Quaker Beliefs; Faith II
QUAKER BELIEFS; FAITH II
248. The Candle of the Lord (by Elfrida Vipont Foulds; 1983)
About the Author—Born in Manchester (England) 1902, Elfrida Vipont Foulds grew up in a Quaker family. She worked as a free-lance writer, lecturer, & singer before and after her marriage to R. Percy Foulds, a research technologist. During WWII she was headmistress of the Quaker Evacuation School at Yealand Manor. 43 of her books have been published. She is also chairman of the committee which arranges visits to the Quaker “1652 Country.” [She has shown international interest in schools, colleges, children’s libraries & Quaker groups].
The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord. Proverbs 20:27
“Dear Friend, when the Lord has set you free and brought you into joy, then you think you have overcome all. But there is a daily cross to be taken up.” Elizabeth Hooten
“I continue a prisoner in Banbury, but I witness freedom in the Lord.” Ann Audland
Rufus Jones and my father E. Vipont Brown were almost exactly of an age. Both belonged to that generation of young men and women who brought about a great re-awakening of Quakerism nearly 100 years ago. The movement was led by Rufus Jones in the US and John Wilhelm Rowntree in London Yearly Meeting. Quakerism was ready for the challenge of a new age.
Pendle Hill according to Henry Hodgkin, was to be “a haven of rest, a school of prophets, a laboratory of ideas, and a fellowship of co-operation.” [As to rest], musician and saint and tortured prophet alike have discovered that there is only one abiding source of rest, the Eternal Presence in the human heart. The prophets and the idealists, the scholars and philosophers, the craftsmen working together will emerge only if at the heart of each restless, seeking individual there is the knowledge of where that rest is to be found.
This quotation reminds me of a hymn we used to sing in the little “Children’s Meeting” started by my mother and other pioneering women at Mount Street Meeting. [We would sing]: “Like a little candle/We must shine/you in your small corner/ And I in mine.” [Unfortunately “small corner” would conjure the image of “standing in the corner” as punishment]. We can take the text smugly, and it will get us nowhere. We can take it in a disillusioned spirit, and again it will get us nowhere. Or we can take it up as a challenge and ask if indeed one poor candle’s gleam can be of use in the world we live in today.
Nearly all Friends must surely be familiar with George Fox’s vision in 1647 of an ocean of darkness, with “an infinite ocean of light and love which flowed over [it].” After WWI, many including me believed that it was all over bar the shouting; not Rufus Jones. [In time of catastrophe, George Fox came to expect that ] the emergence, the incursion, the vernal equinox of the Spirit comes through some human individual or some prepared group. It does not come as lightning out of the sky.” We are asked to be channels for the incursion of the Divine Life, even in the midst of the ocean of darkness and death.
The youth of Rufus Jones’ time were as familiar with their Bibles as ever were the early Friends, but they were also familiar with the biblical scholarship in their own day. The students of the Scarborough Summer School would become Friends whom I myself later knew as revered members of an older generation. The Adult School movement took young people who had led sheltered lives into a more workaday world, & [brought some of that world] into the Society of Friends. [Time spent with Joshua Rowntree, left a tramp thinking that] he could see nowt but the moors & the sea & the sky, [but that later in life he said, “Joshua] made me see.”
The re-awakening of Quakerism inspired by that generation affected Friends all over the world. The inspiration continues to work, but the ocean of darkness is still threatening a world constantly menaced by catastrophe. The 1st World Conference of Friends, held in London in 1920 was called the All Friends Conference. They said that their exhausted, suffering world needed men and women who were prepared to live their everyday lives as if the Kingdom of God had come. It will be through us as individuals, however inadequate we may know ourselves to be—a poor candle’s gleam, but part of something in which we have faith, something which we believe God is bringing into this hungering and thirsting world.
A little passage in II Esdras says: “Come hither, and I shall light a lamp of understanding in thine heart which shall not be put out. Once, a national day of prayer was proclaimed in an emergency. [A friend thought that was treating God as though God were a fire engine. A teacher once had me memorize] Matthew 15:25, “Lord, help me.” I have never ceased to be grateful to that teacher. At first I thought I was too busy to set aside time for prayer. At last I began to realize that I needed some kind of inner peace, or inward retirement. I studied John Woolman who said, “The place of prayer is a precious habitation. I saw this place to be safe, to be inwardly quiet when there was great stirrings and commotions in the world.” Here is where our poor candle can shine more brightly, where we can gather strength to meet the desperate need of the world today.
The great experience of 1652, which transformed Quakerism into a vital missionary movement, began with George Fox’s vision from Pendle Hill’s top. We could explain away the whole thing, believe it has nothing to do with us today. We can contract out of the whole affair & leave visionary people to get on with their visions. But the events of 1652 began at the foot of Pendle Hill, by being “moved of the Lord to go atop it.” George Fox had no good reason to go up there, especially if you add the legend that the Devil walks on Pendle Hill. It was when Fox obeyed his guidance by doing a crazy thing & climbing Pendle Hill, that God gave him his marching orders.
[There was also] Dorothy Waugh, a Westmoreland farm servant who was called of the Lord to go to America & share the Quaker message. [The first time she went to Boston, she was] imprisoned until their ship’s captain agreed to take them back to London. Meanwhile a Quaker name Robert Fowler had been called of the Lord to build a ship, without knowing who wanted it or was going to pay for it. The Quaker missionaries set out, Dorothy Waugh amongst them, & made that memorable voyage in the The Woodhouse. They received a clear direction from God to: “Cut through and steer your straightest course, and mind nothing but me!” The accusation is made that we are apt to confuse our sense of guidance with our own personal inclinations. As John Churchman said: “To see a thing isn’t a commission to do that thing. The time when, & the judgment to know the acceptable time, are the gifts of God.” We can receive a call, but the time isn’t yet. In God’s good time, often very suddenly, the door opens. Something says: “Now is the time!” Such is the joy of a life lived under God’s guidance.
[Such a life requires courage.] Margaret Fell was sentenced to be “cut off from the King’s protection.” She said: “I may be out of the King’s protection, but I am not out of the protection of Almighty God.” The more I study Margaret Fell’s life, the more I realize that she could not have given that answer when she was first convinced of the Truth; her faith was something which grew steadily. Simple people in jail fearlessly claimed the right of every freeborn Englishman to be tried, but said that if they were not granted these things, they would “lay down patiently and suffer under you.” That was the spirit that broke the religious persecution of their day.
Elizabeth Stirredge of Bristol & Somerset 1st argues with guidance, suggesting that God had better send someone else [that could] make a much better job of it. Later she goes ahead in faith; you can feel her joy vibrating through the pages. Thomas Briggs stands in jail saying, “I sing for joy because I know the Lord is with me.”
We are going to need the kind of endurance that the early Friends knew. Ellis Hookes was the 1st Recording Clerk of London Yearly Meeting. In the year of the Great Plague (1665), he stayed at his post maintaining Friends’ affairs, visiting Friends in prison, and helping those with the Plague. William Edmundson, when he was lost in the American wilderness said: “I had nothing to sustain me but the Lord.” James Nayler said after his agonizing experience of error and shame and self-deception that there are times when: “the clouds may be so thick, and the powers of darkness so strong, that you see Him not, yet love him, and believe, and you have him present.” Let us not waste our sorrows, our sufferings, our moments of despair. We must use them. We must use them for a well, and living water will spring up and refresh our spirits, and the spirits of those around us.
Another working pattern for the task in hand lies in our fellowship together. Perhaps it is time we ask ourselves: “Are we gathered?” In spite of being physically separated from his fellow Friends, James Parnell knew that he had the loving support of his friends. He knew that he could not be cut off from them; he maintained his testimony and died a martyr’s death. Our fellowship today must be as strong and have the same sustaining vision. We must be gathered in the deepest sense, [i.e. when all know that they are in the Presence of the Spirit].
There is something else we need to accept, however unwillingly. The Early Friend Elizabeth Hooten wrote: “Dear Friend, when the Lord has set you free & brought you into joy, then you think you have overcome all. But there is a daily cross to be taken up.” We aren’t going to be able to carry that cross unless we know the secret of self-discipline. Ann Audland from a filthy, malodorous prison wrote: “I continue a prisoner in Banbury, but I witness freedom in the Lord.” George Fox wrote: “Never heed the Tempests nor the Storms, Floods nor Rains, for the Seed Christ is over all, & doth reign.” “Don’t think that anything will outlast the Truth, which standeth sure & over that which is out of the Truth.” “So be faithful, & live in that which doth not think the time long.”
This conception of timelessness has echoed through Quaker history to our own day. Tom Kelly exhorted us to live on two planes at once, to pursue our daily lives balanced between Time and Eternity. [That is the only way] we are going to live as if the Kingdom of God had come. Have we evolved a working pattern which will cope with such a challenge? Are we ready to live as if the Kingdom of God had come? Are we ready to believe that the Spirit of Man is the Candle of the Lord?
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8. Rethinking Quaker Principles (by Rufus M. Jones; 1940)
About the Author—Rufus Matthew Jones was born in 1863 into an old Quaker family in South China, ME. He was an American religious leader, writer, magazine editor, philosopher, and college professor. He helped in the establishment of the Haverford Emergency Unit (a precursor to the AFSC). One of the most influential Quakers of the 20th century, he was a Quaker historian and theologian as well as a philosopher. He delivered 2 Swarthmore Lectures. He began teaching philosophy and psychology at Haverford in 1893 and continued to do so until retiring in 1934. He tried unsuccessfully to unite the divided body of Quakers. He died in 1948.
I. A NEW RELIGIOUS TYPE—We have a new word for the breaking in of the new out of the old: mutation. Something emerges that wasn't there before, something that isn't just the sum of preceding events. The birth of the Society of Friends is one of these mutations. It wasn't an absolutely new religious movement. It had a definite setting & a well-marked background in history; nothing just like it ever existed before. There would have been no Society of Friends if there hadn't been a Puritan movement, & yet Quakers weren't really Puritans.
