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Primitive Christianity Revived, Again

Why It Matters How We Read the Bible

“We want to clarify for everybody that this is not a homosexuality issue for us, this is an authority of scripture/interpretation of scripture/orthodoxy issue for us.” That’s what Anthem Friends Church said last week as they withdrew from Northwest Yearly Meeting.

Their exit helps clarify, for me, the stakes involved in how we read and regard the Bible.

The church letter added, “We have come to find over the years that Anthem Friends (formerly Hayden Lake Friends Church) see things very differently than the NWYM.” How so? What’s the authority of scripture issue that leads Anthem Friends to say they “see things differently?”

In their statement of faith (is this a creed?) Anthem Friends (a large church in Hayden, Idaho, with a second location in Coeur d’Alene) says “We believe the Scriptures in the Old and New Testaments are completely without error and are the supreme and final authority of God in faith and life.”

This is Northwest Yearly Meeting from which they withdrew: not an FGC Yearly Meeting, and not an FUM Yearly Meeting, but rather a yearly meeting that is part of Evangelical Friends Church International, which includes five Yearly Meetings in North America (Alaska YM, Eastern Region YM, Mid-America YM, Rocky Mountain YM, and Southwest YM), and many more around the world (140,000 members in 24 countries, says EFCI’s website).

Northwest Yearly Meeting of Friends Church (NWYM) has a banner on its website saying “it is a covenantal community of evangelical Friends churches that make Jesus Christ known by teaching and obeying the whole gospel as revealed by the Holy Spirit and recorded in Scripture.” Apparently that was not good enough for Anthem Friends.

Not good enough as assertion or not good enough in practice? I only know what Anthem says in their letter, but presumably it arises from an unfolding and unresolved controversy in NWYM. This past July, the Elders of NWYM released a letter that begins “Recognizing that our yearly meeting is unable to embrace our current diversity, and recognizing the shattering that is ensuing, with grace and charity we sorrowfully release West Hills Friends Church from NWYM membership.” The “shattering” issue was West Hills’ “affirmation of committed same sex relationships and the decision to perform those weddings.”

The Elders’ letter noted that there was an appeal process regarding their decision, and, to date, eight Meetings/Churches have filed appeals. Eight others have written letters supporting the Elders decision. You can read them all here, and my hat is off to NWYM for providing public access to all this material.

The Elders’ letter acknowledges “We recognize that as a yearly meeting, we are not in consensus over our statement on human sexuality in the Faith and Practice. We recognize that we need to do the hard work of theological reflection as Friends on the issues of revelation (including the authority of both the written and living Word of God) and human sexuality (in a broader sense than just LGBTQ issues).” The appeal letters also lift up the lack of consensus over sexuality matters, which has been manifest in NWYM for several years.

I take it, then, that Anthem Friends Church has withdrawn from NWYM not because of “a homosexuality issue” but because the Yearly Meeting couldn’t clearly and decisively affirm the [alleged] teaching in the Bible that homosexuality is a sin. Disunity, for them, was a cause for separation. (For the record, I believe the Bible is quite unclear about many matters of sexuality.)

Anthem’s posture is fundamentalist. Their creedal statement is an affirmation of Biblical inerrancy. Again, “We believe the Scriptures in the Old and New Testaments are completely without error and are the supreme and final authority of God in faith and life.”

This is the issue Friends need to confront. The issue is not whether the Bible is valuable. It is not whether the Bible provides “texture and clarity to our understanding of God's will,” as a Friend put it recently in a comment on QuakerQuaker. It certainly does. And of course there are those calling themselves Quaker who want nothing to do with the Bible. That’s their loss in my view. But their posture isn’t the one forcing crises in Yearly Meetings. It is the adherents of Biblical inerrancy who are provoking such crises.

When Indiana Yearly Meeting came apart at the seams a few years ago, the driving issue was Biblical inerrancy. Iowa Yearly Meeting (FUM) has wrestled with issues of creeds and Biblical inerrancy in recent years. Now we have crises in North Carolina Yearly Meeting (FUM) and in Northwest Yearly Meeting both driven by assertions of Biblical inerrancy as a litmus test. Both of these crises have been followed well and closely by Steve Angell and Chuck Fager in Quaker Theology and in Fager’s blog, A Friendly Letter. My hat is off to both Steve and Chuck for reporting on these crises. It is time more Friends paid attention to the challenge of Biblical inerrancy.

Close adherence to the Bible, while valuable, is unlikely to yield final and spiritually satisfying answers to all issues that may arise. Insisting on “the Bible alone” as a source of spiritual guidance will sow further schism and hard-heartedness. Seeing the Bible as “without error” and as “the supreme and final authority of God in faith and life” shouts that God stopped speaking to us a millennium and a half ago. I affirm instead that the God who speaks to me through and beyond the Bible assures me that God is still speaking. The meetings in Northwest Yearly Meeting that are wrestling with human sexuality believe, too, that God is still speaking to them.

