Light and Silence

Little children, love one another

Mon, 20 Aug 2012 04:11:18 -0500

A story of John that fits his epistles well.

When the holy Evangelist John had lived to extreme old age in Ephesus, he could be carried only with difficulty by the hands of the disciples, and as he was not able to pronounce more words, he was accustomed to say at every assembly, "Little children, love one another."

At length the disciples and brethren who were present became tired of hearing always the same thing and said: "Master, why do you always say this?" Thereupon John gave an answer worthy of himself: "Because this is the commandment of the Lord, and if it is observed then is it enough."

-In Jerome's Commentary on Galatians, cited in Period I, § 3(b) of A Source Book for Ancient Church History, by Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr.

Experiencing odor

Mon, 02 Jul 2012 20:10:50 -0500

Once upon a time the world was full of fragrance, and fragrance was valued. The powerful had their rose gardens and their personal perfumers, while the poor made do with easier flowers and the scents of the world.

Not all smells were equally wonderful, as everyone acknowledged, but the roles of sewage, vomits, and skunks were treated as philosophical discussions complicated by the challenges of the widely-recognized use of musk in perfume and the gentler smells of pastures and barns.

The Perfumers' Guild had great power, dispensing fragrance to all once a week while their most devoted adherents gathered to focus exclusively on producing the strongest and best smells.

There were a few people who said they couldn't smell the difference, but no one trusted them. There were also a few very sad people who were surrounded by wonderful fragrances but couldn't detect them, and suffered through a strange life of hiding their nasal dysfunction.

And, of course, there were a few people who overdosed, losing themselves completely in the fragrances and leaving behind the concerns of the world. There were heresies - the Cult of the Free Odor, which claimed that all the world had a smell, and that all the world should enjoy smells.

Over time, the abuses of the Perfumers' Guild and even dissension among the Perfumers over how best to approach the difficult subject of 'fragrance' grew doubts among the people. Those who hadn't had a great sense of smell came out and said so. Allergies were no longer a subject of scorn, and many even turned to habits - notably tobacco - that dulled their sense of smell.

Smells were difficult to explain. Opponents leaped on the common challenges of explaining exactly what a smell was like to another person, on subtleties that different people, even experts, might interpret differently. Sides formed, with different groups accusing each other of misinterpreting the meaning or even the value of smell.

Centuries of warfare, whole populations moving on the basis of fragrance, and what seemed like infinite argument finally subsided. There were still perfumers, still people gardening to produce their own fragrances and even essential oils, and a large group of people who considered fragrances useful medicinally.

There were still tensions, though. The "live and let live" attitudes were hard to maintain when proposals for adding congestants and histamines to public water supplies came up. Burning incense in public schools leds to lawsuits, and a series of broken bottles of essential oils across several cities led to riots.

My parents' families were fond of fragrance, but I grew up in a house that was free of it. We tried to preserve the best of what we'd learned, but without the constant smells and accompanying bells.

I, of course, found my way back into the rose garden. A quiet rose garden, but one full of fragrance I found difficult to explain to my family and friends.

A path away from Passivism, better not taken

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 16:47:57 -0500

I was surprised, about a decade ago, to find someone who proclaimed himself a Christian and a Biblical Literalist (his capital letters) - but who didn't think the Sermon on the Mount applied to him.

He'd been talking on a political forum about how the best thing to do to pacifists was punch them in the face, wait for them to get up, ask them if they were still pacifists, and if they said yes, punch them in the face again, then repeat. Yes. That was his gentle version.

I asked him how it squared with his proclaimed faith and the Sermon on the Mount that's generally front and center in Christian conversation, and he said, no, no, the Sermon on the Mount is "kingdom teaching". It's a nice idea now, but only tells you what the kingdom to come will look like. In the meantime, it doesn't apply to Christians.

