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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 Howard Brod on 11th mo. 12, 2015 at 9:35pm: I understand your view, Forrest, and agree it has merit on a certain level when compared to how things should be.

However, I see the situation half-full rather than half-empty when I compare it to centuries ago.

I guess one could say that just shows what a sorry lot humanity has been for eons. And that is probably true. But I do think the Spirit is like water and it continues to trickle into the hearts of all and is making steady progress to bring us all home.

We can disagree. It's OK.

Comment by Forrest Curo on 11th mo. 12, 2015 at 11:24pm: I think we do agree that significant trickling is happening, among human beings, perhaps far more effectively than I can see from here.

When, however, I consider what nice people actually do collectively via

institutions that are supposed to be our agencies, but that in fact work to enchant and enslave people, to cloud our minds and manipulate people for ends that no awakened human being could truly desire in his heart --

then I think there needs to be a waking up, a dis-enchantment to free us from the Ways of The World (in the traditional pejorative sense.) Just becoming nicer dupes of literally-savage social machinery -- That's not 'The Kingdom arriving' yet!

Comment by Diane Benton on 11th mo. 13, 2015 at 10:53am: "Just becoming nicer dupes of literally-savage social machinery -- That's not 'The Kingdom arriving' yet!"

Amen!

Comment by Diane Benton on 11th mo. 13, 2015 at 11:13am: I do know people who go through agencies, knowing the agencies are mostly useful dupes, in order to gain access to people to whom they can bring Love and Light.

Comment by William F Rushby on 11th mo. 13, 2015 at 3:54pm: As an aside, Douglas Bennett wrote: "BTW, I am indebted especially to George Marsden for my understanding of fundamentalism and inerrancy.

D.B., I would like to know which of George Marsden's publications you had in mind when you wrote that he informed your understanding of fundamentalism and inerrancy. Perhaps he could inform my understanding too!!

Comment by Kirby Urner on 11th mo. 14, 2015 at 7:32pm: What interests me are so many of the marriages and/or familial relationships in the Bible are quite far from nuclear.

There's all this worry about defending "one man one woman" thinking it's about keeping those two oppositely sexed (traditional nuclear) but what about the "one"?

A lot of folks in the Bible didn't have a nuclear family model. More molecular families were normal.

http://www.biblicalpolygamy.com/polygamists/abraham/ (randomly pulled up by Google)

A quick search of my own Journals show I, at least, was not oblivious to the issue. Yay me.

http://controlroom.blogspot.com/search?q=polygamy

Comment by Forrest Curo on 11th mo. 14, 2015 at 8:49pm: Doug has mentioned this from time to time -- although the natural prototype seems to be two-party male/female 'coupling' ie Adam & Eve. The other Biblical arrangements seem to be largely political/economic: marrying family so as to keep property in the family (& so as to marry a member of one's own distant tribe rather than one of the locals, in order to have a spouse brought up to follow 'our' customs rather than theirs. This makes sense for a group founded by an 'exile', someone who's been ordered to leave his father's house & king & move to a distant country where customs... differ.

Incest taboos seem stronger among more homogeneous populations, ie typically you'd marry somebody from _another_ tribe because all the local tribes are similar in customs, & if everybody marries 'out' your tribe gets safeguarded by multiple alliances. )

I suppose if you wanted to be _really_ Biblical about marriage, you'd need to marry your brother's widow if he died -- & make sure the kid got your brother's share of the inheritance. Very much property-based marriage customs...

Comment by Forrest Curo on 11th mo. 14, 2015 at 8:50pm: [leave his father's "kin", not "king", sorry!]

Comment by Kirby Urner on 11th mo. 14, 2015 at 9:22pm: One scenario is a Somali refugee family attends Meeting, and although Mr. X has been forced by US law to disavow one of his two wives, these educated folk have done their homework and know that obstreperous Quakers have routinely gone against US law in recognizing marriages the Feds would not (e.g. gay marriage before states made it legal etc.).

So the family may ask Multnomah Meeting that the whole family of three adults and two children be taken under the care of the Meeting and recognized as such, as a political statement (i.e. Quakers have the right to go beyond US law when so led). Even if the Feds deny this religious freedom (hypocritically, contrary to US values), the Quakers agree to recognize the marriage, citing Biblical precedent.

I already proposed this as a possible scenario a couple years back, when still wearing my AFSC hat (local liaison) having seen a film much touted by AFSC called Hawo's Dinner Party, wherein Tennesseans are exposed to Islamic Somalis. Somewhere in that film we get some discussion of the broken families US laws have occasioned among these most recent immigrants to North America.

I'd say the standard US / Federal practice in this day and age (2015) is to preach against polygamy as a women's rights / feminist issue i.e. who wants to be "wife number four" whatever that means.

However, as someone with some Anthropology under my belt, I'm not always on board with such "holier than thou, our way or the highway" campaigns designed to cast aspersions on a longstanding cultural practice. I have my own criteria regarding what I'll defend.

My Journals show I vigorously objected when the State of Texas used armoured vehicles to invade the Mormon compound and take away the children -- a hugely melodramatic (and stupid / ham handed) move.

As a personal bias, I prefer diversity and hope the nuclear family model never becomes accepted as the one and only "right way" for families to form. Humans are not meant to conform to such a degree. Monoculture gets ugly. I don't want any one model of family to lord it over all the others with smug moral certainty. I hope Quakerism doesn't get suckered into supporting the nuke family militarists.

Comment by Forrest Curo on 11th mo. 14, 2015 at 11:10pm: There were these ancient Chinese detective stories written about Judge Dee -- a traditional protagonist in the Chinese genre -- by a Dutch scholar; his versions were popular both in English and in Chinese... and the Judge, of course, marries more women as his career advances. At one point he has three wives, who ask him to marry a fourth so they can all play dominoes together.

Ah! -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_van_Gulik

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