Even though my last post was a five minute quickie, it generated a number of comments. One question that came up was how aware individual Friends are about the specific Quaker meanings of some of the common English words we use — “Light,” “Spirit,” etc.(disambiguation in Wiki-speak). Marshall Massey expressed sadness that the terms were used uncomprehendingly and I suggested that some Friends knowingly confuse the generic and specific meanings. Marshall replied that if this were so it might be a cultural difference based on geography.
If it’s a cultural difference, I suspect it’s less geographic than functional. I was speaking of the class of professional Friends (heavy in my parts) who purposefully obscure their language. We’re very good at talking in a way that sounds Quaker to those who do know our specific language but that sounds generically spiritual to those who don’t. Sometimes this obscurantism is used by people who are repelled by traditional Quakerism but want to advance their ideas in the Religious Society of Friends, but more often (and more dangerously) it’s used by Friends who know and love what we are but are loathe to say anything that might sound controversial.
I’ve told the story before of a Friend and friend who said that everytime he uses the word community he’s meaning the body of Christ. Newcomers hearing him and reading his articles could be forgiven for thinking that community is our reason-for-being, indeed: what we worship. The problem is that ten years later, they’ll have signed up and built up an identity as a Friend and will get all offended when someone suggests that this community they know and love is really the body of Christ.
Liberal Friends in the public eye need to be more honest in their conversation about the Biblical and Christian roots of our religious fellowship. That will scare off potential members who have been scarred by the acts of those who have falsely claimed Christ. I’m sorry about that and we need to be as gentle and humble about this as we can. But hopefully they’ll see the fruits of the true spirit in our openness, our warmth and our giving and will realize that Christian fellowship is not about televangelists and Presidential hypocrites. Maybe they’ll eventually join or maybe not, but if they do at least they won’t be surprised by our identity. Before someone comments back, I’m not saying that Christianity needs to be a test for individual membership but new members should know that everything from our name (“Friends of Christ”) on down are rooted in that tradition and that that formal membership does not include veto power over our public identity.
There is room out there for spiritual-but-not-religious communities that aren’t built around a collective worship of God, don’t worry about any particular tradition and focus their energies and group identity on liberal social causes. But I guess part of what I wonder is why this doesn’t collect under the UUA banner, whose Principles and Purposes statement is already much more syncretistic and post-religious than even the most liberal yearly meeting. Evolving into the “other UUA” would mean abandoning most of the valuable spiritual wisdom we have as a people.
I think there’s a need for the kind of strong liberal Christianity that Friends have practiced for 350 years. There must be millions of people parked on church benches every Sunday morning looking up at the pulpit and thinking to themselves, “surely this isn’t what Jesus was talking about.” Look, we have Evangelical Christians coming out against the war! And let’s face it, it’s only a matter of time before “Emergent Christians” realize how lame all that post-post candle worship is and look for something a little deeper. The times are ripe for “Opportunities,” Friends. We have important knowledge to share about all this. It would be a shame if we kept quiet.
“And let’s face it, it’s only a matter of time before “Emergent Christians” realize how lame all that post-post candle worship is and look for something a little deeper.”
Martin, you crack me up! Friend, you speak my mind.
‑Craig
Martin — I pray that you will soon be employed full time, unless you are liking the freelance life (or should I say, getting by in the freelance life). I agree with what you say. I have one foot out the door of my Meeting, and am starting to go to a very small Methodist church in No’Philly with a black woman as pastor, and mixed white and black flock. The pastor is unabashedly Christian and an intellectual, and an activist. Its liberating to say the word God or Christ, without feeling people inwardly cringe. I think modern Q’s are carrying the ‘tradition’ of the vague language of our Spirit led Quaker founders, who were trying to bash thru the tiny little corrupt box that God had been put in, and express the limitless and uncatagorical (beyond rational) nature of the Divine. I think modern Q’s use this ‘ambiguity’ to hide and to ‘not offend’ and there’s no power in it. So, it is time to speak plainly and openly…THAT is radical now, in the stuck in a form Quaker ‘religion without religion’. I can hear folks saying “but what about continuing revelation?’ What they are saying is, “What about the [Christless] continuing revelation ?” “The one that equates all religious paths as equal?” [therefore denigrating all religions]. Yup, I’m not long with Quakers. I’m ready for ‘church’ again. The Q’s have helped me incredibly. To heal from ‘church’ and hear from our Creator myself. I will always honor Q‑ism, the foundation, the history, the good, bad and ugly. O heck, I’ll probably never completely leave.
