Comments on: The scent of communal religion

By: 3377Dawn

3377Dawn — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 16:08:00 +0000

Dear Friends, I traced my family tree to the1700’s & on my fathers side. I found that they were all quakers.Many of these people were teachers, Justice of the Peace, & preachers. They believed in hard work,& strong family values.
One of the quotes„„Misconception started from an error,However an error no matter how many times repeated & no matter how honestly beleived. Still remains an error. Our words are are own experience.…Dawn

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 01:15:37 +0000

I've experienced a vivacious young chrisian outreach church(evangelical applies, but they, and I use that word with some caution), and any number of traditional & Newman house Cathlolic churches, a few unitarians, a joyful Baptist (probably southern), a frightening christian evangelical, and quite a few methodist churches. I've only had the chance to visit a meeting of friends once, when I was rather young. Looking for a faith that never quite fit isn't an easy path, but is educational. I've noticed that you're right about using language to have something to offer. Most churches that are obviously learning together, where the speaker is sharing an idea that they're learning about, have been effective at offering something for both the new and their experienced members. Churches blessed with a good speaker, who is exploring areas of faith that the congregation really needs help understanding, create an incredibly appealing environment of learning, trust and shared seeking. Once you experience that shared learning, a moment of a preacher trying to grasp a concept, trying to put words towards it, there's an incredible craving to talk about it, to find helpful material on it, whether it's a relevant quote from a bible, another religious writer, or your own experience. Having actual journals to turn to must be amazing. Of course, other people have had to struggle with the same issues of faith... being able to go to an old journal entry of someone from the same faith thinking their way through the problem must be astounding. If we think this century is a hard place for spiritual people to live, what about the last? America was growing, people moving away to seek opportunities, the economy heating up and collapsing in on itself like a bonfire every few decades.. popular clothing becoming less modest, immigrants coming into a society that's not sure how to integrate them, or whether there are jobs to spare.. sound familiar? Most faiths I've been involved with don't provide much information on how these challenges were handled a century ago. Honestly, from what I've seen, faith communities that talk about challenges often form a vocabulary around them. The process of discussing it helps everyone build common meaning for the words, and a common understanding of the challenges, and as that happens, they generally start handling the challenges far more effectively. A community can be strengthened. Most religious communities that are struggling have some area where their member's needs aren't getting met, and they're afraid to talk about it. I think we need words we can all understand together. So, we start with the generic. As I'm not very familiar with your community, I've been trying to stick to dictionary words that aren't too heavily laden with implications. Lay minister is a useful term sometimes, but speaker is generally just as good. I've also learned not to use hot words when it's not necessary, as I often find I get burned. Evangelist is a useful word.. but it's unfairly weighed down with some less pleasant connotations. Generally, I find churches that talk about this type of personal experience the most helpful, and enlightening. They'll build on terms like faith journey, which means an ongoing journey of seeking to get closer to god, or seeking.. till fairly simple, understandable terms start to carry a little more meaning

By: Rudy

Rudy — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 16:58:08 +0000

Oops, as soon as I left the keyboard I had a few additional thoughts…
The majority of Friends in the world are Evangelical, and those ideas came from “outside” in the 19th century. I’m not sure what
to make of this exactly in the context of your project, but I think
it means “Evangelical Christian” is very much part of the Quaker tradition now.
On the other hand, my wife is from upstate New York, the Burned Over District, and in local history there one runs into all varieties of religion, including Jemima Wilkinson, the Publick Universal Friend; she started out as a Quaker. I think Mother Ann Lee was a Quaker originally, or at least an attender 🙂 in the UK, before starting her movement and moving to the US.
They obviously had little influence on Quaker tradition (well, except “Simple Gifts”).