I was puzzled, but over the next few years later I found more discussion of this approach, which seems to come from the dispensationalist interpretation of the Scofield Reference Bible. If you take the notes to the Sermon on the Mount in that Bible literally, you can reach that conclusion, exempting yourself from considering the Sermon on the Mount (and its parallels, and many other similar passages) obligatory.

The notes (which are now out of copyright) read:

Having announced the kingdom of heaven as "at hand," the King, in Mat 5.-7., declares the principles of the kingdom. The Sermon on the Mount has a twofold application:

literally to the kingdom. In this sense it gives the divine constitution for the righteous government of the earth. Whenever the kingdom of heaven is established on earth it will be according to that constitution, which may be regarded as an explanation of the word "righteousness" as used by the prophets in describing the kingdom (e.g.) Isaiah 11:4 Isaiah 11:5 ; 32:1 ; Daniel 9:24
In this sense the Sermon on the Mount is pure law, and transfers the offence from the overt act to the motive. Matthew 5:21 Matthew 5:22 Matthew 5:27 Matthew 5:28 . Here lies the deeper reason why the Jews rejected the kingdom. They had reduced "righteousness" to mere ceremonialism, and the Old Testament idea of the kingdom to a mere affair of outward splendour and power. They were never rebuked for expecting a visible and powerful kingdom, but the words of the prophets should have prepared them to expect also that only the poor in spirit and the meek could share in it (e.g.) Isaiah 11:4 . The seventy-second Psalm, which was universally received by them as a description of the kingdom, was full of this.
For these reasons, the Sermon on the Mount in its primary application gives neither the privilege nor the duty of the Church. These are found in the Epistles. Under the law of the kingdom, for example, no one may hope for forgiveness who has not first forgiven. Matthew 6:12 Matthew 6:14 Matthew 6:15 . Under grace the Christian is exhorted to forgive because he is already forgiven. Ephesians 4:30-32 .

But there is a beautiful moral application to the Christian. It always remains true that the poor in spirit, rather than the proud, are blessed, and those who mourn because of their sins, and who are meek in the consciousness of them, will hunger and thirst after righteousness, and hungering, will be filled. The merciful are "blessed," the pure in heart do "see God." These principles fundamentally reappear in the teaching of the Epistles.

(line breaks and emphasis added)

Though this certainly strikes many of the components of the earlier description of the Passivist conversation, it has many other consequences. (American premillenial dispensationalists did, for a long time, find other reasons to stay out of activism beyond what they considered strictly religious, but returned as a force in the political world over the past several decades.)

I've never found Scofield's reading of the Bible to be anything close to literal or even to resemble plausible. I can't propose this approach as an acceptable path away from Passivism.

A Recipe for Christian Passivism

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 20:08:08 -0500

I've spent a lot of the last few years contemplating the difference between "pacifism" and what I call "passivism" - sometimes dismissively, sometimes appreciatively.

Passivism comes from a plausible reading of the New Testament. It gets used on defense:

"I don't do X because I'm imperfect and it's God's to change."

It also gets used on offense:

"You shouldn't do X because it's God's to change and who do think you are you imperfect person, you hypocrite."

It can bring arguments to a sudden end, as people who've deployed it for offense have frequently also used it for defense, and find criticism of this point personally, well, offensive.

How do you get here? It's not difficult to proof-text, even just from the Sermon on the Mount. Citations are from Matthew, in the King James Version. (I cite the KJV because it's a translation whose creators' biases run largely against my own.) I've bolded verses I've personally heard deployed to criticize other people or to justify inaction.

Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.(5:5)

Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. (5:7)

Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God. (5:9)

Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.

Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: (5:11-12)

I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.

Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee;

Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.

Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way with him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison.

Verily I say unto thee, Thou shalt by no means come out thence, till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing. (5:22-26)

Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:

But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.

And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.

And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.

Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.

Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.

But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;

That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?

And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so?

Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.(5:38-48)

Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? (6:25)

But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.

Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. (6:34-35)

Judge not, that ye be not judged.

For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.