Hi Craig: have you ever looked at the Flickr feed of some of those E.C. events? Some guy in a corner strumming a guitar by himself while a few people do some watercolor on top of a thrift-store coffee table, all lit by the fluorescent lights of the dingy basement their church social with the too-cool name. I mean, Quakers can be lame too – we have our own dingy basements, but at least we know we’re lame.…
Barbara: noooooooo! Oh crap. Sorry for the language but that’s the first word that came to mind and the most appropriate. Unfortunately you make my point: we’re so worried about offending one another that we alienate many of the very people who might be coming to us looking for a robust religious faith. Crap again. I’m so sorry that Friends have failed you.
Dear Martin, I feel a need to say that I wrote the essay on creeds and doctrines that I posted to my journal yesterday — the essay with all the talk about early Christian community — well before I read this posting of yours.
So that essay was not a reaction to your criticism of Friends who say “community” as a way of being ambiguous. I wasn’t being ambiguous, anyway: when I wrote “community”, I was saying what I meant.
I understand you better now that you’ve written this posting, but I’m still not sure I agree with your diagnosis. When a supposedly Christian friend thinks “body of Christ”, but says “community”, is the problem that he is being deliberately ambiguous, or is the problem that he is denying his Lord?
I think here of a story told by Jim McClendon, concerning Clarence Jordan. Jordan, as you may know, was the founder of Koinonia Farm, a Christian interracial community in rural Georgia, long before the civil rights movement began. Habitat for Humanity grew out of Koinonia Farm. Anyone who’s curious can read more about Clarence Jordan in Wikipedia, here.
Of course, once the civil rights movement got rolling, Koinonia Farm grew controversial, and came under intense attack from the bigoted portion of the surrounding population. It suffered an economic boycott, which created great hardship for its residents, and was even bombed.
In the early Fifties, according to McClendon, Clarence Jordan approached his lawyer brother Robert (who later became a state senator and justice of the Georgia Supreme Court), and asked him to represent the Farm in legal matters.
I now quote McClendon verbatim –
“Clarence, I can’t do that. You know my political aspirations. Why, if I represented you, I might lose my job, my house, everything I’ve got.”
“We might lose everything, too, Bob.”
“It’s different for you.”
“Why is it different? I remember, it seems to me, that you and I joined the church the same Sunday, as boys. I expect when we came forward the preacher asked me about the same question he did you. He asked me, ‘Do you accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior.’ And I said, ‘Yes.’ What did you say?”
“I follow Jesus, Clarence, up to a point.”
“Could that point by any chance be — the cross?”
“That’s right. I follow him to the cross, but not on the cross. I’m not getting myself crucified.”
“Then I don’t believe you’re a disciple. You’re an admirer of Jesus, but not a disciple of his. I think you ought to go back to the church you belong to, and tell them you’re an admirer not a disciple.”
“Well now, if everyone who felt like I do did that, we wouldn’t have a church, would we?”
“The question,” Clarence said, “is, Do you have a church?”
There has got to be a Meeting somewhere in Philadelphia that is Christ-Centered. Is there one? If not, with so many Friends there, perhaps it is time to start a Conservative Meeting.
This also brings up an issue that I’ve been wondering about. With the Spirit blowing among Friends in more liberal Meetings, what can be the role of Conservative Yearly Meeting’s such as NCYM©? OYM seems to be doing outreach by allowing Meetings outside of Ohio and that seems to be working well.
The only problem I see is that oversight by Monthly Meetings for Preparative Meetings or Worship Groups would be hard given the distance between these Meetings.
I haven’t been to a liberal Quaker meeting since I was sixteen, but I’m struck reading this by how I hear similar complaints from the conservative evangelical camp about trying to be “seeker friendly.” Not that evangelical churches are afraid to talk about Jesus, of course, but that they might hide some of the unpleasant stuff until after they reel you into an altar call. I remember when I attended a Foursquare church there were some pamphlets for people in that situation, called something like, “What have I signed up for?” They covered very basic Christian doctrine, stuff that I’d hope a person would know before committing their lives to it.
