I have just come back from a “Meeting for Listening for Sweat Lodge Concerns,” described as “an opportunity for persons to express their feelings in a worshipful manner about the cancellation of the FGC Gathering sweat lodge workshop this year.” Non-Quakers reading this blog might be surprised to hear that Friends General Conference holds sweat lodges, but it has and they’ve been increasingly controversial. This year’s workshop was cancelled after FGC received a very strongly worded complaint from the Wampanoag Native American tribe. Today’s meeting intended to listen to the feelings and concerns of all FGC Friends involved and was clerked by the very-able Arthur Larrabee. There was powerful ministry, some predictable “ministry” and one stunning message from a white Friend who dismissed the very existance of racism in the world (it’s just a illusion, the people responsible for it are those who perceive it).
I’ve had my own run-in’s with the sweat lodge, most unforgettably when I was the co-planning clerk of the 2002 Adult Young Friends program at FGC (a few of us thought it was inappropriate to transfer a portion of the rather small AYF budget to the sweat lodge workshop, a request made with the argument that so many high-school and twenty-something Friends were attending it). But I find myself increasingly unconcerned about the lodge. It’s clear to me now that it part of another tradition than I am. It is not the kind of Quaker I am. The question remaining is whether an organization that will sponsor it is a different tradition.
How did Liberal Friends get to the place where most our our younger members consider the sweat lodge ceremony to be the high point of their Quaker experience? The sweat lodge has given a generation of younger Friends an opportunity to commune with the divine in a way that their meetings do not. It has given them mentorship and leadership experiences which they do not receive from the older Friends establishment. It has given them a sense of identity and purpose which they don’t get from their meeting “community.”
I don’t care about banning the workshop. That doesn’t address the real problems. I want to get to the point where younger Friends look at the sweat and wonder why they’d want to spend a week with some white Quaker guy who wonders aloud in public whether he’s “a Quaker or an Indian” (could we have a third choice?). I’ve always thought this was just rather embarrassing. I want the sweat lodge to wither away in recognition of it’s inherent ridiculousness. I want younger Friends to get a taste of the divine love and charity that Friends have found for 350 years. We’re simply cooler than the sweat lodge.
And what really is the sweat lodge all about? I don’t really buy the cultural appropriation critique (the official party line for canceling it argues that it’s racist). Read founder George Price’s Friends Journal article on the sweat lodge and you’ll see that he’s part of a long-standing tradition. For two hundred years, Native Americans have been used as mythic cover for thinly disguised European-American philosophies. The Boston protesters who staged the famous tea party all dressed up as Indians, playing out an emerging mythology of the American rebels as spiritual heirs to Indians (long driven out of the Boston area by that time). In 1826, James Fenimore Cooper turned that myth into one of the first pieces of classic American literature with a story about the “Last” of the Mohicans. At the turn of the twentieth century, the new boy scout movement claimed that their fitness and socialization system was really a re-application of Native American training and initiation rites. Quakers got into the game too: the South Jersey and Bucks County summer camps they founded in the nineteen-teens were full of Native American motifs, with cabins and lakes named after different tribes and the children encouraged to play along.
Set in this context, George Price is clearly just the latest white guy to claim that only the spirit of purer Native Americans will save us from our Old World European stodginess. Yes, it’s appropriation I guess, but it’s so transparent and classically American that our favorite song “Yankee Doodle” is a British wartime send-up of the impulse. We’ve been sticking feathers in our caps since forever.
In the Friends Journal article, it’s clear the Quaker sweat lodge owes more to the European psychotherapy of Karl Jung than Chief Ockanickon. It’s all about “liminality” and initiation into mythic archetypes, featuring cribbed language from Victor Turner, the anthropologist who was very popular circa 1974. Price is clear but never explicit about his work: his sweat lodge is Jungian psychology overlaid onto the outward form of a Native American sweatlodge. In retrospect it’s no surprise that a birthright Philadelphia Friend in a tired yearly meeting would try to combine trendy European pop psychology with Quaker summer camp theming. What is a surprise (or should be a surprise) is that Friends would sponsor and publish articles about a “Quaker Sweat Lodges” without challenging the author to spell out the Quaker contribution to a programmed ritual conducted in a consecrated teepee steeplehouse.
(Push the influences a little more, and you’ll find that Victor Turner’s anthropological findings among obscure African tribes arguably owes as much to his Catholicism than it does the facts on the ground. More than one Quaker wit has compared the sweat lodge to Catholic mass; well: Turner’s your missing philosophical link.)
