Love is unconditional and accepts us for who we are

March 15, 2006

I tried to post this as a com­ment on “this piece by James Riemermann”:http://feeds.quakerquaker.org/quaker?m=299 on the Non­the­ist Friends web­site but the site expe­ri­enced a tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ty when I tried to sub­mit it (hope it’s back up soon!). James describes his post as a “rant” about “conservative-leaning lib­er­al Friends,” and one theme that got picked up in the com­ments was how he and oth­ers felt exclud­ed by us (for that is a term I use to try to describe my spir­i­tu­al con­di­tion). Rather than loose the com­ment I’ll just post it here.
Hi James and everyone,
Well, I think I was one of the first of the Quak­er blog­gers to talk about conservative-leaning lib­er­al Quak­ers back in July 2003. I too am not sure it’s any­thing worth call­ing a “move­ment.”
I hear this feel­ing of being exclud­ed but I’m not sure where that’s com­ing from. When James had a real­ly won­der­ful, thought-provoking response to my “We’re All Ranters Now” piece, I asked him if I could “reprint” the com­ment as its own guest piece. It got a lot of atten­tion, a lot of com­ments. I did­n’t real­ize you were using non​the​ist​friends​.org as a blog these days but “Robin M”:http://www.quakerquaker.org/contributors_robin_m/ of “What Canst Thou Say”:http://robinmsf.blogspot.com/ did and has added a link to your post from “QuakerQuaker.org”:www.quakerquaker.org, which again is a val­i­da­tion that yours is an impor­tant voice (I can pret­ty much guar­an­tee that this is going to be one of the more fol­lowed links). You and every­one here are part of the family.
Yes, we have some dis­agree­ments. I don’t think Quak­erism is sim­ply made up of who­ev­er makes it into the meet­ing­house. I think we have a tra­di­tion that we’ve inher­it­ed. This con­sists of prac­tices and val­ues and ways of look­ing at the world. Much of that tra­di­tion comes from the gospel of Jesus and the epis­tles between the ear­li­est Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ties. Much of what might feel like neu­tral Quak­er prac­tice is a clear echo of that tra­di­tion, and that echo is what I talk about that in my blogs. I think it’s good to know where we’re com­ing from. That does­n’t mean we’re stuck there and we adapt it as our rev­e­la­tion changes (this atti­tude is why I’m a lib­er­al Friend no mat­ter how much I talk about Christ). These blog con­ver­sa­tions are the ways we share our expe­ri­ences, min­is­ter to and com­fort one another.
That peo­ple hold dif­fer­ent reli­gious under­stand­ings and prac­tices isn’t in itself inher­ent­ly exclu­sion­ary. Diver­si­ty is good for us, right? There’s no one Quak­er cen­ter. There’s muli­ti­ple con­ver­sa­tions hap­pen­ing in mul­ti­ple lan­guages, much of it glo­ri­ous­ly over­lap­ping on the elec­tron­ic path­ways of the inter­net. That’s won­der­ful, it shows a great vital­i­ty. The reli­gious tra­di­tion that is Quak­erism is not dead, not moth­balled away in a liv­ing his­to­ry muse­um some­where. It’s alive, with its assump­tions and bound­aries con­stant­ly being revis­it­ed. That’s cool. If a par­tic­u­lar post feels too carp­ing, there’s always the “elder­ing of the back but­ton,” as I like to call it. Let’s try to hear each oth­er from where we are and to remain open to the min­istry from those who might appear to be com­ing from a dif­fer­ent place. Love is the first move­ment and love is uncon­di­tion­al and accepts us for who we are.
I bet­ter stop this before I get too mushy, with all this talk of love! See what I mean about being a lib­er­al Quaker?
Your Friend, Martin

We’re All Ranters Now: On Liberal Friends and Becoming a Society of Finders

November 18, 2003

It’s time to explain why I call this site “The Quak­er Ranter” and to talk about my home, the lib­er­al branch of Quak­ers. Non-Quakers can be for­giv­en for think­ing that I mean this to be a place where I, Mar­tin Kel­ley, “rant,” i.e., where I “utter or express with extrav­a­gance.” That may be the result (smile), but it’s not what I mean and it’s not the real pur­pose behind this site.

Friends and Ranters

The Ranters were fellow-travelers to the Friends in the reli­gious tur­moil of seventeenth-century Eng­land. The coun­try­side was cov­ered with preach­ers and lay peo­ple run­ning around Eng­land seek­ing to revive prim­i­tive Chris­tian­i­ty. George Fox was one, declar­ing that “Christ has come to teach his peo­ple him­self” and that hireling cler­gy were dis­tort­ing God’s mes­sage. The move­ment that coa­lesced around him as “The Friends of Truth” or “The Quak­ers” would take its orders direct­ly from the Spir­it of Christ.

