Fea­tures on Friends Jour­nal this week, Jeff Rasley’s arti­cle on “stealth wor­shipers” and reli­gious doubt in the pro­fes­sion­al clergy:

Because I went to sem­i­nary, I came to know quite a few Chris­t­ian min­is­ters. As an attor­ney, I rep­re­sent­ed sev­er­al church­es and Chris­t­ian min­is­ters in legal mat­ters. Sev­er­al min­is­ters of Protes­tant denom­i­na­tions and two Catholic priests came clean with me about their per­son­al beliefs. I dis­cov­ered that when they were not “on,” many pas­tors would admit to the same doubts about the dog­mas and super­sti­tions of their church­es as I had about mine. 

Decem­ber’s issue is on Chris­tian­i­ty and there are opin­ions on var­i­ous sides of the issue but Rasley’s piece gets right to a core strength of Lib­er­al Quak­erism: its abil­i­ty to so eas­i­ly invite and engage with those unsure of their beliefs. Because of fam­i­ly, I get to a lot of non-Quaker ser­vices a lot and won­der how many of the peo­ple around me aren’t fol­low­ing their church’s teach­ings on var­i­ous issues. One way of order­ing Chris­t­ian denom­i­na­tions is to see if they pre­fer a tidy and pure but small con­gre­ga­tion or a messy big tent come-as-you-are congregation.

It seems like Quak­ers are tak­ing some­thing of a dif­fer­ent path: come but fol­low your own integri­ty and engage in the way that hon­ors what­ev­er lev­el of truth has been giv­en you. It’s a pret­ty pow­er­ful stance, though of course it gives us our own spe­cial set of headaches when it comes time to speak­ing in a col­lec­tive voice.

A Space for Doubt 

When reli­gious ser­vices are stripped of doc­tri­nal claims, doubters and skep­tics can par­tic­i­pate with greater integrity.

Friends Journal