And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?

Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye. (7:1-5)

That's a large part of the Sermon on the Mount, much of which repeats in the Sermon on the Plain (Luke 17-49). Matthew 22:31 provides the oft-quoted "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's."

It's not just Jesus' statements, but what he does. He regularly dines with the unjust (tax collectors, or publicans as the KJV calls them), bringing salvation to the house of Zacchaeus (Luke 19:1-9) and following up with a parable (19:12-27) about how "unto every one which hath shall be given; and from him that hath not, even that he hath shall be taken away from him." (Luke 19:26).

Jesus heals the servant of a centurion, "a man under authority, having soldiers under me" (Matthew 8:9) and says of him, "I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel" (Matthew 8:10). He defends the woman who took "an alabaster box of very precious ointment, and poured it on his head", in a feisty conversation with his disciples:

Now when Jesus was in Bethany, in the house of Simon the leper,

There came unto him a woman having an alabaster box of very precious ointment, and poured it on his head, as he sat at meat.

But when his disciples saw it, they had indignation, saying, To what purpose is this waste?

For this ointment might have been sold for much, and given to the poor.

When Jesus understood it, he said unto them, Why trouble ye the woman? for she hath wrought a good work upon me.

For ye have the poor always with you; but me ye have not always.

For in that she hath poured this ointment on my body, she did it for my burial.

Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached in the whole world, there shall also this, that this woman hath done, be told for a memorial of her.

Then one of the twelve, called Judas Iscariot, went unto the chief priests...

See where questioning Jesus about wasted wealth takes you?

When one of the disciples cuts off the ear of a servant of the high priest, come to take Jesus to his trial and crucifixion, Jesus immediately heals him. (Luke 22:50-51).

In Acts 8:26-40, Philip baptizes the Ethiopian, "an eunuch of great authority... who had the charge of all her treasure" without ever stopping to question that authority.

Paul has similar moments. Perhaps the most startling today is Colossians 3:22, "slaves, obey your masters," which the KJV broadens a bit to servants:

Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh; not with eyeservice, as menpleasers; but in singleness of heart, fearing God;

The Letter to Titus reinforces that:

Exhort servants to be obedient unto their own masters, and to please them well in all things; not answering again;

Not purloining, but shewing all good fidelity; that they may adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things. (Titus 2:9-10)

Another piece from Paul, Romans 13:1-7, is a classic text often used to argue that Christians should obey the civil authority regardless of what it does:

Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.

Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.

For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same:

For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.

Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake.

For for this cause pay ye tribute also: for they are God's ministers, attending continually upon this very thing.

Render therefore to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honour to whom honour.

There are others, but this list is, I think, most of the foundation.

After reading all this, can you still imagine daring to interfere with the workings of the world? (Yes, that's next.)

Aspiring to be Quaker

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 12:53:29 -0500

It's been a powerful week of Quaker provocation. Maggie Harrison opened with YOU ARE NOT A QUAKER (so please stop calling yourself one) (live version here). Micah Bales followed up with Who is a Quaker, which on the surface sounds gentler but is maybe even a stronger call to action - "she has not gone far enough".

Stop for a moment and read them both, then pause for a moment over Bales' description of the past and present:

Maggie's essay cries out for a sanctification of Quakerism, calling the Religious Society of Friends back to its roots in spiritual transformation by Christ's light. The Quaker church began as a radical movement of prophetic faithfulness to God's living Word (the Risen Lord Jesus), and was far more concerned with embodying and proclaiming that message than it was with buildings and endowments; history and Nobel prizes...

You are not a Quaker. Neither is Maggie. Nor am I. We are nothing like Quakers. We are pale shadows of those charismatic extremists of the early Quaker movement, who shook the earth for ten miles around when they preached. It is a mockery for us to claim to be one of them....

... But we are frauds. Quakers do not exist anymore. Three hundred and fifty years was a good run, but it is over now; and the longer we pretend to be something we are not, the more we disgrace a once-proud people.

