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Steven Davision: The gospel of Jesus as an economic message
The good news is that the gospel of Jesus is, at its very heart, an economic message. Jesus defined his role as “the Christ” in specifically economic terms.
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Luis Pizarro: Sharing the Good News in Spain
Our project to create a Quaker Christian worship group in Seville, Spain, has emerged in this complex context.
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Rick Seifert: My Quaker elevator talk
Quakers realize that most people don’t have a clue about Quakers. What they know often begins and ends with the guy in the funny hat on the oat meal carton.
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[Western Friend] Quaker Bloggers in the West
This special issue of Western Friend focuses on lifting up the written ministry of Quaker bloggers in the West!
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Micah Bales: Preparing for the Harvest
In both the revivalism of the late 1800s and the New Meetings Movement of the mid-1900s, we see cases in which growth outran the capacity of seasoned ministry, eldership and oversight to care for newly convinced Friends and Meetings. As a result, the tradition was radically, decisively altered in very short periods of time…
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It was scary, because I knew the answers were not the “right” ones. But they were real.
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Emerging Diane looks at a story from Woolman’s Journal
I think his purpose from the very beginning was more than to tell a confessional story. With this tale, he establishes from the outset a theme that runs throughout the entire journal and pertains to all creation: Once you or I start doing even one evil thing, we create a chain reaction. It’s never just one thing, period.
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Taking up the Cross means choosing to be obedient to the will of God, to be willing to sacrifice at a time when we greatly and intensely don’t wish to.
Quaker Ranter
A Weekly Newsletter and Blog from Martin Kelley
Tag Archives ⇒ Christ
The peace of Christ for those with ears to hear
March 9, 2009
Over on Quaker Oats Live, Cherice is fired up about taxes again and proposing a peace witness for next year:
My solution: Quakers, Mennonites, Brethren, and whomever else wants to participate refuses to pay war taxes for a few years, and we suffer the consequences. I think we should campaign for a war-tax-free 2010 in all Quaker meetings and Mennonite/Brethren/etc. communities. What are they going to do – throw us all in jail? Maybe. But they can’t do that forever. No one wants to pay their taxes for a bunch of Quakers and other pacifists to sit in jail for not paying taxes. It doesn’t make sense.
A commenter chimes in with a warning about Friends who were hit by heavy tax penalties a quarter century ago. But I know of someone who didn’t pay taxes for twenty years and recently volunteered the information to the Internal Revenue Service. The collectors were nonchalant, polite and sympathetic and settled for a very reasonable amount. If this friend’s experience is any guide, there’s not much drama to be had in war tax resistance. These days, Caesar doesn’t care much.
What if our witness was directed not at the federal government but at our fellow Christians? We could follow Quaker founder George Fox’s example and climb the tallest tree we could find (real or metaphorical) and begin preaching the good news that war goes against the teachings of Jesus. As always, we would be respectful and charitable but we could reclaim the strong and clear voices of those who have traveled before us. If we felt the need for backup? Well, I understand there are twenty-seven or so books to the New Testament sympathetic to our cause. And I have every reason to believe that the Inward Christ is still humming our tune and burning bushes for all who have eyes to see and ears to listen. Just as John Woolman ministered with his co-religionists about the sin of slavery, maybe our job is to minister to our co-religionists about war.
But who are these co-religionist neighbors of ours? Twenty years of peace organizing and Friends organizing makes me doubt we could find any large group of “historic peace church” members to join us. We talk big and write pretty epistles, but few individuals engage in witnesses that involve any danger of real sacrifice. The way most of our established bodies couldn’t figure out how to respond to a modern day prophetic Christian witness in Tom Fox’s kidnapping is the norm. When the IRS threatened to put liens on Philadelphia Yearly Meeting to force resistant staffers to pay, the general secretary and clerk said all sorts of sympathetic words of anguish (which they probably even meant), then docked the employee’s pay anyway. There have been times when clear-eyed Christians didn’t mind loosing their liberty or property in service to the gospel. Early Friends called our emulation of Christ’s sacrifice the Lamb’s War, but even seven years of real war in the ancient land of Babylonia itself hasn’t brought back the old fire. Our meetinghouses sit quaint, with ownership deeds untouched, even as we wring our hands wondering why most remain half-empty on First Day morning.