Thomas Cartwright (1535-1603) is the historical father of Puritanism; he worked for a radical reform of the Anglican Church, which seemed to him [not much different from the Roman Catholic Church]. They took over Calvin's conceptions of God as absolute sovereign, and man as wholly depraved and corrupt. The Bible revealed God's plan and was God's one and only communication to the human race, and contains all man can know or needs to know of God's will and purpose. Both the Episcopal and Presbyterian system were in the New Testament (NT); Acts and St. John's epistles described the apostolic, presbyterian churches, while St. Paul's epistles speak of bishops and deacons. New England Puritans discovered a 3rd NT plan, a Congregational plan.
In 1611 the Bible was put into English & everybody read it. The more they read it the more difficult it became to make readers agree upon 1 final, infallible interpretation; no one Plan stood out to everybody. Presbyterianism was dominant, but there was a strong reaction against it; a vast variety of religious views & new church systems swarmed over England. A powerful wave of mystical life, thought, & religion broke out. Little groups formed that were opposed to infallible systems & intolerant authority, inspired by Continental mystics.
[George Fox's Seeking]—George Fox came home to hear the extreme Calvinism of the Drayton Church's "priest"; he revolted from the "notions" & "ideology" of [Calvin's teachings]. At the age of 19 he reached a stage of complete revolt and cut loose from the organized Church, and went seeking something that would "speak to his condition." He saturated himself with the NT and the prophets. During the 4 years of his wanderings, he began to have great mystical experiences of Christ's direct work on his soul, God's love, and the reality of the pentacostal Spirit. His religious experience put him on the list of foremost Christian mystics of history.
By 1647 he began to gather kindred spirits around him (e.g. Elizabeth Hooten, James Nayler, Richard Farnsworth). Out of the convincement of the northern "seekers" he secured Swarthmoor Hall & 60 highly qualified "Publishers of Truth" to assist him in proclaiming the Quaker message. At this stage, organization of the movement was hardly thought of. The thrilling thing was the certainty of God's light and love in the individual's soul.
Early Quakerism was an intense mass movement of the pentecostal type. These people had discovered a new energy. Fox says, "I saw the "Light of Christ that shines through all. The ocean of Life and Light and Love flows over all oceans of darkness." The movement was spontaneous and dynamic and grew by spiritual contagion. Between 1652 and 1660, the number of members in England leaped to about 40,000.
[Structure-less, Creed-less Quakerism]—There were no marks of church structure in this early movement. They were revolting from organization & rigid "notions." They thought that they were the "seed," the 1st fruits of Christ's restored & renewed universal Church of the Spirit, essential Christianity. "All faithful men & women whose faith stands in the power of God have a right of membership" (London YM minute, 1676). The movement was managed & directed by persons possessing "gifts" rather than by chosen officers. Before 1667, there was no reference to the term "Society of Friends." The members called themselves "Children of the Light," or "the Seed," or "Friends." "Society" meant then what we mean now by "Fellowship." [They wanted to avoid] the danger of corporate compulsion that "Church" implied for them. They sought genuine basis of spiritual liberty, equality, & fraternity, free and ample scope for the life and growth of the soul of people upward and outward.
Nobody either outside or inside the Quaker movement though of it in terms of an organized Protestant denomination. Friends did not regard the scriptures as the infallible "Word of God." They love the scriptures, were saturated in it and quoted it aptly and effectively. Christ, the living Word of God was interpreted for them in the NT, [and the NT was interpreted only in the Light of the experienced Christ]. George Fox reacted to the "Declaration of Faith and Order (1658) " in writing and was threatened with burning. George Fox said, "Since Christ Jesus was the author of the apostles ... the [primitive] church's ... the martyr's faith, should not all people look unto Him ... and not to the priests?" [For Fox, things like the "Declaration ..." tended to be congealed substitutes for the soul's personal discovery of Christ, and for vital correspondence with the divine mind and will.
Society of Friends: Open & Seeking? Closed & Rigid?—Many times in nearly 300 years Friends have attempted to produce man-made faiths. "Declarations" made to hold the line at some point of doctrine have always failed to express the central & abiding core of Quaker life & faith. Friends have occasionally gravitated toward being a rigid & congealed sect, as stiff & inelastic as a stiffly organized church might be. [Restrictive] over-regulation & testimonies meant to hedge us in & isolate us from "the world" are still remembered by some of us. This came from the powerful, contemporary wave of [pious, passive contemplation of God], rather than from early Quakerism's genius spirit. The hardening of the Society's arteries was much in evidence in my youth. Is our Quakerism to be an open or a closed type of religion? Will it be open & expectant, or closed & safe?
Open religion has faith in the spiritual capacity of the soul and confidence that God and man are akin and essentially belong together. It dares to leave religion free to grow with the growing world and growing mind, and to sail the uncharted seas with God. Closed religion stands for the finality of the formulations of the past. I suppose no existent church or denomination whose members are committed to a backward-looking program. Such would be hostages against new and dangerous enterprises in the realm of truth. The world at large have turned to us with a renewed expectation of something fresh and new to say about life and immortality. Are we charged with hope and faith and vision or are we busy coining safe repetitive phrases?
Many want us to be a safe rigid sect. Recovery of a faith in the living Christ as an eternal presence is essential to our existence as a vital religious body. I believe that in the main awakened Friends in the world now feel kinship with the founders of our Quaker faith & want to move forward again, win a new following from present-day "seekers," & become a fresh & responsive organ for the Spirit's life in today's world & tomorrow's.
II. THE QUAKER WAY OF LIFE: [Sincerity]—George Fox was a convinced, dynamic interpreter & articulate prophet of truths & principles that had long been known; he became the effective organizer of a Society. Christopher Fox's son George exhibited throughout his life "the brave old wisdom of sincerity." His protest against shams of hollow fashionable manners was no doubt carried to an extreme point of emphasis, including time in prison. The various testimonies against customs & oaths already existed among "tender" people. They went from being expressions of sincerity to badges of a "peculiar people" & lost their original meaning.
It was a feature of Fox's effort to penetrate all etiquette & intercourse between persons with sincerity, & the elimination of sham. You were to be through & through what you professed to be. To hear exalted sermons or sing lofty hymns, & then go home & act as though these exalted things had never been said struck at his life and threw him into a state of agony. It is impossible to estimate rightly the essential significance of the Quaker movement without a clear appraisal of this call to stark sincerity. Simplicity at its best and truest is this utter honesty of heart and life, complete sincerity of soul before God, and [no time for] the ruts of duplicity and sham.
Spiritual Nurture & Education—All the pillar Friends we find in journals rated spiritual nurture [& education] very near the top of the scale of Quaker virtues. Do you bring up your children & others in your care in the nurture of the Truth? There is no substitute for the home as a nursery of the spirit. Propagation of Quaker ideals of life was implicit rather than explicit; it was done by contagion, by unconscious imitation. You drew upon an inheritance which became yours naturally. The stream of visiting Friends who came into Quaker homes was a way of carrying on enrichment of life in the home. The religious "opportunity" for worship with the family was an essential feature of the visit. The extraordinary interest in education is the flowering out of this deep concern for spiritual nurture. Schools sprang up next to meeting houses whenever possible. They informed the mind while they fed & nourished the inner life of the child. The question asked above needs to be asked again.
Sacredness of Life—Quakers have committed their trust for moral, social, nonviolent victories to the armor of light and the sword of the spirit. The attitude toward peace and war is not an isolated attitude. It springs out of a deeper inward soil. It is an essential aspect of a larger whole of life. The 12th century Waldenses refused to fight or take human life. The 3rd Order of St. Francis inaugurated a truce of God. 14th century mystics desired to be instruments in the reformation of the Church and in the remaking of the world in gentle ways.
Erasmus is one of the profoundest advocates of the peace method that has ever interpreted it. Love, patience, innocence, justice, self-restraint, willingness to suffer are a Christian's infallible credentials. Anabaptists & Spiritual Reformers were inspired by Erasmus & other mystics, & went back, not to Scripture texts, but to the NT's whole spirit & the way of Christ. This stream of thought flowed into England during the Commonwealth Era, when George Fox, William Dewsbury, James Nayler, & Isaac Penington were finding a new manner of life.
George Fox gave this stream a peculiar color and direction from his own unique insight and character. As one in the order of prophets he made a novel contribution to the way of life which mystics, humanists, and spiritual reformers before him had heralded. In the early creative days he felt his way along by inward vision. [He did not serve up texts] as legal commands, though he knew the texts well enough. The main secret is found in his discovery that God and man are never sundered, never totally separate entities. The approach to God is through the soul, which is essentially spirit and therefore, may commune with Spirit.
[Salvation Through Experiment]—To be saved for early Quakers meant inward transformation of spirit & way of life. Salvation was an actual spiritual conquest & a new dynamic of life. This Quaker philosophy was a vivid experience. Light from beyond broke in on them & flowed over their darkness. There is a crown of righteousness hovering above everyone's head, if one would only look up & see it. George Fox wrote: "All Friends everywhere, who are dead to carnal Weapons & have beaten them to pieces, stand in that which takes away the occasion of Wars, in the Power which saves men's lives & destroys none, nor would have others (destroy)."
Quakerism is a bold experiment with patience and endurance to exhibit a way of life which [practices] a high estimate of man's divine possibilities, and which even in war and hate goes on with a service and mission of love and good-will. They will not fight; they will be calm and heroic in other ways. They will die if it will demonstrate their faith and truth. This [peace] testimony is 1st and last a positive and creative way of life and of enlarging the area of light and truth and love. Wrong social and economic conditions cannot be radically changed merely by loving those who are most responsible for the wrong, or by relieving the suffering. Solutions can be better found by those who work from the inside, who share in the sufferings and feel the burdens.
[The Strength of Silent Communion]—We cannot change the world from ways of war to ways of peace, nor can we rebuild the social order on right lines for future generations, without the influence and guidance and inspiration of vital religion. The master secret of life is the attainment of the power of serenity in the midst of stress and action and adventure. One of the most significant contribution which the Quakers have made has been their discovery of the value and strength found in of silent communion. The soul in these deep moments of quiet seem to be both breathing in a diviner life, and to be pouring out in response its own highest and noblest aspirations and expectations. This happens especially in an expectant, palpitating hush with others who are fused together into one group of worshiping men and women. There is as much need of a holiday from the problems of the mind through silence as there is for relief from hurry and worry and grind of work.
