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.

Uh-Oh: Beppe’s Doubts

March 9, 2005

I’ve occa­sion­al­ly thought of Beppe­blog’s  Joe Gua­da as my blog­ging Quak­er dopple­ganger. More than once he’s writ­ten the post I was about to write. And more than one impor­tant arti­cle of mine start­ed as com­men­tary to one of his insight­ful articles.

So I’m wor­ried that he’s writ­ten the first of a mul­ti­part arti­cle ask­ing Is it time to leave Quak­erism. I’m wor­ried not just that Quak­erism would lose a bright Light, etc., etc, but because I know that now I’m going to have to pub­licly mull over the ques­tion that’s a con­stant back­ground hum that I try not to think about.

Update: just to prove my point, my com­ment to Joe’s post was more inter­est­ing that my post point­ing to his post. Here’s the com­ment I just left there:

There was one day in wor­ship a few years ago right around the time when my wife Julie decid­ed to leave Quak­erism when I had this odd vision. I imag­ined us as boul­ders the front edge of a water­fall. Thou­sands of gal­lons of water swept over us every day, erod­ing and scar­ring our sur­face and under­min­ing the frag­ile base we were on. When Boul­der Julie final­ly dis­lodged and fell off the precipice of Quak­erism, I real­ized that one of the rocks that had held me in place was now gone and now there was going to be even more water and pres­sure try­ing to push me off.
I say this because you’ve become one of my blog­ging rocks, some­one who con­firms that I’m not a total nut­case. If you went over the edge I’d have to reassess my sit­u­a­tion and at least take a peek down myself. At the very least I’m going to have to blog about why I’ve stayed so long. I’m sure this is only part one to my com­men­tary on these issues…

Quaker Testimonies

October 15, 2004

One of the more rev­o­lu­tion­ary trans­for­ma­tions of Amer­i­can Quak­erism in the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry has been our under­stand­ing of the tes­ti­monies. In online dis­cus­sions I find that many Friends think the “SPICE” tes­ti­monies date back from time immemo­r­i­al. Not only are they rel­a­tive­ly new, they’re a dif­fer­ent sort of crea­ture from their predecessors.

In the last fifty years it’s become dif­fi­cult to sep­a­rate Quak­er tes­ti­monies from ques­tions of mem­ber­ship. Both were dra­mat­i­cal­ly rein­vent­ed by a newly-minted class of lib­er­al Friends in the ear­ly part of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry and then cod­i­fied by Howard Brin­ton’s land­mark Friends for 300 Years, pub­lished in the ear­ly 1950s.

Comfort and the Test of Membership

Brin­ton comes right out and says that the test for mem­ber­ship should­n’t involve issues of faith or of prac­tice but should be based on whether one feels com­fort­able with the oth­er mem­bers of the Meet­ing. This con­cep­tion of mem­ber­ship has grad­u­al­ly become dom­i­nant among lib­er­al Friends in the half cen­tu­ry since this book was pub­lished. The trou­ble with it is twofold. The first is that “com­fort” is not nec­es­sar­i­ly what God has in mind for us. If the frequently-jailed first gen­er­a­tion of Friends had used Brin­ton’s mod­el there would be no Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends to talk about (we’d be lost in the his­tor­i­cal foot­notes with the Mug­gle­to­ni­ans, Grindle­to­ni­ans and the like). One of the clas­sic tests for dis­cern­ment is whether an pro­posed action is con­trary to self-will. Com­fort is not our Soci­ety’s calling.

The sec­ond prob­lem is that com­fort­a­bil­i­ty comes from fit­ting in with a cer­tain kind of style, class, col­or and atti­tude. It’s fine to want com­fort in our Meet­ings but when we make it the pri­ma­ry test for mem­ber­ship, it becomes a cloak for eth­nic and cul­tur­al big­otries that keep us from reach­ing out. If you have advanced edu­ca­tion, mild man­ners and lib­er­al pol­i­tics, you’ll fit it at most East Coast Quak­er meet­ings. If you’re too loud or too eth­nic or speak with a work­ing class accent you’ll like­ly feel out of place. Samuel Cald­well gave a great talk about the dif­fer­ence between Quak­er cul­ture and Quak­er faith and I’ve pro­posed a tongue-in-cheek tes­ti­mo­ny against com­mu­ni­ty as way of open­ing up discussion.

The Feel-Good Testimonies

Friends for 300 Years also rein­vent­ed the Tes­ti­monies. They had been spe­cif­ic and often pro­scrip­tive: against gam­bling, against par­tic­i­pa­tion in war. But the new tes­ti­monies became vague feel-good char­ac­ter traits – the now-famous SPICE tes­ti­monies of sim­plic­i­ty, peace, integri­ty, com­mu­ni­ty and equal­i­ty. Who isn’t in favor of all those val­ues? A pres­i­dent tak­ing us to war will tell us it’s the right thing to do (integri­ty) to con­truct last­ing peace (peace) so we can bring free­dom to an oppressed coun­try (equal­i­ty) and cre­ate a stronger sense of nation­al pride (com­mu­ni­ty) here at home.