But what about these emerging church kids?: all those people reading Shane Claiborne, moving to neighborhoods in need, organizing into small cells to talk late into the night about primitive Christianity? Some of them are actually putting down their candles and pretentious jargon long enough to read those twenty-seven books. Friends have a lot of accumulated wisdom about what it means the primitive Christian life, even if we’re pretty rusty on its actual practice. What shape would that witness take and who would join us into that unknown but familiar desert? What would our movement even be called? And does it matter?
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Anyone interested in thinking more on this should start saving up their loose change ($200 commuters) to come join C Wess Daniels and me this November when we lead a workshop on “The New Monastics and Convergent Friends” at Pendle Hill near Philadelphia. Methinks I’m already starting to blog about it.
For other uses, see Light (disambiguation)
March 21, 2007
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.
What’s God Got to Do, Got to Do With It?
April 18, 2005
This essay is my hesitant attempt to answer the questions James R. posted a few weeks ago, I Am What I Am.
Loving God with All Our Hearts
My religion teaches me that the first commandment is to love God above all else. The primary mission of a religious community is to serve God and to facilitate the spiritual growth and discernment of its members in their search for God. For me, this needs to be an explicit goal of my meeting.
I very much appreciate James’s honesty that for him to use the term of “God” would be “misleading, even dishonest.” One of the central openings of Quakerism is that we should not profess an abstract understanding of God. We believe in the necessity for “deep and repeated baptisms” and for every testimony and act in the ministry to come from the “immediate influence of his Spirit” in a “fresh annointing” (wonderful language from a Irish memorial minute for Job Scott). I would wish that more Friends would follow James’s example and not speak without that immediate direct knowledge of the divine. (How many plenary speakers at Quaker events are reading from a prepared speech? How many of us really find ourselves turning to prayer when conflicts arise in business meeting?)
I don’t think one does need an experience of God to be a part of a Quaker community. Many of us go through dry spells where the Spirit’s presence seems absent and this certainly doesn’t disqualify us for membership. But God is the center of our faith and our work: worship is about listening to God’s call; business meeting is about discerning God’s instructions. This has to be understood. For those who can’t name God in their lives, it must be just a bit bizarre to come week after week to participate with a group of people praying for God’s guidance. But that’s okay. I think all that is good in our religious society come from the Great Master. We are known by our fruits and the outward forms of our witnesses constantly point back to God’s love. This is the only real outreach we do. I’m happy spending a lifetime laboring with someone in my community pointing out to the Spirit’s presence in our midst. All that we love about Quakers comes from that source but part of my discipline is the patience to wait for God to reveal Herself to you.
I joined Friends via the fairly common route of peace activism. I could sense that there was something else at work among the Quaker peace activists I knew and wanted to taste of that something myself. It’s taken me years to be able to name and articulate the divine presence I sensed fifteen years ago. That’s okay, it’s a normal route for some of us.
The other piece that the comments have been dancing around is Jesus. I’m at the point where I can (finally) affirm that Christianity is not accidental to Quakerism. As I’ve delved deeper I’ve realized just how much of our faith and work really does grow out of the teachings of Jesus. I don’t want to be part of a Friends meeting where our Quaker roots are largely absent. I want to know more about Friends, which means delving ever deeper into our past and engaging with it. We can’t do that without frequently turning to the Bible. Liberal Friends need to start exploring our Christian roots more fully and need to get more serious about reading Quaker writings that predate 1950. There have been many great figures in human history, but whatever you think about the divinity of Jesus, he has had much more of an impact on Quakerism than all of the heroes of American liberalism combined. We’ve got a Friend in Jesus and we’ve got to get on speaking arragements with him again if we’re going to keep this Quakerism going.
