I have tended to describe this shift in understanding as the moment when Quakerism “clicked” for me—when it ceased to be just the weird subculture I grew up in, and more a matter of conviction. Practices that I ignored or never quite understood, like making group decisions without taking a vote, now made sense, because they were borne out of an attempt to make Christ the present teacher in all affairs.

Isaac’s piece stems in part from the December Friends Journal, on Quakers and Christianity. A large percentage of the submissions we received for the issue had remarkably similar personal stories: people had grown up in a restrictive religious tradition and come to Liberal Friends because of its openness to spiritual seeking. If anything they were hostile to Christianity and distinctive Quaker peculiarities when they joined but over time they slowly shifted, often after getting to know grounded elder Friends. Now they quietly identified as Christian Friends.

We could have printed a whole issue of (mostly) convinced Liberal Friends who had rediscovered Christianity. Instead we picked a representative sample for the print edition and published the rest as part of our our extended online edition; you can read it all at the online contents. Although Isaac’s story is different (he grew up as a Friend) it shares a similar trajectory.

(Issac also has some questions about Quaker publishing, with a link to a great 2009 blog post from Johan Maurer. I feel I should talk about this issue too but that’ll take a bit more pondering on my part).

Is Quaker Culture an Obstacle to Faith?

Friends traditionally have lumped Christmas in with all of the other ritualistic boo-ha that mainstream Christians practice. These are outward elements that should be abandoned now that we know Christ has come to teach the people himself and is present and available to all of us at all times. Outward baptism, communion, planned sermons, paid ministers, Christmas and Easter: all distractions from true Christian religion, from primitive Chritianity revived.

One confusion that arises in liberal meetings this time of year is that it’s assumed it’s the Christian Friends who want the Christmas tree. Arguments sometime break out with “hyphenated” Friends who feel uncomfortable with the tree: folks who consider themselves Friends but also Pagan, Nontheistic, or Jewish and wonder why they’re having Christianity forced on them. But those of us who follow what we might call the “Christian tradition as understood by Friends” should be just as put out by a Christmas tree and party. We know that symbolic rituals like these spark disunity and distract us from the real purpose of our community: befriending Christ and listening for His guidance.

I was shocked and startled when I first learned that Quaker schools used to meet on Christmas day. My first response was “oh come on, that’s taking it all too far.” But it kept bugging me and I kept trying to understand it. This was one of the pieces that helped me understand the Quaker way better and I finally grew to understand the rationale. If Friends were more consistent with more-or-less symbolic stuff like Christmas, it would be easier to teach Quakerism.

I don’t mind Christmas trees, per se. I have one in my living room. In my extended family Christmas has served as one of the mandatory times of year we all have to show up together for dinner. It’s never been very religious, so I never felt I needed to stop the practice when I became involved with Friends. But as a Friend I’m careful not to pretend that the consumerism and social rituals have much to do with Christ. Christmas trees are pretty. The lights make me feel good in the doldrums of mid-winter. That’s reason enough to put one up.

Unprogrammed liberal Friends could use the tensions between traditional Quakerly stoicism and mainstream Christian nostalgia as a teaching moment, and we could use discomfort around the ritual of Christmas as a point of unity and dialog with Pagan, Jewish and Non-theistic Friends. Christian Friends are always having to explain how we’re not the kind of Christians others assume we are (others both within and outside the Society). Being principled about Christmas is one way of showing that difference. People will surely say “oh come on,” but so what? A lot of spiritual seekers are critical of the kind of crazy commercial spending sprees that marked Christmases past and I don’t see why a group saying Christmas isn’t about Christ would be at a particular disadvantage during this first Christmas season of the next Great Depression.

I’ve been talking about liberal unprogrammed Friends. For the record, I understand Christmas celebrations among “pastoral” and/or “programmed” Friends. They’ve made a conscious decision to adopt a more mainstream Christian approach to religious education and ministry. That’s fine. It’s not the kind of Quaker I practice, but they’re open about their approach and Christmas makes sense in that context.

Whenever I post this kind of stuff on my blog I get comments how I’m being too Scroogey. Well I guess I am. Bah Humbug. Honestly though, I’ve always like Quaker Christmas parties. They’re a way of mixing things up, a way of coming together as a community in a warmer way that we usually do. People stop confabbing about committee questions and actually enjoy one another’s company. One time I asked my meeting to call it the Day the World Calls Christmas Party, which I thought was kind of clever (everyone else surely thought “there goes Martin again”). The joy of real community that is filled once a year at our Christmas parties might be symptom of a hunger to be a different kind of community every week, even every day.