Yesterday I had some good conversation about generational issues in Quakerism. I’m certainly not the only thirty-something that feels invisible in the bulldozer of baby boomer assumptions about our spirituality. I’m also not the only one getting to the point where we’re just going to be Quaker despite the Quaker institutions and culture. I think the question we’re all grappling with now is how we relate to the institutions that ignore us and dismiss our cries of alarm for what we Friends have become.
Dear Martin,
I find myself wanting to qualify your headline (not that I have any right to do so!) by saying that we Quakers should be cooler than any “Cultural Appropriation-Quaker sweat lodge” could ever be. I’ve been in lots of discussions about this very issue with lots and lots of people, and the point that I seem most often to make poorly (judging from the total lack of comprehension in my interlocutors) is this: Meeting for Worship is not necessarily cooler on some absolute scale than any other religious practice – but it OUGHT to be cooler *to Quakers* than any other religious practice. We know we’re not doing sweat lodge right – we can’t, no matter what excuses we make about cultural cross-fertilization, and “really respecting” those people whose religious practices we borrow for day trips to exotic “spiritual sensations,” and how close we feel to Nature when we smudge or take vision-quests. But why in the hell (if you’ll forgive me) are we not doing Meeting for Worship right?
Melynda Huskey
Hi Melynda,
The popularity of the sweat lodge among younger Friends should be a fire alarm to the Quaker establishment (maybe it is, maybe we’ve responded by just evacuating the building!). I’ve been amazed at how many seemingly-solid Quakers seem oblivious that most of their children just don’t care about Quakerism. Older Quakers are so grateful to have young people around that they don’t even want to acknowledge that the kids are participating in altar- and ritual-based religious practices totally at odds with 350 years of Quakerism.
I sometimes wonder if this isn’t a repeat of nineteenth century Revivalism. There too the kids all started jumping on the hot religious fad, one that promised them more instantaneous religious excitement than they found in Meeting. As I understand it, the leaders then were younger birthright Friends from powerful Quaker families who didn’t want to rein their own kids in. Being a next-generation leader was more important than being a faithful Friend and enough weighty Quakers looked the other way and were oblivious to the seeds of schims their actions were sowing.
Just because an experience has brought someone to Quakerism doesn’t make it Quaker. Here’s a fascinating account of “Quaker conversion after LSD use”:http://www.csp.org/nicholas/A14.html. I recently heard a respected Friend give his spiritual story to a Quaker audience: the first half hour was a detailed cataloging of serious drug abuse back in the 1970s and the spiritual insights he gained while high. It ended up working for him, but how many relationships did he mangle and how many of his friends died or never came out of the spirial of self-abuse? Revivals and sweat lodges are non-chemical ways to get a spiritual high. You can see and smell the Kingdom from their vantage point and some do come back down to retrace the journey by foot. But these easy highs aren’t a particularly good way into Quakerism; it’s too tempting to keep using them over and over in lieu of the hard work (“justification” and “sanctification” in Quaker-speak) and to never get to the unmediated experience we Friends celebrate.
I was talking with Joan about this on the way home, and as usual, she came up with an explanation in song (she’s melodious that way).
Why do these young Quakers want to build sweat lodges? As you surmised, it all boils down to this:
“We want the funk / Gotta get the funk / We want the funk.”
Once upon a time, of course, Friends *were* the funk. The Young Friends of Bristol and Reading kept Meeting for Worship while their parents were in jail for conscience’s sake. Then the funk shifted – it was all about Evangelical revival, the Sabbath-School movement, and some funky, funky creeds. And then again, it was funky to build a New World Order full of Kingsley-style Christian Socialism, all muscular and visionary.
And now, sadly, Quakerism has come to this: the funk is in faux-sixties spirituality – white people in dreadlocks, macrame hemp chokers and Zen power bracelets, roaming around the world seeking what we may devour of other faith traditions – without even *trying* to be faithful to our own.
Melynda
P.S. I’m a big crank. So in the interest of balance I will say that the last issue of Friends Journal had some profoundly moving and thoughtful articles in it, and I didn’t throw it across the room once. And I will also say that the Oxford Study Bible using the Revised English Translation is superb, and has really great maps. And we had really great sparklers this year, courtesy of our friend C. on the Nez Perce Nation, where Catholic and Presbyterian and Seven Drum folks all go to sweat.
So much of this blog is why I am reluctant to apply for membership. Granted, I’ve only been an attender for a year, but while I want to be a Quaker in the religious, spiritual sense, I don’t feel like I want to be a part of the actual Meeting. I don’t want to be an activist. I want to be just plain old, somewhat spiritual, concerned, regular me. Can’t I be just a Quaker and a mom? Or do I have to defend abortion clinics, too? (That is what the focus on a Quakers and Activism talk seemed to be, it was run by someone who worked extensively with Planned Parenthood, a group that tried to talk me into aborting my first born.)