I sympathize with both of these, as I frequently dream of a more focused fellowship more willing to cut to the bone, or "GET NAKED" as Harrison puts it. I dream of pushing myself ever further that direction as well. I've spent a lot of time here talking about concepts like deification that really push the "why can't go farther?" question to the limit, and asked if early Quakers thought that was what they were doing.

At the same time, however, I draw back a little because I know Quakers who are, as Bales says, "called to so much more than secure lives in the lap of Empire," or as Harrison puts it, "are committed to the process of gettin' naked as a step in the longer path of being clothed in righteousness, which means a return to right order, or the Gospel Order, or the Kingdom of Heaven, or the Garden or Eden, or total Liberation, or WHATEVER YOU WANT TO CALL IT."

There are many levels of commitment to such change in Quakerism (and elsewhere), many people with different levels of such commitment helping each other toward it. Even those with the least commitment can be helps, not hindrances, to those with the most commitment. Commitment can, as I wrote recently, come to us, not the other way around.

Reading early Quaker history, it is hard not to be struck not only by the commitment of the Valiant Sixty but by the number of people who were interested in the message but didn't stay around. Reading Pennsylvania history, it's hard not to notice Quakerism falling off over the generations because the appeal of worldly things - fashion, slaves, and many kinds of business - had a greater appeal than the Quaker message. Waves of Quaker revival (and associated conflict) brought in new people, and drove others out.

In a world full of churches that call themselves Christian but really contain people aspiring to be Christian, it is not surprising that a world full of meetinghouses contains people aspiring to be Quaker. We call ourselves Quakers and Christians, but because that is the path, not a destination we've reached.

(Okay, some people think they've reached the destination, but that's a separate conversation.)

So yes, it's critical to focus on "real radical transformation.... we ARE about something." Something is happening, something is here - as these two and many others demonstrate.

At the same time, we need to remember that we are walking a difficult path that requires leading. We are not there yet, any of us. This piece from a Presbyterian service I was at this morning reminded me of that:

Not because we have made peace this day. Not because we have treated the other as ourself. Not because we have walked the earth with reverence today, but because there is mercy, because there is grace, because your Spirit has not been taken from us. We come still thirsting for peace, still longing to love, still hungering for wholeness. Amen.

The surprising part to me was that that was the Assurance of Forgiveness.

Are we, Quakers, ready?

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 12:33:38 -0500

The first place I encountered Quakers as more than obscure historical figures was in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. I read it while looking for a college, and somehow wound up at a (culturally) Quaker college - which of course planted many more seeds that took me here.

The world Atwood describes is harsh, and Quakers play a role somewhat like their earlier Underground Railroad work - though with more severe penalties. A few excerpts illustrate her telling:

"Five members of the heretical sect of Quakers have been arrested," he says, smiling blandly, "and more arrests are anticipated."

Two of the Quakers appear onscreen, a man and a woman. They look terrified, but they're trying to preserve some dignity in front of the camera. The man has a large dark mark on his forehead; the woman's veil has been torn off, and her hair falls in strands over her face. Both of them are about fifty. (Section 14).

Why would Quakers be so dangerous? Well, they help people. The wrong people.

I also believe that they didn't catch him or catch up with him after all, that he made it... found his way to a nearby farmhouse, was allowed in, with suspicion at first, but then when they understood who he was, they were friendly, not the sort who would turn him in, perhaps they were Quakers, they will smuggle him inland... (Section 18)

And...

"I chose them because they were a married couple, and those were safer than anyone single and especially anyone gay. Also I remembered the designation beside their name. Q, it said, which meant Quaker. We had the religious denominations marked...

"So these people let me in right away.... as soon as I was inside the door, I took off the headgear and told them who I was. They could have phoned the police or whatever, I know I was taking a chance... Anyway, they didn't. They gave me some clothes, a dress of hers, and burned the Aunt's outfit and the pass in their furnace; they knew that had to be done right away. They didn't like having me there, that much was clear, it made them very nervous. They had two little kids, both under seven. I could see their point.