By: Rudy

Rudy — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 16:32:27 +0000

Martin, I am not trying to convince you to respect the ideas; I have a lot of trouble with New Age stuff in particular. And I imagine that you *do* respect some of the ideas on your list. What I am having trouble with is just the “whatever pop idea intrigues them” expression, which sounds to me like you’re dissing the people who
hold the ideas.
I understand that you are trying to say that they shouldn’t say that
Buddhist/Evangelical/whatever ideas are ‑Quaker- ideas, and I can
see how irritating that could be, but why the snide dismissal as
“pop ideas” that simply “intrigue” them? As opposed to “deep ideas
that speak to their condition, but are simply not Quakerism?”
I often find Buddhist writings that speak to me, though I’m not
a Buddhist Quaker. The Epistle of James is often said to have a Buddhist tone; I recall reading that connection years before I became a Quaker, and learned that James was a favorite among Quakers. There has got to something deep going on there.
I may be overly sensitive about this; I recall being upset with a friend who dismissed ideas of mine he disagreed with as “fashionable”, as though I had just absorbed them from People
Magazine.
I am not sure what to say to the other part of your feelings, about the Everything Can Be Quakerism being disrespectful to the tradition, or to people trying to recover the tradition. I sort of sense what you mean, but I’m not sure what those people could do differently, especially since the Quaker tradition of the future might include the ideas of those people.

By: Martin Kelley

Martin Kelley — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 18:33:21 +0000

@Rudy, well yes, I don’t have all that much respect for some of the silly ideas that people have tried to label Quaker. New ideas are fine but insisting that anything any Quaker believes is de facto Quaker means the term doesn’t mean anything. I find it very disrespectful and very distracting to those of us who are trying to understand what this tradition means.

By: Rudy

Rudy — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 13:21:17 +0000

The phrase “whatever pop culture idea intrigues them” jumps out at
me as not very respectful.
I’m intrigued by any number of popcultural/mainstream/philosophical
ideas because the “speak to my condition”.
I agree with you about the need to look deeper into our own tradition. Compare Catholicism though: that huge, huge denomination has/had Teilhard, Ricouer, liberation theology, Rosemary Ruether, Rene Girard (I think he’s Catholic), conservative and reactionary thinkers, the current Pope.
Quakers are just not that large a tradition. New ideas are just
in the nature of things, going to come from the outside.

By: Paul Ricketts

Paul Ricketts — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 22:41:32 +0000

You are right,
We are not Quakers in isolation but are part of a
living faith that spans 2000 years.
First leg would be, experiential-the direct experience.
God speaks to us not only today but in the livesof our sisters and brothers who have went before us.
The three-legged stool for me is a metaphor to describe how we take into consideration Experiential, Contemplative, Activism, each one informing the other two, to discern truth.

By: Martin Kelley

Martin Kelley — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 12:52:45 +0000

@Craig: definitely the most glaring part of the Quaker message that Conservative Friends haven't followed is the need to spread the Good News. Ohio's experiments are certainly interesting, if sometimes ironic (in some ways they're the most forward thinking and liberal yearly meetings in the world). I definitely hope they continue experimenting. @Paul: I'm not a carpenter so I won't try to figure out the perfect number of legs for a stool. But the piece that's missing from your three legs is tradition. We don't have to make all this up as we go along. Others have come before us and we are part of an old family. Quaker journals from generations past and the Bible are all important touchstones that gives us the language to understand and talk about the direct experience with one another. Many Friends today misunderstand the Quaker understanding of continual revelation and think that whatever pop culture idea intrigues them can be rolled up into Quakerism as long as we tweak the names of a few terms. You get some Friends pulling in New Age ideas as others pull in Christian Evangelical ones, as others explore Buddhism and others go Presbyterian. You can name just about any American spiritual movement or sub-movements and find a Quaker advocating it as the next Quaker thing, blogging about it and getting all offended when other Friends don't want to write it into Faith and Practice or don't think it an appropriate workshop at a Quaker gathering. It's not easy to balance tradition with new experiences and revelation--just look at how many Friends have hurt each other and their neighbors around issues of slavery and same-sex acceptance. Trying new things can get us out of our rut and can help us understand ourselves in a fresh way. But our shared history and our hundreds (thousands) of years of prayer and discernment need to be one of the legs of any stool we build.