We mod­ern Friends (lib­er­al ones at least) were real­ly trans­formed by the redefin­tions of mem­ber­ship and the tes­ti­monies that took place mid-century. I find it sad that a lot of Friends think our cur­rent tes­ti­monies are the ancient ones. I think an aware­ness of how Friends han­dled these issues in the 300 years before Brin­ton would help us nav­i­gate a way out of the “eth­i­cal soci­ety” we have become by default.

The Source of our Testimonies

A quest for uni­ty was behind the rad­i­cal trans­for­ma­tion of the tes­ti­monies. The main accom­plish­ment of East Coast Quak­erism in the mid-twentieth cen­tu­ry was the reunit­ing of many of the year­ly meet­ings that had been torn apart by schisms start­ing in 1827. By the end of that cen­tu­ry Friends were divid­ed across a half dozen major the­o­log­i­cal strains man­i­fest­ed in a patch­work of insti­tu­tion­al divi­sions. One way out of this morass was to present the tes­ti­monies as our core uni­fy­ing prici­ples. But you can only do that if you divorce them from their source.

As Chris­tians (even as post-Christians), our core com­mand­ment is sim­ple: to love God with all our heart and to love our neigh­bor as ourselves:

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great com­mand­ment. And the sec­ond is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neigh­bour as thy­self. On these two com­mand­ments hang all the law and the prophets. Matthew 22:37 – 40 and Mark 12:30 – 31, Luke 10:27.

The Quak­er tes­ti­monies also hang on these com­mand­ments: they are our col­lec­tive mem­o­ry. While they are in con­tant flux, they refer back to 350 years of expe­ri­ence. These are the truths we can tes­ti­fy to as a peo­ple, ways of liv­ing that we have learned from our direct expe­ri­ence of the Holy Spir­it. They are intri­cate­ly tied up with our faith and with how we see our­selves fol­low­ing through on our charge, our covenant with God.

I’m sure that Howard Brin­ton did­n’t intend to sep­a­rate the tes­ti­monies from faith, but he chose his new catagories in such a way that they would appeal to a mod­ern lib­er­al audi­ence. By pop­u­lar­iz­ing them he made them so acces­si­ble that we think we know them already.

A Tale of Two Testimonies

Take the twin tes­ti­monies of plain­ness and sim­plic­i­ty. First the ancient tes­ti­mo­ny of plain­ness. Here’s the descrip­tion from 1682:

Advised, that all Friends, both old and young, keep out of the world’s cor­rupt lan­guage, man­ners, vain and need­less things and fash­ions, in appar­el, build­ings, and fur­ni­ture of hous­es, some of which are immod­est, inde­cent, and unbe­com­ing. And that they avoid immod­er­a­tion in the use of law­ful things, which though inno­cent in them­selves, may there­by become hurt­ful; also such kinds of stuffs, colours and dress, as are cal­cu­lat­ed more to please a vain and wan­ton mind, than for real use­ful­ness; and let trades­men and oth­ers, mem­bers of our reli­gious soci­ety, be admon­ished, that they be not acces­sary to these evils; for we ought to take up our dai­ly cross, mind­ing the grace of God which brings sal­va­tion, and teach­es to deny all ungod­li­ness and world­ly lusts, and to live sober­ly, right­eous­ly and god­ly, in this present world, that we may adorn the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ in all things; so may we feel his bless­ing, and be instru­men­tal in his hand for the good of others.

Note that there’s noth­ing in there about the length of one’s hem. The key phrase for me is the warn­ing about doing things “cal­cu­lat­ed to please a vain and wan­ton mind.” Friends were being told that pride makes it hard­er to love God and our neigh­bors; immod­er­a­tion makes it hard to hear God’s still small voice; self-sacrifice is nec­es­sary to be an instru­ment of God’s love. This tes­ti­mo­ny is all about our rela­tion­ships with God and with each other.

Most mod­ern Friends have dis­pensed with “plain­ness” and recast the tes­ti­mo­ny as “sim­plic­i­ty.” Ask most Friends about this tes­ti­mo­ny and they’ll start telling you about their clut­tered desks and their annoy­ance with cell­phones. Ask for a reli­gious edu­ca­tion pro­gram on sim­plic­i­ty and you’ll almost cer­tain­ly be assigned a book from the mod­ern vol­un­tary sim­plic­i­ty move­ment, one of those self-help man­u­als that promise inner peace if you plant a gar­den or buy a fuel-efficient car, with “God” absent from the index. While it’s true that most Amer­i­cans (and Friends) would have more time for spir­i­tu­al refresh­ment if they unclut­tered their lives, the sec­u­lar notions of sim­plic­i­ty do not emanate out of a con­cern for “gospel order” or for a “right order­ing” of our lives with God. Vol­un­tary sim­plic­i­ty is great: I’ve pub­lished books on it and I live car-free, use cloth dia­pers, etc. But plain­ness is some­thing dif­fer­ent and it’s that dif­fer­ence that we need to explore again.

