From the exterior, there may not appear to be very much different between a group of individuals doing individual meditation or individual contemplation in the same room and a group of Quaker worshiping together. But there are a number of things that are, as we experience them, different. One is that these practices that have as their goal achieving stillness of mind or perfect quiet or single-pointed awareness, as a goal, are actually quite different from what we are attempting and achieving in meeting for worship. For Friends, this point of stillness is only a way station, and we pass though that. It is not our goal, but it is how we get to a point of encounter with God.
 
http://quakerspeak.com/why-do-quakers-worship-in-silence/

I agree with a lot of his observation. But at the same time I’m not sure what a serious examination would look like or would produce. In recent years my own yearly meeting has developed a kind of circadian rhythm of constant reorganization, tinkering with organizational charts, legislative processes design to speed up decisions, and changing times and frequencies of events hoping to attract new people. And yet, as I wrote a few weeks ago, when I went to sit in on a meeting of the governing body, I was the third or fourth youngest person in a room of about 75 Friends. It was pretty much the same group of people who were doing it ten years and multiple reforms ago, only now they are ten years older. We actually ripped through business so we can spend an hour naval-gazing about the purpose of this particular governing body and I can report it wasn’t the breath of fresh air that we might have hoped for.

A big part of the problem is we’ve forgotten why we’re doing all this. We’ve split the faith from the practice–and I don’t mean Christian vs non-Christian, but the whole kit-and-kaboodle that is the Quaker understanding of gospel order, a world view that is distinct from that of other Christian denominations. Lloyd Lee Wilson calls it the “Quaker gestalt” in Essays on the Quaker Vision of Gospel Order. When a spiritual tradition has an internal consistency, and the process and theology reinforce each other. Architecture and demeanor, cultural and business values fit together. It’s never perfect, of course, and maintaining the consistency against new influences and changing circumstances is often the source of unnecessary petty squabbling. But even something as innocuous as a meetinghouse’s bench arrangements can tell you a lot about a group’s theology and its balance towards authority and individualism.

It’s our understanding of our faith and our concept of body-of-Christ community which undergirds our institutional structures. When we don’t have a good grasp of it, we do things merely because “we’re supposed to” and the process feels dry and spirit-less. We defend particular institutions as necessary because they’re codified in our books of doctrine and lose our ability to positively explain their existence, at which point frustrated members will call for their abandonment as unnecessary baggage from a bygone age.

As an example, about seven years ago my quarterly meeting went through a naval-gazing process. I tried to be involved, as did my then-Quaker wife Julie. We asked a lot of big questions but others on the visioning committee just wanted to ask small questions. When Julie and I asked about divine guidance at sessions, for example, one fellow condescendingly explained that if we spent all our time asking what God wanted we’d never get anything done. We really didn’t know what to say to that, especially as it seemed the consensus of others in the group. One thing they were complaining about was that it was always the same few people doing anything but after a few rounds of those meetings, we ran screaming away (my wife right out of the RSoF altogether).

Re-visioning isn’t just deconstructing institutions we don’t understand or tinkering with some new process to fix the old process that doesn’t work. If you’ve got a group of people actively listening to the guidance of the Inward Christ then any process or structure probably can be made to work (though some will facilitate discernment better). Our books of “Faith and Practice” were never meant to be inerrant Bibles. At their core, they’re our “wiki” of best practices for Quaker community discernment–tips earned through the successes and failures of previous generations. I think if we understand our spiritual roots better we’ll find our musty old Quaker institutions actually still have important roles to play. But how do we get there? I like Brent’s questions but I’m not sure you can just start with them. Anyone want to share stories of spiritual deepening in their meetings or faith communities and how that fed into a renewed appreciation of Quaker bodies and process?

“[T]he first generations of English and America Quaker liberals like Jones and Cadbury were all birthright and they wrote books as well as pamphlets. Before unification, PYM Orthodox and the other Orthodox meetings produced philosophers, theologians, and Bible scholars, but now the combined yearly meetings in FGC produce weighty Friends, social activists, and earnest seekers.”
…
“The liberals who created the FGC had a thirst for knowledge, for linking the best in religion with the best in science, for drawing upon both to make ethical judgments. Today by becoming anti-intellectual in religion when we are well-educated we have jettisoned the impulse that created FGC, reunited yearly meetings, redefined our role in wider society, and created the modern peace testimony. The kinds of energy we now devote to meditation techniques and inner spirituality needs to be spent on philosophy, science, and Christian religion.”

