision too closely with any existing institution” is borne of many years observing humans sometimes be afraid to challenge their communities when needed. This can be done lovingly and in a healthy community this is appreciated. I was probably thinking of Fox’s observation that his search for worldly answers to his spiritual questions failed precisely because he had to learn that “even Christ Jesus” was the source he needed to turn to.

]]> https://www.quakerranter.org/friends_and_theology_and_geek/#comment-1230 Wed, 06 Jun 2007 09:28:06 +0000 http://www.quakerranter.org/?p=269#comment-1230 Theologizing isn’t necessarily a community-builder. The process of people working out their own individual theologies tends to create people who are each kinda wrapped up in their own private understandings, and who therefore don’t connect with one another nearly as well as they might.
Barclay escaped that trap because he was not presenting his own theology but, rather, mapping out the theology of the Society of Friends as he had found them. He was drawn into unity with Friends by the process of mapping their theology.
And modern scholarly theologians escape that trap insofar as they stick to producing theology, not as a personal assertion of truth, but as an activity within the scholarly community. In this wise their theologizing builds community between them and the scholars they are collaborating with. But it doesn’t necessarily build community between them and the local grassroots church where they worship. And once they produce theology as a personal assertion of truth, they start isolating themselves even from the scholarly community.
Quakerism is very much a corporate endeavor, and I think that’s why we Friends are wary of individual theologizing. It’s not that we are anti-intellectual. Particularly in the unprogrammed sphere, our meetings teem with shameless intellectuals, and the workshops at yearly meetings and retreats are often full of shameless intellectualizing. But we don’t want to emphasize things that divide us. We want to find our way back together, back to community, out of the fallenness of the world. And so we do our intellectualizing with a light touch, and don’t cling too hard to the theological ideas we come up with in those workshops and retreats.
Is the gap between Friends ideals and practices unbridgeable? Maybe so; your wife Julie may be on to something important there. But I think it’s a mistake to think that Friends ideals are what Quakerism is about.
It seems to me that an ideal is a product of our own human mental processes, which we attempt to use to extricate ourselves from some measure of the wrongness of the world. Which is about as much as to say: an ideal is a human-made idol that we look to to save us. Would you disagree?
The purpose of Quakerism — or, at least, of traditional Quakerism; I don’t think I properly understand any other kind — is to walk in the Light, i.e. to act with constant attention to, and obedience to, the inward Guide, Christ himself. And at least in my own experience, following that Guide turns out to be something quite different from following one’s ideals. There are repeated moments when our ideals pull us to do or say something and the Guide responds: wait a moment, if you act that way you will hurt someone, or you will neglect somebody’s real needs.
I understand your sense of alienation from formal Quaker bodies, Martin. But do you have an ordinary local Quaker community you can feel part of, someplace where you can love and care for other members and be loved and cared for by them in return? That’s what it’s all about, I think.

]]> https://www.quakerranter.org/friends_and_theology_and_geek/#comment-1229 Tue, 05 Jun 2007 19:54:05 +0000 http://www.quakerranter.org/?p=269#comment-1229 You know me, a long-time kvetcher about our collective shortfalls. But I think an important element of the Quaker path is to stay in there and wrestle with the imperfect group of people that we’ve been given–including of course our own self.
“Inner spirituality” might sound like some kind of personal indulgence, but a true effort to develop it is entirely proper; one needs to connect to that “true source of our daily bread” as a foundation for those larger works you find more impressive.

]]>