Pick just about any of the so-called “SPICE” tes­ti­monies (sim­plic­i­ty, peace, integri­ty, com­mu­ni­ty and equal­i­ty) and you’ll find the mod­ern notions are sec­u­lar­l­ized over-simplications of the Quak­er under­stand­ings. In our quest for uni­ty, we’ve over-stated their importance.

Ear­li­er I men­tioned that many of the ear­li­er tes­ti­monies were pro­scrip­tive – they said cer­tain actions were not in accord with our prin­ci­ples. Take a big one: after many years of dif­fi­cult min­is­ter­ing and soul search­ing, Friends were able to say that slav­ery was a sin and that Friends who held slaves were kept from a deep com­mu­nion with God; this is dif­fer­ent than say­ing we believe in equal­i­ty. Sim­i­lar­ly, say­ing we’re against all out­ward war is dif­fer­ent than say­ing we’re in favor of peace. While I know some Friends are proud of cast­ing every­thing in pos­ti­tive terms, some­times we need to come out and say a par­tic­u­lar prac­tice is just plain wrong, that it inter­feres with and goes against our rela­tion­ship with God and with our neighbors.

I’ll leave it up to you to start chew­ing over what spe­cif­ic actions we might take a stand against. But know this: if our min­is­ters and meet­ings found that a par­tic­u­lar prac­tice was against our tes­ti­monies, we could be sure that there would be some Friends engaged in it. We would have a long process of min­is­ter­ing with them and labor­ing with them. It would be hard. Feel­ings would be hurt. Peo­ple would go away angry.

After a half-century of lib­er­al indi­vid­u­al­ism, it would be hard to once more affirm that there is some­thing to Quak­erism, that it does have norms and bound­aries. We would need all the love, char­i­ty and patience we could muster. This work would is not easy, espe­cial­ly because it’s work with mem­bers of our com­mu­ni­ty, peo­ple we love and hon­or. We would have to fol­low John Wool­man’s exam­ple: our first audi­ence would not be Wash­ing­ton pol­i­cy­mak­ers , but instead Friends in our own Society.

Testimonies as Affirmation of the Power

In a world beset by war, greed, pover­ty and hatred, we do need to be able to talk about our val­ues in sec­u­lar terms. An abil­i­ty to talk about paci­fism with our non-Quaker neigh­bors in a smart, informed way is essen­tial (thus my Non​vi​o​lence​.org min­istry [since laid down], cur­rent­ly receiv­ing two mil­lions vis­i­tors a year). When we affirm com­mu­ni­ty and equal­i­ty we are wit­ness­ing to our faith. Friends should be proud of what we’ve con­tributed to the nation­al and inter­na­tion­al dis­cus­sions on these topics.

But for all of their con­tem­po­rary cen­tral­i­ty to Quak­erism, the tes­ti­monies are only second-hand out­ward forms. They are not to be wor­shiped in and of them­selves. Mod­ern Friends come dan­ger­ous­ly close to lift­ing up the peace tes­ti­mo­ny as a false idol – the prin­ci­ple we wor­ship over every­thing else. When we get so good at argu­ing the prac­ti­cal­i­ty of paci­fism, we for­get that our tes­ti­mo­ny is first and fore­most our procla­ma­tion that we live in the pow­er that takes away occas­sion for war. When high school math teach­ers start argu­ing over arcane points of nuclear pol­i­cy, play­ing arm­chair diplo­mat with year­ly meet­ing press releas­es to the U.S. State Depart­ment, we loose cred­i­bil­i­ty and become some­thing of a joke. But when we min­is­ter with the Pow­er that tran­scends wars and earth­ly king­doms, the Good News we speak has an author­i­ty that can thun­der over pet­ty gov­ern­ments with it’s com­mand to quake before God.

When we remem­ber the spir­i­tu­al source of our faith, our under­stand­ings of the tes­ti­monies deep­en immea­sur­ably. When we let our actions flow from uncom­pli­cat­ed faith we gain a pow­er and endurance that strength­ens our wit­ness. When we speak of our expe­ri­ence of the Holy Spir­it, our words gain the author­i­ty as oth­ers rec­og­nize the echo of that “still small voice” speak­ing to their hearts. Our love and our wit­ness are sim­ple and uni­ver­sal, as is the good news we share: that to be ful­ly human is to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul and mind and to love our neigh­bors as we do ourselves.

Hal­lelu­jah: praise be to God!

Reading elsewhere:

Quakerism 101

August 10, 2004

In Fall 2005 I led a six-week Quak­erism 101 course at Med­ford (NJ) Month­ly Meet­ing. It went very well. Med­ford has a lot of involved, weighty Friends (some of them past year­ly meet­ing clerks!) and I think they appre­ci­at­ed a fresh take on an intro­duc­to­ry course. The core ques­tion: how might we teach Quak­erism today?