This talk was hugely influential to my wife Julie and myself. We had just met two days before and while I had developed an instant crush, Frost’s talk was the first time we sat next to one another. I realized that this might become something serious when we both laughed out loud at Jerry’s wry asides and theology jokes. We ended up walking around the campus late into the early hours talking talking talking.

But the talk wasn’t just the religion geek equivalent of a pick-up bar. We both responded to Frost’s call for a new generation of serious Quaker thinkers. Julie enrolled in a Religion PhD program, studying Quaker theology under Frost himself for a semester. I dove into historians like Thomas Hamm and modern thinkers like Lloyd Lee Wilson as a way to understand and articulate the implicit theology of “FGC Friends” and took independent initiatives to fill the gaps in FGC services, taking leadership in young adult program and co-leading workshops and interest groups.

Things didn’t turn out as we expected. I hesitate speaking for Julie but I think it’s fair enough to say that she came to the conclusion that Friends ideals and practices were unbridgable and she left Friends. I’ve documented my own setbacks and right now I’m pretty detached from formal Quaker bodies.

Maybe enough time hasn’t gone by yet. I’ve heard that the person sitting on Julie’s other side for that talk is now studying theology up in New England; another Friend who I suspect was nearby just started at Earlham School of Religion. I’ve called this the Lost Quaker Generation but at least some of its members have just been lying low. It’s hard to know whether any of these historically-informed Friends will ever help shape FGC popular culture in the way that Quaker academia influenced liberal Friends did before the 1970s.

Rereading Frost’s speech this afternoon it’s clear to see it as an important inspiration for QuakerQuaker. Parts of it act well as a good liberal Quaker vision for what the blogosphere has since taken to calling convergent Friends. I hope more people will stumble on Frost’s speech and be inspired, though I hope they will be careful not to tie this vision too closely with any existing institution and to remember the true source of that daily bread. Here’s a few more inspirational lines from Jerry:

We should remember that theology can provide a foundation for unity. We ought to be smart enough to realize that any formulation of what we believe or linking faith to modern thought is a secondary activity; to paraphrase Robert Barclay, words are description of the fountain and not the stream of living water. Those who created the FGC and reunited meetings knew the possibilities and dangers of theology, but they had a confidence that truth increased possibilities.

In a meeting for worship I attended a few years ago a woman rose and spoke about her work for peace. She told us of letters written and meetings attended; she certainly kept busy. She confessed that it is tiring work and she certainly sounded tired and put-upon. But she said she’d keep at it and she quoted early Friends’ mandate to us: that we must work to take away the occasion of war.

Read contemporary Friends literature and you’ll see this imperative all over the place. From one brochure: “We are called as Friends to lead lives that ‘take away the occasion of all wars.’ ” Yet this statement, like many contemporary statements on Quaker testimonies, is taken out of context. The actor has been switched and the message has been lost. For the peace testimony doesn’t instruct us to take away occasions.

The Quaker Peace Testimony: Living in the Power

The classic statement of the Quaker peace testimony is the 1660 Declaration. England was embroiled in war and insurrection. A failed political coup was blamed on Quakers and it looked like Friends were going to be persecuted once more by the civil authorities. But Friends weren’t interested in the political process swirling around them. They weren’t taking sides in the coups. “I lived in the virtue of that life and power that took away the occasion of all wars,” George Fox had told civil authorities ten years before and the signers of the declaration elaborated why they could not fight: “we do earnestly desire and wait, that by the Word of God’s power and its effectual operation in the hearts of men, the kingdoms of this world may become the kingdoms of the Lord.”

For all of the over-intellectualism within Quakerism today, it’s a surprise that these statements are so rarely parsed down. Look at Fox’s statement: many modern activists could agree we should take away occassion for war, certainly, but it’s a subordinate clause. It is not referring to the “we,” but instead modifies “power.” Our instructions are to live in that power. It is that power that does the work of taking away war’s occasion.