There is a substratum in us which is the mother-soil out of which all our ideas and purposes are born. Vitalizing & flooding with power this fundamental stratum of being is what seems to happen to some in the hush & mystery of intimate contact with divine currents, in the living silence of corporate worship. A nurse in the influenza epidemic was utterly worn out; she managed to slip away for an hour of genuine worship. She returned to her work with a freshness of spirit, a renewed will, and raised to a new level of life and action. Sometimes the walls between the seen and unseen appear to grow thin, and one feels one's self in contact with more than one's self, with a widened range of experience, including the cooperative influence of many expectant worshipers. We come back to work more completely organized, vitalized, and equipped with new energies of the spirit.
John Woolman of the 18th century describes how he learned to wait in patience & to dwell deep in the life & love of God, [& then in God's time] to "stand as a trumpet through which the Lord speaks." Friends come from their worship with a new sense of ordination (not of human hands), & more eager to push back the skirts of darkness & to widen the area of light & love. The dynamic worker at the tasks of the world must be organized within, must be brought in line with celestial currents & be penetrated with energies beyond one's self. Our task is to bind up the broken-hearted, be a cup of strength in [hard times], to set people on their feet, to feed & comfort little children in war. Those serving need to know: "That God at their fountains/ Far off hath been raining."
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245. Alternative Christianity (by John Punshon; 1982)
About the Author—John Punshon was born in London’s East End in 1935. He was evacuated to Devon for the duration of WWII. He became a convinced friend at Brasenose College, Oxford. He was appointed Quaker Studies Tutor at Woodbrooke, the Quaker Center in Birmingham in 1979. John used his invitation to speak at Friends House in London in 1981 to contribute to the continuing discussion as the nature of the Quaker tradition. This pamphlet is the result.
[Introduction]—[The Quaker approach to religion tends to see form & substance as opposites & not complementary parts of a whole. If we are to bear collective witness, we have to give form & structure to experience. We must go beyond raw material of personal experience to see ourselves in a wider setting. Is Friends’ interpretation of Christ’s mind & the NT as valid as that of the major branches of the Christian religion?
The Problem of Authority—[Some Quakers say that no generalization about Quakers would be helpful, and it would erect standards as to what qualifies as “Quaker.”] I dissent from these objections because: they are themselves generalizations; [saying that there is no place for authority in Quakerism is a misunderstanding of what authority is]. It no more follows that the lack of an outward authority implies the lack of any authority than to say that the lack of creeds implies an absence of belief. Quakers have an inward authority, called by various names. The Quaker tradition is the path into which Friends have been led by the Light, and the beliefs it has led them to espouse in the form of collective insights, not individual enlightenment. We are only entitled to assume we have a better understanding than past Quakers if we give full weight to what they had to say.
Christian Principles/Quaker Praxis—The Old Testament involves the following doctrines:
1st God is a moral, creative, and loving agent who created the Universe by an act of will and imagination.
2nd The relationships we can have with God become strained or impossible through self-centeredness (sin).
3rd Because of basic moral estrangement of human & divine, initiative for reconciliation comes from God.
4th The primary aim of religious life should be seeking justice, not ecstasy; God is to be found in history.
5th The life of religious discipleship is good works proceeding from faith.
On this foundation lie the distinctive doctrines of Christianity [in general]. So, Quakerism shares a theory with the rest of the Christian Church but displays a totally different praxis.
We don’t baptize or celebrate the Holy communion because we don’t believe that divine grace is channeled through outward ceremonies dependent on human arrangement. We have beliefs but we don’t impose a test of belief on perspective members. Friends have always believed that purely verbal formulations rooted in the circumstances of a particular time & backed with the sanction of outward authority discourage direct personal experience of God. We meet in silence, because worship should be held under the complete guidance of the Holy Spirit. Silence remains the distinctively Quaker form of worship, even in the programmed tradition. The minister is one with spiritual gifts that are self-authenticating. We lay our ministry open to all for God to use as he thinks fit. With Christians it has been left to Friends, Mennonites, & Brethren to protest [that there is no such thing as a just war], & that one’s attitude to war is a clearer indication of the ground of one’s faith than any creed or religious affiliation. What brings out the differences between Quakerism & other churches is its attitude towards the Bible.
Children of the Light/ Basic Divergences—The earliest name Friends adopted for themselves was the Biblical “Children of Light; “Quaker” was an abusive term used by others. George Fox’s question, “what thou speakest, is it inwardly from God?” is not an invitation to people to construct their own faith.
The Quakers are saying that the New Testament is the product of a community; what matters is what it can tell us about that community. Quakers claimed to be that community. This sense of identity with the New Testament Children of Light is the basic principle which distinguishes Quakerism from older traditions and gives its doctrine of Scripture its dangerous and sometimes abused freedom. The divergence between Quakerism and the other churches comes in the way the Holy Spirit is envisaged as guiding the Church. The Quaker conception of identity with the Children of Light and the Catholic “Apostolic Succession” are fundamentally different in that the Catholic use an intermediary in the workings of the Spirit where the Quakers do not.
The 1st basic divergence is that the Catholic is hierarchical & exercises a teaching & pastoral ministry primarily through its clergy. Friends believe that I Corinthians 12 says that the Children of Light knew no distinction of clergy and laity. 2nd Using a primarily sacramental system channels grace through ceremonies & dis torts the original pattern of Christian witness. The Children of Light’s witness was a revival of prophecy. 3rd, Quakers have never denied the need for eucharistic remembrance, but rather that its symbolism was other than a spiritual & inward thing. 4th if you set great store by participation in the eucharist, you have laid down qualification for those who wish to take part; you reduce faith to an expression of doctrine rather than an experience of the Spirit.
An Alternative Theory of Continuity—Quakerism would make 3 conditions that must be satisfied before any Christian group can claim to be in the same power as the Apostles. The 1st condition is that it must display the fruits of the Spirit, as found in Philippians 4:8 and Galatians 5:22-23. The 2nd condition is a conscious awareness of [firsthand experience] of the Spirit in the group, and an acceptance of it. The 3rd condition is sound doctrine, a willingness to accept the guidance of the Spirit. Quakerism is a Christianity which emphasizes the importance of intense inner conviction and a hostility to outward and visible ceremonies and forms.
Friends have always set themselves strongly against what they consider to be a timid Christianity which says that Christ’s death frees from the consequences of sin but leaves you in a sinful state. The light shows you your sin and gives you the power to overcome it. Some see the light as a source of understanding, while others see the Light as a means of verifying our understanding. We internalize it, spiritualize it, respond to it. We are justified because of the Light and not the event. [There are movements within Quakerism]: those who tend towards the evangelicals, and those who tend towards a rejection of Christianity.
The Particularity of the Bible—The Bible contains a record of events and the consequent development of ideas, and what matters in theology is what you do with these events, what sort of significance you see in them. The means of understanding the significance of these events can only be with you. Only the Light can unlock the Scripture’s secrets. To look for religious authority in the Bible alone is to mistake a part for a whole.
Robert Barclay proposes that the Bible contains: a faith historical account of the actions of God’s people in various ages; a prophetic account of some things past and some to come; and a full and adequate account of the doctrine of Christ. Barclay had no critical problems such as we face. We have to reach our own accommodation with the text, and use all the critical tools and academic disciplines available to us. Does the Bible, after being critically examined, contain history, prophecy, and doctrine that we are under an obligation to accept because it is in the Bible? Some people answer the question by explaining it away. Others see the Bible simply as myth, i.e. it expresses at a very deep level patterns of psychological response to the world of our experience that necessary for creative and productive living. And then there are attempts to locate scriptural authority in the events the Bible relates rather than the text which does the relating.
If our interpretation of the Scriptures does not change along with the problems, then the latter will go unanswered; or worse, they will receive the old unserviceable answers.”
Liberation Theology—The Uruguayan Jesuit Juan Luis Segundo formulates the “hermeneutic circle,” [which has to do with changing our interpretation of the Bible. He said: “If our interpretation of the Scriptures does not change along with the problems, then the latter will go unanswered; or worse, they will receive the old unserviceable answers.” As a Quaker I find this approach acceptable and productive [because]: the theological agenda is settled by experience rather than unchallengeable assumption; it does not encourage random and undisciplined change; understanding the place of revelation lies in the individual apprehension of developing truth; and it rests not on particular authority but the faith that God is unconfined. Liberation theologians point to what affects us now as the basis from which theology must move.
What does God have to say about current issues? The most important thing God says is that there is nothing new in these things, that they have been a feature of human experience at all times and in all places. Three biblical features lead to activism and involvement. 1st there is conflict and a call to prophetic witness against oppression. 2nd is urgency and a call for justice now. 3rd is idealism and a call like Micah’s to put down war and take up peace. This is the way Quakers have always regarded religion. I would conclude that Quakers [coming down on the side of peace, the oppressed, and nature] are all part of [both] a 20th century political movement and a religious movement of far greater antiquity and divine significance.
New Testament (NT) Criticism/ Defining Radical Quakerism —[Christianity today is faced with the attitude that the documents of the NT are] so fragmentary and ambiguous that they can provide no solid grounds on which to stand. [At the beginning of the 20th century], our understanding of NT times underwent a profound change. The gospels offer us a perception of Jesus, [not Jesus himself]. The Bible by itself cannot give us the truth about Jesus and cannot provide the authoritative revelation that for so many centuries we thought it could.
We have 4 Christologies: John, Paul, Peter, and Hebrews; we have the tantalizing problem of the Synoptic Gospels. [What we really have] is evidence about the experience and teaching of the 1st Christians, and an expression of faith. “For God,” Paul said, “who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (II Corinthians 4:6). George Fox was saying that the Bible will not yield up its revelation to the intellect, operating upon the letter of the text, but only to the humble spirit that will recognize the things of God illuminated by the Light Within.
We can seek and find God within; indeed, that is the only place where God can be found. People who found themselves on the same spiritual journey do not avoid great differences of opinion, but can transcend them by recognizing one another as followers of Jesus in a multiplicity of ways. London YM’s Discipline points to the traditional Advices and Queries and Christian Faith and Practice, which express the broad principles of belief and conduct that the YM holds. It calls simply for loyal recognition of them, not precise agreement. My own YM expresses it understanding of the nature of the Church today the same way.
