QuakerQuaker

Primitive Christianity Revived, Again

Becoming the Community the Spirit Would Have Us Be

Note: I originally posted this as a comment to Mike Shell’s stimulating blog, “Seeing Beyond the Projections” (which I recommend you also read). I offer it here as a separate blog to invite comments just on it.

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It is unfortunate that many of our Quaker meetings/churches have brought into the meetinghouse the divisiveness that is so prevalent in the world at large. One of the great charges of Jesus is that God provides for and loves all - even those we might individually consider wrong, misguided, and so forth. Lao-tzu in the Tao Te Ching says the same thing. Further, Jesus stated that we each should love all in this same perfect manner. If this isn't "universalism", then I don't know what is. Yet, you cannot love someone of a different perspective, if you don't take the first action of welcoming them into your spiritual community.

I will speak here from the liberal Quaker perspective - but my questions could easily apply also to pastoral and evangelical Friends. If our meetings do not appeal to the varying shades of Christianity and general spirituality, the whole political spectrum, the rainbow of ethnic origins, varied economic backgrounds, and intellectual capacities - then we just might not be loving (as a community) others, as Jesus suggests we should. It is one thing to say we accept all; but the 'proof in the pudding' is how comfortable are the 'all' being among us.

Again, let's just take liberal Quakers as an example (an easy one to point to for me because I am part of a liberal Quaker meeting). The form of worship utilized by liberal Quakers could be an inviting environment for all - no pastor, no sermon, no anything but the living Spirit to minister among us. However, many of our meetings don't come off as inviting to Republicans, Evangelical Christians, etc. Our dedication to the movement of the Spirit among us should be uniting us in love - period. Yet, we often act as the world does by sending subtle messages that we don't respect, accept, or value these "others".

We must ask ourselves direct questions as a meeting in order to reform ourselves into the community the Spirit wants us to be. Such as, "Do we emphasize our SPICES testimonies (Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Community, Equality, Stewardship) without also emphasizing what political action Friends should take? Does our Peace and Social Concerns committee stick to these testimonies - or do they direct Friends on how they should vote or what they should support in order to "be good Quakers"? Example: My yearly meeting's Peace committee recently sent out a directive that Friends should contact their legislators about supporting the Iran Nuclear Treaty. This was done in a directive manner without first arriving at a sense of the yearly meeting that we ALL wanted to do this? Yet, we have some politically conservative Friends among us who sincerely believe that this treaty will lead to war, violating our Peace testimony. Surely, it must be obvious to any objective person that our common support for our testimonies does not mean we all support the same political actions in order to manifest them.

Our meetings/churches would do well to embrace some humility before we make assumptions about those among us. While we all embrace love and light, it is unlikely that we all embrace the same application of these in daily earthly life. And unless we have come to a common understanding through our Quaker process that we are unified in particular secular action, we must concentrate on spiritual unity above all else. This is the only way we will ever be able to demonstrate that we actively love all. The Bible itself says “God is Love”, and so it makes perfect sense that Jesus consistently advocated for Love above all else. What better basis for our spiritual unity could we have than this?

This simple change in attitude within our meetings/churches could make a distinguishing difference and a witness to the world we live in.

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Comment by William F Rushby on 9th mo. 20, 2015 at 10:31pm: Kirby, I am a Conservative Friend. I have never attended a programmed Friends meeting on a regular basis.

You called ministers in programmed meetings "hireling priests." This is more evidence that you have a "name-calling" problem!

How can you "wage peace" when there is so much animosity in your heart??

Comment by Kirby Urner on 9th mo. 20, 2015 at 10:42pm: William -- That's just Quakerism 101.

Friends,
Keep at a word in all your dealings without oppression.
And keep to the sound language, thou to everyone.
And keep your testimony against the world's vain fashions.
And keep your testimony against the hireling priests, and their tithes, and maintenance.

-- George Fox

http://www.hallvworthington.com/Letters/gfsection11a.html (my emphasis)

I guess my advice to newcomers would be: if you have zero tolerance for "name calling", you've come to the wrong religion.

Comment by William F Rushby on 9th mo. 20, 2015 at 10:55pm: I guess I am not exactly a newcomer! I joined Friends when I was 18; I am now 74. I have zero tolerance for name calling, particularly when the invective originates from an adult who claims to be a Friend. Don't hide behind George Fox. This is not the 17th Century!