"... Then the woman made me a sandwich and a cup of coffee and the man said he'd take me to another house. They hadn't risked phoning.

"The other house was Quakers too, and they were pay dirt, because they were a station on the Underground Femaleroad. After the first man left, they said they'd try to get me out of the country...." (Section 38)

Quakerism clearly isn't centered on smuggling people, and even as I watch various conflicts today I wouldn't claim this country resembles Atwood's Republic of Gilead.

Are we ready, though, to help those in need?

(Reading Atwood's The Year of the Flood, with a sort of Quaker-like group that sings Anglican-ish hymns, reminded me of her earlier Quaker discussion.)

Troublesome pacifists

Mon, 25 Apr 2011 12:13:24 -0500

I spoke in Meeting yesterday for the first time in a long while. I don't remember precisely what I said, but the gist of it, two long-past conversations, seems worth sharing.

When I was in high school, a friend of mine - perhaps he'd seen Spartacus recently? - objected that Christ's crimes seemed awfully weak for a full-scale crucifixion. He hadn't preached armed insurrection, or any of the kinds of things Romans typically worried about.

A few years ago, at a conference lunch, I'd mentioned this blog, and the conversation after went something like:

Are you Quaker?

Yes.

Aren't they pacifists?

Well, mostly...

So if they're pacifists, why do they cause so much trouble?

I didn't have a proper answer for him, but maybe the conversation helped. It was kind of the opposite of the earlier conversation, but at the same time not exactly.

No peace without until peace within

Wed, 23 Feb 2011 12:23:55 -0500

Howard Brinton writes, in the introduction to The Guide to True Peace:

But how, the activist will ask, can we heal a sick world when we are advised to "retire from all outward objects and silence all desires in the profound silence of the whole soul" (p.2)? The answer is that there is no peace without until there is peace within.

A man who is inwardly disordered will infect all about him with his inner disorder. John Woolman, a New Jersey tailor of the eighteenth century, followed without reservation the type of religion portrayed in The Guide to True Peace, yet he was one of the world's greatest social reformers. When he went about persuading the Quakers, a hundred years before the Civil War, to give up their slaves, he did not say much about suffering and injustice. He simply pointed out to the slaveholders that they felt no inner peace.

The history of the Society of Friends shows that almost always this search for inner peace is the dynamic of Quaker pioneering in social reform. True peace comes, not by inaction but in letting God act through us. (x)

An invitation and an argument

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 14:08:12 -0500

Last week, while driving through central New York, I saw two signs with calls to be Christian but totally different approaches.

The first, painted on a farm stand sign along Route 20, read:

Jesus loves you. Love him back.

I kept reflecting on that for the rest of the drive out.

Maybe it prepared me for the writing on the back window of a truck I saw parked at a Thruway rest area on the way back:

God said it
That settles it
You better believe it!

That made for a different kind of reflection.

The Velvet hymn

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 17:44:18 -0500

Hymns, even new hymns, crop up in the strangest places. One of my favorites, a simple repeating verse, is:

Jesus, help me find my proper place
Jesus, help me find my proper place
Help me in my weakness
'Cos I'm falling out of grace
Jesus
Jesus

If you'd like to hear it, it's here on YouTube. I often hear it in my mind during meeting, a refrain that helps me settle.

Lou Reed and The Velvet Underground seem an unlikely source for this meditative piece, though the album it was on, also called The Velvet Underground, is definitely calmer than its predecessors. But still, this comes right after "Pale Blue Eyes", with "the fact that you are married only proves your my best friend" and "Some Kind of Love", which has always left me wondering what's going on with "put jelly on your shoulder baby."

Song meanings has speculation about what this mean, but I've yet to find a real telling of how this came to be. Even if it's connected, say, to coming down from heroin, it stays simple enough to have much broader meaning.