Quakerism is what I thought I was looking for — it may still be. But not the Quaker CULTURE and much of the community. 🙁
If it matters, I am a 35 year old married mother of 3. How boring. 🙁
Have you ever heard George Price explain his training and his understanding of the tradition? Having done multiple sweats with George, I am entirely convinced that a) the sweat lodge is a legitimate spiritual experience along the lines of Quaker meeting b) George has appropriate training from Native Americans c) FGC should not be caving in to demands of other Indians that there be no Quaker sweat lodges (so long as the differences between the Quaker sweat lodge and the real Indian sweat lodges are made clear) and d) the sweat lodge is entirely compatable with Quakerism and Christianity.
I should mention that I am a (former) young friend from Philadelphia, a convinced Friend, and a Christian, so I feel that I at least am a counter example to your fears.
Chris
So much commentary!
Chis, Yes, George Price’s sweat lodge is a legitimate religious experience. It’s just not a Quaker religious experience. _This is not how we Friends reach out to the divine._ I’ve heard a number of stories of how young Friends first touched the divine through the sweat lodge and then came into Quakerism. This also happened when Revivals became popular with nineteenth-century young Friends. From Thomas Hamm’s excellent “Transformation of American Quakerism”:http://www.quakerbooks.org/get/0 – 253-20718 – 5
bq. But most of the middle party…tried a delicate balancing act. Initially favoring the revival, and in many cases actively participating in it, they became increasingly skeptical as the revivalists seemed bent on overthrowing all of the old landmarks. At the same time, the continued to appreciate the new energy and vitality it seemed to create. Thus they tried to carve a middle way. They would accept “orderly” revivals. They would accept converts, if they were schooled in Quaker practices after becoming members. They would accept singing, if “done int he spirit.” But they eschewed second-experience santification and feared the arrogance they perceived in the revival ministry.
A few months ago I met Thomas Hamm and thanked him, explaining that _Transformation_ had helped explain present-day Quaker dynamics. He replied, “the script doesn’t change, just the actors.” Anyone wanting to understand the sweatlodge movement in modern-day Quakerism should read _Transformation_.
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Ann: well I’m just a married 37 year old father of one. Pretty boring too, potentially. Yes, there are a lot of Friends for whom activism is the extent of their Quakerism. I find it sad, and kind of useless, for their activism generally seems futile and self-serving. Being both an activist and a Friend, I’ve found that my own work has been most effective in the world when I was following the spirit’s calling and doing discreet, non-dramatic actions. I.e., when I was being pretty boring!
— — —
Melynda: yea, the June issue of Friends Journal was pretty good, wasn’t it? I need to read through it more…
Martin,
This was such a great post; and look at all of the responses you got. Seems to have struck a nerve.
I completely agree that a sweat lodge can be a legitimate, authentic spriritual practice; but it isn’t particularly from our tradition. You hit it on the head when you suggest that adults feel the need to look outside of our tradition to keep the youth engaged. Actually, a lot of adult Friends do the very same thing: supplimenting their Quakerism with all sorts of other spiritualities and activism.
And Ann — thank God for being boring. Some of the most boring people in the world have made incredible differences in other people’s lives!
I never took part in the FGC sweat lodge, so I can’t speak personally of its awe or its asininity. However, I spent the past week at the Gathering discussing the tradition with a good number of other young adults who found the experience to be one of the most profound religious experiences in their lives.
To me, this is not a sign that the sweat lodge (leaving aside the issues of cultural appropriation)is a detractor to the spirit of Quakerism. Rather, it should serve as a wakeup call that we have absolutely failed to engage young people in spirit of Quakerism and the power of silent worship.
From elementary to high school, young Friends are whisked away from a meeting for worship after the first 15 minutes — many have never experienced an entire meeting for Worship, much less the awe of a gathered meeting. Of course, many older adult Friends haven’t either — we have lowered our expectations for the Silence — rather than experiencing the power of Christ in our midst, we — at best — hope for a nice, peaceful escape from the frantic pace of life beyond the meetinghouse. We quelch true prophetic ministry — “eldering” those who rise to speak from the apocalyptic power the early Friends basked in, or even (in worst cases) those who speak a bit too confidentally about the existence of God.