On the Bible, I would much rather Friends take guidance (though not as a creed) from Barclay’s Apology in which he says of the Scriptures, after noting the Bible’s value:

Nevertheless, because they are only a declaration of the fountain, and not the fountain itself, therefore they are not to be esteemed the principal ground of all Truth and knowledge, nor yet the adequate primary rule of faith and manners. Yet because they give a true and faithful testimony of the first foundation, they are and may be esteemed a secondary rule, subordinate to the Spirit, from which they have all their excellency and certainty: for as by the inward testimony of the Spirit we do alone truly know them, so they testify, that the Spirit is that Guide by which the saints are led into all Truth; therefore, according to the Scriptures, the Spirit is the first and principal leader. Seeing then that we do therefore receive and believe the Scriptures because they proceeded from the Spirit, for the very same reason is the Spirit more originally and principally the rule.

Also posted on River View Friend

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Comment by Keith Saylor on 11th mo. 12, 2015 at 11:28am: Forrest. Yes there are many of us whose conscious and conscience are no longer anchored in and informed by mediation through outward forms and circumstances. The obstacles and scars you mention are approached in and through the mediation of Presence itself in our conscious and conscience. The inward Light has lead us out of mediation through outward forms and circumstance and into mediation in the Light itself. The activity of the Light in our conscious and guiding our conscience in the relative increase and decrease of the Light manifesting in our conscience is our guide and is our Mediation. Your use of "unmediated bliss" to deride, ridicule, and mock, the experience of inward Presence as our Mediator and not outward forms, representations, and circumstances mis-represents our experience. We certainly are is direct play in the world with inward Presence anchoring our conscious and informing our conscience.

Comment by Forrest Curo on 11th mo. 12, 2015 at 1:46pm: I am not talking about what you're experiencing, but about what human beings might have experienced, from the beginning, if God had considered that sufficient nourishment for newly-created persons. Evidently God did not, at that time, think that was suitable for people at that stage of development.

What I've noticed over my life so far is a tendency for God to present me with the fact, yearning, experience, person, or insight that seemed to be what suited me best at the time, something that my previous tangled course was evidently leading up to. I have no reason to doubt that other people, if they look for such 'clues' and hints could find them similarly -- or be drawn to them in any case, as appropriate.

And so I don't imagine that any material, emotional, mental, social, or authoritative influence is necessary for people to Get There, but conclude that people encounter these things as needed, and can be led out of them when ready, but not before.

400 years in Egypt, wasn't it?

Comment by Adria Gulizia on 11th mo. 12, 2015 at 3:01pm

Here is a link from the Tract Association of Friends, if folks are interested in traditional Quaker discernment. In brief, there are five tests of a leading:

Moral purity
Persistence of the leading
Consistency with other individuals' experience
Consistency with the Bible
Inward unity with others

I conceive of this as what I call the "three-legged stool" of discernment: persistent leading of the Spirit in the individual (numbers 1 and 2); corporate discernment (3 and 5); and consistency with the Bible. (Consistency with the Bible, contrary to Howard's earlier suggestion, is usually not determined by prooftexting, but by being steeped in Scripture. I don't need to have a concordance and the Oxford Study Bible open on my lap to know that if you are being "led" to murder someone or steal from someone or cheat on your taxes, your "leading" is not consistent with the Bible, regardless of how compelling your other reasons are.)

I don't want to pooh-pooh anyone's ways of determining the way God works, but on a website called Quaker Quaker, where many people gather to explore what it looks like when our practice and our theology are Quaker, I'd like to encourage folks to gain an understanding of Friends' traditional frameworks and theological outlook before discarding them in favor of each person going his own way. There is a lot of value in our traditions, and I promise you they are worth exploring, even if you are perfectly content with the way you are currently doing things.

Comment by Howard Brod on 11th mo. 12, 2015 at 3:33pm: Few liberal Quakers would subscribe to their formula. I have reviewed their material before, and it represents a particular strand of Quakerism - Orthodox East Coast Quakerism - in my opinion. Certainly, it would appeal to some. But Quakerism is quite a varied religious tradition, and it is difficult to assign any particular strand of Quakerism as representing the entire "faith tradition".

Comment by William F Rushby on 11th mo. 12, 2015 at 6:05pm: Our culture is so steeped in the Biblical worldview and ethos, that we are often unaware of the Bible's role in how we think and speak. Biblical Archeology Review features a regular column by Leonard Greenspoon, which focusses on Biblical imagery and phrases in the news and in publications; he never seems to run out examples.