In one of the stranger culture mashups I've encountered, someone's even created a video for this with clips from The Passion of the Christ. I guess it makes sense to people who don't know anything about this band, or perhaps far too much about this band.

A Liberal Quaker at Liberty

Tue, 05 May 2009 20:54:07 -0500

Liberty University, that is. The author:

grew up in the tiny college town of Oberlin, Ohio, a crunchy liberal enclave plopped down improbably in the middle of the Lake Erie Rust Belt. My parents are Quakers, a rather free-spirited sect of Christianity who members (called Friends) spend a lot of time talking about peace and working for social justice. But despite the our affiliation, our house was practically religion-free. We never read the Bible or said grace over our meals, and our attendance at Quaker services was spotty - though we did visit a small Baptist church once a year to sing Christmas carols. (To be clear: this is the kind of Baptist church where the pastor swaps out the gendered language in the carols, like in "Lo! How a Rose E'er Blooming" when "men of old have sung" becomes "as those of old have sung.)

When high school came around, I left home to attend a boarding school in the Philadelphia suburbs. It happened to be a Quaker school, but going there was hardly a religious decision. In fact, during high school, I wasn't sure what I thought about my parents' religion, or about religion in general. I liked learning about the Quaker moral tenets - simplicity, peace, integrity, and equality - but when the subject of God came up, I always found myself lagging behind. Quakers talk about God as an "inner light," and while I understood that position intellectually, I couldn't bring myself to think that there was a divine being who existed independent of the human mind, who guided our decisions and heard our prayers. To put it in Quaker terms, my inner light flickered a light, like the overhead fluorescent at Motel 6, and sometimes, it burnt out altogether. The closest I came to consistent faith was during my senior year religion class, when we learned about the Central and South American liberation theology movements and I became briefly convinced that God was a left-wing superhero who led the global struggle against imperialism and corporate greed. Sort of a celestial Michael Moore.

He takes a semester off from Brown to attend Liberty, Jerry Falwell's university. When I picked it up in the bookstore, I was worried that it just be a trainwreck of cultural conflict, but flipping through it was clear the train stayed on the tracks. In fact, it's easily the best "outside looking in" book I've read on this wing of evangelical Christianity. Kevin Roose, the author, carries off a complex challenge of being an undercover journalist in an alien culture, managing to explain his encounters and his response sympathetically.

It's hard reading sometimes, dealing with homophobia, young-earth Creationism, the challenges of dating when you're not quite who you say you are, the Quiverfull movement, occasional racism, and a lot of stories that don't come up in the Quaker meeting he grew up in. I don't want to spoil the story, so I'll leave you with that intro. (He doesn't spend that much time discussing Quakerism, but it comes up in the background regularly.)

For a lot more, explore The Unlikely Disciple.

The Limits of History, IV

Sun, 04 Jan 2009 19:21:53 -0500

In a comment on my earlier piece, Zach Alexander asks:

Reading the previous two posts in the series, I'd be interested to see how you tie them together. I see no contradiction, but a very mild tension ? we should ease up on historical accuracy (I-II), but not too much (III). What is the middle ground?

Partly, the tension comes from the time between the posts, but mostly I think I've failed to be clear again. There are two separate aspects to the question of history and Quakerism:

How important is history - the stories we tell - to Quakerism?
What kind of historical practice do we apply to those stories?

My first and third posts were supposed to be about the first question - yes, history is important, critical to who "Quakers" are. In a creedless religion, we are the stories we tell. (Thanks to Will T for helping me polish that phrasing with an earlier comment.)

Because of this, I am, of course, deeply concerned about what might be described as Quaker amnesia - people arguing, as I think you have, that one piece or another is at the heart of what's valuable about Quakerism, and the rest is just... whatever. Yes, it's tempting - but wrong. Without the larger context, a small list of "key pieces" is doomed to be misleading (about Quakerism) at best.