[Quakerism is an “alternative” Christianity, because it is: radical, charismatic, and prophetic. The Quaker contribution to all kinds of struggles is a special case of a much older and more profound struggle on the stage of human history. The office of prophet is a diverse and therefore misunderstood one. It is unsought and frequently resisted; part of the prophetic experience is a struggle with God that resolves into total obedience. The prophet all too often sees his words rejected as threatening to established values and habitual ways of thought. Friends believe that it is the prophet not the priest, who is God’s interpreter to humankind.
We don’t baptize or celebrate the Holy communion because we don’t believe that divine grace is channeled through outward ceremonies dependent on human arrangement. We have beliefs but we don’t impose a test of belief on perspective members. Friends have always believed that purely verbal formulations rooted in the circumstances of a particular time & backed with the sanction of outward authority discourage direct personal experience of God. We meet in silence, because worship should be held under the complete guidance of the Holy Spirit. Silence remains the distinctively Quaker form of worship, even in the programmed tradition. The minister is one with spiritual gifts that are self-authenticating. We lay our ministry open to all for God to use as he thinks fit. With Christians it has been left to Friends, Mennonites, & Brethren to protest [that there is no such thing as a just war], & that one’s attitude to war is a clearer indication of the ground of one’s faith than any creed or religious affiliation. What brings out the differences between Quakerism & other churches is its attitude towards the Bible.
Children of the Light/ Basic Divergences—The earliest name Friends adopted for themselves was the Biblical “Children of Light; “Quaker” was an abusive term used by others. George Fox’s question, “what thou speakest, is it inwardly from God?” is not an invitation to people to construct their own faith.
The Quakers are saying that the New Testament is the product of a community; what matters is what it can tell us about that community. Quakers claimed to be that community. This sense of identity with the New Testament Children of Light is the basic principle which distinguishes Quakerism from older traditions and gives its doctrine of Scripture its dangerous and sometimes abused freedom. The divergence between Quakerism and the other churches comes in the way the Holy Spirit is envisaged as guiding the Church. The Quaker conception of identity with the Children of Light and the Catholic “Apostolic Succession” are fundamentally different in that the Catholic use an intermediary in the workings of the Spirit where the Quakers do not.
The 1st basic divergence is that the Catholic is hierarchical & exercises a teaching & pastoral ministry primarily through its clergy. Friends believe that I Corinthians 12 says that the Children of Light knew no distinction of clergy and laity. 2nd Using a primarily sacramental system channels grace through ceremonies & dis torts the original pattern of Christian witness. The Children of Light’s witness was a revival of prophecy. 3rd, Quakers have never denied the need for eucharistic remembrance, but rather that its symbolism was other than a spiritual & inward thing. 4th if you set great store by participation in the eucharist, you have laid down qualification for those who wish to take part; you reduce faith to an expression of doctrine rather than an experience of the Spirit.
An Alternative Theory of Continuity—Quakerism would make 3 conditions that must be satisfied before any Christian group can claim to be in the same power as the Apostles. The 1st condition is that it must display the fruits of the Spirit, as found in Philippians 4:8 and Galatians 5:22-23. The 2nd condition is a conscious awareness of [firsthand experience] of the Spirit in the group, and an acceptance of it. The 3rd condition is sound doctrine, a willingness to accept the guidance of the Spirit. Quakerism is a Christianity which emphasizes the importance of intense inner conviction and a hostility to outward and visible ceremonies and forms.
Friends have always set themselves strongly against what they consider to be a timid Christianity which says that Christ’s death frees from the consequences of sin but leaves you in a sinful state. The light shows you your sin and gives you the power to overcome it. Some see the light as a source of understanding, while others see the Light as a means of verifying our understanding. We internalize it, spiritualize it, respond to it. We are justified because of the Light and not the event. [There are movements within Quakerism]: those who tend towards the evangelicals, and those who tend towards a rejection of Christianity.
The Particularity of the Bible—The Bible contains a record of events and the consequent development of ideas, and what matters in theology is what you do with these events, what sort of significance you see in them. The means of understanding the significance of these events can only be with you. Only the Light can unlock the Scripture’s secrets. To look for religious authority in the Bible alone is to mistake a part for a whole.
Robert Barclay proposes that the Bible contains: a faith historical account of the actions of God’s people in various ages; a prophetic account of some things past and some to come; and a full and adequate account of the doctrine of Christ. Barclay had no critical problems such as we face. We have to reach our own accommodation with the text, and use all the critical tools and academic disciplines available to us. Does the Bible, after being critically examined, contain history, prophecy, and doctrine that we are under an obligation to accept because it is in the Bible? Some people answer the question by explaining it away. Others see the Bible simply as myth, i.e. it expresses at a very deep level patterns of psychological response to the world of our experience that necessary for creative and productive living. And then there are attempts to locate scriptural authority in the events the Bible relates rather than the text which does the relating.
If our interpretation of the Scriptures does not change along with the problems, then the latter will go unanswered; or worse, they will receive the old unserviceable answers.”
Liberation Theology—The Uruguayan Jesuit Juan Luis Segundo formulates the “hermeneutic circle,” [which has to do with changing our interpretation of the Bible. He said: “If our interpretation of the Scriptures does not change along with the problems, then the latter will go unanswered; or worse, they will receive the old unserviceable answers.” As a Quaker I find this approach acceptable and productive [because]: the theological agenda is settled by experience rather than unchallengeable assumption; it does not encourage random and undisciplined change; understanding the place of revelation lies in the individual apprehension of developing truth; and it rests not on particular authority but the faith that God is unconfined. Liberation theologians point to what affects us now as the basis from which theology must move.
What does God have to say about current issues? The most important thing God says is that there is nothing new in these things, that they have been a feature of human experience at all times and in all places. Three biblical features lead to activism and involvement. 1st there is conflict and a call to prophetic witness against oppression. 2nd is urgency and a call for justice now. 3rd is idealism and a call like Micah’s to put down war and take up peace. This is the way Quakers have always regarded religion. I would conclude that Quakers [coming down on the side of peace, the oppressed, and nature] are all part of [both] a 20th century political movement and a religious movement of far greater antiquity and divine significance.
New Testament (NT) Criticism/ Defining Radical Quakerism —[Christianity today is faced with the attitude that the documents of the NT are] so fragmentary and ambiguous that they can provide no solid grounds on which to stand. [At the beginning of the 20th century], our understanding of NT times underwent a profound change. The gospels offer us a perception of Jesus, [not Jesus himself]. The Bible by itself cannot give us the truth about Jesus and cannot provide the authoritative revelation that for so many centuries we thought it could.
We have 4 Christologies: John, Paul, Peter, and Hebrews; we have the tantalizing problem of the Synoptic Gospels. [What we really have] is evidence about the experience and teaching of the 1st Christians, and an expression of faith. “For God,” Paul said, “who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (II Corinthians 4:6). George Fox was saying that the Bible will not yield up its revelation to the intellect, operating upon the letter of the text, but only to the humble spirit that will recognize the things of God illuminated by the Light Within.
We can seek and find God within; indeed, that is the only place where God can be found. People who found themselves on the same spiritual journey do not avoid great differences of opinion, but can transcend them by recognizing one another as followers of Jesus in a multiplicity of ways. London YM’s Discipline points to the traditional Advices and Queries and Christian Faith and Practice, which express the broad principles of belief and conduct that the YM holds. It calls simply for loyal recognition of them, not precise agreement. My own YM expresses it understanding of the nature of the Church today the same way.
[Quakerism is an “alternative” Christianity, because it is: radical, charismatic, and prophetic. The Quaker contribution to all kinds of struggles is a special case of a much older and more profound struggle on the stage of human history. The office of prophet is a diverse and therefore misunderstood one. It is unsought and frequently resisted; part of the prophetic experience is a struggle with God that resolves into total obedience. The prophet all too often sees his words rejected as threatening to established values and habitual ways of thought. Friends believe that it is the prophet not the priest, who is God’s interpreter to humankind.
The proclamation that God’s goodness & God’s justice, God’s love & God’s redemptive purpose isn’t once for all, an event which took place at an ever more remote period in the past, but is immediate eternal work of the Holy Spirit. Seek & find God within; that is the only place. London YM’s Faith & Practice, expresses broad principles of belief & conduct that the YM holds. Quakerism: “alternative” Christianity, because it is: radical, charismatic, & prophetic. Prophets diverse and therefore misunderstood; prophet’s words rejected as threatening to established values & habitual ways of thought. Proclamation that God’s goodness & God’s justice, God’s love & God’s redemptive purpose is not once for all; Holy Spirit’s immediate & eternal work.
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40. Quaker Message (extracts of Quaker belief & practice & present significance by Sidney Lucas; 1948)
The Inward Light—Up to the mid-17th Century] Theologians had turned away from the revelation of life for the world here and instead constructed a plan or scheme of salvation for another world. Quakerism was a fresh attempt to recover the way of life revealed in the New Testament; to re-interpret it and re-live it in this world. It was part of a wider movement to restore primitive Christianity and to change the basis of authority from external things to the interior life and spirit of humans. Friends made the fundamental truth of the Inward Light the actual foundation for their whole religious system. We believe that the religion of Jesus Christ is primarily spiritual in its essence, and that every follower [has available to them] direct personal intercourse with God through [God’s spirit acting] in the human heart. Some may have looked on Quakerism as an exalted type of social service. But it is our aim to call people back to the light of God in their own souls.
William Penn said: . . . “Quakers lay down as a main fundamental . . . that God through Christ hath placed a principle in every one to inform them of their duty, and to enable them to do it.” George Fox said: “Your teacher is within you: look not forth; it will teach you both lying in bed and going abroad, to shun all occasion of sin and evil. . . Preach freely and bring people off from these outward temples . . . and direct them to the spirit and Grace of God in themselves . . . [and to] Christ, their free teacher.” The significant watchword of the new discovery was the Universal saving light.
[Today] people may differ as to its explanation, but they cannot deny that there is something in human nature that responds to truth and beauty and love. The victory [over departures from the true way of life] comes from the consciousness of a strength not our own. The light that shines into the human heart is not of man, and must be distinguished from the conscience and the natural faculty of reason. The Inward Light was a divine clearness which enlightened and gradually built up the conscience, and it taught an intuitive wisdom beyond reasoned argument. The Moral Sense, the realization of a clear distinction between right and wrong and of an imperative to choose the former if one is to be true to oneself is the most distinctive feature of the divine life within us. We speak now of the conscience as the faculty within us which discriminates between right and wrong . . . and we regard this faculty as constantly subject to divine illumination.
