Thomas Hamm is one of the most literary QuakerSpeak interviewees — you could probably take his raw transcript and publish it as a Friends Journal article. But it’s good to have a YouTube-accessible explanation of one of the only formal compendiums of belief and practices that we creed-adverse Friends produce. It’s also fascinating to learn how the purpose and structure of Faith and Practice has differed over time, geography, and theology.
What do Quakers believe? How do we practice our faith? The best place to look for the answers might be in a book of faith and practice. Here’s what they are and how they evolved over time.
This week’s featured Friends Journal article is Selling Hope by Tom Hoopes. Hoopes is a teacher at George School, one of the two prominent Quaker boarding schools in the Philadelphia area, and he talks about the branding challenges of “Quaker values” which historic Quaker schools so often fall back on when describing their mission. We often describe these with the simplistic “SPICES” forumulation (Eric Moon wrote about the problems over-emphasizing these). Hoopes encourages us to expand our language:
We can use any number of descriptors that do not sound so haughty and nearsighted. I think we should continually lift up some key pieces of vocabulary that really do make the Quaker way distinctive. Here is a brief list, to which I am sure Friends can add others: “that of God in every person”; “the Inner Light”; “continuing revelation”; “discernment”; “sense of the meeting”; “rightly led and rightly ordered”; “Friend speaks my mind”; “the still, small voice within”; “way opening”; “clerking”; “query”; “worship sharing”; “expectant waiting”; “centering down”; “Quaker decision making”; “Quaker tradition”; “faith and practice”; “seeking clearness”; “Quaker testimonies”; and of course, “meeting for worship.”
Longtime FJ readers will remember a much-discussed 2008 article by Hoopes, “Young Families and Quakerism: Will the Center Hold?” It certain spoke to my condition as a parent struggling with family life among Friends:
Let’s look at some hard realities facing many Quaker parents of young children today. They are frequently exhausted and frazzled from attending to their children’s needs in addition to their own all week long. They desperately need a break from their own children, and they may feel guilty about that fact. They are often asked — or expected — to serve as First-day school teachers or childcare providers. Hence, their experience of meeting is not one of replenishment, but of further depletion.
I wish I could report that Philadelphia Friends took the 2008 article to heart.
One of the blueprints for Quaker community is the “Epistle from the Elders at Balby” written in 1656 at the very infancy of the Friends movement by a gathering of leaders from Yorkshire and North Midlands, England.
It’s the precursor to Faith and Practice, as it outlines the relationship between individuals and the meeting. If remembered at all today, it’s for its postscript, a paraphrase of 2 Corinthians that warns readers not to treat this as a form to worship and to remain living in the light which is pure and holy. That postscript now starts off most liberal Quaker books of Faith and Practice.
But the Epistle itself is well worth dusting off. It addresses worship, ministry, marriage, and how to deal in meekness and love with those walking “disorderly.” It talks of how to support families and take care of members who were imprisoned or in need. Some of it’s language is a little stilted and there’s some talk of the role of servants that most modern Friend would object to. But overall, it’s a remarkably lucid, practical and relevant document. It’s also short: just over two pages.
One of the things I hear again and again from Friends is the desire for a deeper community of faith. Younger Friends are especially drawn toward the so-called “New Monastic” movement of tight communal living. The Balby Epistle is a glimpse into how an earlier generation of Friends addressed some of these same concerns.
In late January 2004, I went to a gathering on “Quaker Faith and Practice: The Witness of Our Lives and Words,” co-sponsored by the Christian Friends Conference and the New Foundation Fellowship. Here are some thoughts about the meeting.
Friends Journal