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Permalink Reply by Forrest Curo on 11th mo. 7, 2020 at 1:03pm

Older than the article you cite... in  http://sneezingflower.blogspot.com/2006/09/pamphlet-of-few-years-ag...

"Among the reasons we don't make converts like early Friends: people expect to be told what a church 'believes,' and modern Friends don't work that way. The most widespread consensus among us is probably that we shouldn't work that way. But between us and that Apostolic church, both groups are missing something. Perhaps another chart (or two) will help me understand this better.

..................      faith & connection to God
............................           ^
............................           |
........Apostolic-style      | Friends (& others)
............churches....        | at their best
...........................            |           
doctrinal rigidity<------------------------------> openness
............................           |
typical modern people | most modern Friends
............................           | and meetings
............................           v
.................. .         materialistic world-view

This is good, as far as it goes, but it leaves out some other relevant dimensions.

..................... coherent message and orientation in world
...............................        ^ ............................... |
..................... 'beliefs'     |      process of
..............................          |      learning
..............................          |
...............................         |
fixed doctrine <------------------------------> openness
..............................          |
..............................          | 
................. 'opinions'      |        confusion
..............................          |
..............................          v
..................... being adrift, with no unifying context

On this chart, I would put much of the Society of Friends down in the lower right. That represents a more desirable condition than the lower left, but is not at all where I'd like us--way up along that central axis, living in the tension between 'doctrine' and 'openness,' but with a coherent message for the world and each other.
There must be something we know, can share, and can insist on, without shutting our ears to what else God might have to say. This 'something' would not be a creed or a testimony--for a committee to entomb in a suitable minute--but an underlying, mutually-known sense of God's intentions and our place in them.
Early Friends had this, and we do not. "

------

Political unity ought to follow from this. Without that sense of God's purposes, people come down with ideologies they misname as "Conservative" or "Liberal" (and mistake for 'religion', alas.)

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Permalink Reply by William F Rushby on 11th mo. 7, 2020 at 2:23pm

Hello, Forrest!  I haven't yet made it to the end of your "stream of consciousness" post!!  I'll keep working on it, in modest doses.

You have offered what I might call a tangle of ideas, flashes of insight and some serious observations concerning the Society of Friends.  It's hard for me to tell even where to begin a reply.  For the present, I think it best to wait to see what others offer by way of reaction.

To all of the astonished bystanders: you don't need to reply to Forrest in a single, monolithic response.  Instead, pick out a loose thread in his ball of yarn and tell us what you think!!!

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Permalink Reply by Forrest Curo on 11th mo. 7, 2020 at 3:20pm

Consciousness seems to disturb a lot of people.

That way of mapping the relationship between ideas onto an axis, and plotting where various mixes of them would fit in that conceptional space, came to me via Dan Snyder at Pendle Hill.  I'm afraid I recommend it more than I use it; it does help resolve confusions (when one doesn't find the method itself confusing.)

I should have put the link in a footnote; the part most relevant to your concern is in my comment here.

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Permalink Reply by William F Rushby on 11th mo. 8, 2020 at 8:27pm

So far no reports of meetings growing or declining by 2% or more.

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Permalink Reply by Forrest Curo on 11th mo. 9, 2020 at 9:42am

Of the two Meetings in my city, one has been suffering attrition-through-deaths, while the other has evidently been growing.

I haven't toted up their respective numbers, because that's a sociology-of-religious-organisations issue, while my interest is in something else: Are they helping people recognize and cooperate with God's work in and around them? [The shrinking (but still hanging-in Meeting) seems to had a strong and positive effect in this direction for at least some people I've met there. Others, if they were influenced at all, have drifted off... but this is very much a city of people moving to and fro in the world. Some of the best new members we get are too soon on their way to other cities.]

In any case, meeting for zoom-worship is more convenient for some -- but feels too much, for me, like trying to worship with a bunch of pictures. We may actually gain some people, meanwhile, but I won't be able to say anything useful about them until we finally gather again!

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Permalink Reply by William F Rushby on 11th mo. 9, 2020 at 2:00pm

A further question: do these meetings have any children, young adults, young married couples and singles?  What is done to include them in the meeting?  Or, are they "also-rans" while the meeting caters mostly to over-60s?

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Permalink Reply by William F Rushby on 11th mo. 9, 2020 at 3:03pm

Actually, the first question I put to interested readers is indeed a sociology of religious organization issue, but it is also a sociology of communal survival matter.  Avoiding "the numbers" is a cop-out unless the Society of Friends can reinvent itself as an "unembodied" internet discussion group!

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