This worked fine for a few years. But before long a lead­ing Quak­er rode into the town of Bris­tol in imi­ta­tion of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem. Not a good idea. The author­i­ties con­vict­ed him of heresy and George Fox dis­tanced him­self from his old friend. Soon after­wards, a quasi-Quaker col­lec­tion of reli­gious rad­i­cals plot­ted an over­throw of the gov­ern­ment. That also did­n’t go down very well with the author­i­ties, and Fox quick­ly dis­avowed vio­lence in a state­ment that became the basis of our peace tes­ti­mo­ny. Clear­ly the Friends of the Truth need­ed to fig­ure out mech­a­nisms for decid­ing what mes­sages were tru­ly of God and who could speak for the Friends movement.

The cen­tral ques­tion was one of author­i­ty. Those Friends rec­og­nized as hav­ing the gift for spir­i­tu­al dis­cern­ment were put in charge of a sys­tem of dis­ci­pline over way­ward Friends. Friends devised a method for deter­min­ing the valid­i­ty of indi­vid­ual lead­ings and con­cerns. This sys­tem rest­ed on an assump­tion that Truth is immutable, and that any errors come from our own will­ful­ness in dis­obey­ing the mes­sage. New lead­ings were first weighed against the tra­di­tion of Friends and their pre­de­ces­sors the Israelites (as brought down to us through the Bible).

Ranters often looked and sound­ed like Quak­ers but were opposed to any impo­si­tion of group author­i­ty. They were a move­ment of indi­vid­ual spir­i­tu­al seek­ers. Ranters thought that God spoke direct­ly to indi­vid­u­als and they put no lim­its on what the Spir­it might instruct us. Tra­di­tion had no role, insti­tu­tions were for disbelievers.

Mean­while Quak­ers set up Quar­ter­ly and Year­ly Meet­ings to insti­tu­tion­al­ize the sys­tem of elders and dis­ci­pline. This worked for awhile, but it should­n’t be too sur­pris­ing that this human insti­tu­tion even­tu­al­ly broke down. World­li­ness and wealth sep­a­rat­ed the elders from their less well-to-do brethren and new spir­i­tu­al move­ments swept through Quak­er ranks. Divi­sions arose over the eter­nal ques­tion of how to pass along a spir­i­tu­al­i­ty of con­vince­ment in a Soci­ety grown com­fort­able. By the ear­ly 1800s, Philadel­phia elders had became a kind of aris­toc­ra­cy based on birthright and in 1827 they dis­owned two-thirds of their own year­ly meet­ing. The dis­owned major­i­ty nat­u­ral­ly devel­oped a dis­trust of author­i­ty, while the aris­to­crat­ic minor­i­ty even­tu­al­ly real­ized there was no one left to elder.

Over the next cen­tu­ry and a half, suc­ces­sive waves of pop­u­lar reli­gious move­ments washed over Friends. Revival­ism, Deism, Spir­i­tu­al­ism and Pro­gres­sive Uni­tar­i­an­ism all left their mark on Friends in the Nine­teenth Cen­tu­ry. Mod­ern lib­er­al Protes­tantism, Evan­gel­i­cal­ism, New Ageism, and sixties-style rad­i­cal­ism trans­formed the Twen­ti­eth. Each fad lift­ed up a piece of Quak­ers’ orig­i­nal mes­sage but invari­ably added its own incon­gru­ous ele­ments into wor­ship. The Soci­ety grew ever more fractured.

Faced with ever-greater the­o­log­i­cal dis­uni­ty, Friends sim­ply gave up. In the 1950s, the two Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ings reunit­ed. It was cel­e­brat­ed as rec­on­cil­i­a­tion. But they could do so only because the role of Quak­er insti­tu­tions had fun­da­men­tal­ly changed. Our cor­po­rate bod­ies no longer even try to take on the role of dis­cern­ing what it means to be a Friend.

We are all Ranters now

Lib­er­al Quak­ers today tend to see their local Meet­ing­house as a place where every­one can believe what they want to believe. The high­est val­ue is giv­en to tol­er­ance and cor­dial­i­ty. Many peo­ple now join Friends because it’s the reli­gion with­out a reli­gion, i.e., it’s a com­mu­ni­ty with the form of a reli­gion but with­out any the­ol­o­gy or expec­ta­tions. We are a proud to be a com­mu­ni­ty of seek­ers. Our com­mon­al­i­ty is in our form and we’re big on silence and meet­ing process.

