Brent Nongbri is a post-doctoral research fellow in early Christianity at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. His 2013 book, Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept, offers a corrective to the modern concept of religion “as…

Rebuilt: As the Court of Quaker Opinion can promote, we have the task of re-assembling the grand, old model of Quakerism.

Authentic: What, as spiritual hobby, you value as antique.

Rebuilt: And, in need of enhanced performance.

Authentic: As vehicle, rather than horse-and-pony, show.

Rebuilt: As rebuilt in a post-modern version of itself.

Authentic: To answer the hip roadsters of contemporary religion?

Rebuilt: To take the model off historical…

They speak of me as if I am not there. I am in first person. I am the Presence they point to in their abstracted linguistics and outward forms but I am not Present in their act of speaking. I am in the room yet they speak as if I were not. I am right there in their midst yet they cling to their linguistic forms ... their eyes and minds enchanted by outward words, ideas, ideology, religious forms and practices. I am none of these. I am the Life, the Presence, pushed to third person, the Life…

I journey through the days knowing the Life and the Death. I am in the living story. I am in the Light and the Light is in me. I am in the world but no longer of it. My identity is anchored in eternal Life. I am eternal. The rationalizations of the abstract mind grow ever quiet. I am in the Quiet and the Quiet is me.



I am when talking with friends and associates. The Spirit fades less and less in outward communication. Faith is in the playfulness of eternal being/Being right in…