Some years ago a British presenter of a paper at the Conference of Quaker Historians and Archivists wondered where a particular phrase, used by Friends sometime in the past, came from. Edsel Burdge, a Mennonite friend, was sitting next to me. He remarked that, if the presenter knew the Bible better, he could easily find exactly that phrase in it.

Comment by Diane Benton on 11th mo. 12, 2015 at 6:23pm: Since my trust in God's ability to have an unmediated relationship with creation has been given to me by God, bit by bit, over my life time, I can't disparage anyone whose measure of trust is different from mine. Nor can I keep from testifying to the trustworthiness of God as moved by Presence. As more and more people give testimony, trust may be received more easily.

Correction to previous comment: "the only was to be out of that will" should be "the only way to be out of that will."

Comment by Keith Saylor on 11th mo. 12, 2015 at 7:13pm: Forrest, thank you for taking the time to correct my mis-understanding of your words.

Sincerely, Keith

Comment by Keith Saylor on 11th mo. 12, 2015 at 7:19pm: Adria, I agree that knowledge of Quaker tradition is important. I explore it deeply in my life. I am assuming the Quaker tradition you are referencing is the Foxonian tradition that Fox and those who followed him established some 25 years after the founding of the Quaker Gathering. It is also important that Quakers have the opportunity to know about experience of those founding Quakers (contemporaries of George Fox) who were not supportive of Foxonian tradition and why. That is why I often reference William Rogers "The Christian Quaker ..." written in 1680.

Those founding Quakers who did not support the establishment of Foxonian tradition and practice rested their trust in the inward Light itself in their "conscience," as they repeatedly testified to, and not in outward forms, practices, etc. They specifically saw the establishment of Foxonian Tradition as a moving back into a conscience anchored in outward forms; a life and conscience that they were lead out of (even as many of us today) by their direct experience of the inward Light as sufficient guide and teacher. It can be argued that the "Liberal" Meeting Howard so often shares with us here on QuakerQuaker is in close alignment with these per-Foxonian Tradtion Quakers. If it is a stretch to argue they predate Foxonian Tradition, it is not a stretch that they existed along-side Foxonian Tradition from the very start of the Quaker Gathering. To suggest that a faith in the sufficiency of direct experience of the inward Light anchoring the conscious and informing the conscience somehow came about way after Foxonian Tradition (in the form of "Liberal" Quakerism. Of course it also depends on what is meant of liberal Quakerism) is exposed as a problematic when the treatise of William Rogers is read.

Comment by Howard Brod on 11th mo. 12, 2015 at 8:04pm: Bill, I do agree with you that a knowledge of the Bible is essential to function successfully in our world. Its references permeate many aspects of the Western world. We were very aware of that with the children at our meeting and routinely educated them in the Bible - even though we are a liberal Quaker group.

I do think that the teachings of Jesus, which I will group into forgiveness, compassion, and love - have quite literally already transformed the Western world's governments compared to centuries ago. And I don't think most people realize this. It is quite ironic that at the same time, people have become less religious.

Why is this so? I think this is because as societies experience the teachings of Jesus, they realize they are true. They may not ever identify these as coming from Jesus. Even so, these basic 'teachings of the Spirit' are the only thing that will ever transform the world; or in Christian terminology, it is the only thing that will "bring the kingdom of God on the Earth". I have heard it said that "liberal Quakers don't follow Jesus' teachings because he said them; rather, liberal Quakers follow them because they are true".

The point is we need to accept the reality of Jesus' teachings - if nothing else. In the end, I believe that is what he wants.

The purity of identifying solely with the Spirit of these teachings in our being - is very powerful. It's a power that once you go there, it can't be denied. It is truly a "born again experience".

I just want to testify to that reality that has become mine.

Comment by Forrest Curo on 11th mo. 12, 2015 at 9:22pm: To say that the teachings of Jesus 'have transformed the Western World's governments' is downright hallucinatory! Any such changes that have occurred have been purely cosmetic, have had to be struggled for against determined reluctance, including violent suppression of and cunning token compromises with popular movements for fairer, less oppressive, less violent policies. The governments involved -- and the corporations that use them against us -- have remained solidly under diabolical management.They lie, in case you haven't noticed. They've found that an ounce of p.r. is worth a ton of actual mitigation -- & costs them far less.

This is not to say that we don't see the occasional good person striving to keep governments and corporations honest, but we're talking about criminogenic social environments here, where the race is not always to the bent -- "but that's the way to bet."

As far as the spiritual condition of humanity overall... We've got a very odd mix, which I can't really figure out myself, of people utterly enthralled by the violent punitive, oppressive spirit of our political leadership and their media shills -- combined with vast numbers of people who truly want peace, adequate efforts to relieve the sufferings of poor people, the kind of changes Dorothy Day called for. How much of this kinder, gentler spirit would survive the first day of some popular new war...? How deep is the evil, how deep the good in us? Ultimately the goodness is more powerful -- but at present?

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