QuakerQuaker

Primitive Christianity Revived, Again

The Case of Gathered vs. Covered Meeting For Worship

Gathered: If it please the Court of Quaker Opinion, we Friends hold to the quietist, earlier known as spiritualist, mode of worship. We believe that God can and will gather our Meetings irrespective of vocal ministry.

Covered: May it interest the Court that there is an historical acknowledgment by the Western religions of the world that people assemble via pilgrimage-like procession to the place of worship. In addition, worshipers are first gathered by means of some sort of human involvement in song, gesture or sacred symbol of the Son of God come in the flesh.

Gathered: May it please the Court that Friends find no need to sacramentalize, let alone ritualize, our being gathered in the presence of God. Our human involvement is minimized so that the divine reality may be maximized.

Covered: If it be of interest to the Court, the divine reality was and is maximized through incarnational guidance, or 'God, U, and I dance'. As such, Jesus was God's 'May I have this dance?'.

Gathered: Begging the Court's pardon, such incarnational metaphors belong to vocal ministry and not the gathered meeting for worship. In a word, we are not willing to pay the cover for the dance.

Covered: We rest our case.

2 members like this

Comment by Lawrence Cullen Jones on 6th mo. 3, 2013 at 2:46pm: This does not speak to my previous experience. "Gathered" to me is the sense that everyone is worshipful. "Covered" is the sense that those gathered are hearing/thinking the same message. Thus covered is a step beyond gathered.

Comment by Bill Smith on 6th mo. 3, 2013 at 4:24pm: Early Quakers (Friends of The Light or Truth) held every thing sacred and felt strongly the incarnation of Christ in their lives. Holiness "Quakers" in after 1850 forsook the Inward Light of Christ for the Word of God in the scriptures. After 1950 many Liberal Quakers forsook the experience of the inward light of Christ for the intellectual "light" of something . This piece misses the main point for gathered/covered meetings for worship and especially for meeting for worship for business or as they say in Britain "Church Affairs."

Comment by William F Rushby on 6th mo. 4, 2013 at 9:32am: The Gathered Meeting

By Thomas Kelly
"In the Quaker practice of group worship on the basis of silence come special times when an electric hush and solemnity and depth of power steals over the worshippers. A blanket of divine covering comes over the room, and a quickening Presence pervades us, breaking down some part of the special privacy and isolation of our individual lives and bonding our spirits within a super-individual Life and Power—an objective, dynamic Presence which enfolds us all, nourishes our souls, speaks glad, unutterable comfort within us, and quickens in us depths that had before been slumbering. The Burning Bush has been kindled in our midst, and we stand together on holy ground."

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