So I guess this isn’t strictly a Quaker problem, though of course different churches manifest it in different ways.
@Craig: sure, Philadelphia meetings are on a continuum. A handful of the old Wilburite meetings that have kept something of their character and have informal ties to Conservative Quakers elsewhere. What I’m talking about is the disinclination of many of our more public Friends to openly share their understandings using the Quaker language that I know they use. The self-editing is keeping us from many seekers who might be drawn to the Quaker message and it’s bringing in people with “God” and “Christ” baggage who would think twice if they realized that many of really believe this stuff.
@Camassia: I never quite thought of it that way, it is something of a bait-and-switch tactic isn’t it? Liberal Friends have equivalent printed material but somehow membership clearness committees must be full of some _wink-wink nudge-nudge_ to the effect that it really doesn’t matter. Philadelphia Yearly Meeting’s _Faith and Practice_ is still subtitled “A Book of Christian Discipline”; in addition to PYM serves many of the newer yearly meetings in the US. It seems that should be a heads-up for newcomers.
Martin,
Thank you very much for your comments on my blog. It is an interesting background and i’m hopeful that it will lend itself to embracing friends. I am new to the whole term convergent friends but it’s nice to be part of the conversation.
‑Kristen.
Wow — what a great bunch of responses to Martin’s post. Martin, Friends have not failed me. Friends have failed Quakerism. I know I do this on a minute by minute basis. Your website is SO SO SO (did I say SO?) important. I feel so cleansed, having got my stewing feelings out on your blog. You remind me of the really calm beautiful voice that used to host “Catharsis” on Temple’s radio Station, WRTI. People would call in and rant, and the host would give them a forum. How uncathartic for the listener, but I’m sure it did a world of good for the caller. I thank God, after all you have been thru, you are still true to your calling, and Q‑ism. Let’s start our own meeting soon, shall we? I’m still in. Thank you Marshall Massey, for your parable of the Koinonia Farm. Powerful.
I wish I knew or could find the reference in Scripture: there is something that has “switched on” for me in recent months, and it has to do with the query about how physicians do not reside or travel among people who are well (very loose paraphrase…).
I acknowledge it would be easy for me to leave a meeting that does not satisfy me spiritually but I know that this is not what God asks of me.
At the same time, I am not foolish: if I did not have other sources of regular spiritual nurture in my Quaker life, I could not sustain my life in a meeting that strays from the principle of God (the Light, Christ) being at the Center…
Blessings,
Liz Opp, The Good Raised Up
@Marshall: sorry your comment didn’t come through immediately. Deliberate ambiguity or denying the Lord? Frankly I’m not sure I see much of a substantive difference between the two.
Last night I watched a documentary on social rank among a species of Great Apes. Using that methodology, I think social status among liberal Friends rises if you can speak good Quakerese but drops if you sound Christian. The phenomenon’s not limited to Friends: Liberal America has an achingly strong nostalgia for Christianity and the rootedness it promises but a flat-out fear of religious conviction. We’ve forgotten that it’s possible to be a believer without being a NASCAR-watching, Coors-swilling KKK member (pick your favorite liberal stereotype), that the solid ground of progressive Christianity has given us heroes like Martin Luther King and John Woolman.
@Barb: so I’m a jazz smooth talker am I? That’s good, as long as I’m not a smooth jazz talker if you catch the diff. We can coordinate one of my visits to Middletown meeting sometime if you want though my schedule is making meeting-going rather difficult. I think you’re right: Quakers often fail to live up to our own billing. We don’t need to be perfect but we can do better than this.
@LizOpp: The physician metaphor is useful but I think the way you used it misses the point I was trying to raise. Recasting it: as a doctor do you always insist that everything’s fine despite all evidence, simply because you want the patient to like you? Do you hedge and haw with your diagnoses, stressing the cup half full even when you know it’s almost completely empty because you don’t want to see them upset?
If you haven’t noticed I’m not a leaver either, even after being treated pretty shabbily and even after I realized that a lot of people I considered friends were going to leave me out to dry.
To respond first to Liz: the line about the physician is to be found at Mark 2:17, Matthew 9:12 and Luke 5:31. It is Jesus’s explanation to the Pharisees as to why he is associating with known sinners rather than with them.
