Also on FJ, Greg Woods and Jen Newman finish off September features’s with an article about their work on vocational discernment for young adult Friends.

Working on some articles on Quaker testimonies and re-reading Anthony Manousos’s 2009 blog post, “How Howard Brinton Invented SPICE, the Quaker Testimonies,” and Paul Buckley’s 2012 talk, “The Origin of the SPICES.” Both gems.

Sad to read of the passing of Mariellen Gilpin in What Canst Thou Say? She was a consistently thoughtful writer on Quaker mysticism, ministry, and eldership for many decades.

A new QuakerSpeak this week: Spirituality on the Road: Five Years of Quaker RV Living, an interview with Betsey Kenworthy.

I am going to make a bold apology for a clarified liberal Quaker identity that retains its roots and recovers worship in the spirit of Christ, but yet releases us from the orthodox Christian preoccupations that no longer speak to so many unprogrammed Friends.

Are Quakers Christian?

Rather I am aware that a certain level of fellowship or companionship is missing. It can take a lifetime, I find, to explore the implications and meaning of the gospel life, to experience such a renewing of the mind that one can grow into the life of Christ, see and learn to honor the Sophia of God, the Logos in its appearing in humans, and in creation, and in ourselves in our measure. Fellowship with others who are following that same path ( a path “traditionally held by Friends”) is nourishing, stimulating, and educative in, well, particular ways. Fellowship with earnest seekers who understand their paths differently is also precious, and indeed necessary — but not the same.

One cost of our theological diversity

I was grateful that the “who” question was there — testifying that we are not centered on ourselves, dutifully inventorying our Quaker markers. For me, evangelism (paying urgent attention to the “who”) puts all those other testimonies in perspective. All those testimonies are “signs and wonders,” qualities of the Light by which we as the Body of Christ participate in making Jesus visible.

https://blog.canyoubelieve.me/2019/02/evangelistic-malpractice.html

Granted, as a deep student of Carl Gustav Jung and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Yungblut’s definitions of those three adjectives may not have exactly been old-school. This particularly goes for his reflections on the word “evangelical.” But the dynamic conversation among these qualities — different definitions and all — may be vital if Friends are to grow in usefulness to the Body of Christ, and to those who’ve not yet been convinced.

https://blog.canyoubelieve.me/2018/10/quakerism-of-future.html

A phrase that keeps coming to mind is “a new Quakerism,” and oddly enough, I’ve been hearing other Friends unknowingly echo this phrase back to me. It seems to me that many Friends, even those who consider themselves “convinced,” are hungry for more than what the Society has to offer.

Of course it’s part of our tradition that it needs to be forever reborn. You can’t recycle sermons or use the prop of your university learning as a crutch. We are never to know what might happen when worship starts, since the idea is that it’s directly led in the moment by Christ. It’s also a part of our tradition that forms are forever calcifying and that we need to remember why we’re here and who’s brought us together. Glad to see the work continue.

A New Quakerism

we went to weekend training workshops; we read the writings of Christian healers; shamanic healers; and practitioners of Reiki, traditional Chinese medicine, Ayurveda, and homeopathy. I longed to be able to inspect people’s etheric and astral bodies, their chakras and marmas, with a diagnostician’s eye. So long as it involved no straying from Christ, I aspired to know how to mobilize healing virtues in plant spirits, minerals, colors, and sounds, and how to recognize “holy” places.

Some of this reminds me of the wonderful work of the eighteen-century Friend Samuel Bownas, whose book A Description of the Qualifications Necessary to a Gospel Minister is full of very useful advice on ministry and warnings about pitfalls—romantic attachments, undue politicization.

Just a moment…

www.friendsjournal.org

Whereas the young man heretofore has been given to be something wild, he of late years was become more somber, it was proposed by friends to the young man and woman: 
Whether he did believe yet was the truth which we professed and walked in according to our measure—further shewing that if wee did not walk in the truth according to our measure given us, we were but a community of men and women, and not a Church of Christ. 

— Query for 1689 marriage clearness