Shaking the Sandy Foundation
James asked if the regulars at Quaker Ranter wanted a purging. I certainly don’t want to kick anyone out but I don’t think some of the people currently involved in Quakerism would be with us if we were truer to our calling. We need to start talking honestly and have a round or two of truth-telling and plain speaking about what it means to be a Friend. Yes, there are some delicate people who are offended by terms like God and worship, Christ and obedience. And many have good reasons to be offended (as Julie pointed out to me this weekend, one of the greatest sins our religious and political leaders have done over the centuries is to commit evil in the name of God, for they not only committed that evil but have so scarred some seekers that they cannot come to God). One can know Jesus without using the name and God does hold us in His warm embrace even through our doubts. But for those of us lucky enough to know His name shouldn’t be afraid to use it.
Many people come to us sincerely as seekers, trying to understand the source of Quakers’ witness and spiritual grounding. I appreciate James’s asking “why I feel so irrestibly drawn to a community and religious society in which the central term is God.” As long as that’s where we start, I’m happy to be in fellowship.
But fellowship is an immediate relationship that doesn’t always last. There are people involved in Quakerism for reasons that are incidental to the mission of our religious society. We know the types: peace activists who seem to be around because Quakers have a good mailing list; Friends from ancient Quaker families who are around because they want to be buried out with great-grandma in the cemetery out back; twenty-something liberal seekers who like the openness and affability of Quakers. These are sandy foundations for religious faith and they will not necessarily hold. If Quakers started articulating our beliefs and recommitting ourselves to be a people of God, we will have those who will decide to drift away. They might be hurt when they realize their attraction to Quakerism was misplaced.
Naming the Trolls
We’ve all met people who have walked into a meetinghouse with serious disagreements with basic fundamental principles of Quakerism. This is to say we attract some loonies, or more precisely: visitors who have come to pick a fight. Most religious institutions show them the door. As Friends we have a proud tradition of tolerance but we’re too quick nowadays to let tolerance trump gospel order and destroy the “safe space” of our meetinghouse. This is a disservice to our community. Every so often we get someone who stands up to angrily denounce Christian language in a Quaker meeting. It’s fine to challenge an in-group’s unexamined pieties but I’m talking about those who try to get the meeting to censor ideas by claiming victimhood status whenever they hear a Christian worldview expressed. The person’s motivations for being there need to be questioned and they need to be lovingly labored with. We attract some people who deeply hurt and come with axes to grind. Some of them will use non-theism as their rallying call. When they are eldered they will claim it’s because of their philosophy, not their action. These kind of conflicts are messy, unpleasant and often confusing but we need to address them head on.
There are plenty of professing Christians who also need to be called on their disruptive behavior. They too would claim that any eldership is a reaction to their Christian theology. (Actually, I know more professing Christians than professing non-theists who should be challenged this way (Julie asked “who?” and I came up with a list of three right off the bat)). But there are disrupters of all flavors who will trumpet their martyrdom when Friends finally begin to take seriously the problems of detraction (a fine Quaker concept we need to revisit). If we suffer unfairly we need to be able to muster up a certain humility and obedience to the meeting, even if we’re sure it’s wrong. Again, it will be messy and all too-human but we need to work with each other on this one.
Sharing the Treasure
The real problem as I see it is not respectful non-theists among us: it’s those of us who have tasted of the bounty but hoard the treasure for ourselves. We hide the openings we’ve been given. A few weeks ago I was at yearly meeting sessions attended by some of the most recognized ministers in Philadelphia when a woman said she was offended by the (fairly tame) psalms we were asked to read. She explained “I’m used to Quakerese, Light and all that, and I don’t like all this language about God as an entity.” No one in that room stood to explain that these psalms _are one of the sources_ of our Quakerese and that the “Light” Friends have have been talking about for most of the past three and a half centuries is explicitly the Light _of Christ_. I don’t want to make too big a deal of this incident, but this kind of thing happens all the time: we censor our language to the point where it’s full of inoffensive double-meanings. Let’s not be afraid to talk in the language we have. We need to share the treasure we’ve been given.