Comment by Forrest Curo on 9th mo. 20, 2015 at 11:10pm: Kirby, you remind me of a game in a novel I read once. The nobles would recruit a few willing peasants for some tiny payment, blindfold them, and put them in a pigsty armed with clubs. Whoever could hit the pig would get a prize; but of course they simply ended up beating each other half to death.

They called this game, "Beating the Blind Pig." The spectators enjoyed it immensely.

But it isn't a game to let yourself be caught up in.

Comment by Forrest Curo on 9th mo. 20, 2015 at 11:33pm: When I first joined Friends, I thought I was enlisting in the shock troops of the Lamb's War. But nothing has turned out quite as I'd expected, neither Friends, nor me, nor my Assignment from the Big Guy.

Either there is a value in the life of a human being, quite apart from whatever utility they might possess as cannon fodder for one good Cause or another... or we've got nothing to seek peace for...

Comment by Stephanie Stuckwisch on 9th mo. 20, 2015 at 11:55pm: Kirby, I was naming a tactic I have observed many times over many years by many people. I obviously hit a nerve.

This conversation has deteriorated and I'm tired of participating in it.

Comment by Kirby Urner on 9th mo. 21, 2015 at 12:02am: I found this thread useful in crystallizing many differences. Thanks to all for their participation, and to QuakerQuaker. I've already started linking to these comments from other writings -- so useful to have URLs for everything. Quakers take to the Internet like ducks to water, or at least some do. At 57, born to Quaker parents (both convinced), my span of years matches William's (74 - 18). I have plenty of tolerance for name calling and listen attentively as new ones get invented.

Comment by Keith Saylor on 9th mo. 21, 2015 at 12:31am: Hello Howard. You wrote:

"While we all embrace love and light ... "

I welcomed your post when I first read it couple days ago and needed to take some time with your words quoted above. The word "embrace" struct me and I played around a bit with it. What if we "braced" love and light? What if love and light were embracing or bracing us all? Then back again. If we are bracing love and light, what is the brace? Are we the brace? Is love and light the brace holding us together? Or better yet, should love and light be the brace that holds us in position or together? You then went on to say:

"... we must concentrate on spiritual unity above all else."

Is "spiritual unity" when Love and Light braces us (that is, anchors our conscious and conscience) and we embrace Love and Light? You wrote we must "concentrate" on "spiritual unity," this is, we must bring our efforts, faculties, activities, etc., to bear on one thing or activity and that one thing is a oneness of spirit among diverse people.

To experience a conscious and conscience braced by Love and Light and that paradoxically embraces Love and Light itself is the experience of unity. Isn't this the glory and grace of the inward Presence of Christ; that by the inward power of Love and Light itself we know Love and Light in all things and all events even in those outward circumstances where we do not agree.

What a gift to know this heavenly nature right now and in all moments! Thank you for sharing Love and Light; for your words have strengthened Love and Light within me as the Kingdom of Heaven manifests even now as I express my gratitude.

Blessings.

Comment by Howard Brod on 9th mo. 21, 2015 at 8:47am: After decades upon decades of being a Quaker and experiencing all that Quakers have to offer (yes, even pastoral and evangelical meetings/churches), I have returned to the heart of the very earliest Friends: our simple expectant waiting worship. That is indeed what Quakerism is all about. Everything godly for us springs from that. And it is so sad to me that so many Friends today prefer to emphasize all of the supporting Quaker structures (committees, Quaker traditions, Quaker history, Quaker terminology, politics, doctrines ("notions"), etc.) - and scarcely tend to our simple form of worship.

It is our revolutionary worship, which brings us in direct worshipful contact with the divine, that is our heart and soul. Bill Rushby is correct in my estimation - that without a return to that realization, we are doomed to dwindle. Everything else can come and go over time, depending on the current need. Rather than quoting George Fox, we should simply appreciate the wonderful expectant waiting worship he stumbled upon. Only good things for humankind lead from it in our day and every day into the future.

Comment by Howard Brod on 9th mo. 21, 2015 at 8:54am: Thanks Keith for your affirmations of Love and Light.

We had the most wonderful sharing of that Love and Light during my meeting's Circle of Friends as we read and pondered your words from "A Witness from Heaven". It resonated with everyone present. I thank you on behalf of Midlothian Friends Meeting (Virginia) for your testimony. We are so grateful for the experience of Love and Light that your words provided us!

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