I find that we conservative-leaning Friends in Liberal meetings are often quick to cry out that our meetings must return to our Christian roots or seek to know Christ together. And this is what I personally yearn for in the Society of Friends in many ways. But it is far too often said with a sentiment that WE Christian Friends have to do this. TODAY. NOW. God can’t wait. And we can’t wait for God. We have to convince everyone we are right and Quakerism without Christ is no Quakerism at all. No wonder James and so many other non-theists sometimes worry that Christ-centered Friends are craving an inquisition-like purge!
Corporate change can only occur with corporate leading. It will not and cannot come by a few determined, “enlightened souls” who will attempt to non-violently twist the arm of the meeting until they cry “Jesus!”
I don’t want a purge. And, as a Christ-centered, Liberal Friend, schism is often a tempting daydream for me to dwell in, but I’m doubtful that that is where I will be led anytime soon. We aren’t called to “fix” the Society of Friends on our own. That’s Christ’s work, and it’s hubris to assume it’s all on our shoulders. Our job is to simply bear witness to the measure we’ve been given, open our hearts to receiving the measure given to others, and honor our covenant of membership with one another as we seek to understand the next step in finding our shared faith. And it just so happens that that is everyone’s job in meeting – Christ-centered, universalist, non-theist, or whatever label a Friend might apply to themselves. We will all be used in this process.
I don’t want to leave this at an abstract level, however. Let me offer an extremely personal and dear example:
When I spoke on a panel at my meeting exploring the differences of our community’s languages, experiences and beliefs, I bore witness to Christ in my life as a personal, creative Source of Life and Truth. Afterwards, a couple came up to me and thanked me for offering my ministry. One of them said I spoke of Christ with a “prophetic voice.” This couple identifies themselves and Jewish, non-theist Friends. It meant so much to me.
I continued to deepen my relationship in the Spirit with each of them. When I was welcomed into membership at a small meeting dinner (months after I had become a member, in proper Quaker fashion), one of the members of this couple clearly expressed her commitment to my journey, understood as following Christ. I voiced my commitment to them in their spiritual journey.
Did I make a mistake in that moment? To say I am committed to another’s spiritual journey that doesn’t profess Christ or even God? I think not – because this commitment was not born when I verbalized it to them – it began when I became a member of Friends Meeting at Cambridge, a member of the Religious Society of Friends, and a member of these two Friends. And to that I was clearly led. Our covenant of membership is a call to be members of one another. And I use the word covenant quite intentionally — I believe that one of the ways that God reveals herself to us is through the model of the beloved community. In seeking to honor the covenant we have made with our fellow Friends, we further understand the blessings and challenges of seeking to honor our covenant with God.
This doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t boldly and compassionately speak of the loving work of the Light of Christ within me. It just means being open to the fact that I might have a lot of spiritual wisdom to receive from searches for Truth that don’t involve a recognition of Christ, and I should support those journeys as much as I am clear to. And in doing so, I may find my own understanding of Truth has grown.
I take this commitment of membership very seriously – to labor, nurture, support and challenge my fellow Friends; to walk in the Light together, and to give, receive, and pray with my fellow sojourners when the next step is unclear. My feet are on solid ground. Honestly, I fear my meeting’s are often in sinking sand. But to attempt to force our community into theological flagellations without the hand of the Holy Spirit actively pulling us all up together will only cause us to sink in deeper.
Furthermore, to lose patience and walk alone towards the light before me is to leave others behind. And the next time I lose my way, I don’t want to be alone.

bq. Jeffrey Hipp is a member of Friends Meeting at Cambridge (MA), and is co-clerk of the Young Adult Friends of New England Yearly Meeting.
This piece originated as a response to “What’s God Got to Do, Got to Do With it?”:http://www.nonviolence.org/martink/archives/000577.php. Reproduced as a feature with permission from the author.

I heard about this conference almost by accident, from a listing on Quakerinfo’s Christian Renewal page. It was hard to get details about it, as my emails to the organizers kept getting lost, but finally I did hear back. Sessions included:

• The Simplicity of Our Witness to That Which We Know Within
• The Witness of Our Meetings, Our Lives, and Our Words
• Being a Witness to Christ’s Presence and Power in a Time of Strife
• Living Our Witness in a Secular Age.
• Our Witness in Scripture and Friends Writing

So what did I think of the conference?

I liked meeting the workshop leaders and fellow participants. There are very sincere, devote Friends who are aware of the need to have the Society of Friends look more closely at our roots. The New Foundation Fellowship has been around since the mid-70s and gathered around a series of Lewis Benson’s talks about George Fox and early Friends. They publish a number of interesting books and pamphlets. The Christian Friends Conference is relatively new and I never found how quite how it differed from NFF: there was so much overlap between the two groups that that it was hard for this outsider to figure out the difference.