I’m not quibbling but getting to the very heart of the classic understanding of peace. It is a “testimony,” in that we are “testifying” to a larger truth. We are acknowledging something: that there is a Power (let’s start capitalizing it) that takes away the need for war. It is that Power that has made peace possible and that Power that has already acted and continues to act in our world. The job has actually been done. The occasion for war has been ended. Our relationship to this Power is simply to live in it. Around the time of the Declaration, George Fox wrote a letter to Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell :

The next morning I was moved of the Lord to write a paper to the Protector, Oliver Cromwell; wherein I did, in the presence of the Lord God, declare that I denied the wearing or drawing of a carnal sword, or any other outward weapon, against him or any man; and that I was sent of God to stand a witness against all violence, and against the works of darkness; and to turn people from darkness to light; and to bring them from the causes of war and fighting, to the peaceable gospel.

The peace testimony is actually a statement of faith. Not surprising really, or it shouldn’t be. Early Friends were all about shouting out the truth. “Christ has come to teach the people himself” was a early tagline. It’s no wonder that they stretched it out to say that Christ has taken away occasion for war. Hallelujiah!, I can hear them shout. Let the celebration begin. I always hear John Lennon echoing these celebrants when he sings “War is over” and follows with “if we want it.”

Obviously war isn’t over. People must still want it. And they do. War is rooted in lusts, James 4:1–3 tells us. Modern American greed for material things with ever more rapacity and blindness. We drive our S.U.V.s and then fight for oil supplies in the Persian Gulf. We worry that we won’t be popular or loved if we don’t use teeth-whitening strips or don’t obsess over the latest T.V. fad. We aren’t living in the Power and the Deceiver convinces us that war is peace.

But the Power is there. We can live in that Power and it will take away more than occasions for war, for it will take away the lusts and insecurities that lead to war.

Speaking Faith to Power

When you’ve acknowledge the Power, what does faith become? It becomes a testimony to the world. I can testify to you personally that there is a Power and that this Power will comfort you, teach you, guide you. Early Friends were proselytising when they wrote their statement. After writing his letter to Cromwell, Fox went to visit the man himself. Cromwell was undoubtedly the most powerful man in England and anything but a pacifist. He had raised and led armies against the king and it was he who ordered the beheading of King Charles I. And what did Fox talk about? Truth. And Jesus.

George Fox stood as a witness just as he promised, and tried to turn Cromwell from darkness to light, to bring him from the cause of war to the peaceable gospel. By Fox’s account, it almost worked:

As I was turning, he caught me by the hand, and with tears in his eyes said, “Come again to my house; for if thou and I were but an hour of a day together, we should be nearer one to the other”; adding that he wished me no more ill than he did to his own soul. I told him if he did he wronged his own soul; and admonished him to hearken to God’s voice, that he might stand in his counsel, and obey it; and if he did so, that would keep him from hardness of heart; but if he did not hear God’s voice, his heart would be hardened. He said it was true.

This then is the Quaker Peace Testimony. I don’t think it can be divorced from its spiritual basis. In the twentieth century, many leading Friends tried to dilute the Quaker message to make it more understandable and palatable for non-Friends. A line of George Fox was taken out of context and used so much that most Friends have adopted “that of God in everyone” as a unified creed, forgetting that it’s a modern phrase whose ambiguity Fox wouldn’t have appreciated. When we talk about peace, we often do so in very secularized language. We’re still trying to proselytize, but our message is a rationalist one that war can be solved by technocratic means and a more democratic apportionment of resources. Most contemporary statements have all the umph of a floor speech at the Democratic National Convention, with only throw-away references to “communities of faith,” and bland statements of “that of God” hinting that there might be something more to our message.

The freedom of living the Power

We actually share much of the peace testimony with a number of Christians. There are many Evangelical Christians who readily agree that there’s a Power but conclude that their job is just to wait for its return. They define the power strictly as Jesus Christ and the return as the Second Coming. They foresee a worldly Armageddon when peace will fail and thousands will die.

That’s not our way. Friends pulled Christianity out of the first century and refused to wait for any last century to declare that Jesus is here now, “to teach his people himself.” We keep constant vigil and rejoice to find the returned Christ already here, deep in our hearts, at work in the world. Our way of working for peace is to praise the Power, wait for its guidance and then follow it’s commands through whatever hardship await us. When we’re doing it right, we become instruments of God in the service of the Spirit. Christ does use us to take away the occasions for war!

But the waiting is necessary, the guidance is key. It gives us the strength to overcome overwork and burn-out and it gives us the direction for our work. The slickest, most expensive peace campaigns and the most dramatic self-inflating actions often achieve much less than the simple, humble, behind-the-scenes, year-in, year-out service. I suspect that the ways we’re most used by the Spirit are ways we barely perceive.

