Kwakersaur: Jesus vs Christ vs Discernment

January 26, 2005

“Inter­est­ing short post”:http://kwakersaur.blogspot.com/2005/01/jesus-language.html from Kwak­er­saur about the dif­fer­ent ways Friends have relat­ed to God cir­ca 1660, 1950 and today. A snippet
bq. [The first gen­er­a­tion of Friends’] lan­guage lacked the me-an-Jesus kind of spir­i­tu­al­i­ty that marks the 1955 min­utes and char­ac­ter­izes a lot of Chris­t­ian spir­i­tu­al­i­ty of today. For ear­ly Quak­ers — and I sus­pect ear­ly Chris­tians — it was not so much Jesus as a friend­ly affa­ble fel­low who loved us in a warm and com­fy positive-strokes-I’m-OK-You’re-OK kin­da way.

Con­tin­ue read­ing

Johan Maurer: More about boldness

November 12, 2004

Johan has a great post about “Quak­er evan­ge­liz­ing in Russia”:http://maurers.home.mindspring.com/2004/11/more-about-boldness.htm that real­ly applies to Quak­ers reach­ing out any­where. My favorite paragraph:
bq. I per­son­al­ly have a hard time with hob­by­ist Quak­erism, espe­cial­ly when defined in terms of ultra­finicky pre­scrip­tions of how “we” do things, “our” spe­cial pro­ce­dures and folk­ways, or any­thing else that detracts from Jesus being in the cen­ter of our com­mu­ni­ty life. How can we present some­thing so stilt­ed and crab­by and cul­tur­al­ly spe­cif­ic as an answer to spir­i­tu­al bondage? It is just anoth­er form of bondage!

Con­tin­ue read­ing

Missional Churches and Half-Hearted Welcomes

September 11, 2004

Over on my main “Non​vi​o​lence​.org blog”:http://www.nonviolence.org/articles/000436.php I link to Punkmon­key’s great post, “refus­ing to get political”:http://ginkworld.blogspot.com/2004/09/refusing-to-get-political.html, where he talks about why Chris­t­ian paci­fism is more than sim­ply anti-war activism. Oh how I wish more Quak­ers knew this! I like Punkmon­key’s blog a lot. He’s also recent­ly writ­ten about what it would mean to be a “mis­sion­al com­mu­ni­ty of faith”:http://ginkworld.blogspot.com/2004/07/missional-community-of-faith.html:
bq. a mis­sion­al com­mu­ni­ty of faith is a liv­ing breath­ing trans­par­ent com­mu­ni­ty of faith will­ing to get messy while reach out to, and bring­ing in, those out­side the cur­rent community
Amen broth­er. The whole post is great. I love his cri­tique of check-writing church­es (per­fect­ly applic­a­ble to most peace and social con­cerns com­mit­tees I’ve seen). He also hits some­thing I see a lot: Meet­ings that are “wel­com­ing and exclud­ing” in their cliquish­ness: “small groups of peo­ple who seem friend­ly, and wel­com­ing but in actu­al­i­ty are not wel­com­ing.” Punkmon­key’s not Quak­er but Bebbe­blog’s Joe Gua­da is and I start­ed read­ing his posts next. There I found a real­ly inter­est­ing coun­ter­point: “Can I be a (fill in the blank here) & be a Quak­er, too?”:http://beppeblog.blogspot.com/2004/09/file-under-Quakerism-religion-can-i-be.html. Joe’s post also talks about iden­ti­ty, prax­is and super­fi­cial half-welcoming. He quotes a friend who’s not joined Quakers:
bq. Yes, I know that every­one has the Inner Light. Yes, I remem­ber how uncom­fort­able it is to be look­ing for a group and to feel left out (though it’s not as uncom­fort­able as feel­ing like you’re part of the group, get­ting deeply involved and then find­ing out that you’re a bad fit because peo­ple weren’t telling you up front that you did­n’t fit).
Lots of great read­ing in all this!

Plain Dress Discussion on Yahoo

April 19, 2004

Julie, my wife, has just start­ed a Yahoo group called PlainAnd­Mod­est­Dress.
Here’s her description:

This group is for Chris­tians inter­est­ed in dis­cussing issues of reli­gious plain and mod­est dress. It is not nec­es­sary to have grown up in a plain or mod­est­ly dress­ing group. We are espe­cial­ly inter­est­ed in the expe­ri­ences of those who have come to this point as a sort of con­ver­sion or a “recov­ery” of tra­di­tion that has been lost. Tra­di­tion­al Catholics, Anabap­tists, con­ser­v­a­tive Quak­ers, and oth­er Chris­tians wel­come here. The­o­log­i­cal points and demon­i­na­tion­al dif­fer­ences are open for dis­cus­sion (not argu­ment), as are the specifics of what type of plain dress you have been called to. Dis­cus­sion of head­cov­er­ing is also allowed here, as are gen­der dis­tinc­tions in dress. We may also share prayers for one anoth­er, as well as the chal­lenges we face in try­ing to live in obe­di­ence to the Lord. This is not a forum in which to dis­cuss the valid­i­ty of Chris­tian­i­ty – no blas­phem­ing allowed. 