Related Reading:
This post was inspired by James R’s comment, which I titled I Am What I Am. He was responding originally to my essay We’re All Ranters Now. I remain deeply grateful that James posted his comment and then allowed me to feature it. These are not easy issues, certainly not, and its easy to misread what we all are saying. I hope that what I’m contributing is seen through the lens of love and charity, in whose spirit I’ve been trying to respond. I’m not trying to write a position paper, but to share honestly what I’ve seen and the openings I feel I have been given – I reserve the right to change my opinions! From what I’ve read, I’d be honored to be in fellowship with James.
Liz Oppenheimer has opened up with a thoughtful, tender piece called My Friendly journey with Christ.
You know the disclaimer at the bottom that says I’m not speaking for any Quaker organization? I mean it. I’m just take phone orders and crank out web pages for a particular organization. This isn’t them speaking.
A Simple Testimony
March 22, 2005
I like to rant. I like to break down Quaker sociology. But often I’m quiet about simply testifying to how Christ’s love comforts me, guides me, elders me.
It’s My Language Now: Thinking About Youth Ministry
March 16, 2005
This past weekend I took part in a “Youth Ministries Consultation” sponsored by Friends General Conference. Thirty Friends, most under the age of 35, came together to talk about their experience of Quakerism.
Conformed to the World
The issue that spoke most strongly this weekend was the experience of not being known. Young and old we longed for a naming & nurturing of gifts. We longed to be seen as members one of another. Early on a young Friend from a well-known family said she often felt she was seen as her mother’s daughter or confused with cousins and aunts. Another Friend with pedigree complained that as a young person interested in Quakerism he was seen by nominating committees as a generic “Young Friend” who could be slotted into any committee as its token youth representative. Another young Friend agreed that, yes, there is “affirmative action for young Friends.”
Affirmative action?!? For young Friends?? At this statement my jaw dropped. Throughout most of my time as a twenty- and thirty-something Friend I have felt almost completely invisible. I’d have to walk on water to be named to a committee by my yearly meeting (only in the last year has a yearly meeting nominating committee-member approached me). I can get profiled in the New York Times for my peace work but request as I try I can’t even get on the mailing list for my yearly meeting’s peace committee!
And yet the deeper issue is the same for me and the annointed young Friends: we are seen not as ourselves but in relation (or non-relation) to other Friends. We are all tokens. As a small group of us met to talk about the issue of gift-naming, we realized the problem wasn’t just limited to those under forty. Even older Friends longed to be part of meetings that would know us, meetings that would see beyond our most obvious skins of age, race and birth family to our deeper, ever-changing and refreshing souls. We all long for others to give nurturing guidance and loving oversight to that deepest part of ourselves! How we long to whisper, sing and shout to one another about the Spirit’s movement inside us. We all long for a religious society where expectations aren’t limited by our outward differences.
This isn’t about filling committees and finding clerks. What if we could go beyond the superficial communities of niceness maintained in so many Meetings to find something more real – a “capital ‘C’ Community” as one Friend put it? This is about living that beloved Community. Consultations and programs are easy but the hard work is changing attitudes and changing our expectations of one another, expectations that keep us from having to get to know one another.
One Body in Christ
As the consultation wrapped up we were given an overview of the next steps: setting up committees, doing fundraising, supporting identified youth work. It’s all fine and good but it was a pretty generic list of next-steps that could have been generated even before the meeting.