Then to respond to Liz and Martin both: If we are to base our policy on this teaching from the synoptic gospels, then it cannot be used to justify continuing to associate with meetings that see nothing wrong with themselves. For such meetings are the equivalent of the Pharisees Jesus was declining to associate with.
Christ associated, not just with any old known sinners, but specifically with those known sinners who were bothered by the way they were living. This sense of being bothered was their awareness of their own Inward Guide. Their awareness of their own Inward Guide made them ready for the guidance of Christ.
And that is the sort of person we, too, should be associating with — for the company of such people reinforces our own willingness to hear and be taught and corrected by that same Guide.
The perfume of the sandal tree
is communicated to other trees nearby:
they become scented as the sandal itself.
And in just the same way,
having associated with saints,
I have become somewhat Godlike myself.
— Kabîr, Bhairo 5, from the Âdî Granth
I … understand that Saint Paul was also weak in faith.… An angel stood by him at sea, and comforted him, and when he came to Rome, he was comforted as he saw the brethren come out to meet him. Hereby we see what the communion and company does of such as fear God. The Lord commanded the disciples to remain together in one place, before they received the Holy Ghost, and to comfort one another; for Christ well knew that adversaries would assault them.
— Martin Luther, Table Talk, trans. William Hazlitt, §308
All this is not to say that we should outright shun the company of comfortable Friends. Christ didn’t outright shun the Pharisees. But we, like Christ, should know what our home community is. It is the company of such as fear God.
Just so you know, Martin, I do read your blog on occasion and still dabble with QuakerQuaker. See, I can “come out of retirement” for you, too!
All good comments. I don’t wish to besmirch Humanism, it has much to offer, but I think the form of Humanism from the 1920’s through the 1960’s had a big impact on liberal Quakers. I understand that the humanists (or at least some ormost) had issues with the supernatural, theism, miracles, etc. But, they equated all of that to a form of Christianity that was truly either condemning or comfortable or both. Maybe that was present amongst Friends back in the early 1900’s when so many were influenced by the modern ideas blowing through academia, etc?
Then along came the 1960’s and a stronger sense of personal freedom, but also individualism, seemed to have influenced Quakerism in the U.S., too.
Reject the confines of a supernatural Christianity stuck in the Middle Ages + I have my own truth = ??
Of course, one can also point at the individualism and comfortableness of a lot of Christian churches, including quite a few evangelical ones, too!
P.S. I like reading blogs instead of regularly blogging…well, I don’t know. I’m twittering right now at twitter.com. It can’t get any easier to blog than that! Ha!
I have been thinking a lot about the ambiguity of “Quaker Speak,” lately, but had not considered that some people may not use that ambiguity in a conscious way to obscure what they mean to avoid contention or to consciously create the misapprehension of unity for some other reason. I have been thinking of it as some kind of ironic joke we are playing on one another – without even knowing that we are doing it. Can it be a joke if no one really appreciates the humor? If the humor isn’t funny?
Strong stuff, that!!!
Strong stuff, also, the idea that some want to turn the Society of Friends into a competing brand of UU, or the suggestion (no, the fact) that this has already happened in a number of places.
I recently encountered a Friend who said that if “transformation” was the essence of “Quakerism” that she never would have been a Quaker.
I can only stand still, at that.
What, I have been wondering lately, is a reason to turn away someone who seeks membership? Well, what, then?
@Joe: ohmegod!, I’m never going to wash this keyboard again!!
That sounds as good an analysis as any. There’s sort of a “nostaligification” of Christianity that has occurred. It’s been demystified, the supernatural taken out and turned into folksy stories. That’s fine and such – Jesus was a good storyteller and moral leader in addition to everything else – but if you don’t think there’s anything supernatural going on then you’re not a Christian. I know some people will rail at this statement – “how dare you define Christianity for me?!” blah blah blah, but it’s been the definition since the days of the apostles and it’s the only definition that makes much sense.
Pretty obvious stuff except that many people long to hold onto that identity. There’s comfort in the nostalgia. Some have made careers in it – religious leaders who don’t really believe.