Our first day school programs are much more comfortable with field trips to Buddhist silent retreats than applications of Jesus’s teaching in our lives, and writings from early Friends are cut apart, pasted together and riddled with ellipses so that they will flimsily sustain the illusion that we are doing things today just like they did back then. An disturbingly large portion of young adults raised as Quaker who I have spoken with tend to view the Religious Society of Friends as a salad bar religion that has little to do with faith in God or a corporate set of beliefs beyond pacifism and Quaker ritual. In short, first day school is far too often a program for finding the religion they can enter into once they leave their parents’ house and abandon Quakerism.
So if ceremonies like the sweat lodge are where young Friends find the opportunity to experience God, so be it. They certainly aren’t finding the Spirit in our intellectualized, secularized and elitist meetings. But if we are to continue to acquiesce to this fact, why are so many liberal Quaker leaders wringing their hands in agony, wondering why these young people are leaving our meetinghouses in droves?
Martin — It is sad that you have to make inaccurate characterizations of me or what the Quaker sweat is or is not. Your ideas that somehow we shouldn’t do sweats border on racism (if not a total embrace — albeit unconscious). I have found that Native American ideas about the nature of our relationship with the divine are a profound. If you would read Black Elk Speaks you would find that there is an evangelical power in Black Elks vision that speaks increasingly to us today.
I have never presented myself as any thing other than a Quaker — it is hurtful of you to say that I am pretending to be an Indian — wearing feather and beads — I don’t know where you got that idea other than from you own imagination.
Many Friends have gotten incredible insight which has fed their meetings for worship from Yoga, Zen, Judaism, and many other disciplines. The nature of religous experience is syncretic, ever evolving and changing. In years past reactionary Friends tryed to stop people from dancing and singing. I don’t think you would get far trying to tell Friends that singing is unQuakerly — but people thinking like you are have in the past.
To call Jung psycho-babble reveals your lack of understanding. Many Quaker psychologists use Jung as a guide. Jung by the way thought that Native American ideas about the nature of spirit held great wisdom.
The sweatlodge is much more powerful than your small ideas. FGC can cancel it, at its own loss, but the sweat will continue. Christian missions centuries ago tryed to stop the Russian Bannia and the Finnish sauna, which both had a lot in common with the Native American sweat, but those rituals keep raising themselves from the dust. The Navajo sweat was made illegal by the U.S. government and Quakers were asked to lead it in the early twentieth century.
The sweat was for me the thing that made me more of a Quaker — before you dismiss this idea you should ask others — hundreds of whom have had the same experience. It is a gift of life the stodgy Quakers who think Quakerism is some kind of historical artifact that we must be vigilant in guarding.
Quakerism is above all a community and a method — It is sad that some Friends have reduced themselves to damming others for the places they have found light.
Hi George,
I’m glad you’ve found a gift of light. And I’m totally with you in wanting to break down the walls of the “stodgy Quakers who think Quakerism is some kind of historical artifact that we must be vigilant in guarding.” But I want to be a Quaker. And practice Quakerism. And no, that’s not about Jung. And it’s not about hymn singing, which is usually distracting and kind of lame. That doesn’t mean I’d want to stop anyone from singing or playing Indian. You’re not an embattled ethnic or political minority, my friend, and comparing yourself to the Navajo being beaten down by the U.S. cavalry is just tad bit ridiculous. To call me a racist for something I didn’t say is particularly silly: you do know readers can just scroll up the screen, don’t you?
No one’s trying to keep you from conducting sweat lodges. I’m sure the smell of burning sage will never depart the campfires of Camp Onas and Camp Ockanickon and that you will lead nominally Quaker children in articulated rituals there for the rest of your life. But is Quakerism so irrelevant that we have to ditch it for a programmed ritual just to keep the kids interested? I don’t think so. There’s an ocean of young seekers out there yearning for what Quakerism promises to offer. There still is a great people to be gathered together, and we don’t need a barker outside offering them some recycled spirituality as a door prize.
As long as you insist that the Religious Society of Friends endorse the sweat lodge ritual (and its altar, priestly functions and consecrated spaces), your truest predecessor will not be Black Elk, but David Brainerd Updegraff. He tried to sell us Quaker sprinkling water and you’re offering up burning sage but in the end all we need is to stand still in the Light. Those of us who have tasted of its honey know that everything else is empty calories.
I think Friends have something special and the more we pretend to be something else, the less we are who we are. There’s no reason you have to call your sweat lodge “Quaker.” Just because you grew up as a Friend (and yes, I’m assuming you’re part of the ancient Quaker Price family) doesn’t mean that the spirituality you’ve embraced needs to be shoehorned into the spirituality you inherited. Some of us are embracing Quakerism and we’re on fire and we want to sing joyously of our baptism of the Holy Spirit, a freedom that doesn’t fit into stodgy rituals _whatever their origin_.