This is the pro­pos­al for the course. I start­ed off with a long intro­duc­tion on the his­to­ry and phi­los­o­phy of Quak­er reli­gious edu­ca­tion and ped­a­gog­ic accul­tur­a­tion and go on to out­line a dif­fer­ent sort cur­ricu­lum for Quak­erism 101.

I took exten­sive notes of each ses­sion and will try to work that feed­back into a revised cur­ricu­lum that oth­er Meet­ings and Q101 lead­ers could use and adapt. In the mean­time, if you want to know how spe­cif­ic ses­sions and role­splays went, just email me and I’ll send you the unedit­ed notes. If you’re on the Adult Reli­gious Ed. com­mit­tee of a South Jer­sey or Philadel­phia area Meet­ing and want to bring me to teach it again, just let me know.

Thoughts on a Quak­erism 101 Course

Over the last few years, there seems to be a real groundswell of inter­est in Quak­ers try­ing to under­stand who we are and where we came from. There’s a revival of inter­st in look­ing back at our roots, not for his­to­ry or ortho­doxy’s sake, but instead to try­ing to tease out the “Quak­er Trea­sures” that we might want to reclaim. I’ve seen this con­ver­sa­tion tak­ing place in all of the branch­es of Friends and it’s very hopeful.

I assume at least some of the par­tic­i­pants of the Quak­erism 101 course will have gone through oth­er intro­duc­to­ry cours­es or will have read the stan­dard texts. It would be fun to give them all some­thing new – luck­i­ly there’s plen­ty to choose from! I also want to expose par­tic­i­pants to the range of con­tem­po­rary Quak­erism. I’d like par­tic­i­pants to under­stand why the oth­er branch­es call them­selves Friends and to rec­og­nize some of the pec­u­lar­i­ties our branch has uncon­scious­ly adopted.

Ear­ly Friends did­n’t get involved in six-week cours­es. They were too busy climb­ing trees to shout the gospel fur­ther, invit­ing peo­ple to join the great move­ment. Lat­er Qui­etist Friends had strong struc­tures of record­ed min­is­ters and elders which served a ped­a­gog­ic pur­pose for teach­ing Friends. When revival­ism broke out and brought over­whelm­ing­ly large num­bers of new atten­ders to meet­ings, this sys­tem broke down and many meet­ings hired min­is­ters to teach Quak­erism to the new peo­ple. Around the turn of the cen­tu­ry, promi­nent Quak­er edu­ca­tors intro­duced aca­d­e­m­ic mod­els, with cours­es and lec­ture series. Each of these approach­es to reli­gious edu­ca­tion fid­dles with Quak­erism and each has major draw­backs. But these new mod­els were insti­tut­ed because of very real and ongo­ing prob­lems Friends have with trans­mit­ting our faith to our youth and accul­tur­at­ing new seek­ers to our Quak­er way.

The core con­tra­dic­tion of a course series is that the leader is expect­ed to both impart knowl­edge and to invite par­tic­i­pa­tion. In prac­tice, this eas­i­ly leads to sit­u­a­tions where the teacher is either too dom­i­neer­ing _or_ too open to par­tic­i­pa­tion. The lat­ter seems more com­mon: Quak­erism is pre­sent­ed as a least-common-denominator social group­ing, form­less, with mem­ber­ship defined sim­ply by one’s com­fort­a­bil­i­ty in the group (see Brin­ton’s Friends for 300 Years.) One of the main goals of a intro­duc­to­ry course should be to bring new atten­ders into Quak­er cul­ture, prac­tice and ethics. There’s an implic­it assump­tion that there is some­thing called Quak­erism to teach. Part of that job is teas­ing out the reli­gious and cul­tur­al mod­els that new atten­ders are bring­ing with them and to open up the ques­tion as to how they fit or don’t fit in with the “gestalt” of Quak­erism (Grundy, Quak­er Trea­sures and Wilson’s Essays on the Quak­er Vision).

The great­est irony behind the Quak­erism 101 class is that its seemingly-neutral edu­ca­tion­al mod­el lulls proud­ly “unpro­grammed” Friends into an obliv­i­ous­ness that they’ve just insti­tut­ed a pro­gram led by a hireling min­is­ter. Argu­ments why Q101 teach­ers should be paid sounds iden­ti­cal to argu­ments why part-time FUM min­is­ters should be paid. A Q101 leader in an unpro­grammed meet­ing might well want to acknowl­edge this con­tra­dic­tion and pray for guid­ance and seek clear­ness about this. (For my Med­ford class, I decid­ed to teach it as paid leader of a class as a way of dis­ci­plin­ing myself to prac­tice of my fel­low Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing Friends.)