Caught up in the idea of a “youth ministries program” are assumptions that the problem is with the youth and that the solution will come through some sort of programming. I don’t think either premise is accurate. The real change needs to be cultural and it needs to extend far past youth. Even most of the older Friends at the consultation saw that. But will they bring it back to the larger organization? Last November I shared some concerns about the Youth Ministries initative with its organizing committee:
I haven’t heard any apologizing from older Friends for the neglect and invisibility that they’ve given my generation. I haven’t heard anyone talk about addressing the issues of Quaker ageism or the the culture of FGC institutional nepotism. At [the FGC governing board’s annual meeting] I heard a statement that a youth ministries program would be built on the ongoing work of half-a-dozen listed committees, most of which I know haven’t done anything for youth ministries.
The point was hit home by an older Friend at the consultation during a small-group breakout. He explained the all-too-familiar rationale for why we should support youth: “because they are an investment in our future, they’re our leadership twenty and thirty years from now.” I suspect that a number of Friends on governing boards – not just of FGC but of our service programs and yearly meetings – look at “youth ministries” in a similarly-condescending, dismissive way, as investment work in the future. Why else would younger Friends be so under-represented in most Quaker committees and program work?
The problems transcend Quaker institutions. But Friends General Conference is in a particularly good position to model the work. Will FGC create a youth ministries ghetto or will it do the hard work of integrating its committees? Will it finally start sponsoring young ministers in its Traveling Ministries program? Will FGC initiate outreach efforts specifically targeted at 20-somethings (the demographic of the great majority of seekers who come to our doors)? Will there ever be a Friend under thirty-five invited to give a major Gathering plenary talk?
Transformed by the Renewing of Our Minds
The consultation was just 30 Friends. Most of the most exciting young Friends I know weren’t even invited and really couldn’t be with such a limited attendance cap. One older Friend tried to sum up the weekend by saying it was the start of something important, but that’s the wrong way to look at it. It’s really only another step along the way, the continuation of work that’s been going on for 100 years, 350 years, 2000 years or more depending on your frame of reference. This is work that will continue to be done over the course of generations, in hundreds of meetinghouses and it will involve everyone in the Religious Society of Friends in one way or another.
Lurking unnamed in the background of the Youth Ministries Consultation is the popular “Quaker” sweat lodge, which became so popular precisely because it was partly organized by young Friends, gave them real leadership opportunities and knew–knew with a certainty–that they could experience the divine and share that experience with their peers. If FGC’s programs can’t match those criteria, then FGC will suffer the loss of yet another generation.
What was important to me were the trends represented. There was a definite interest in getting more deeply involved in Quakerism and in exploring the religious side of this Society of Friends.
Grace Given Us
One struggle we’re going to continue to have is with language. For one small-group breakout, the organizing committee broke issues down by topics. One was dubbed “Leadership Training.” With that moniker it was surely going to focus on some sort of delimited, secular – and quite frankly boring – program that would be based on an organizational design model. It wasn’t the concern I had heard raised so I asked if we could rename it to a “naming of gifts” group; thankfully the suggestion was eagerly accepted. Renaming it helped ground it and gave the small group that gathered permission to look at the deeper issues involved. No one in our small group pointed out that our discussion unconsciously echoed Paul’s letter to the Romans:
Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect… For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us. Romans 12.
This unconscious Christianity is very strong among our branch of Quakers. As our small group discussed naming of gifts we turned to the roles of our monthly meetings and started labeling their functions. As the mission statement was worked out point by point, I noticed we were recreating gospel order. I suggested that one was to “forgive each other our trespasses,” which was an idea the small group liked. Even so, a few members didn’t want to use that language.
We were talking gospel order, but with sanitized language; it’s an oddity that we modern liberal Friends turn so often to secular vocabulary: we talk of childhood development models, we use organizational design lingo, we speak in the Quaker committee-speak.
My feeling is that liberal Friends do want to be religious. But we’ve spent a generation replacing any word that hints of religion with secularized alternatives and that now we often can’t think past this self-limited vocabulary. One word that needs to be exercised more is “God.” If you want to be a modern day Quaker minister, just reformulate every secularized Quakerspeak query you see to include “God.” When Friends ask “How can my monthly meeting meet my needs,” nicely suggest that we also ask “How can my monthly meeting meet God’s needs.” I found myself constantly reformulating queries over the weekend. It’s kind of odd that the word “God” has become so absent from a People gathered in the knowledge that “Christ has come to teach the people Himself,” but that’s the Society we’ve inherited and this is where our ministry must start.