What is the “Quakerism” you are practicing? If you practice enough maybe you can take it on the road (sorry I couldn’t help myself). For myself and most of the Friends I know our “Quakerism” isn’t just something we do Sunday morning or just in meeting for worship. It extends into every aspect of our lives. What I learned from Native Americans helped me to understand on a viseral level a deeper meaning of that idea. It deepened my meeting for worship. It helped me become a better Quaker. I couldn’t disagree more with your statement that worship isn’t enriched by our quests for knowledge in other areas.
I can’t figure out how by citing a fact about Navajo — Quaker relations you inferred that I was comparing myself to the Navajo. Either I am missing something or you are twisting my words. That is neither a truthful or “Quakerly” activity.
I glad you are not into banning the sweat lodge. Others are into banning the Quaker sweat and it has been canceled at FGC.
Your objection to us calling it a Quaker sweat seems analygous to straight people saying that gay marriage is hurting them. There is a boundery problem with that idea. We have been accepted by dozens of Quaker institutions, many see that what we are doing is nurturing to participants and has strengthened the Society of Friends.
Your religious parochialism serves neither you or the Society of Friends. Meeting for Worship will not be lessened or diluted from encouraging Friends to understand the universal nature of God. That all religons have at base an idea that everthing comes from one source. Whatever tools we use that take us closer to that understanding of a universal source will only help the human race. The world is at war today mostly because of perceived religous differences. As Friends we should be leading the way in peace making through respectful listening and tolerance.
I am glad you feel a fire in your spirit. I wonder why you also feel the need to denigrate others’ leadings. “Nominal” Quaker children? Your ignorance of the nature of ritual and the difference between living and dead rituals is unfortunate. Meeting for Worship IS a RITUAL. Whether it is dead or alive is up to the participants.
Your claim to the exclusiveness of your spiritual experience (“empty calories”?)is a symtom of your unrecognized racism. Now careful here — I didn’t say you are a racist. All of us have racist tendencies in our unconscious — those of us who understand that can come to grips with them and learn to grow beyond them. Those of us who don’t are condemmed to make ever more clever justifications of them (Its my people). Born again Christians think that the only way to find God is their way — so do fundalmentalist Moslems. If there is something that we as Friends have that is special it is our peacemaking and tolerance for a variety of spiritual experience. Like I said the sweat and improved my access to the “gathered meeting”.
Hi George,
Quakers believe that the best way to God is to strip away the ritual. It’s what makes us Quaker. I think Quakers going off and exploring other religions is fine. William Penn participated in a sweat lodge and found great solitude in it. John Woolman sought religious opportunities with the Lenape with whom he came in contact and realized the power of the God in the intereactions. These very deep Friends realized, as you do and as I do, that we are one in the Spirit and that we are enriched sharing spiritual opportunities with others. But neither of them returned to their meetings to say that the children’s program should now feature a sweat lodge. As Friends, they knew that the ritual would become distracting. If this central learning of Friends is something you don’t agree with, why stay?
>Your ignorance of the nature of ritual and the difference between
>living and dead rituals is unfortunate. Meeting for Worship IS a RITUAL.
>Whether it is dead or alive is up to the participants.
No George, actually it’s up to Christ in our midst. You’re right that Meeting for worship is often a dead ritual, but what makes it real is God. And our path to God is through stillness. Spiritual conviction and racial ethnicity are two different things and you mix it up simply to play the race card (thanks for the clarification though: it’s good to know that Doctor Price doesn’t think I’m a racist, just that I have unconscious racist tendencies). I’m not a racist for thinking you’re wrong. And I’m not a religious fundamentalist in saying that religious traditions have limits and boundaries. There are some “big generational differences”:/quaker/emerging_church.php at play in your charges that any limits to individual expression constitute a form of bigotry. “Are we all ranters now?”:/quaker/ranters.php
Anyway, thanks for posting (I guess), but two long and hostile mini-essays are probably enough on my site, thanks. I’m being more than fair posting these two. If you start a blog, let me know and I’ll put a link from this page.
I’ve become a regular reader only recently and am enjoying your blog immensly; I am in sympathy with most of your views and am glad to find others here of similar feeling (including a couple from my own meeting … you know who you are).
On my first peruse of this thread, I found myself much more agreeing with your position, Martin, and have cringed at many of the non- or barely tangental Quaker activities and groups that I see at Gatherings, activities that I manage to tolerate but with a mixture of bemusement and sadness.
But as I thought more about it, it began to hit closer to home and wonder whether I’m part of that problem.
