Long-time Quaker blogger Mark Wutka wonders if we’ve inadvertently brought back in a doctrinal statement with our easy response to the question of Quaker belief:
Do Friends today have faith and trust in ‘that of God’ in every person? Are we striving to answer ‘that of God’ in others, and do we have the faith that doing so may eventually bring them away from evil? I ask this because much of the discourse today seems to ignore this.
“That of God in everyone” is one of those phrases that many traditional-leaning Friends have found a bit problematic over the years. Quaker co-founder George Fox used it, but sparingly. It doesn’t even appear in his Journal. If you were looking for an “elevator pitch” of his beliefs, I would go with his spiritual opening that there is one, even Christ Jesus, who can speak to our condition. The most well-argued (perhaps over-argued) expose of “that of God” as a latter-day Quaker overlay came from Lewis Benson’s famous essay from 1970, ‘That of God in Every Man” — What Did George Fox Mean by It?
In the second half of the piece Mark asks whether our belief of that of God leads us to act differently in the political sphere. He struggles with this, as do I, and as do presumably all of us. I worry particularly about judging the way Friends act; whenever I see someone share a hard truth, I know I’ll quickly see someone else critique them for being too divisive, too “unQuakerly.”
Jesus famously overturned the money changers and Benjamin Lay spilled pig blood in yearly meeting sessions. Maybe the only guide we have is the active Guide. Maybe our orderly walking will look alternatively meek or divisive depending on the cues we’re given. And maybe we’ll be misunderstood even as we’re being the most faithful.
Mark finishes:
For now, I am striving to walk in the Light as best I can and manifest the fruit of the Spirit in my interactions with people
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