The doctrine of the spirit's indwelling has been to Friends a practical faith embracing with its scope the whole of human life. Hence, little account is made of the popular distinction between things secular and things religious; every employment that is not wrong may be accounted holy. Obedience to the Inward Light heightens and quickens personality enlarges the power of perception, and renders possible things impossible before.
With readiness to go forward there must also be willingness to wait. The great tradition of guidance can only be maintained as we are enabled faithfully to wait on the voice of God. We do need the individual interpretation of the facts of life, [but] it needs checking and criticizing and correcting by measuring it against the corporate community conscience. “The Spirit of Truth, “God,” “Christ,” “the holy spirit,” “The seed of God,” “the Light” ([i.e.] the principle of good in all) are metaphors used to express something too deep for words. We can make our faith in its existence the bridge in our approach to all whom we meet.
Communion with God—The more our engagements multiply, the greater is the call to watch unto prayer [and communion with God]. We believe in prayer as a power in the world, and we need to pray in expectation of definite results. Prayer does not need many words. It is more often a case of an inner attitude, a lifting up of the work to be done and a surrendering of our will about it. Silence [instead of grace] may check our thought amid the rush of outward life, and call us to an inward act of devotion, by which the meal may be made a sacrament.
It is important to recognize the difference between private and public worship. The individual experience [is helpful] but not sufficient. In the Meeting for Worship . . . a corporate sense of the divine presence is reached. In a meeting for worship the worshippers are like the spokes of a wheel. The nearer they come to the centre of all Life the near they are to each other. Silence is one of the best preparations for such communion. It may be sheer emptiness, an absence of words . . . But it may be an intensified pause, vitalized hush, a creative quiet, an actual moment of reciprocal correspondence with God. Though there be not a word spoken, yet is the true spiritual worship performed. The function of a meeting is to bring a lift to life, a vision to the soul, a fortification for the tasks that are before us. George Fox was always anxious to bring men to “sit under their own vine; to ‘fix their eyes on Christ their teacher’ and not to depend on himself or any other preacher or leader.
True ministry is not simply the expression of views of truth or ideals of conduct. We need to wait for that sense of call that comes to us from God through the fellowship of hearts that are bound into harmony by the flowing through them of the tides of God’s living presence. We covet for our church, not only a ministry which springs up out of the life of the Meeting itself, but also the utterance of a message in apostolic power, which will triumph over spiritual deadness and opposition in the congregation. Fox said, “If any have anything upon them to speak, in the life of God stand up and speak, if it be but two or three words, and sit down again.”
The sacraments derive their origin from the Church and not from the mind of Christ, or from his clear commands. In Baptism we have the change from the complete immersion of a convert, to the sprinkling of an unconscious infant. In the Eucharist we have the change from a common meal to a solemn rite. [The Biblical evidence for both sacraments are not part of the original gospel content, but were later insertions]. Quakers find from their religious experience that Communion and the cleansing and renewing baptism of his Spirit are possible without ritual. [We see] ritual as leading to confusion between outward sign and inward reality.
Neither a majority nor a minority should allow itself in way to overbear or to obstruct a meeting for church affairs in its course towards a decision. We are unlikely to reach truth or wisdom if one section imposes its will on another [as in taking a vote. We rely on] attaining a group consciousness of the course to take.
Our objection to forms is that they would confine us to that which is too little—they hamper and check the living exercise of the spirit which is necessary for real worship and inward growth. Some theology and some practice in common there is bound to be, though it may be left fluid and welcome change.
Conceptions of God—There is a vast difference between knowledge about God and knowledge of God [i.e.] a recognition of God’s presence in the experience of [one’s] own heart. The scriptures are unique and irreplaceable not because they are inspired as no other writings are, nor because they are preserved miraculously free from . . . error, but because they record the main stages in the discovery or revelation of the great truths of God. Friends accepted the Bible as inspired, but they would not call it the “Word of God” because for them it was not the final rule of faith and duty. Early Quaker testimony had: freedom from literal acceptance of the scripture; new ideas on pre-Christian and non-Christian people; true following of the New Testament Christianity. We highly value . . . the Scriptures . . . but we believe that the Light of Christ alone can implement and interpret them.
God cannot be ethically present in the unethical; God cannot be personally present in the impersonal. God can only be entirely present in a being capable of containing and expressing God in God’s essential truth. The essence of religion appears to be the recognition of divine purpose in the world, and the endeavor to make that purpose our own. Faith is not being free of doubt, any more than courage is being free from fears. Faith is a determination to act on something we are not quite sure about. The center of faith is belief in ourselves [what we can do spiritually]; belief in God is only its reasonable unfolding. Belief in God is an act of our whole nature by which we take hold of the unseen and the eternal and are able to have communion with it.
[Our] attempts to express the nature of God [are best described by] Maximus of Trye in the 2nd Century A.D.: “God, the father and fashioner of all that is, older than the sun or sky, greater than time and eternity, and all the flow of being; is unnameable by any lawgiver, unutterable by any voice, not to be seen by any eye. But we, being unable to apprehend his essence, use the help of sounds and names and pictures [of this world] . . . yearning for the knowledge of him, and . . . naming all that is beautiful in this world after his nature.” The creative power is in the world . . . and it is ceaselessly active. The God we have found is not omnipotent but evolutionary, progressive, growing in power and revelation of God’s self.
The central fact in the religious history of humankind is the life & personality of Jesus Christ. The 1st thing we need to know is that God is like Christ, not that Christ is like God. [Some overemphasize Christ’s divinity; some overemphasize Christ’s humanity]. Jesus shows us the divine life humanly lived & the human life divinely lived. The 1st Christians were conscious of his present guiding spirit; Christ’s authority for them was internal not external. Fox challenged his hearers: “You will say ‘Christ said this, & the apostles say this’, but what canst thou say?” We shall believe many things because [Jesus] said them . . . But we must go on to something further if his work for & in us is to be completed; the Jesus of history must become the Christ of our experience.
War & Peace—Be faithful in maintaining our testimony against all war as inconsistent with “Christ's" spirit & teaching. Live in the life & power that takes away the occasion of all wars. War & Christianity are contradictory ways of life. We utterly deny all outward wars & strife, & fightings with outward weapons, for any end, or under any pretence whatever. . . Christ's Spirit . . . will never move us to fight & war against any man.
The 4 fundamental grounds for opposition to war are: New Testament (external authority); Conscience (internal authority); Personality (transforming power of love and the supreme worth of personal life; Irrationality (insanity of war). We do not rest our witness for peace on isolated texts; war is a contradiction of the message, spirit, work, and life of Jesus Christ. It is not consistent for anyone to claim that his Christianity as a way of life stops him from war, unless he is prepared to adjust his entire life. Fox proposed to live in such a spirit that no thought or word is sowing the seeds of conflict. We probe into our lives, to search out the seeds of war, which may find nourishment in our selfishness or our clinging to material possessions.
The man who compromises daily with his religious ideals can't easily stand out suddenly for them in a crisis moment. When pacifism becomes simply refusal to fight it has lost the virtue [& ability to convert an opponent]. It must be an active power that makes peace. Our conviction that all war is unchristian prevents us from giving military service to the state, but calls us to serve our nation in others way even at the cost of much personal sacrifice. There is a right & possible way for the family of nations to live together at peace. It is the way exemplified in the life & teaching of Jesus Christ. There can be no great civilization, no enduring peace, no fellowship of nations ... without the culture of the spirit & ... the principles of life which lie at the heart of Christ’s message & way of life. Quakerism recognizes that religion has a definite ethical principle ... for humanity's guidance, a principle which strikes at the root of injustice, & should eliminate all the causes of war—that of the infinite worth of all human personality. We must care for the soul [by working] for conditions in which the spirit is free.
Quakerism and Society—In your daily work, and in your social and other activities, be concerned for the establishment of the Kingdom of heaven upon earth. While making provision for yourselves and your families, be not too anxious, but in quietness of spirit seek 1st the Kingdom of God and God’s righteousness. To be able to transcend money, culture, and color bars, and free of all dividing prejudices, is the function of a Quaker. The foundation of the teaching of Jesus is the unlimited love of God to all. Religion is man’s response to that love.
The central thought in Quakerism, the indwelling spirit of God in all, must find an outward expression in service, [such as assuring] the opportunity of full development, physical, moral, and spiritual . . . to the whole community. True service is the outward form of true worship. Finding the Will of God in relation to society and industry is [done by]: stimulating members to experiment . . . with creating a standard higher than the conventional one; & educating public opinion toward a clearer understanding of the implication of the teachings of Jesus which haven't yet been worked out in the [larger community]. The thing that matters in our social structure is human personality; we shall not allow ourselves to lose this essential fact in abstractions. We shall go behind [them] . . . to the people who make them up and who are the only realities that give meaning to the words.
The great task of the future [in industry] is to see that deciding what is produced shall be done in the consumer’s interest, for whose ultimate benefit both Government and industry exist, with the profit motive occupying a place of small importance. We must accept our share of responsibility for finding a liberal, democratic, and Christian approach to the new society. Friends in their work try to be constructive, and therefore have never just given charitable relief, but have tried . . . to help men and women to a creative activity of their own—to restore their self-respect and help them to feel that they are wanted.
Not by exploiting and impoverishing our neighbor, but by strengthening them economically will we be able to reap personal benefits. Every individual needs to make their own contribution to [solving social problems through making] changes in themselves, their environment, and their personal relationships. Jesus did not work for people; he became as one of them and worked with them. Many evils arise from the inadequate systems for dealing with economic forces in industry. The Society of Friends asserts that the [economic] evils around us are not inevitable; it is within human ability and power to order economic life on a rational and Christian basis.
We ask friends to be considerate as to the extent to which they make others work on the first day of the week. The 1st-day of the week should be a time for worship & religious service, fostering family life, rest & leisure, & intellectual & spiritual refreshment. We believe that all forms of gambling & all speculative means of obtaining money are contrary to Christ’s spirit; it is also a symptom of unrest, of a craving for excitement & relief from life’s tedium. John Woolman’s chief objection to the consumption of spirituous liquors was that it hindered communion with God. We believe that social drinking customs of the country are largely responsible for lapses into intemperance of many in all classes of society, who would otherwise be useful citizens.