I have led twice on shape note singing from the Sacred Harp. A lot of Quakers sing from the Sacred Harp; many of us do so from time to time in the meetinghouse after meeting. Some regular singings are hosted in meetinghouses. There’s been an afternoon Sacred Harp singing at FGC for at least 20 years now; and others besides myself have offered workshops on it. Occasionally songs from the Sacred Harp find themselves being sung in meeting for worship (by an individual minister, not a group).
But Sacred Harp singing is not from the Quaker tradition. Indeed, although Sacred Harp singers do not purport to be a church or demoniation, there is a coherent, identifiable, growing, and vital community of Sacred Harp singers (tracing its continuity back to at least 1844) and has its own commonly developed mores and traditions and which functions in many ways like a church, particularly with respect to providing pastoral care of each other. (Interestingly, it has also — like Friends — had its schisms and disagreements over orthodoxy and the intrusion of modernity into the tradition.)
Moreover, while the religious beliefs of singers is at least as diverse as those among Quakers, Sacred Harp singing is explicitly religious in nature. While the songs express a range of theological beliefs, the majority are certainly centered in a difficult-to-label-accurately theology more compatible to Primative Baptists’ or Methodists than Friends’. (Ironically, though, the diversity of — and genuine respect for — religious beliefs among Sacred Harp singers is much wider than among Friends.)
Yet I am one Friend who has found my way back to Jesus, the biblical narrative, and Quaker-Christianity through singing this music. It has refreshed and reawakened my inner life and has given me insight and a vocabulary from which I can better understand the writings left us by George Fox and other early Friends. It has thus been an aid to my religious life as a Friend. (And I am not alone in this; many singers have found their ways back to their church homes through singing these songs; singing these songs is a very powerful practice.)
So my question is, how does your (our) critique of the sweat lodge controversey apply to Sacred Harp singing at Quaker events? In my own mind, I see a clear difference, but I’m not sure how to articulate what it is. Is it because it’s MY sacred cow being gored?
(I know of no objection by traditional Sacred Harp singers to its being sung at Quaker gatherings, which is one difference, and there isn’t any significant cost to FGC of sponsoring a Sacred Harp workshop as there is to a sweat lodge, but I’m wondering about more principled differences.)
What do you think? Is singing from the Sacred Harp an inapropriate activity at a Quaker gathering? (or, put differently, another piece of evidence of modern Quaker decadence?)
Hi Paul: first off, thanks for posting. Glad to know you’ve been enjoying the blog.
And what a debut in the comments – you don’t mess around! I think if we start looking at a lot of practices, we’ll start asking ourselves these kind of awkward questions. First off, let me repeat that I’ve never called for a ban of the sweat lodge: I don’t want to get into this situation where we’re deciding what’s orthdox enough. Because there’s a lot of things we do that don’t necessarily really fit Quakerism. I prefer to take a positive attitude, to share the Spirit and openings that I’ve received.
The sweat lodge has become a focal point partly because it’s the front line of an unacknowledged generation gap in FGC Quakerism. A lot of teens and twenty-somethings brought up in Quakerism just got totally ripped off by years of religious education that was too chicken-shit (pardon my French) to tell the good news or teach religion; that focused on character building exercises and acculturation into hippie/lefty culture. I think character-building is fine and I’ve got more than a little left/hippie in me but there’s more to Quakerism than this.
I don’t think the problem is occassionally visiting other religious practices. You run into trouble when you just too involved in the minutia of the practice or start thinking that it’s Quaker.
About ten years or so ago, a few people in the adult young Friends program at Gathering did a Brethren-style “love feast.” That first AYF feast was reverent and focused on how the group was re-enacting the disciples’ last meal with Jesus. Somehow, within just a few short years this became an essential AYF ritual. At the last one I attended (a few years ago), the high point seemed to be shooting whipped cream into each other’s mouths and doing suggestive things with bananas; the idea that we were sharing a meal with Christ was kind of lost. It’s not that sharing a Brethren ritual was a problem, it was that we now thought this some sort of Quaker or AYF ritual. And isn’t that the Quaker warning: that we should be wary of rituals but sooner or later we will take them too seriously or not seriously enough and get into trouble?
Well, all this isn’t necessarily a satisfactory answer. You’re raising real questions: how do we stay open to the fascinating diversity of modern Quakerism but also put forward some vision of identity that has (traditional) Quakerism as its influence and God as its architect?
Martin, I’m glad I took the time to review more of your early entries.
First, I feel sad reading the exchanges between you and Friend George. I sense that each of you present a piece of the Truth, but the Light is dimmed by the sting of your language towards one another. Being firm in one’s belief and conviction is one thing; using one’s beliefs and conviction for what feels to me to be a type of one-upsmanship is another. And it makes it harder for me to read through the exchange as a result.
