In a recent Reddit thread, an ex-Catholic interested in Friends asked whether the QuakerSpeak video “9 Core Quaker Beliefs” was representative of Friends. Longtime Philadelphia Friends might recognize that title as part of Arthur Larrabee’s longtime work to compile some agreed-upon list of Quaker beliefs that we can use in outreach and messaging.
But to someone without context, he’s just some schmoe on YouTube.
Quakerism is well-known for being creedless. It’s easy to argue that it’s anything you want it to be. Plenty of people are drawn more to our community than to the historic beliefs of Friends. At one point, not that long ago even, one could point to Robert Barclay’s Apology as a theological statement accepted by most Friends. No longer. Unprogrammed Friends have largely given up even on the elders who once tried to maintain orthodoxy (sometimes overly so and often to ill effect). Nowadays “What do Quakers Believe?” easily morphs into “What Do I Believe?”
In the Liberal U.S. Quaker world it used to be that you could legitimize some hitherto outsider belief by starting a website, presenting it as a workshop at a few successive FGC Gatherings, and getting an article published in Friends Journal. Nowadays a popular YouTuber like Jessica Kellgren-Fozard will get much more reach than any institutional outlet: her 2018 video Oh God… Let’s Talk About My Religion has gotten 530k views and 3,885 comments. Is she the most learned representative of Quakerism? A recorded minister in her yearly meeting? Did she vet her views with her meeting before posting the video, as Friends used to have to vet books pre-publication? No, no, and no, but she’s done a lot to get us out there in front of seekers and is, de facto, a recognized authority on Friends to hundreds of thousands of people.
Art Larrabee, of the QuakerSpeak video (currently at 241k views for those keeping score), is an interesting counterpoint. He’s held a variety of leadership positions among Philadelphia Friends and has been a sought-after workshop leader. Art started his list of core beliefs while he was the chief executive of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. In this role, he was often called on to be a spokesperson for Liberal Friends. He has written about the background of this list:
Several years ago, way opened for me to share with PYM’s Advisory Committee a life-long frustration that I could not articulate the core beliefs of our faith community with any confidence that what I might say would be shared by others. At the time, I was feeling let down by my faith community and that our failure to name collectively held, core beliefs contributed to a loss of energy among us. I also felt that the absence of a statement of core beliefs inhibited our ability to easily and effectively communicate to others about our Quaker faith. In my professional life before becoming General Secretary, I sometimes found myself wanting to invite friends in law and business to come to meeting for worship but I could never quite figure out what I could say with any confidence when asked, “What do Quakers believe?” What was I inviting them to? Yes, I could try to say what I believed, but I could not tell them what we believed as a community. I wanted something I could hand to those I thought might be interested and say, “This is what’s at the core of our faith. There is more to Quakerism than this, but this is a place to begin.”
Advisory Committee invited me to try my hand at drafting such a statement and on several occasions they have seen prior versions of what I am presenting today. I have shared earlier versions of this work with two quarterly meetings, three or four monthly meetings, the residents of a retirement community and Interim Meeting. With each presentation, suggestions have been made which have found their way into the document.
The results in a very thoughtful, threshed-out list. It might be the most careful distillation since Howard Brinton dashed out Friends for 300 Years in 1952. And yet: as far as I know, the nine beliefs list was never formally adopted by any Quaker body. Years later, it’s still only a list of what Art Larrabee believes other Friends believe. His authority is the respect he has, which is really not all that different than the source of authority for a popular YouTuber. In some future revision of Faith and Practice both Larrabee and Kellgren-Fozard is sure to be quoted in the extracts section. But even there, their words will be presented as interesting viewpoints, not canonical statements.
It’s a hell of a way to run a religion, perhaps, but it’s a fascinating culture we’ve developed to compensate for our rejection of creeds.
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