Quaker ministry is not a passive waiting. We pray, we test, we work hard and we use all the gifts our Creator has given us (intelligence, technologies, etc.). There are problems in the world, huge ones that need addressing and we will address them. But we do so out of a joy. And through our work, we ask others to join us in our joy, to lift up the cross with us, joining Jesus metaphorically in witnessing to the world.

The modern-day President ordering a war suffers from the same lack of faith that George Fox’s Cromwell did. They are ignorant or impatient of Christ’s message and so take peace-making into their own hands. But how much do faithless politicians differ from many contemporary peace activists? When I blockade a federal building or stand in front of a tank, am I trying to stop war myself? When I say it’s my job to “end the occasion for war,” am I taking on the work of God? I feel sad for the woman who rose in Meeting for Worship and told us how hard her peace work is. Each of us alone is incapable of bringing on world peace, and we turn in our own tracks with a quiet dispair. I’ve seen so many Quaker peace activists do really poor jobs with such a overwhelmed sense of sadness that they don’t get much support. Detached from the Spirit, we look to gain our self-worth from others and we start doing things simply to impress our worldly peers. If we’re lucky we get money but not love, respect but not a new voice lifted up in the choir of praise for the Creator. We’ve given up hope in God’s promise and despair is our ever-present companion.

Our testimony to the world

It doesn’t need to be this way. And I think for many Friends it hasn’t been. When you work for the Power, you don’t get attached to your work’s outcome in the same way. We’re just footsoldiers for the Lord. Often we’ll do things and have no idea how they’ve affected others. It’s not our job to know, for it’s not our job to be sucessful as defined by the world. Maybe all the work I’ve ever done for peace is for some exchange of ideas that I won’t recognize at the time. We need to strive to be gracious and grounded even in the midst of all the undramatic moments (as well as those most dramatic moments). We will be known to the world by how we witness our trust in God and by how faithfully we live our lives in obedience to the Spirit’s instructions.

Related Reading

Again, the link to the 1660 Declaration is the first stop for those wanting to understand Friends’ understanding on peacemaking.

Quaker Historian Jerry Frost talked about the peace testimony as part of his history of twentieth century Quakerism (“Non-violence seemed almost a panacea for liberal Friends seeking politically and socially relevant peace work”). Bill Samuel has written a history of the peace testimony with a good list of links. Lloyd Lee Wilson wrote about being a “Christian Pacifist” in the April 2003 edition of Quaker Life.

If wars are indeed rooted in lust, then nonviolent activism should be involved in examinating those lusts. In The Roots of Nonviolence (written for Nonviolence.org), I talk a little about how activists might relate to the deeper causes of the war to transcend the “anti-war” movement. One way I’ve been exploring anti-consumerism in with my re-examination of the Quaker tradition of plain dress.

For reasons I can’t understand, people sometimes read “Living in the Power: the Quaker Peace Testimony Reclaimed” and think I’m “advocating a retreat from directly engaging the problems of the world” (as one Friend put it). I ask those who think I’m positing some sort of either/or duality betwen faith vs. works, or ministry vs. activism, to please reread the essay. I have been a peace activist for over fifteen years and run nonviolence.org [update: ran, I laid it down in 2008), a prominent website on nonviolence. I think some of the misunderstandings are generational.

This was a post I sent to the “Pearl” email list, which consists of members of the 2002 FGC Gathering workshop led by Lloyd Lee Wilson of North Carolina Yearly Meeting (Conservative). Eighth Month 20, 2002

I thought I’d share some of my journey in plain-ness since Gathering. There’s two parts to plain dress: simplicity and plain-ness.

The most important part of the simplicity work has been simplifying my wardrobe. It’s incredible how many clothes I have. I suspect I have a lot fewer than most Americans but there’s still tons, and never enough room in the closets & dressers (I do have small closets but still!). I’d like to get all my clothes into one or two dresser drawers and donate the rest to charity. Two pairs of pants, a couple of shirts, a few days worth of socks and undergarments. This requires that I wash everything frequently which means I hand-wash things but that’s okay. The point is to not worry or think about what I’m going to wear every morning. I’ve been to a wedding and a funeral since I started going plain and it was nice not having to fret about what to wear.

I also appreciate using less resources up by having fewer clothes. It’s hard to get away from products that don’t have some negative side effects (support of oil industry, spilling of chemical wastes into streams, killing of animals for hide, exploitation of people constructing the clothes at horrible wages & conditions). I try my best to balance these concerns but the best way is to reduce the use.