A part of the Truth that I understand George lifts up is that there is a Power that for some is more readily accessed through the ritual of the Quaker sweatlodge experience. On the other hand, a part of the Truth that I see you lifting up, Martin, is that for others, a living Quaker faith is weakened when the members of the faith community look outside of their direct relationship to the Spirit and covenant community for guidance.
What I see in the exchange is that George speaks to his experience as a contemporary Hicksite Friend, and that you are speaking to your experience as a contemporary Conservative Friend. Part of the trouble from where I sit seems to be that each of you wants the other to accept your view as the Right One. “Quakers become stodgy if they stick to their old ways” is simply the other side of the coin of “Quakerism is weakened if they bring in too many ideas from other places.” And “Quakers are fed by being exposed to new ways to connect with the Spirit” is the other side of the coin of “Quakers are fed by digging deep into their tradition of stripping away so that only the Spirit remains.”
From my own experience, I know that I get the most defensive, most protective, and most aggressively critical when that which is dear to me is challenged or contested. It is clear to me that you and George each dearly love the Quakerism that best speaks to your condition. And you see that same Quakerism speaking deeply to the condition of other Friends as well. Is it a wonder that you’d defend, protect, and criticize, based on that conviction?
This exchange seems to highlight for me the essential difference of (at least) two branches of Friends: Hicksite and Conservative. Yet neither has the access to all the Light, which is why we need to discipline ourselves to listen to each other, even in disagreement.
.….….….….….….….…
Paul L, you raise an interesting question about a possible parallel between the Quaker sweat lodge and the place of Sacred Harp singing among Friends.
One difference is that it seems as though Sacred Harp singing did not emerge from an oppressed people and therefore is not controversial among the individuals and groups connected to it (Sacred Harp).
Another difference is the question of whether or not young adult Friends and others connected to Sacred Harp are having profound, collective experiences with it: if Sacred Harp singing were dropped last minute at the Gathering, would a listening session be called? Would young adult Friends or some other significantly large group be devastated?
(Certainly you would be, I don’t doubt that!)
There is a difference, then, about the power given by the community – or a subset of that community – as to the weight of a certain activity within Quaker practice. You speak openly of how your spiritual and Quaker life have been transformed by your participation in Sacred Harp singing, and you share your joy enthusiastically with others. But I have never felt or feared that your experience would become the basis of others’ hunger for being in touch with the Divine. And so it is less controversial in that regard as well.
(Maybe I should check back with you on this, though, after the next Gathering. smile)
I feel as though this comment to you, Paul, is not complete, but I cannot come to clearness at this late hour, so it will have to be left as is.
Blessings,
Liz
Hi Liz: well we’ll just have to agree to disagree on this. I think it actually is okay to say a practice doesn’t come out of the Quaker tradition. Part of the reason the Religious Society of Friends has such an identity problems is we’re too afraid to talk about what isn’t Quaker. To say something isn’t Quaker isn’t to say it isn’t legit or isn’t useful, it’s just to say it isn’t our way.
Hmm. Something in my intention got lost in my post.
I agree that it is necessary to point out if a practice doesn’t come from Quaker tradition. I cannot be a more faithful Quaker if I seek the Spirit through reading Torah, for example: it is counter to a basic tenet of Quakerism, about how we come to know God.
Of course I’m wanting to be certain I’m clear with you, given what you raise as identity problems and what I am preparing for the Gathering. I don’t wish to rehash what has already been shared: instead, I’ll affirm that I do see you and me on much the same page: drawing on and naming Quaker traditions helps strengthen one’s Quaker identity, as does stripping away and not relying on the practices of another tradition.
Ummm, not to create too much of a distraction here, but actually reading “Torah” (if by Torah you are referring to the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament) *IS* part of Quaker tradition. As Christians, Quakers historically have read the Bible and all parts of it, including the OT. They wouldn’t have referred to it as “Torah,” of course. So on this level a comparison between reading traditionally Jewish (and Christian) Scripture and participating in a non-Christian indigenous religious practice and calling it “Quaker” is hardly a useful one. But I realize this is an aside…
Julie
My concern with the sweatlodge issue comes from one of process. I have lost all faith in FGC central committee as well as all faith in the ad-hoc racism committee. It seems as one got duped, and the second exists as a McCarthyistic committee to pressure people whom the leadership finds troubling.
If we as Quakers want to discuss racism, let us discuss it in an actual committee — approved by a meeting — not an ad-hoc shadow committee that meets only when and with whom it chooses, and listens to only whom it chooses.
