Johan Maurer: More about boldness

Johan has a great post about “Quak­er evan­ge­liz­ing in Russia”:http://maurers.home.mindspring.com/2004/11/more-about-boldness.htm that real­ly applies to Quak­ers reach­ing out any­where. My favorite paragraph:
bq. I per­son­al­ly have a hard time with hob­by­ist Quak­erism, espe­cial­ly when defined in terms of ultra­finicky pre­scrip­tions of how “we” do things, “our” spe­cial pro­ce­dures and folk­ways, or any­thing else that detracts from Jesus being in the cen­ter of our com­mu­ni­ty life. How can we present some­thing so stilt­ed and crab­by and cul­tur­al­ly spe­cif­ic as an answer to spir­i­tu­al bondage? It is just anoth­er form of bondage!


I think a lot of Philadel­phia Friends obsess on pro­ce­dure and process since it pro­vides us the safe zone sup­pos­ed­ly sep­a­rat­ed from the­ol­o­gy. I cer­tain­ly know my share of Friends who answer every ques­tion with “that’s how we do it” (this is even fun­nier when it’s a par­tic­u­lar­ly mod­ern Quak­er prac­tice). At Quak­er gath­er­ings you’re doomed if you hold some pro­gram three years in a row, since that’s all it takes for it to be seen as essential.
I can be as guilty of all this as any­one. I find myself some­times jus­ti­fy­ing actions by an appeal to their ancient­ness among Friends. Tra­di­tion is impor­tant to Friends and it’s long been a test for dis­cern­ment but we should also be will­ing to explain how any prac­tice leads us clos­er to God. I try to catch myself now when I start explain­ing some­thing sole­ly from tra­di­tion. If noth­ing else it’s just a bad argu­ment: it can be refut­ed sim­ply by some­one declar­ing they’re not part of the tra­di­tion. As Johan points out, this just does­n’t work when evan­ge­liz­ing to anoth­er cul­ture (whether that cul­ture be Rus­sia or our own fel­low Quakers).
I think it’s inter­est­ing that when we’re not throw­ing the man­tle of tra­di­tion on our argu­ments, unpro­grammed Friends are often releas­ing our actions from all tra­di­tion by claim­ing a “con­tin­u­al rev­e­la­tion” that denies dis­cern­ment sub­or­di­nate to imme­di­ate impulse. It’s sort of a sign of our imbal­ance that many of us are ner­vous in that gray area between tra­di­tion and con­tin­u­al rev­e­la­tion. Every Friend that real­ly “gets” Quak­erism in my expe­ri­ence knows that these can­not be separated.
h3. See also:
“Let’s Talk About Evangelism”:http://www.fum.org/QL/issues/0410/Evangelism.htm, Johan’s recent arti­cle in _Quaker Life_ where he talks about his Wood­brooke fel­low­ship on _Evangelism and the Friends Testimonies_. On his dis­cus­sion board he’s try­ing out a “def­i­n­i­tion of Quak­er evangelism”:http://www.network54.com/Forum/thread?forumid=261660&messageid=1097599791&lp=1097599791, where he care­ful­ly dif­fer­en­ti­ates it from both pros­e­lytism and out­reach. Good stuff here.

One thought on “Johan Maurer: More about boldness

  1. I like your point that some Friends tend to use the argu­ment of “tra­di­tion” to invoke the need to do some­thing (or not). I have done this through­out my career with Quak­ers. I recall Johan speak­ing at an FGC Con­fer­ence about ten years ago mak­ing the very valid point that not ALL peo­ple desire or want to expe­ri­ence God in a strict­ly silent means. Could Friends, even us unpro­grammed ones, be open to lead­ings that allowed for cer­tain Meet­ings for Wor­ship with music and/or a brief mes­sage? My Meet­ing at the time tried this, and we found that peo­ple in the neigh­bor­hood, who could­n’t abide or under­stand the pur­pose of silence, start­ed to come to Meet­ing! Hmm.
    If I under­stand your point cor­rect­ly, I’m (grad­u­al­ly) real­iz­ing that it takes a lot more than just “tra­di­tion”, “con­tin­u­ing rev­e­la­tion”, “con­fir­ma­tion by Scrip­ture”, “lead­ings”, or “com­muncal dis­cern­ment”. It actu­al­ly takes ALL of them (or at least a sea­soned and well under­stood rea­son why one of these should be sub­or­di­nat­ed to the oth­er “tests” of lead­ings by God). Or at least that is what it seems to be the case to me.

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