I felt very welcomed, especially by the event organizer (who went out of her way to attend to my strange vegan diet). The weekend’s agenda was upended at the last moment by the absence of NFF organizer Terry Wallace, who was too ill to come.

Many of the sessions were on the intellectual side–prepared speeches read from notes. I suspect this is the legacy of Lewis Benson, who was very much a presence at the conference even though he died over fifteen years ago. I missed the kind of mystical, don’t-speak-unless-led spirit of old quietist conservatives and the extended worship sessions that are becoming popular with post-liberal conservative Friends. Somewhere between these extremes there’s a balance and I wondered if NFF could reach the larger audience it deserves with just this lecture format.

Size, aka there are more Christian Friends than this:

The first impression was how small the gathering was. I suspected this would be the case when I saw so little publicity. As the weekend came near, I mentioned it to a few Philadelphia-area Christian Friends, who were surprised to hear that such an event was happening. Most sessions had about eight people and maybe two dozen or so Friends circulated through during the weekend. Most of the participants already knew each other and were members of New Foundation Fellowship and/or Ohio Yearly Meeting (Conservative).

This was kind of a shame. With almost 12,000 members, there are certainly more Christians embedded in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting than there are in New Foundation Fellowship and Ohio Yearly Meeting combined. This kind of a conference could have easily attracted more people than this. Many small Quaker organizations act more as support groups for a core group of people who share interests and a desire to see each other regularly (I’ve joined these kinds of groups in the past, mistakenly thinking they would get excited if they realized how many people they could attract with only a little outreach). I don’t know if this was the dynamic with NFF/CFC but no one seemed to be too concerned at the small turnout or limited publicity in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. The NFF never put this event up on their website calendar and the CFC doesn’t even have a website, which has become a crucial outreach tool for any small, geographically-dispersed new initiative that wants to reach its intended audience.

Divides and Reaching Across:

I also felt sort of sad for the self-imposed divide going on here. In between sessions, Seth Hinshaw, clerk of Ohio Yearly Meeting, asked me about FGC and then asked each of the other people there at the time if they had ever been to the FGC Gathering. Almost none had. I know the Gathering can be a depressing place for a Christian Friend, but if you want to go fishing for new disciples, there’s nothing like it. Just the presence of grounded traditionalist Friends at the Gathering does a lot to dispel stereotypes and generate good will.

When Jack Smith (Ohio YM, CFC) gave his spiel on the Christian Friends Conference, it sounded very much in the same spirit as FGC’s Traveling Ministries Program. There’s a shared impulse to look anew at traditions and to make the time to tell stories with one another, one on one, in an authentic sharing sprit. Call this the spirt of the age and label it post-liberal, emergent church, whatever–there is a lot more kinship here than we think and a lot of opportunities to go beyond our circles to connect with others.

Geographically Scattered Meetings:

From conversations and reading the Ohio Yearly Meeting minute book I learned more about a very geographically diverse meeting–Rockingham Friends. Although there’s a physical town in Virginia after which it’s named, only a few members of the meeting actually live nearby. The great majority live across the country and around the world, made up of Quaker Christian Friends holding dual membership in a local yearly meeting and in Rockingham. I’ve had wonderful fellowship in the Spirit with the Rockingham Friends I’ve met (I spent some time with the London cohort last Spring). While many meetings have long-distance members on the books (it’s not uncommon to find a Philadelphia-area meeting that claims hundreds of members but only has a few dozen people on First Day), Rockingham Friends outside Virginia seem to value and affirm their affiliate membership (link to the Ohio book of discipline). It would be fascinating to hear more about how business meeting works and to understand the impulse and benefits of being part of a geographically-diverse meeting like this.

I find it fascinating that the most socially-conservative yearly meeting in the U.S. would have one of the most ground-breaking concept of membership. Perhaps it’s part of an evolving twenty-first century model. Many people within the Religious Society of Friends and in the larger religious world have a closer sense of identity with an intentionally-defined identity group than they do with their local meeting. Perhaps the most lively, spirit-led example in the Quaker world had its mid-winter gathering in the same Burlington meetinghouse a few weeks later: FLGBTQC, Friends for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Concerns. I didn’t attend but all reports were that it was a much bigger gathering. (I can also guarantee that there were more Christian Quakers in the meetinghouse that weekend, an irony that deserves some chewing over sometime in the future).

Final Thoughts:

I’d certainly go again. There was some very good, thought-provoking conversations there. Is this the springboard of a Christian renewal that will sweep throughout all branches of the Religious Society of Friends? Well, probably not. But it is another rivulet making its way into the future and a interesting group to go paddling downstream with on a weekend in January.