The stan­dard Quak­erism 101 cur­ricu­lum com­part­men­tal­izes every­thing into neat lit­tle box­es. His­to­ry gets a box, tes­ti­monies get a box, faith and insti­tu­tions get box­es. I want to break out of that. I can rec­om­mend good books on Quak­er his­to­ry and point par­tic­i­pants to good web­sites advo­cat­ing Quak­er tes­ti­monies. But I want to present his­to­ry as cur­rent events and the tes­ti­monies as min­istry. The stan­dard cur­ricu­lum starts with some of the more con­tro­ver­sial mate­r­i­al about the dif­fer­ent braches of Friends and only then goes into wor­ship, the meet­ing life, etc. I want dis­cus­sion of the lat­ter to be informed by the ear­li­er dis­cus­sion of who we are and who we might be. The course will start off more struc­tured, with me as leader and become more par­tic­i­pa­to­ry in the lat­er sections.

Cur­ricu­lum:

What I want to do is have one sol­id overview book and sup­ple­ment it with some of those fas­ci­nat­ing (and coversation-sparking!) pam­phlets. The overview book is Thomas Ham­m’s Quak­ers in Amer­i­ca. Pub­lished last year, it’s the best intro­duc­tion to Quak­erism in at least a gen­er­a­tion. Hamm wrote this as part of a reli­gions of Amer­i­ca series and it’s meant as a gen­er­al intro­duc­tion to con­tem­po­rary Quak­erism. His lat­er chap­ters on debates with­in Quak­erism should be easy to adapt for a Q‑101 series.

Ses­sion I: Introductions

  • Wor­ship
  • In-class read­ing of two pages from Quak­ers in Amer­i­ca (pro­file of Ohio Year­ly Meet­ing ses­sions, p. 1), reflec­tions. (maybe start this class 2?)
  • Intro­duc­tions to one another.

Ses­sion II: What Are Our Models

  • Wor­ship
  • In-class read­ing of two pages from Quak­ers in Amer­i­ca (pro­file of First Friends Church of Can­ton, p. 3), reflections.
  • What are our mod­els? Role­play of “What Would X Do?” with a giv­en prob­lem: JC, George Fox, Methodists, Non-denominational bible church, col­lege. Also: the “nat­ur­al break­ing point” mod­el of Quak­er divisions.
  • Read­ing for this class: “Con­vinced Quak­erism” by Ben Pink Dandelion

Ses­sion III: The Schisms

  • Wor­ship
  • In-class read­ing of two pages from Quak­ers in Amer­i­ca (pro­file of Wilm­ing­ton Year­ly Meet­ing ses­sions, p. 5), reflections.
  • Read­ing for this class: Quak­ers in Amer­i­ca chap­ter 3, “Their Sep­a­rate Ways: Amer­i­can Friends Since 1800,” about the branches

Ses­sion IV: Role of our Institutions

  • Wor­ship
  • In-class read­ing of two pages from Quak­ers in Amer­i­ca (pro­file of Lake Erie Year­ly Meet­ing, p. 7), reflections.
  • Read­ing for this class: “The Author­i­ty of Our Meet­ings…” by Paul Lacey

Ses­sion V: Con­tro­ver­sies with­in Friends

  • Could pick any 2 – 3 con­tro­ver­sies of Ham­m’s: “Is Quak­erism Chris­t­ian?,” “Lead­er­ship,” “Author­i­ty,” “Sex­u­al­i­ty,” “Iden­ti­ty,” “Uni­ty and Diver­si­ty,” “Growth and Decline.” Ear­ly in the course I could poll the group to get a sense which ones they might want to grap­ple with. The idea is not to be thor­ough cov­er­ing all the top­ics or even all the intri­ca­cies with­in each top­ic. I hope to just see if we can mod­el ways of talk­ing about these with­in Medford.
  • Read­ing for this class: Quak­ers in Amer­i­ca chap­ter 5, “Con­tem­po­rary Quak­er Debates,” p. 120

Ses­sion VI: Role of wor­ship, role of min­istry, role of witnesses.

  • Focus­ing on Worship/Ministry (Witness)/MM Author­i­ty (Elders). If the cal­en­dar allows for eight ses­sions, this could eas­i­ly be split apart or giv­en two weeks.
  • Read­ing for this class: “Quak­er Trea­sures” by Mar­ty Pax­ton Grundy, which ties togeth­er Gospel Order, Min­istries and the Testimonies.

Ses­sion VII: What kind of reli­gious com­mu­ni­ty do we want Med­ford MM to be?

  • This should be par­tic­i­pa­to­ry, inter­ac­tive. There should be some go-around sort of exer­cise to open up our visions of an ide­al reli­gious com­mu­ni­ty and what we think Med­ford Meet­ing might be like in 5, 10, 25 years.
  • Read­ing for this class: “Build­ing the Life of the Meet­ing” by Bill & Fran Taber (1994, $4). I’ve heard there’s some­thing recent from John Pun­shon which might work better.
  • Also: some­thing from the emer­gent church move­ment to point to a great peo­ple that might be gath­ered. Per­haps essays from Jor­dan Coop­er & some­one at Cir­cle of Hope/Phila.