The second post and some of the third post were more about the second question.

Here, I'm taking a position that should make academic historians uncomfortable. I don't think applying the usual rules for academic history to the stories of Quakerism is particularly useful for Quakerism. Yes, it's valuable for historians, and First Among Friends in particular is eye-opening - but not quite right.

I'm also less and less surprised by the 'tampering' with Fox's Journal and his works generally. Early Quaker writings weren't meant to be objective journalism or verbatim archives. We have to accept that they were written for the express purpose of evangelizing their readers, of telling a story their writers found compelling. I don't think it's all that different from how we look at the Bible, except with fewer translation issues. Believers see it one way, academics and other interested outsiders often see it another way.

At this point, I'm comfortable with the idea that these early Quaker documents simply are different, and communicate different things, depending on who you are. Not merely "who you are" as an individual, but "who you are" as a community. In an earlier age, I'm guessing Quakers would have thought of it as inside the hedge vs. outside the hedge, but since the hedge has come down, the lines are blurrier.

How can we make this work? My best advice would be to supplement whatever secondary Quaker history we want to read with the primary documents, or things close to the originals. And I have some ideas on making the originals easier to get to.... we'll see.

Holiness: The Soul of Quakerism

Sun, 04 Jan 2009 14:46:31 -0500

Carole Dale Spencer manages, in Holiness: The Soul of Quakerism, to describe early Quakerism as a largely coherent whole whose later schisms reflect emphasis on some components and the loss of others. While it's definitely an academic book, it is still a compelling read, and I hope this story will be told widely in more accessible forms over the years to come.

Before continuing with the review, I should note that Spencer plays to practically every bias and opinion I hold regarding Quakerism up through about the 1840s, and frequently thereafter. It's strange to me to be reading interpretive Quaker history, especially history that looks beyond the first generation, and not be spending a fair amount of time arguing with the author in my head. I find her telling of the early Quakers compelling, as well as her case for the Quietists as something better than a terrible decline. While I'm not as convinced by her doubts about Elias Hicks personally, her overall take on Hicksites makes sense to me, as do her doubts about how close Joseph John Gurney was to the heart of Quakerism. I think she's correct that John Wilbur was, as he claimed, much closer.

Where I start having doubts is in the second half of the 19th century, when the Holiness Movement per se comes through. There's a conversation worth having about forms of Quaker worship, hinted at here, but not really explored. I return pretty easily though, in her discussion of the 20th century, and overall I'm kind of dazed to agree with so much of a single telling of Quaker history, especially at this level of depth.

I suspect some potential readers will bounce off the word "Holiness", thinking that this is a plea for revival meetings. They shouldn't. Spencer's use of holiness certainly includes revival meetings (including, I think, the earliest Quaker gatherings), but it's a much richer use than that. Her use of holiness derives from the early Christian fathers, a group whose thought (as she points out) regularly parallels that of early Quakers. She emphasizes eight aspects, which she sees as integrated in early Quaker thought:

Scripture
Eschatology
Conversion
Charisma (Spirit)
Evangelism
Mysticism
Suffering
Perfection

Obviously, not all of those aspects resonate with all Quakers today, and the details of many of them changed over the course of 350 years, sometimes repeatedly. I remember being blown away by Apocalypse of the Word, largely because it was startling to me that eschatology was central to early Quakers. Talking about "perfection" seems to instantly raise alarms, whether with Quakers or with, well, practically anyone, but Spencer weaves it tightly into the story.

I'll be writing more about the book for a while to come - there are lots and lots of pieces worth pursuing, even pieces I hope someone will take up and turn into complete books of their own.

Yes, it's written academically, and can be very dense, but the content is excellent. My one real complaint (and maybe this is only my copy) is that the type seems excessively light. It's all there, but reading it seems trickier than it should be. The price ($41) isn't cheap, but fortunately it's not as astronomical as some academic publishing.