There is much to be said about plain dress. This is not an easy wit­ness. It forces us to deal with issues of sub­mis­sion and humil­i­ty on a dai­ly basis – just try to go to a con­ve­nience store and not feel self-consciously set apart. Explain­ing this new ‘style’ to one’s more world­ly friends can be quite a chal­lenge. These are eter­nal issues for those adopt­ing plain dress and I laugh with com­rade­ship when I read old Quak­er jour­nal accounts of going plain.
Even so, I have a bit of trep­i­da­tion about a news­group on plain dress. I don’t want to fetishize plain dress by talk­ing about it too much. The point should­n’t be to for­mu­late some sort of ‘uni­form of the right­eous,’ and adop­tion of this tes­ti­mo­ny should­n’t be moti­vat­ed by peer pres­sure or ambi­tion, but by a call­ing from the Holy Spir­it – this is the crux of what I under­stand Mar­garet Fell to have been say­ing when she called pres­sured plain­ness a “sil­ly poor gospel”. (I should say that some non-Quaker do dress more as an iden­ti­fy­ing uni­form, which is fine, just not nec­es­sar­i­ly the Quak­er rationale).
But like any out­ward form or tes­ti­mo­ny (peace, Quak­er process, etc.), tak­ing up plain dress can be a fruit­ful course in reli­gious edu­ca­tion. I think back to being sev­en­teen and buck­ing my father’s wish that I attend the Naval Acad­e­my – my “no” made me ask how else my beliefs about peace might need to be act­ed out in my life. It became a use­ful query. Plain dress has forced me to think anew about how I “con­sume” cloth­ing and how I relate to mass mar­ket­ing and the glob­al cloth­ing indus­try. It’s also kept me from duck­ing out on my faith, as I wear an iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of my beliefs.
So join the plain dress dis­cus­sion or take a look at the ever-growing sec­tion of the site called Resources on Quak­er Plain Dress, which includes “My Exper­i­ments with Plain­ness”, my ear­ly sto­ry about going plain.

Visit with Christian Friends Conference & New Foundation Fellowship

March 15, 2004

In late Jan­u­ary 2004, I went to a gath­er­ing on “Quak­er Faith and Prac­tice: The Wit­ness of Our Lives and Words,” co-sponsored by the Chris­t­ian Friends Con­fer­ence and the New Foun­da­tion Fel­low­ship. Here are some thoughts about the meeting.

Con­tin­ue read­ing

Evangelical Friend’s Take on the Postmodern Church

March 1, 2004

I’ve long been curi­ous about whether any­one in the Evan­gel­i­cal branch of Friends has been fol­low­ing the “emer­gent church” move­ment. Now I find that Bruce Bish­op , for­mer Youth Super­in­ten­dent of North­west Year­ly Meet­ings, has writ­ten a primer called Post­mod­ernism: Taste and See that the Lord Is Good
bq. “Post­mod­ernism” – we see that label bandied about quite a bit these days. And like the once-frequent phrase “Gen­er­a­tion X,” post­mod­ernism is often seen as anti-Christian and some­thing that the church needs to fight. I would beg to differ.
I don’t par­tic­u­lar­ly like the term “post­mod­ern,” as the philo­soph­i­cal and pop-culture def­i­n­i­tions almost com­plete­ly con­tra­dict one anoth­er, but he’s talk­ing phi­los­o­phy, so MTV watch­ers should lis­ten past the words. (Bish­op is in good com­pa­ny in his con­tin­ued use in the term: “Here’s Jor­dan Cooper”:http://www.jordoncooper.com/2004_03_01_archives.html#107896665936703076 and “Bri­an McLaren”:http://www.emergentvillage.com/index.cfm?PAGE_ID=797 talk­ing about the prob­lems with the term and their expla­na­tions of why they’re still using it).
I real­ly _really_ hope Bruce Bish­op writes a follow-up address­ing how Friends might relate to this move­ment (“see my thoughts here”:http://www.nonviolence.org/Quaker/emerging_church.php).

FGC on Quaker Religious Ed

February 12, 2004

One of the pieces I helped put online in my role of FGC web­mas­ter is FGC Reli­gious Edu­ca­tion: Lessons for the 21st Cen­tu­ry, by Beck­ey Phipps. It’s def­i­nite­ly worth a read. It’s com­prised of inter­views of three Friends:

Ernie Busce­mi: “It is the most amaz­ing thing, all the kids that I know that have gone into [Quak­er] lead­er­ship pro­grams – they’ve dis­ap­peared. I see the same thing [hap­pen­ing] as a woman and per­son of col­or, we are doing some­thing wrong.”

Mar­ty Grundy: “Our branch [of Friends] has dis­card­ed the tools by which ear­li­er Friends’ prac­tices were formed. We’ve lost our under­stand­ing of what it is that we are about.”

Arthur Larrabee: “We need to tap into God’s ener­gy and God’s joy. Ear­ly Friends had that ener­gy, they had a vision, they had the con­nec­tion with the inward Christ, a source of infi­nite ener­gy pow­er and joy.”

While I wish this could be extend­ed a bit (e.g., why not ask the ‘kids’ them­selves where they’ve gone), at least these are the right questions.