Near the end of the consultation one college-age Friend explained a moment when her Quakerism was transformed from outward identity to an inward knowledge. “It’s my language now” she declared to us. Yes, it is. And that’s youth ministry and elder ministry, the good news that there’s a God we can name who will reveal what is “good and acceptable and perfect.” That’s our work today, that is the ministry of our ages.
More Reading:
FGC published a Good News Bulletin about the Youth Ministries Consultation.
Kwakersaur: Jesus vs Christ vs Discernment
January 26, 2005
“Interesting short post”:http://kwakersaur.blogspot.com/2005/01/jesus-language.html from Kwakersaur about the different ways Friends have related to God circa 1660, 1950 and today. A snippet
bq. [The first generation of Friends’] language lacked the me-an-Jesus kind of spirituality that marks the 1955 minutes and characterizes a lot of Christian spirituality of today. For early Quakers — and I suspect early Christians — it was not so much Jesus as a friendly affable fellow who loved us in a warm and comfy positive-strokes-I’m-OK-You’re-OK kinda way.
Beyond the MacGuffins: Sheeran’s Beyond Majority Rule
December 26, 2003
A review of Michael Sheeran’s Beyond Majority Rule. Twenty years later, do Friends need to experience the gathered condition?
Beyond Majority Rule has one of the more unique stories in Quaker writings. Michael Sheeran is a Jesuit priest who went to seminary in the years right after the Second Vatican Council. Forged by great changes taking place in the church, he took seriously the Council’s mandate for Roman Catholics to get “in touch with their roots.” He became interested in a long-forgotten process of “Communal Discernment” used by the Jesuit order in when it was founded in the mid-sixteenth century. His search led him to study groups outside Catholicism that had similar decision-making structures. The Religious Society of Friends should consider itself lucky that he found us. His book often explains our ways better than anything we’ve written.
Sheeran’s advantage comes from being an outsider firmly rooted in his own faith. He’s not afraid to share observations and to make comparisons. He started his research with a rather formal study of Friends, conducing many interviews and attending about ten monthly meetings in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. There are sections of the book that are dry expositions of Quaker process, sprinkled by interviews. There are times where Sheeran starts saying something really insightful about early or contemporary Friends, but then backs off to repeat some outdated Quaker cliche (he relies a bit too heavily on the group of mid-century Haverford-based academics whose histories often projected their own theology of modern liberal mysticism onto the early Friends). These sections aren’t always very enlightening – too many Philadelphia Friends are unconscious of their cherished myths and their inbedded inconsistencies. On page 85, he expresses the conundrum quite eloquently:
If the researcher was to succumb to the all too typical canons of social science, he would probably scratch his head a few times atjust this point, note that the ambiguity of Quaker expression makes accurate statistical evaluation of Quaker believes almost impossible without investment of untold time and effort, and move on to analysis of some less interesting but more manageable object of study.
Fortunately for us, Sheeran does not succumb. The book shines when Sheeran steps away from the academic role and offers us his subjective observations.
There are six pages in Beyond Majority Rule that comprise its main contribution to Quakerism. Almost every time I’ve heard someone refer to this book in conversation, it’s been to share the observations of these six pages. Over the years I’ve often casually browsed through the book and it’s these six pages that I’ve always stopped to read. The passage is called “Conflicting Myths and Fundamental Cleavages” and it begins on page 84. Sheeran begins by relating the obvious observation:
When Friends reflect upon their beliefs, they often focus upon the obvious conflict between Christocentric and universalist approaches. People who feel strongly drawn to either camp often see the other position as a threat to Quakerism itself.