I can't recommend it as light reading, but if you're up for a detailed and valuably opinionated journey through Quaker history, it's an excellent telling.

(It's also worth noting that the latest issue of Quaker Religious Thought, #110, includes reviews by Stephen Angell, Margery Post Abbott, and Jim Le Shana, with replies from Spencer.)

Comments on a Bible

Sat, 03 Jan 2009 14:22:05 -0500

I'm always surprised by how few reviews most books on Quakerism get on Amazon. (There are exceptions, of course.)

Maybe that's a good thing, though, as sometimes warfare can break out in the review sections and their comments. It seems pretty clear that there's a constituency appalled by the very notion of a "Green Bible", disgusted by the shift it implies from God to God's creation, from ourselves as special creations to humans as one of many creations. I suspect that's just getting started, too.

I've wondered for a while what a Quaker Bible might look like. Highlighting in gray probably isn't a great idea, but I can only imagine what comments it would draw....

Theology as Autobiography, Biography, and Hagiography

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 12:32:16 -0500

The title of this post is taken from the title of section 1.3 of Carole Dale Spencer's Holiness: The Soul of Quakerism, and I think it gets to some of why I'm concerned about the willingness to throw over Quaker history in favor of our own reductions.

She's writing in the context of methodology, how her book is going to proceed, but along the way she presents a very clear statement about how Quakerism explained itself over the centuries:

In early Quakerism theology was experiential and mystical (cogito Dei experimentalis), therefore developed and formulated most effectively as autobiography. Autobiography was supplemented by biography and then sanctified by hagiography....

Along with the Bible, hagiography and its related literature (rather than doctrinal treatises) have been the primary textual means by which the Christian faith has been transferred through generations. After the Bible, the lives of saints, their journals or spiritual diaries, and their devotional manuals have been the most formative influences in the teaching of holiness.....

More important than doctrinal formulation, and essential because Quakers were theoretically non-creedal, was the actual depiction of lives through which readers could understand and measure themselves through the model of earlier saints....

The most common form of teaching and Quakers' main reading material were the journals of its saints, George Fox's Journal being the prototype (Wright, 1932). These journals were written to describe and define a life of holiness and to teach by example. (4-5)

Arriving in an unprogrammed Quaker meeting with no sense of history (as I did twenty years ago), one can pick up the form easily enough, even the worshipful goal of that form. Testimonies are readily explained - the SPICE acronym may be a cliche, but for beginners it's readily comprehensible. And beyond that, there's the Inner Light, right? No creeds, so anything else?

Well, yes. The ahistorical version of Quakerism does have some popularity, but there's a lot more in all those dusty journals. The status of those journals - as tutorials for religious belief and not simply as verbatim history - also goes a long way toward explaining why Quakers treated their history in ways that make contemporary historians shake their heads.

I wonder, though, whether this approach to transmitting religious experience can hold up - is holding up - in the current state of the world. This isn't a uniquely current problem, as I think John Wilbur faced similar challenges in his battles with the Gurneyite Orthodox. It seems, though, that the way we read (and the amount we read, and so on) keeps changing.

Handing a copy of George Fox's Journal (or even The Quaker Reader to new attenders probably isn't the best way to introduce them to the religion. Quakerism 101 classes at least provide a general overview, and hopefully encourage people to read and explore more deeply.

I worry that in many ways Quakerism - especially unprogrammed Quakerism - makes sense only in the context of a deeply literate society. The lack of liturgy and adornment means that there isn't a constant story told each Sunday, and creedlessness (and more or less lack of a catechism) leaves us needing to study Quaker experience. Studying Quaker experience is a long slow process. This makes it hard for newcomers and for people without the time to dedicate to that study, and can also make religion feel like homework.

I don't see any easy way around this, at least for those who see Quakerism as more than the simplified form and testimonies I described above. We'll have to take the hard road, and convince others that it's worthwhile.