Is it any won­der that almost every­one today seems to be a hyphen­at­ed Quak­er? We’ve got Catholic-Quakers, Pagan-Quakers, Jewish-Quakers: if you can hyphen­ate it, there’s a Quak­er inter­est group for you. I’m not talk­ing about Friends nour­ished by anoth­er tra­di­tion: we’ve have his­tor­i­cal­ly been graced and con­tin­ue to be graced by con­verts to Quak­erism whose fresh eyes let us see some­thing new about our­selves. No, I’m talk­ing about peo­ple who prac­tice the out­ward form of Quak­erism but look else­where for the­ol­o­gy and inspi­ra­tion. If being a Friend means lit­tle more than show­ing up at Meet­ing once a week, we should­n’t be sur­prised that peo­ple bring a the­ol­o­gy along to fill up the hour. It’s like bring­ing a news­pa­per along for your train com­mute every morning.

But the appear­ance of tol­er­ance and uni­ty comes at a price: it depends on every­one for­ev­er remain­ing a Seek­er. Any­one who wants to fol­low ear­ly Friends’ expe­ri­ence as “Friends of the Truth” risks becomes a Find­er who threat­ens the nego­ti­at­ed truce of the mod­ern Quak­er meet­ing. If we real­ly are a peo­ple of God, we might have to start act­ing that way. We might all have to pray togeth­er in our silence. We might all have to sub­mit our­selves to God’s will. We might all have to wres­tle with each oth­er to artic­u­late a shared belief sys­tem. If we were Find­ers, we might need to define what is unac­cept­able behav­ior for a Friend, i.e., on what grounds we would con­sid­er dis­own­ing a member.

If we became a reli­gious soci­ety of Find­ers, then we’d need to fig­ure out what it means to be a Quaker-Quaker: some­one who’s the­ol­o­gy and prac­tice is Quak­er. We would need to put down those indi­vid­ual news­pa­pers to become a Peo­ple once more. I’m not say­ing we’d be unit­ed all the time. We’d still have dis­agree­ments. Even more, we would once again need to be vig­i­lant against the re-establishment of repres­sive elder­ships. But it seems obvi­ous to me that Truth lies in the bal­ance between author­i­ty and indi­vid­u­al­ism and that it’s each gen­er­a­tion’s task to restore and main­tain that balance.

* * *
Over the years a num­ber of old­er and wis­er Friends have advised me to live by Friends’ prin­ci­ples and to chal­lenge my Meet­ing to live up to those ideals. But in my year serv­ing as co-clerk of a small South Jer­sey Meet­ing, I learned that almost no one else there believed that our busi­ness meet­ings should be led by the real pres­ence of the liv­ing God. I was stuck try­ing to clerk using a mod­el of cor­po­rate decision-making that I alone held. I would like to think those wis­er Friends have more ground­ed Meet­ings. Per­haps they do. But I fear they just are more suc­cess­ful at kid­ding them­selves that there’s more going on than there is. I agree that the Spir­it is every­where and that Christ is work­ing even we don’t rec­og­nize it. But isn’t it the role of a reli­gious com­mu­ni­ty to rec­og­nize and cel­e­brate God’s pres­ence in our lives?

Until Friends can find a way to artic­u­late a shared faith, I will remain a Ranter. I don’t want to be. I long for the over­sight of a com­mu­ni­ty unit­ed in a shared search for Truth. But can any of us be Friends if so many of us are Ranters?


More Reading

For those inter­est­ed, “We all Ranters Now” para­phras­es (birthright Friend) Richard Nixon’s famous quote (semi-misattributed) about the lib­er­al econ­o­mist John May­nard Keynes.

Bill Samuel has an inter­est­ing piece called “Keep­ing the Faith” that address­es the con­cept of Uni­ty and its wax­ing and wan­ing among Friends over the centuries.

Samuel D. Cald­well gave an inter­est­ing lec­ture back in 1997, Quak­er Cul­ture vs. Quak­er Faith. An excerpt: “Quak­er cul­ture and Quak­er faith are… often direct­ly at odds with one anoth­er in Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing today. Although it orig­i­nal­ly derived from and was con­sis­tent with Quak­er faith, con­tem­po­rary Quak­er cul­ture in this Year­ly Meet­ing has evolved into a bor­ing, peev­ish, repres­sive, pet­ty, humor­less, inept, mar­gin­al, and large­ly irrel­e­vant cult that is gen­er­al­ly repug­nant to ordi­nary peo­ple with healthy psy­ches. If we try to pre­serve our Quak­er cul­ture, instead of fol­low­ing the lead­ings of our Quak­er faith, we will most cer­tain­ly be cast out of the King­dom and die.”

I talk a bit more about these issues in Sodi­um Free Friends, which talks about the way we some­times inten­tion­al­ly mis-understand our past and why it mat­ters to engage with it. Some prag­man­tic Friends defend our vague­ness as a way to increase our num­bers. In The Younger Evan­gel­i­cals and the Younger Quak­ers I look at a class of con­tem­po­rary seek­ers who would be recep­tive to a more robust Quak­erism and map out the issues we’d need to look at before we could real­ly wel­come them in.