Books Used:

  • “Quak­ers in Amer­i­ca” is Thomas Ham­m’s excel­lent new intro­duc­tion to Friends is a bit pricey ($40) but is adapt­ing well to a Q101 course.
  • “Con­vinced Quak­erism” by Ben Pink Dan­de­lion mix­es tra­di­tion­al Quak­er under­stad­ings of con­vince­ment with Ben’s per­son­al sto­ry and it sparked a good, widerang­ing dis­cus­sion. $4.
  • “Quak­er Trea­sures” by Mar­ty Grundy. $4
  • “The Author­i­ty of Our Meet­ings…” by Paul Lacey. $4
  • “Build­ing the Life of the Meet­ing” by Bill and Fran Taber. $4

Con­sid­ered Using:

  • “Why Friends are Friends” by Jack Will­cuts. $9.95. I like this book and think that much of it could be used for a Q101 in a liberal-branch Friends Meet­ing. Chap­ters: “The Won­der of Wor­ship,” “Sacred Spir­i­tu­al Sacra­ments,” “Called to Min­istry,” “Let­ting Peace Pre­vail,” “Get­ting the Sense of the Meet­ing,” “On Being Pow­er­ful” – I find the mid­dle chap­ters are the more interesting/Quaker ones).
  • Silence and Wit­ness by Michael Birkel. I haven’t read through this yet, but in skim­ming the chap­ters it looks like Birkel shys away from chal­leng­ing the Quak­er sta­tus quo. With­in that con­straint, how­ev­er, it looks like a good intro­duc­tion to Quak­erism. $16.
  • “Quak­er Cul­ture vs. Quak­er Faith” by Samuel Caldwell.
  • The Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing Quak­erism 101 cur­ricu­lum. It’s not as bad as it could be but it’s too heavy on his­to­ry and tes­ti­monies and too focused on the Jones/Brinton view of Quak­erism which I think has played itself out. I’ve seen Q101 facil­i­ta­tors read direct­ly out of the cur­ricu­lum to the glazed eyes of the par­tic­i­pants. I want­ed some­thing fresh­er and less course-like.

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.

What makes a Quaker meeting house?

December 5, 2003
An Atlantic County Methodist Episcopal Meetinghouse. Picture from NJChurschape
An Atlantic Coun­ty Methodist Epis­co­pal Meet­ing­house. Pic­ture from NJChurschape

One of my favorite sites is the amaz­ing NJChurch​scape​.com—that’s New Jer­sey Church­scapes, put togeth­er large­ly through the efforts of Frank L. Greenagel. It’s a true labor of love, a cat­a­loging of church and meet­ing archi­tec­ture in New Jer­sey. It has beau­ti­ful pho­tos, great sto­ries, read­able essays on archi­tec­ture. In a state where every­thing below Cher­ry Hill often gets ignored, South Jer­sey gets good cov­er­age and there’s a lot from the old Quak­er colony of West Jer­sey. This mon­th’s fea­ture is on the meet­ing­house, a build­ing of endear­ing sim­plic­i­ty and it rais­es a lot of ques­tions for me of how we relate to our church buildings.

We modern-day Friends tend to think of the term meet­ing­house as unique­ly ours, but go back in his­to­ry and you’ll find just about every­one using the term to describe the non-showy build­ings they erect­ed for reli­gious ser­vices and town life. Dri­ve around South Jer­sey and you’ll see old Methodist church­es that start­ed out life as meet­ing­hous­es and look sur­pris­ing­ly Quak­er. Greenagel looks at the style and then asks:

At what point does a struc­ture cease being a meet­ing­house and become a church?.. With the ris­ing afflu­ence and increased mobil­i­ty of the pop­u­la­tion came a demand for more spe­cial­ized places to meet, as well as more of the basic com­forts and style which hereto­fore were dis­missed as too world­ly, so many church­es added small­er lec­ture rooms, class­rooms for Sun­day school, and oth­er assem­bly rooms dis­tinct from the main auditorium.

By this mea­sure, how many of our beloved East Coast Quak­er meet­ing­hous­es should real­ly just be called “church­es?” In the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry the Protes­tant “Sun­day School Move­ment” was picked up by Gur­neyite and Pro­gres­sive Hick­site Friends, with the class­es sim­ply renamed “First Day School” in def­er­ence to Quak­er sen­si­bil­i­ties (I’ve always won­dered if the name switch actu­al­ly fooled any­one, but that’s anoth­er sto­ry). By the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, the new mod­ern lib­er­al Friends had picked up the lec­ture for­mat, which like the First Day School move­ment had been adopt­ed from edu­ca­tion­al mod­els via oth­er reli­gious groups. Many of our larg­er month­ly meet­ings have fel­low­ship halls, class­rooms, kitchens, etc. These build­ings have become spe­cial­ized reli­gious wor­ship build­ings and many of them sit emp­ty for most of the week. But not all.