We recognize it to be our duty as Christians to inform ourselves regarding those of other races and nationalities within our own country, and regarding other nations having a civilization different from our own, [in order to] establish a high standard of conduct toward them. Concern and cooperation with the American Negro’s full attainment of civil liberties is the current focus of our work. No task is so fundamental or urgent as that of converting the brotherhood of man from a respected phrase to a living practice.
The terrible sufferings of our forefathers in 17th century prisons have given Friends a special interest in prison management & the treatment of crime. Society is in measure responsible for the criminal, a fact which emphasizes the duty of meeting moral failure by redemptive care. While condemning unrighteous acts, we should also seek to have offenders treated in a manner conducive to strengthening moral character. We have often expressed our objection to capital punishment; it fails as a deterrent. Many crimes are closely connected with property; it seems to many that most crime is traceable to possessing private property & unequal wealth distribution. Quaker principles applied to our life as citizens demand an unceasing care to see that the laws are good [& fair].
Social service as a vocation can best be undertaken by those especially qualified by training. But there remains for every individual an opportunity for service in daily life and at special times. It is the duty of society considered a fellowship to help every citizen to gain the best life; it is the duty of each citizen to do his part to create, maintain, and enrich that fellowship.
He is the truest patriot who benefits his own country without diminishing another’s welfare. One who works to improve the civic, economic, social, and moral condition of his country is more truly patriotic than one who exalts one’s own nation at the expense of others or supports and justifies its action irrespective of right or justice.
Friends recognize the obligation of obedience to the government or else of submission to its authority, as the Inward Light leads: acceptance of the penalties of disobedience where conscience does not allow conformity; efforts by non-violent means only, to change objectionable principles, practices, and laws. The something of God in all is the final court of appeal and not the church, or the bible, or the state.
A living religious community ought to be from its very nature in some respects ahead of the State of which its members are citizens; there is at times a conflict between the good and the best. In political resistance emphasis is placed on citizen’s rights; in religious resistance the emphasis must rather be on duties. Early Friends did not regard the State and its policy as a non-religious matter. When called to serve in public office, Friends should consider the public good rather than personal preference and convenience.
Personal Witness for the Truth—Maintain that charity which suffereth long and is kind. Put the best construction upon the conduct and opinions one of another which circumstances will warrant. [When] it may be necessary to disclose the failings of others be well satisfied as to the purity of your own motives. Our attitude towards life should tend to free us from the bondage of material things, and make us concerned to give the first place to the things of the spirit; such service is hindered by the love of money [and possession]. Friends should seek to discern how much of their income or property can be spared and wisely distributed for the benefit of others. Simplicity does not mean that our lives shall be poor and bare, destitute of enjoyment and beauty, but the possessions or activities that capture the heart and lessen our simple and steadfast devotion to the cause of the Kingdom of God must go.
Business in its essence is a vast and complex movement of social service; however, some may abuse its methods for private ends. Sincerity of speech is closely allied to simplicity and has an emphasis on essentials and a suppression of the corrupt or false. Care is needed to avoid and discourage the insincerities and extravagances that are prevalent in the social world. Regarding oaths, Pythagoras says: “Let no man call God to witness by an oath, no not in judgment; but let every man so accustom himself to speak, that he may become worthy to be trusted even without an oath. We regard the taking of oaths as contrary to the teaching of Christ, and as setting up a double standard of truthfulness.
The completeness of the response of Friends to the Inward Light led to exceptional sensitiveness to moral issues. If we are possessed of a considerate & helpful kindliness, and by a gentle and graciousness which reflects the Christ life, our neighbors are at once made happier and stronger and more able to bear their own burdens.
Publishing the Truth—The aim of education is the full & harmonious development of the resources of the human spirit. Seek for your children that full development of God’s gifts which true education can bring. Be zealous that education may be continued throughout life, & that its privileges may be shared by all. Education’s task is that of helping people at all stages of their lives to achieve an inner harmony, and a sense of wholeness which will develop the creative possibilities of the individual to their fullest capacity. Quaker schools: provide for the education of children in a free and definitely anti-militarist atmosphere; give many opportunities for educational experiments; are an indispensable means of helping to maintain and spread our view of truth.
We come into the world endowed with a natural capacity for reaching out after all that is good, with an instinct for the things that give life and joy. Truth being so much greater than our conception of it, we should ever be making fresh discoveries; complete knowledge is always beyond us. We must not overstress one aspect of truth to the exclusion of other truth.
George Fox wrote: “Let all nations hear the sound by word or writing. Spare no place, spare no tongue nor pen, but be obedient to the Lord God; go through the world and be valiant for the truth upon earth; tread and trample all that is contrary under. Be patterns, be examples in all countries wherever you come.” While the Truth is eternal, our understanding of it should enlarge, and our expression of it must change. Often we have been too modest to preach Quakerism outside our own meeting, and so we preach Christianity, but a Christianity that leaves a place for a certain kind of war in the hearts of the people we convert. The Christian missionary discovers not only God but also humankind. In Publishing the Truth our service lies in a world of humans, every one of whom has the divine seed within them. When noble impulses are stirred within, let us be quick to respond by word or deed. [If not responded to] such impulses deaden the conscience.
We hold that liberty of conscience is the common right of all men and essential to the well-being of society. When, therefore, the Government requires of any that which is prohibited by one’s conscience, the duty of civil disobedience ceases. Christianity requires the toleration of opinions not our own lest we should unwittingly hinder the workings of the spirit of God.
Penn reminds us that the humble, meek, merciful, just, pious, and devout souls are everywhere of one religion [e.g. heathens, Turks, Jews, all the several sorts of Christians]. Man is only truly man as he receives and obeys the inner voice. Many seeking men have experienced this throughout history, even before Christ. We believe that Jesus’ revelation of God as Love is the highest conception of God possible. Our conception of God and of Christ is distinctly westernized, and to that extent partial and limited; we are increasingly coming to see that the East has its contribution to make to the full experience of God in Christ.
Can we not rise to the thought and the practice of a great Quaker brotherhood, organized to serve the world of God’s children by changing the unnatural anger and aversion which makes them enemies into that loving cooperation which will turn the whole world into a Society of friends?
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138. An Apology for Perfection (by Cecil E. Hinshaw; 1964)
About the Author—Cecil Hinshaw attended Friends University, Kansas, Denver University, Iliff Theological School, & Harvard. Cecil Hinshaw was professor of Bible, Religion at Friends University, & William Penn College, Iowa; he was dean & later college president. He resigned in 1949 after efforts to integrate college & supporting conscientious objection. He served the American Friends Service Committee & the Fellowship of Reconciliation. Cecil Hinshaw worked with Committees of Correspondence, an intellectual forum against nuclear proliferation. The author believes the Society of Friends owes more to ethical perfectionism than to mysticism.
A religious movement, viewed through lenses of a past age & the present scene, offers a truer insight into a religious faith’s meaning than can be obtained without such perspectives. Every religious movement is a response to [& an attempt to withstand] problems & questions that men struggle with at a certain time in history. Conflicts of thought that marked the differences of Quakerism, Calvinism, & materialism are repeated today.
Seed Bed of Quakerism—Our world is so different in many ways from England in 1650 that a quite lively imagination is necessary for us to understand their thought-struggles. And yet, in 1650, the masses of people probably lived lives even less restrained & disciplined than do the masses today. And indulgence in material possessions showed itself in the desire for the latest fashions in fine clothes. Much of the preoccupation with religious questions in 1650 was superstitious and superficial; only a small minority showed a vital spiritual hunger.
Then as now, there was a religious vacuum, with numerous sects trying to fill that vacuum; there was and is restlessness and disquiet, hope and longing. [The New Calvinism wants us to understand, as the Old Calvinism did], that any attempt [or any belief in the ability] to avoid sin involves us in the worse sin of pride. The way to salvation appears to be the same. This salvation, as for the Calvinists of the 1600s, is a relationship that means acceptance of us by God in spite of our sin.
In contrast, an Episcopal Bishop said, “This is the catechism of the ignorant & the profane.” A similar view of hopelessness about human nature & about our world [existed in both periods]. Enjoyment of what is at hand for the time available is a normal & natural attitude when hopelessness about the future and the world dominates our thoughts. It is reasonable to conclude that the basic religious problems now are the same as they were then.
Mysticism, Quakerism, Ethical Purity, and Spiritual Power—For George Fox, only the term “perfection” was adequate to describe the life [of ethical purity] he sought & believed he achieved. The ethical purity concept may seem to conflict with the mystical religion concept. There is a mysticism in which union with God is the final goal of religious endeavor. This type of mysticism sees the ethical struggle as a means to union with God rather than as an end in itself; [St. Theresa, Fenelon, & Guyon, fit into this mysticism]. Another type of mysticism reverses the emphasis. Holy obedience & ethical perfection are seen as goal; [mysticism provides the means]. St. Francis used this emphasis. The same person in different periods of one’s development may represent both emphases. Quaker mysticism has been closer to Protestant pietistic groups (Mennonites, Brethren, & Moravians).
The functional type of mysticism, centered on the struggle for ethical purity, is evident in the spiritual pilgrimage of George Fox. [A specific event on “the 9th day of the 12th month, 1643,” highlighted the lack of moral integrity in his friends, and was a watershed in his spiritual development. He was admonished] to accept and live with human frailties, to give up the search for perfection. This Fox could not do, and the result was despair and hopelessness for a period of some months. He came to understand that temptation was normal, for Jesus had been tempted. At the climax of his conversion experience, Fox heard the words “There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition.” Mysticism was, for Fox, a practical, utilitarian, divine power that supplemented his own will in the struggle against sin. He wrote: “They who are in Christ, the 2nd Adam, are in perfection, and in that which . . . makes free from sin . . . thou that deny perfection, has denied the ministers of Christ’s work.
