Tag Archives ⇒ New Testament

Ministers, elders, and overseers

October 22, 2018
· Martin Kelley

From Jnana Hod­son, a list­ing of three types of offices in tra­di­tion­al Quak­er meetings:

Tra­di­tion­al­ly, Quak­er meet­ings rec­og­nized and nur­tured indi­vid­u­als who had spir­i­tu­al gifts as min­is­ters, elders, or over­seers. These roles could be filled by men or women, and their ser­vice extend­ed over the entire congregation. 

Many Friends have dropped the term “over­seers” in recent years, out of con­cern for how the word is so asso­ci­at­ed with slav­ery. As I under­stand it, ear­ly Friends’ use of the word came from its use as an Eng­lish trans­la­tion for Episko­pos in the New Tes­ta­ment. They con­sid­ered them­selves to be re-establishing ear­ly Chris­t­ian mod­els. For exam­ple, Acts 20:28:

Take heed there­fore unto your­selves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you over­seers, to feed the church of God, which he hath pur­chased with his own blood. 

Bible trans­la­tions that were geared toward a Catholic audi­ence tend­ed to stick to Latinized words and went with “bish­op” over “over­seer.” Quak­ers wor­ried about the con­no­ta­tion of the word could pro­pose that we just start nam­ing bish­ops. It’s not as nut­ty as it might seem, as there are anabap­tist church­es who use the term to talk about roles with­in indi­vid­ual church­es. Of course, some­times name changes also mask changes in the­ol­o­gy and I noticed that some of the more lib­er­al Quak­er meet­ings dropped “over­seer” with a speed which they are not oth­er­wise known for. Friends today are a lot more indi­vid­u­al­is­tic than Friends were when our insti­tu­tions were set up — there are many good rea­sons for this in our his­to­ries. But I do hope we’re con­tin­u­ing to find ade­quate ways to notice and care for our members.
 

We need all three – and more

The Quaker Art of Dying?

March 22, 2017
· Martin Kelley
Hopewell Ceme­tery, Winslow Town­ship N.J. One of the many South Jer­sey Quak­er bur­ial grounds on long-bypassed coun­try roads. The meet­ing­house that was here is long gone.

We’re now cast­ing about for arti­cles for a Friends Jour­nal issue on “The Art of Dying and the After­life.” I’m inter­est­ed to see what we’ll get. Every so often some­one will ask me about Quak­er belief in the after­life. I’ve always found it rather remark­able that I don’t have any sat­is­fy­ing canon­i­cal answer to give them. While indi­vid­u­als Friends might have var­i­ous the­o­ries, I don’t see the issue come up all that often in ear­ly Friends theology.

As extreme­ly atten­tive Chris­tians they would have signed off on the idea of eter­nal life through Christ. Since they thought of them­selves as liv­ing in end times, they total­ly emu­lat­ed New Tes­ta­ment mir­a­cles. George Fox him­self brought a man back from the dead in a town off Exit 109 of the Gar­den State Express­way. Strange things afoot at the Cir­cle K!

Fox’s biog­ra­phers quick­ly scaled back the whole mir­a­cle thing. Appar­ent­ly that was an odd­ness too far. The cut-out parts of his biog­ra­phy have been repub­lished but even the repub­lish­ing now appears out of print (nev­er fear: Ama­zon has it used for not too much).

But Friends has folk cus­toms and beliefs too. The deceased body wasn’t undu­ly ven­er­at­ed. They recy­cled grave plots with­out much con­cern. I can think of a cou­ple of his­toric Quak­er bur­ial grounds in Philly that have been repur­posed for activ­i­ties deemed more prac­ti­cal to the liv­ing. The phi­los­o­phy of green bur­ial is catch­ing up with Quak­ers’ prac­tice, a fas­ci­nat­ing coming-around.

It also seems there’s a strong old Quak­er cul­ture of face imped­ing death with equa­nim­i­ty. That makes sense giv­en Friends’ mod­esty around indi­vid­ual achieve­ments. There’s a prac­ti­cal­i­ty that I see in many old­er Friends as they age. I’d be curi­ous to hear from Friends who have had insights on aging as they age and also care­tak­ers and fam­i­lies and hos­pice chap­lains who have accom­pa­nied Friends though death.

Writ­ing sub­mis­sions for our issue on “The Art of Dying and the After­life” are due May 8. You can learn about writ­ing for us at:

https://​www​.friend​sjour​nal​.org/​s​u​b​m​i​s​s​i​o​ns/

How do Friends approach the end of life? We’re liv­ing longer and dying longer. How do we make deci­sions on end-of-life care for our­selves and our loved ones? Do Quak­ers have insight into what hap­pens after we die? Sub­mis­sions due 5/8/2017.

ps: But of course we’re not just a dead tra­di­tion. There are many heal­ers who have revived ideas of Quak­er heal­ing. We have a high pro­por­tion of main­stream med­ical heal­ers as well as those fol­low­ing more mys­ti­cal heal­ing paths. If that’s of inter­est to you, nev­er fear: Octo­ber 2017 will be an issue on healing!).