As a Gen-X’er I’ve often been bored by this debate. It often breaks down into empty language and the desire to feel self-righteous about one’s beliefs. It’s the MacGuffin of contemporary liberal Quakerism. (A MacGuffin is a film plot device that drives the action but is in itself never explained and doesn’t really matter: if the spies have to get the secret plans across the border by midnight, those plans are the MacGuffin and the chase the real action.) Today’s debates about Christocentrism versus Universalism ignore the real issues of faithlessness we need to address.
Sheeran sees the real cleavage between Friends as those who haveexperienced the divine and those who haven’t. I’d extend the former just a bit to include those who have faith that the experience of the divine is possible. When we sit in worship do we really believe that we might be visited by Christ (however named, however defined)? When we center ourselves for Meeting for Business do we expect to be guided by the Great Teacher?
Sheeran found that a number of Friends didn’t believe in a divine visitation:
Further questions sometimes led to the paradoxical discovery that, for some of these Friends, the experience of being gathered even in meeting for worship was more of a formal rather than an experiential reality. For some, the fact that the group had sat quiety for twenty-five minutes was itself identified as being gathered.
There are many clerks that call for a “moment of silence” to begin and end business – five minutes of formal silence to prove that we’re Quakers and maybe to gather our arguments together. Meetings for business are conducted by smart people with smart ideas and efficiency is prized. Sitting in worship is seen a meditative oasis if not a complete waste of time. For these Friends, Quakerism is a society of strong leadership combined with intellectual vigor. Good decisions are made using good process. If some Friends choose to describe their own guidance as coming from “God,” that their individual choice but it is certainly not an imperative for all.
Maybe it’s Sheeran’s Catholicism that makes him aware of these issues. Both Catholics and Friends traditionally believe in the real presence of Christ during worship. When a Friend stands to speak in meeting, they do so out of obedience, to be a messenger and servant of the Holy Spirit. That Friends might speak ‘beyond their Guide’ does not betray the fact that it’s God’s message we are trying to relay. Our understanding of Christ’s presence is really quite radical: “Jesus has come to teach the people himself,” as Fox put it, it’s the idea that God will speak to us as He did to the Apostles and as He did to the ancient prophets of Israel. The history of God being actively involved with His people continues.
Why does this matter? Because as a religious body it is simply our duty to follow God and because newcomers can tell when we’re faking it. I’ve known self-described atheists who get it and who I consider brothers and sisters in faith and I’ve known people who can quote the bible inside and out yet know nothing about love (haven’t we all known some of these, even in Quakerism?). How do we get past the MacGuffin debates of previous generations to distill the core of the Quaker message?
Not all Friends will agree with Sheeran’s point of cleavage. None other than the acclaimed Haverfordian Douglas V Steere wrote the introduction to Beyond Majority Rule and he used it to dismiss the core six pages as “modest but not especially convincing” (page x). The unstated condition behind the great Quaker reunifications of the mid-twentieth century was a taboo against talking about what we believe as a people. Quakerism became an individual mysticism coupled with a world-focused social activism – to talk about the area in between was to threaten the new unity.
Times have changed and generations have shifted. It is this very in-between-ness that first attracted me to Friends. As a nascent peace activist, I met Friends whose deep faith allowed them to keep going past the despair of the world. I didn’t come to Friends to learn how to pray or how to be a lefty activist (most Quaker activists now are too self-absorbed to be really effective). What I want to know is how Friends relate to one another and to God in order to transcend themselves. How do we work together to discern our divine leadings? How do we come together to be a faithful people of the Spirit?
I find I’m not alone in my interest in Sheeran’s six pages. The fifty-somethings I know in leadership positions in Quakerism also seem more tender to Sheeran’s observations than Douglas Steere was. Twenty-five years after submitting his dissertation, Friends are perhaps ready to be convinced by our Friend, Michael J. Sheeran.
Postscript: Michael J Sheeran continues to be an interesting and active figure. He continues to write about governance issues in the Catholic Church and serves as president of Regis University in Denver.