Nowa­days many Quak­er meet­ings with build­ings open them mid-week for use by com­mu­ni­ty groups. Quak­er meet­ing­hous­es host peace groups, bat­tered women hot­lines, yoga class­es, reli­gious con­gre­ga­tions in need of a tem­po­rary home and sim­i­lar caus­es. There’s often an ele­ment of good works in the group’s charter.

Per­haps this will­ing­ness to open our build­ings up earns us the right to con­tin­ue using the meet­ing­house name. If so, we should be care­ful to resist the pres­sure of the insur­ance indus­try to close our­selves up in the name of lia­bil­i­ty. One unique­ness to our wor­ship spaces is that they are not con­se­crat­ed and there should be no spe­cial rules for their use. They are over­sized barns and we should cher­ish that. We should remem­ber not to get fetishis­tic about their his­to­ry and we should­n’t tie up our busi­ness meet­ings in end­less dis­cus­sions over the col­or of the new seat cush­ions. When we turn our build­ings over for oth­ers’ use, we should­n’t wor­ry over­ly much if a chair or clock gets damanged or stolen. Friends know that our reli­gion is not our build­ings and that the mea­sure of our spir­it is sim­ply how far we’ll fol­low God, togeth­er as a people.

Related Reading:

  • There’s a very hand­some book about the HABS work on Quak­er meet­ing­hous­es in the greater Philadel­phia area called Silent Wit­ness: Quak­er Meet­ing Hous­es In The Delaware Val­ley, 1695 To The Present. (only $10!).
  • My friend Bob Bar­nett has been putting a lot of great work into a new West Jer­sey website.

Are Catholics More Quaker?

November 16, 2003

I guess folks might won­der why the son of the Quak­er Ranter is get­ting bap­tized in a Roman Catholic church…

[box]An updat­ed note before I start: I don’t want this to be seen as a cri­tique or put-down of any par­tic­u­lar indi­vid­u­als but to point out what seems to me to be a pret­ty obvi­ous larg­er dynam­ic with­in Quak­erism: our reli­gious edu­ca­tion pro­grams have not been doing a very good job at trans­mit­ting our faith to our young peo­ple. One mea­sure of such pro­grams is how many chil­dren we retain as actively-participating adults; by such mea­sures I think we can say Quak­ers are failing.

And, a few per­haps obvi­ous dis­claimers: 1) there are deeply faith­ful peo­ple who grew up in Young Friends pro­grams; 2) there are reli­gious ed instruc­tors who are wor­ried about the mes­sage we’re giv­ing our young peo­ple and fret as I do; 3) there are a lot of mem­bers of the RSoF who just don’t think teach­ing dis­tinct­ly Quak­er faith­ful­ness is impor­tant and would­n’t agree that there’s a problem.

I don’t think it’s use­ful to read this with­out also look­ing to my ear­ly arti­cle, The Lost Quak­er Gen­er­a­tion, which mourns the friends I’ve seen drop out of Quak­erism (many of them “birthright,” i.e., born into Quak­er fam­i­lies), and We’re all Ranters Now, which argues that our soci­ety of seek­ers needs to become a soci­ety of find­ers if we are to be able to artic­u­late a faith to transmit.
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On June 30, 2000, Julie and I met at a nation­al gath­er­ing of Quak­ers. Four­teen months lat­er we were mar­ried at the Wood­stown Friends Meet­ing­house under the care of the Atlantic City Area Friends Meet­ing. Rough­ly four­teen months lat­er, when the sparkles in our eyes were meet­ing with an approv­ing nod from God and our baby was con­ceived, I was co-clerk of Atlantic City Area Meet­ing and Julie was clerk of its Out­reach Com­mit­tee. Ten months lat­er, our infant son Theo was bap­tized at Mater Eccle­si­ae Roman Catholic Church in Berlin, N.J. It’s Julie’s new church; I myself remain Quak­er, but with­out a Meet­ing I can quite call home. What happened?

I don’t want to try to speak for Julie and why she left Friends to return to the faith she was brought up in. But I do have to tes­ti­fy that the rev­er­ence, spir­it and authen­tic­i­ty of the wor­ship at Mater Eccle­si­ae is deep­er than that in most Friends Meet­ing­hous­es. It’s a church with a lot of mem­bers who seem to believe in the real pres­ence of Christ. A dis­claimer that Mater Eccle­si­ae is unusu­al, one of the few church­es in the coun­try that uses the tra­di­tion­al Tri­den­tine Mass or Roman Rite, and that it attracts ardent fol­low­ers who have self-selected them­selves, in that they’re not going to their local parish church. I don’t think it’s the Catholi­cism alone that draws Julie – I think the pur­pose­ful­ness of the wor­shipers is a large piece. Despite all the dis­trac­tions (chants, Latin, rote con­fes­sions of faith: I’m speak­ing as a Friend), the wor­ship there is unusu­al­ly gath­ered. But more: there’s a ground­ed­ness to the faith. In a one-on-one con­ver­sa­tion the priest explained to me the ways he thought Quak­erism was wrong. I was­n’t offend­ed – quite the con­trary, I loved it! It was so refresh­ing to meet some­one who believed what he believed, (Hey, if I did­n’t believe in the degen­er­a­tion of the Roman Catholic Church or the emp­ty pro­fes­sions of hireling priests, I might join him. I also feel com­fort­able pre­dict­ing that he would wel­come my joust­ing here.)