The Content of “Truth”; The Work of the Light Within —A question once used in some MMs was: Is the Truth prospering among Friends? The content of Fox’s truth was perfection, and a holy and sinless life. He was imprisoned for a year for claiming that “Christ, my Savior, has taken away my sin; and in him there is no sin.” Such a claim of purity can easily be misunderstood as a pretension of divinity, which was punishable as blasphemy. George said: “If your faith be true, it will give you victory over sin and the devil, purify your hearts and consciences, and bring you to please God and give you access to God again. . . There is a time for people to see that they have sinned, and a time for them to confess their sin, and to forsake it, and to know the blood of Christ to cleanse from all sin . . . Of all the sects in Christendom, I found none that could bear to be told, that any should come to Adam’s perfection before he fell; to be clear and pure without sin as he was.”
The 1st function of the “light within” on the soul of one receptive is to show the nature of evil [& bring awareness of sin]. The 2nd function is the illumination of the content of the perfect life, to know how one ought to live. The 3rd function of “light within” is to provide the power to live according the divine standard A 4th function was to bring all true seekers together into unity on their understanding of the content of the perfect life.
Quaker Testimonies—Standards of Purity—A consideration of Quaker testimonies shows more evidence that Quakerism historically has been essentially an ethical struggle. [While not obeying the command to kill men] is a valid reason for our position, that is a modern emphasis and is not found to any significant degree in early Quaker thought. It was the violence, the hate, the selfishness in fighting that bothered them. Fox was perhaps more concerned with what violence did to the one who used it, [the spiritual loss involved, than he was about the victims]. The origin of the testimony was in the ethical struggle for lives without conscious sins. [The reason for not honoring men with titles and removing hats] was their conviction that the desire to honor men arose from the selfish motive to flatter others for personal gain and to be flattered in return.
Pitfalls for Quakers—The essential differences between Ranters & Quakers were: Ranters carried mysticism to a pantheistic conclusion; Ranters didn't practice the Quakers’ stern discipline. William Penn writes: “For they interpreted Christ’s fulfilling of the law for us, to be a discharging of us from any obligation & duty the law required, instead of condemnation of the law for sins past. . . that now it was no sin to do [what was sin before].
One of the reasons for the continued vitality of Quakerism has been its ability to transcend its beginnings. The larger truths implicit in their early stand gradually became evident to them as the years passed. One of the more important limitations of early Quakerism is to be found in its view of human nature. There were important gaps in their knowledge, especially where the struggle for ethical perfection involved them in strains and stresses beyond the capacity of the human mind and spirit. [We should not] say that expression of emotions is necessarily desirable, but purity is not to be attained by denying what exists in us, [or by taking on] more stress than we can deal with constructively. Barclay (“perfection proportional and answerable to man’s measure”) and Pennington (“. . . a state of perfection does not exclude degrees.”) both emphasize that the growth in perfection was necessary and possible as a person lived up to that measure of light he had received.
[With this lofty goal came the danger of pride when Quakers thought they had achieved perfection]. In fields like economics and politics, [Quaker perfectionism] led them into mistakes. A country is often better off with an impure but experienced and wise leader than with a foolish saint. Helping other countries necessarily involves extraordinarily complex problems, often not understood by well-intentioned people who are concentrating on the purity of their desire to help needy people with a loving spirit.
[Quaker Ideals in Human Society]—No perfection of deed is possible in human society where actions & decisions involve millions of people. The greater danger is in refusing to recognize the real nature of man & the society in which he lives. But the fact remains, as it does in any similar survey of early Christianity, that Quakerism in its early years accomplished moral miracles. While other more sophisticated & worldly-wise people stood on the sidelines, the rash daring & unquestioning idealism of the Friends built a tradition of service to humankind still honored today. Their successes far outweighed their failures & went beyond theories & theology.
An important & basic contribution that Quakerism makes today is a witness to experiencing immediate knowledge of God. The divine life operating in humankind is the reason for our hope that the world, with its meaning & value, can be viewed without despair. Those who have never had such knowledge, even those who question their existence, can still know God in human experiences. The certainty of God’s presence among Quakers has been a quiet one without emotional assurance or visions. The more sensitive we become, the more life becomes testimony to God’s presence sustaining the world of God’s creation. In our despairing & materialistic world, there are oases of hope & succor to those who can understand & know that God lives & works with them.
A 2nd contribution is a restatement of Quaker faith that human nature has potential for goodness far beyond the evidence our world produces today. [But the very real tragedies, poverty, racism, & religious pride that we choose to see & treat honestly] must condition & affect whatever we think about human nature. Without denying the evil that is in man, we remember the evidence of man’s ability to share. We know by faith & experience that we are God’s children & our destiny is the beloved community. We have our choice of having this faith, believing & living as though it were true, or of living on the assumption that human nature is basically evil.
A Religion of Integrity—A 3rd function of Quakerism is in the search for integrity. Not merely honesty in our relations with other people, but honesty with ourselves and honesty with God in all of life. Failure of reform has as much to do with the low standards of morality among business and government that deal with corruption as the corruption itself. [Dishonesty is now often cloaked in respectability and acceptance]. The roots of deceit are deep in our society, imbedded in our methods of business and advertising. [The increasing] “preaching up of sin,” as early Quakers would call it, is the natural accompaniment of the growing acceptance of immorality.
The time will come when society will be ready for the prophetic word & exemplary deed pointing to higher standards of integrity, when more & more people “hunger & thirst after righteousness.” [The high esteem in which Quakerism is held] may be evidence of this hunger & need. We may lack vision of the future & confidence in our destiny, but nothing can take away the integrity with which we face even apparent meaninglessness. The fact that the people who will be drawn to us by a testimony of integrity will be a widely varied & curiously assorted group should neither surprise nor dismay us, for it is inevitable that any vital new movement will evidence [diversity] in its adherents. Words & profession are of little importance & sometimes more of a liability than an asset. The reality of a life that refuses to accept & sanctify known evil is the important & essential issue.
The Needs [and Call] of Modern Quakerism—Any significant human endeavor requires the acceptance and practice of a discipline. It is in the practice of “holy obedience,” as contrasted with theories, where we are inevitably tested. Contrary to the usual assumption of the modern person, every act and every decision has some relation to morality. And those who attempt to attain the heights of moral achievement need to climb with other pilgrims rather than try to scale the peaks alone. We gain enormously in help and encouragement from a close association with those who are sharing with us in the most difficult search one ever attempts.
For reasons perhaps beyond our knowledge, the divine power is most often and fully revealed to the waiting, prepared, and expectant group. Coming together once a week for worship is hardly a sufficient basis upon which to build this life together and with God. [We need to be creative in finding] ways to study together as well as worship together. Without believing that ultimate goals will be realized in human society, we can believe that God’s power works, in cooperation with the efforts of all, to the proximate realization of specific goals [e.g. the end of segregation and international warfare]. This confidence must be related to a conviction that God calls us to specific tasks meaningful in our time. We must believe that God works now with us to the realization of [what is best for society]. Our times require the accomplishment of goals beyond our human strength. God’s cooperation with us can make them possible. We dare to believe we are called now to divine-human cooperation in realizing the dreams which poets and prophets have pictured.
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112. Two Trends in Modern Quaker Thought: A Statement of Belief (by Albert Vann Fowler; 1961)
About the Author—Albert Vann. (1904-68) & Helen W. Fowler (1907-68) were poets, freelance writers, & editors. Albert was born in Syracuse, NY, in 1904; He earned an A.B. in History from Haverford College in 1927 & studied Psychology & Journalism at Columbia University. He did freelance writing & wrote poetry. He married Helen Frances Wose in 1937; They collaborated in writing poetry. (e.g. Meadville Trilogy (Lion of Judah, Scylla the Beautiful, & Landcastle)) As a pacifist, Albert V. Fowler joined the Fellowship of Reconciliation, & in 1940 joined the Society of Friends. The couple spent the years 1946-1947 at Pendle Hill; They founded the literary quarterly, Approach, which included poetry, short stories, & critical work, primarily by young authors.
In this extrovert age we are apt to forget that what men do is conditioned and circumscribed by their faith. [Jesus and Paul looked to people’s faith as the source of their healing]. There are in modern Quakerism two distinct varieties of belief: universal; and particular. The universal variety accepts Christianity in its Quaker interpretation as but one religion among many. [In a way it] stands apart from all religions and looks at them with an appraising eye. The particular variety is inseparable from the faith it professes. It accepts Christianity as the one divine life that is reproducing in the individual the character of the historic Jesus Christ.
A Matter for all Christians—While a Quaker issue, it is also of great importance to individual Christians outside the Society of Friends. The universal and particular varieties are each the center of emotional viewpoints and convictions which need to be understood. The universal is supported by liberals who think of themselves as tolerant, open-minded and in the forefront of scientific discovery. The particular is supported by those whose lives are rooted in a common Christian experience and in the doctrines of Christianity. They think of themselves as conservative and orthodox in the positive sense of those words.
The word orthodox is defined as “sound in opinion or doctrine”. The term underwent a popular change until now it has taken the connotation of reactionary and conventional. In the same way the word conservative has changed from a positive [i.e. preserving the good] to a negative term [i.e. opposed to all innovation]. There is a refugee psychology in Quakerism which pushes Friends away from the traditional Christian viewpoint.
Non-Christians as Members?—At the Blue River Quarterly Meeting, Arthur Morgan said: “The inner feeling that the Christian faith is uniquely true, and is in a class by itself, different from all other religions, is not a harmless error.” What should be done is to seek out the great truth underlying all religions, not the small truth in each of them. Morgan also said: “The Christian religion is a human product, an accumulation from many sources.” The Christian religion should come to see itself as one of the great but fallible traditions.
Arthur Morgan is convinced the time is coming when these provincial mythologies will have had their day. Non-Christians, he believes, look at the Christian attitude of representing the one true faith as exploitation, spiritual imperialism, bigotry, and arrogance. The times are calling for a more universal vision of religious truth, which Quakers can help bring into focus. The belief in the inner light led early Friends to [carefully consider a problem] and then let it rest in the expectation that an opening would occur which might disclose truth. It seems possible to him that committed persons of other faiths might have a stronger interest in what they find in the Society than do many who are born in that tradition and the lives of all concerned might be enlarged and refined.
To contribute to an interfaith fellowship of fallible men trying to find a good way of life together is something Arthur Morgan believes Friends can do for world peace and for a deeper and more inclusive religious outlook. His argument does not touch on the wide divergence of thought about the nature of God which is so characteristic of the universal variety. It conceives God principally as an impersonal force, a prime mover, a first cause, and not as a personal God dealing directly with men in an intimate relationship.