These motivations are simple-ness rather than plain-ness. But I am trying to be plain too. For men it’s pretty easy. My most common clothing since Gathering has been black pants, shoes and suspenders, and the combo seems to look pretty plain. There’s no historic authenticity. The pants are Levi-Dockers which I already own, the shoes non-leather ones from Payless, also already owned. The only purchase was suspenders from Sears. I bought black overalls too. My Dockers were victims of a minor bike accident last week (my scraped knee & elbow are healing well, thank you, and my bike is fine) and I’m replacing them with thicker pants that will hold up better to repeated washing & use. There’s irony in this, certainly. If I were being just simple, I’d wear out all the pants I have–despite their color–rather than buy new ones. I’d be wearing some bright & wacky pants, that’s for sure! But irony is part of any witness, especially in the beginning when there’s some lifestyle shifting that needs to happen. As a person living in the world I’m bound to have contradictions: they help me to not take myself too seriously and I try to accept them with grace and good humor.

But practicality in dress more important to me than historical authenticity. I don’t want to wear a hat since I bike every day and want to keep my head free for the helmet; it also feels like my doing it would go beyond the line into quaintness. The only type of clothing that’s new to my wardrobe is the suspenders and really they are as practical as a belt, just less common today. A few Civil War re-enactment buffs have smilingly observed that clip-on suspenders aren’t historically authentic but that’s perfectly okay with me. I also wear collars, that’s perfectly okay with me too.

The other thing that I’m clear about is that the commandment to plain dress is not necessarily eternal. It is situational, it is partly a response to the world and to Quakerdom and it does consciously refer to certain symbols. God is what’s eternal, and listening to the call of Christ within is the real commandment. If I were in a Quaker community that demanded plain dress, I expect I would feel led to break out the tie-die and bleach and manic-panic hair coloring. Dress is an outward form and like all outward forms and practices, it can easily become a false sacrament. If we embrace the form but forget the source (which I suspect lots of Nineteenth Century Friends did), then it’s time to cause a ruckus.

Every so often Friends need to look around and take stock of the state of the Society. At the turn of the 20th Century, they did that. There’s a fascinating anti-plain dress book from that time that argues that it’s a musty old tradition that should be swept away in light of the socialist ecumenical world of the future. I suspect I would have had much sympathy for the position at the time, especially if I were in a group of Friends who didn’t have the fire of the Spirit and wore their old clothes only because their parents had and it was expected of Quakers.

Today the situation is changed. We have many Friends who have blended in so well with modern suburban America that they’re indistinguishable in spirit or deed. They don’t want to have committee meeting on Saturdays or after Meeting since that would take up so much time, etc. They’re happy being Quakers as long as not much is expected and as long as there’s no challenge and no sacrifice required. We also have Friends who think that the peace testimony and witness is all there is (confusing the outward form with the source again, in my opinion). When a spiritual emptiness sets into a community there are two obvious ways out: 1) bring in the fads of the outside world (religious revivalism in the 19 Century, socialist ecumenicalsim in the 20th, Buddhism and sweat lodges in the 21st). or 2) re-examine the fire of previous generations and figure out what babies you threw away with the bathwater in the last rebellion against empty outward form.

I think Quakers really found something special 350 years ago, or rediscovered it and that we are constantly rediscovering it. I have felt that power/ I know that there is still one, named Jesus Christ, who can speak to my condition and that the Spirit comes to teach the people directly. I’ll read old journals and put on old clothes to try to understand early Friends’ beliefs. The clothes aren’t important, I don’t want to give them too much weight. But there is a tradition of Quakers taking on plain dress upon some sort of deep spiritual convincement (it is so much of a cliche of old Quaker journals that literary types classify it as part of the essential structure of the journals). I see plain dress as a reminder we give ourselves that we are trying to live outside the worldliness of our times and serve the eternal. My witness to others is simply that I think Quakerism is something to commit oneself wholly to (yes, I’ll meet on a Saturday) and that there are some precious gifts in traditional Quaker faith & practice that could speak to the spiritual crisis many Friends feel today.

In friendship,
Martin Kelley
Atlantic City Area MM, NJ
martink@martinkelley.com

Related Posts

• Plain Dressing at the FGC Gathering (Seventh Month 2004)
• Gohn Brothers and some plain dressing tips (Seventh Month 2004)