Like many Friends I watched the realignment proceedings of Indiana Yearly Meeting over the past couple years with a mixture of concern, confusion, consternation, and a strong sense that it is really none of my business.  It’s like any divisive issue in the Christian church; we want to dismiss what we may perceive to be petty bickering in “our larger community” (the community of faith), but when it happens in our own little Religious Society of Friends, it’s coming into the extended family.  It’s getting close to home.  When these divisions happen in our Meetings, it is like they are striking our family.  So no doubt for many Indiana Friends, this IS a dispute within their family.  And that is a very sad thing.

From what I understand, this schism originated in disagreements about homosexuality and the affirming of gays and lesbians as participating members of Quaker Meetings in IYM.  It appears then to have extended into questions about the authority and role of the Yearly Meeting, and some arguments about proper Quaker process.  So it seems to come down to differences of belief.  Some Friends believe one way, some Friends believe another.  Some Christians believe this, some Christians believe that.  Some religions hold these truths, some religions...well, who knows.

Beliefs, doctrines, positions, practices.  Forgive me, Friends, but is this what divides us?  Is this all there is to the spiritual path?  Is this all there is to the Christian life? 

Somehow I don’t think this is the cross Jesus intended for us to bear.  When Jesus says, “fear not, but only believe,” and “all things are possible for him who believes,” and “while you have light, believe in the light, that you may be children of the light,” was He using the word “believe” to mean intellectually assenting to something, or did He use the word to mean have Faith in, to Trust in?

I “believe” all kinds of things.  Some things I used to believe I don’t anymore and I’m sure some things I believe now I won’t believe in the future.  None of this is to say that belief is unimportant, but if our spiritual life, our relationship with God, the reality of the Inward Light, our walk with Jesus - any of this - is dependent upon our beliefs about these things, then I, for one, am doomed.  There’s no hope because I can’t trust my little brain to hold on to any single belief about any single thing for any fixed amount of time.  I have no unshakable trust in my beliefs or my ability to “believe” in things or about things.  Did Jesus literally walk on water?  I don’t know.  Did the angels really sing to shepherds abiding their flocks by night?  Ummm, well...  The virgin birth?  Oh dear, is it that time already?

This is where Faith comes in.  And this I know experientially. 

In 1987, during a period of despair and confusion, I had one of those mystical experiences where I felt the Spirit open my heart and show me that God is here and all things will be right in Him.  God answered a prayer of my heart when my head didn’t even believe He was there.  (Wow!)   This experience led me to Friends and eventually to Christ, but it did not “tell” me exactly what I was to believe or even that I had to believe anything.  All my “beliefs” came later as a feeble and as yet inadequate attempt at interpreting that experience of God.  But no belief before or after could change the reality of that experience for me. 

Friends, if we Trust in God, might that not allow for any number of beliefs about the spiritual life and how each of us is going to follow God?  If we Trust in God, isn’t it enough to know that we will be led on the path, however long and winding, that each of us is meant to be on?  Isn’t Faith more than believing the “right” things, following the “correct” doctrine, infant baptism or full emersion, transubstantiation or consubstanitation, cessationism or continuing revelation, chilism versus realized eschatology...oh, where does it end?

Quakers have such a wide variety of beliefs it is almost like seeing a microcosm of the religious diversity in the world bundled neatly in a compact little Society.  Why should this be our biggest challenge rather than our greatest witness?