The only phenomenon I’d add to your list is the effects of draft-dodging on American religion. Read the personal stories of many of the “nostalgic Christian” leaders now in their early sixties and there seem to be quite a few whose choice to get their MDiv was motivated in part by the deferment it gave them from military service. I know Quakers too, who joined way earlier than they might have (should have?) in order to get the benefits of “Quaker” in their conscientious objector applications. A little more “seasoning” of the decision might have made the religious vocation clearer – either stronger and more committed or perhaps allowed them to see they weren’t really called. I’m a “pacifist”:www.nonviolence.org of course and I’ve long campaigned for expanded rights to conscientious objection but I wonder how many people who only half-felt the call to religious service went the other half for the wrong reasons?
@Timothy: yes, well I think we’ve reached the theoretical limit of the 1950s redefinition of Quaker membership – that belief and practice mean nothing and the prime qualification is comfortable-ness in the meeting community (see FWCC statements from the time or Howard Brinton’s “Friends for 300 Years”). Membership means nothing in the spiritual sense, it simply marks a certain social status in the community. We could radicalize our situation one more degree and treat as members – as Friends – everyone who comes into our doors, everyone we meet on the street. When someone asks for help or spiritual advice we don’t ask how long they’ve been coming to meeting but we help them and minister them as best we can with the Light we’re given. Of course this means valuing the community of “those who might be Friends” more highly than the community of “those who are already Friends.” Jesus was quite ready to do this but I fear we modern day “Friends of Jesus” might be a little too cozy in our meetinghouses to make such a radical move.
Hello again, Martin. Reading your comments to Timothy on membership, I am struck by the fact that they represent a tremendous shift in understanding of the reason for membership.
Early Friends, as I’m sure you know, had a prophetic message to the world, which led them to travel to every corner of England and beyond, confronting those who were not living in accordance with Truth. But in carrying that message, they had to deal with adherents to their movement who muddled or undercut that message with unhelpful words or bad behavior. This included adherents who acted with seeming blasphemousness (Nayler’s followers in the streets of Bristol), adherents who engaged in outright immorality or amorality (Quaker preachers conducting extramarital affairs), and adherents who did things in contradiction to the movement’s prophetic testimonies (Friends who paid tithes in order to avoid the confiscation of their property).
In order to handle such challenges, the first Friends first eldered and then disowned those who muddled or undercut their message and could not be brought back to good behavior. And the second, third and fourth generations of Friends developed their formal membership system as a way of clarifying who was positively owned. Being owned as a member meant that you were committed to upholding the testimonies, and that the Society in turn would support you in what you did. It also meant you were included in Friends’ corporate decision-making, because you were trusted to discern on a right basis.
Your response to Timothy does not seem to reflect any concern for such issues. But should it? If Friends own as members anyone who walks in off the street, what is to keep members’ behavior any different from the general behavior of the populace? What is to make our corporate decision-making any different from the popular vote?
I am in unity with Timothy’s concerns as I understand them, but I understand him as asking a very different question from the one you have responded to.
Martin and all the responders, thank you for the discussion, the insightfulness, the lessons. Besides acting as a dialogue among yourselves, your words reach out to those of us who believe, who follow, who need more than we are finding in ourlives at the moment. Or just want to bolster our insights and continue to learn. Thank you
Martin
Maybe the problem isn’t language (although your idea about one’s ability to speak Quakerese correlating with one’s status as a Friend did strike a chord!!!!). I wonder if the problem has to do with individualism.
Quakers aren’t supposed to be individuals in the “rugged individualism” kind of way. Meetings are a collective, surrending kind of activity. We are who we are through each other. Families the same.
Are Quakers perhaps subconsciously living out their lives as individuals, as their culture demands, but using tricks of the mind and language to create a perception that they are living as a collective?
Maybe I haven’t worded this idea right… It just strikes me when I hear Quakerese that it’s the product of a subtle disconnect between who we are and who we think we are.
Another problem at the root of this language thing might be fear. It’s easier to see with the fundamentalists that they use language, images, doctrines, quotes, rules, and other forms of rigidity to hide from threatening ideas. They are afraid that if they admit this one thing might not be verbally true, in the ordinary sense of truth, then their whole religion might cave in. Might Quakers have this fear too? Are some of us afraid that if we use language from the gospels that we might be opening the floodgates of fundamentalism?
And if so, are those fears well-founded or ill-founded?
Great post, Martin. It got us all thinking…