What I can talk about is my mis­giv­ings about the prospect of rais­ing up Theo as a Quak­er in Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing. The weak­est ele­ment of the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends is its chil­dren’s reli­gious edu­ca­tion. This is some­thing I’ve seen man­i­fest­ed in two dif­fer­ent kinds of ways: con­tent and results.

Quak­ers have remark­ably few expec­ta­tions of their chil­dren. It’s con­sid­ered remark­able if old­er chil­dren spend a whole ten min­utes in Meet­ing for Wor­ship (I’ve heard adult birthright Friends boast that they’ve nev­er sat through a whole hour of Quak­er wor­ship). Quak­ers are obsessed about lis­ten­ing to what chil­dren have to say, and so nev­er share with them what they believe. I’ve known adults birthright Friends who have nev­er had con­ver­sa­tions with their par­ents about the basis of their faith.

Quak­er reli­gious edu­ca­tion pro­grams often for­go teach­ing tra­di­tion­al Quak­er faith and prac­tice for more fad­dish beliefs. The base­ment walls of the Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing youth cen­ter is paint­ed over with danc­ing gods, while of the big events of the Young Friends’ annu­al cal­en­dar is a “Quak­er sweat lodge”. A cul­ture of touch and phys­i­cal­i­ty (“cud­dle pud­dles”, back­rubs) is thought charm­ing and immod­est dress is con­sid­ered a sign of rebel­lious indi­vid­u­al­i­ty. Quak­er schools pub­lish brochures say­ing Meet­ing for Wor­ship is all about “think­ing, with God giv­en lit­tle notice.” When Quak­ers want to have “inter­gen­er­a­tional” wor­ship, they feel they have to pro­gram it with some sort of attention-keeping play­time activ­i­ty (Mater Eccle­si­ae echoes Quak­er tra­di­tion here: “inter­gen­er­a­tional” means chil­dren sit­ting through and par­tic­i­pat­ing in Mass with the adults).

Too many of the peo­ple my age and Julie’s who were brought up at Friends are igno­rant of basic Quak­er beliefs and are unaware of Quak­er tra­di­tions (FUM, EFI, Con­ser­v­a­tives) out­side the easy-going East Coast lib­er­al­ism they were raised in. For them being a Friend is act­ing a cer­tain way, believ­ing a cer­tain brand of polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy and being part of a cer­tain social group. Too many Young Adult Friends I’ve known over the years are cliquish, irre­li­gious, and have more than their share of issues around inti­ma­cy and sexuality.

Don’t get me wrong: these kids are often real­ly good peo­ple, chil­dren to be proud of, doing great things in the world. Many of them are open-hearted, spiritually-sensitive, and in deeply ground­ed rela­tion­ships. But only a very few are prac­tic­ing Quak­ers. And when I look at the reli­gious edu­ca­tion they get, I can’t say I’m sur­prised. If I were to raise Theo as a Quak­er, I would have to “home school” him away from most of the reli­gious edu­ca­tion pro­grams offered local­ly. When all the kids scram­ble out of wor­ship after ten min­utes I’d have to say “no” and tell him to keep sit­ting – how weird would that be?

Theo has a bet­ter chance of shar­ing the tra­di­tion­al Quak­er val­ues of the pres­ence of Christ, of Holy Obe­di­ence, and of bear­ing the cross by being raised as a Catholic in a tra­di­tion­al­ist church. It’s more like­ly he’ll turn out Quak­er if he’s bap­tised at Mater Eccle­si­ae. Julie and I will be teach­ing him rev­er­ence by exam­ple. I’ll share my Quak­er faith with him. I’m sure he’ll par­tic­i­pate in Quak­er events, but con­scious­ly, selec­tive­ly, guard­ed­ly (in the old Quak­er sense).

If Friends believe they have a faith worth holdling, they should also believe they have a faith worth pass­ing on. Do we?

Related Reading

  • Beck­ey Phipps con­duct­ed a series of inter­views that touched on many of these issues and pub­lished it in FGCon­nec­tions. FGC Reli­gious Edu­ca­tion: Lessons for the 21st Cen­tu­ry asks many of the right ques­tions. My favorite line: “It is the most amaz­ing thing, all the kids that I know that have gone into [Quak­er] lead­er­ship pro­grams – they’ve disappeared.”
  • I touch on these issues from the oth­er side in The Lost Quak­er Gen­er­a­tion, which is about the twenty- and thirty-something Friends that have drift­ed away