Furthermore, if we are to consider the claims of those outside the community against the sweatlodge, is it not reasonable that those making allegations have actual knowlege of that which they are offended by. Merely reading a description does not begin to describe the Quaker sweat in terms of tradition, history and practice. That the accuser has not taken the time to visit gathering and make her claims before those she brands racist — really all who have participated in the quaker sweat — shows contempt for our traditions of open process. That we have yet to have an open and transparent dealing with this matter is a massive failure of FGC leadership and needs to be dealt with. The conversation of Gathering this year amongst the AYF community was about the sweat. Had the committes come to the same conclusions following a more just, transparent and open process I have a feeling we would be more easy with it’s leadership. As it stands right now, I am about as easy with the leadership on this issue as a passenger on a busted rollercoaster. Process hasn’t been followed, and we need to find leadership who can speak to the truth of this issue within actual quaker process — not merely quaker politics.
If we get rid of the sweat for good, what other groups will be next? Some people don’t like healers at gathering — will they be gone? Some don’t like GLBT folk, will they be next? Where will it end? Where then will we find the unique spiritual space that is the meetinghouse where traditions meet eachother under the banner of God. The political marginalization of one groups ultimatly marginalizes the spiritual power of the gathering as a whole because it says to people that their gifts are not wanted. This in contrast to our long held belief that there is “that of God in everyone”.
Hi Petey: first off, don’t post multiple posts under different names or I won’t let your comments through. You can campaign for the sweat lodge on your personal blog.
That said, the pro-sweat lodge organizing I saw happening this week (the 2005 Gathering) was orchestrated by a couple of white-haired old men with long-standing axes to grind against FGC. It feels very opportunistic to me to hear old men speaking out on behalf of young people, “especially when they routinely ignore young Friends with real gifts”:http://www.nonviolence.org/martink/selling_quakerism_to_the_kids.php. There’s a lot of demagaugery going on, with the whole paranoia about secret committees – Petey, if you bothered to be more involved with FGC (like, actually volunteer and participate in committees) you would have spent dozens of hours talking about this over the past few years. The young people responding to the gray-hair’s organizing about this all tend to be cultural Quakers at best.
That said (again), I agree with a lot of what you write. I don’t think the cancelation of the workshop has much to do with racism (liberal Friends are hiding behind racism for a lot of our theological debate right now, e.g., renaming of “oversight committees”). If I’m right and the motiviations are not honest, then this is all going to come back at us and bite us on the ass.
The real problem I see is twenty years of FGC Friends not supporting youth leadership. Twenty years of tokenism. Twenty years where the only qualifications considered for committee memberships have been one’s parents (leading to some very unqualified committee members indeed). Twenty years where bold visionary young Friends with gifts for prophetic ministry “have been cut off and marginalized”:/martink/passing_the_faith_planet_of_the_quakers_style.php. Twenty years of liberal Quaker leadership that is scared shitless to talk about theology or Quaker identity.
Even now, the whole sweat lodge debate is largely between sixty-something old codgers playing out long-standing rivalries. If it weren’t the sweat lodge, they’d all be fighting over something else. If you need Chuck Fager and George Price to fight your future for you, then there is no future.
I’m glad you’ve found your voice (this post hits all the Fager/Price talking points yet doesn’t resemble any posts you’ve written on your own blog). I look forward to reading more on that site.
That you insult people who hold dear the Quaker Sweat and call me to use my blog for the same purpose that you use yours for (theological campaigning) is both sad and wrong. Please, friend — namecalling is unquakerly. You can choose to let this through to your blog or not, I don’t really care — this is more for you than for your audience. Please, don’t insult people, don’t complain when people respond to your campaigns with counter-campaigns of their own, after all — at the end of the day, it’s just ideas, and if ideas are so scary that they warrant namecalling then what of God in conversations can be found here?
Hey Petey: I have no interest in getting into a flame war with you. Anyone who wants can scroll up and see that I didn’t call you names or insult you. “Quaker Ranter” is a personal blog. Like any personal blog I write about the things I’m interested in. In my case its Quakerism. I like talking about it, its identity, its boundaries.
I don’t particularly care about the sweat lodge. I think its silly and has little to do with Quakerism but I’m not wasting my time campaigning. This was a single post a year ago – that it’s one of the few things that came up when you typed “quaker sweat lodge” in Yahoo isn’t my fault. If you think I’m full of it then just hit the back button and fare thee well.
Your Friend, Martin
hey folks, i’m from manitoba and have been invited by a cree friend to experience sun dance with him. not as worried about the mingling blood or exhaustion in the sun thing as much as how to respect his experience without compromising quaker concerns about forms being distracting of substance.