[The picking & choosing of religious faith elements from a variety of sources, can be done through] a rigorous, disciplined, & scholarly search for the truth, [or it can be done only to] suit one’s own tastes & needs. [There is also the extreme of] the religion of pure personal experience, an interior monologue unrelated to any external facts or situations. It isn't personal experience that is important in the religious life, but what is experienced. The universal variety allows for an almost infinite number of different [variations] of God, from the Father Almighty to theoretical [human] abstractions. The Quaker’s particular variety strips the Gospel concept of God of dogma and outward sacrament to free the Spirit so that it could speak with equal authority at a later time.
A Resurgence of Interest—There is a resurgence of interest in the particular variety of belief. John McCandless quoted from the London Yearly Meeting Discipline of 1922: “To us (the unity of Christians) consists in the one Divine life that is reproducing in them the character of the historic Person, Jesus Christ; which, while it is something far deeper than any definition of His Person, is for Christians the final manifestation of the character of God Himself. Faith is not only a belief in truth but a surrender to truth.” [The universal variety’s position] represents to John McCandless a widespread and unparalleled disloyalty to Jesus Christ.
The modern, tolerant, scientific, undogmatic view of Christianity as one of the outstanding religions of the world is untenable to John McCandless; he finds it impossible to know religious truth from the outside. He believes that to insist religion be tolerant or liberal means that we worship not God but tolerance or liberalism. He insists that the scientific attitude is maintained in invalid areas, and to unwarranted degrees, in order to indulge doubts that prevent man from coming to terms with Christ’s demands on him. Early Friends believed the New Testament’s original vision had been revealed to them; it was their responsibility to demonstrate it. McCandless said: If Quakerism is . . . Truth, then it is universal and inescapable; if it is not Truth, it ought to be laid down.”
The Inherent Risks—The first risk inherent in the particular variety of Quaker belief is of a rigid formalism, a narrow fundamentalism, and [too much] reliance on the past as the source of inspiration and achievement. The gravest danger is that [in trying] to live it one steps out of the popular current of religious thinking and takes a stand against the tide.
Clear distinctions can be seen between the universal and the particular. Universal emphasizes seekers and the search; particular emphasizes what has been found. Universal mainly looks for something new; particular is centered on something eternal. Universal is concerned with open choices; particular is concerned with the choice already made. Universal love is a general concept unconstrained by particular detail; particular love is delineated in the life and teachings of Jesus and in his relations with God.
The Clear distinction—For the universal attitude, religious authority resides in the individual, the finite; for the particular attitude religious authority resides in Christ, God, the infinite. For the universal, Jesus is among many prophets; for the particular, Jesus is the divine’s unique revelation. Freedom to the universal means lack of constraint in doing as one chooses. Freedom to the particular means lack of constraint doing what God chooses.
A Third Group—[This group] acts to blur and blunt the distinguishing features and to keep the 2 varieties from clashing with each other, and to avoid another schism. It mitigates and restrains differences that cannot be reconciled. The third group is both a buffer and a sincere and earnest combination of both the universal and the particular. This group sees in Quakerism a reconciling power between Christianity and the other great world religions; it has its counterparts throughout much of modern Christianity.
Modern Quakerism thus proclaims two quite different beliefs, with a third group trying to draw them together. The resulting confusion is kept beneath the surface and is not openly acknowledged. It has been easier to bring the two together on a basis of common work [e.g. American Friends Service Committee (AFSC)]. Many convinced Friends have come through the universal door. Many, having looked to the Quaker Meeting as a source of inspiration and deepened faith, pass beyond it to find fuller meaning elsewhere.
A Continuing Conversation—This, one of the most important problems facing modern Quakerism, is left to personal debate instead of being considered soberly in public, seeking the sense of the Meeting & a minute to record it. The universal argument is that [when] the Christ-figure is a stumbling block to someone seeking a religious faith, it is more important to remove the stumbling block than to obstruct one’s religious search.
Like Paul carrying the gospel to the Greek and the Roman world, the Society of Friends is reaching and nourishing the religious life of the unchurched against strong opposition within its own ranks. It is also better to set aside a Quaker testimony than to turn the seeker away, in the hope that one will grow into acceptance of it. Modern Quaker opinion holds that the wise thing is to stress the differences between Quakerism and traditional Christianity in order to keep from being swallowed up as just another sect. Another universal claim is that the importance of Jesus’ sayings depends solely on their undoubted truth and not on who set them forth.
An Anti-Christian Attitude—The motive behind western civilization’s and the universal’s anti-Christian attitude seems to be a desire to be free of Christian dispensation and discipline. Men’s and women’s historic faith is giving way under pressure from the great storm of secularism which has been brewing for almost 200 years. The most persuasive and misleading argument in this attitude is the claim that the Christian gospel must be tailored to fit the modern mind. Those giving way want to believe that they are breathing new life and vitality into a religion that has lost its appeal to the present generation, rather than that they are betraying the figure on the cross. Now that Robert Barclay’s interpretation (i.e. Barclay’s Apology) has been abandoned under the pressure of secularism, Quakers are free to indulge in imprecision to the full.
Butterfield’s Summary—Herbert Butterfield defends the view that the screen between God and man was torn and broken in the person of Jesus Christ, and that the divine stepped straight onto the stage and into the story. Christian religion’s central idea is that divinity is made incarnate in a personality more human than the human one. He makes it clear that if basic Christian beliefs seem out of keeping with the thought of the 20th century, there are grounds for believing they must have been equally anomalous to the Roman Empire.
Christians make a mistake if they fear scholarship or if they believe too readily its infallibility and competence. One of the terrible elements in history for Butterfield is the fact that the Church began a policy of persecution as soon as it was in a position to do so, and fought wars to preserve their persecuting power; this is a comment on human nature, rather than an argument against Christianity. Sometimes the Church fought bitterly when the world stood for [what turned out to be the right cause, later accepted even] by the clergy themselves.
Butterfield wonders how many generations it will take to heal the deep-seated and understandable resentments against [past Church abuses]. [Looking at] the intimate life of the Church, and the spiritual labor of humble men, he finds the most moving spectacle that history has to offer, [where charity abounds].
Secularism’s Advance and Openness to Truth—This discussion cannot be understood without some attempt to explain the advance of secularism in western civilization. C.S. Lewis calls it “the unchristening of Europe.” Lewis is quick to add there are a great many Christians in the world today just as there were a great many skeptics in the past. But religious belief and practice was the norm; today, he believes it is the exception, and committed Christians in the minority. The unchristening of the West which has probably not yet reached its peak, underlines the need of the Society of Friends to bring the conversation between universal and particular out into the open. [Whether the universal path or the particular path is chosen], most friends want to have it grow from a common concern of the Society as a whole after the topic has been explored openly and at length.
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40. Quaker Message (extracts of Quaker belief & practice & present significance by Sidney Lucas; 1948)
The Inward Light—Up to the mid-17th Century] Theologians had turned away from the revelation of life for the world here and instead constructed a plan or scheme of salvation for another world. Quakerism was a fresh attempt to recover the way of life revealed in the New Testament; to re-interpret it and re-live it in this world. It was part of a wider movement to restore primitive Christianity and to change the basis of authority from external things to the interior life and spirit of humans. Friends made the fundamental truth of the Inward Light the actual foundation for their whole religious system. We believe that the religion of Jesus Christ is primarily spiritual in its essence, and that every follower [has available to them] direct personal intercourse with God through [God’s spirit acting] in the human heart. Some may have looked on Quakerism as an exalted type of social service. But it is our aim to call people back to the light of God in their own souls.
William Penn said: . . . “Quakers lay down as a main fundamental . . . that God through Christ hath placed a principle in every one to inform them of their duty, and to enable them to do it.” George Fox said: “Your teacher is within you: look not forth; it will teach you both lying in bed and going abroad, to shun all occasion of sin and evil. . . Preach freely and bring people off from these outward temples . . . and direct them to the spirit and Grace of God in themselves . . . [and to] Christ, their free teacher.” The significant watchword of the new discovery was the Universal saving light.
[Today] people may differ as to its explanation, but they cannot deny that there is something in human nature that responds to truth and beauty and love. The victory [over departures from the true way of life] comes from the consciousness of a strength not our own. The light that shines into the human heart is not of man, and must be distinguished from the conscience and the natural faculty of reason. The Inward Light was a divine clearness which enlightened and gradually built up the conscience, and it taught an intuitive wisdom beyond reasoned argument. The Moral Sense, the realization of a clear distinction between right and wrong and of an imperative to choose the former if one is to be true to oneself is the most distinctive feature of the divine life within us. We speak now of the conscience as the faculty within us which discriminates between right and wrong . . . and we regard this faculty as constantly subject to divine illumination.
The doctrine of the spirit's indwelling has been to Friends a practical faith embracing with its scope the whole of human life. Hence, little account is made of the popular distinction between things secular and things religious; every employment that is not wrong may be accounted holy. Obedience to the Inward Light heightens and quickens personality enlarges the power of perception, and renders possible things impossible before.
With readiness to go forward there must also be willingness to wait. The great tradition of guidance can only be maintained as we are enabled faithfully to wait on the voice of God. We do need the individual interpretation of the facts of life, [but] it needs checking and criticizing and correcting by measuring it against the corporate community conscience. “The Spirit of Truth, “God,” “Christ,” “the holy spirit,” “The seed of God,” “the Light” ([i.e.] the principle of good in all) are metaphors used to express something too deep for words. We can make our faith in its existence the bridge in our approach to all whom we meet.
Communion with God—The more our engagements multiply, the greater is the call to watch unto prayer [and communion with God]. We believe in prayer as a power in the world, and we need to pray in expectation of definite results. Prayer does not need many words. It is more often a case of an inner attitude, a lifting up of the work to be done and a surrendering of our will about it. Silence [instead of grace] may check our thought amid the rush of outward life, and call us to an inward act of devotion, by which the meal may be made a sacrament.
It is important to recognize the difference between private and public worship. The individual experience [is helpful] but not sufficient. In the Meeting for Worship . . . a corporate sense of the divine presence is reached. In a meeting for worship the worshippers are like the spokes of a wheel. The nearer they come to the centre of all Life the near they are to each other. Silence is one of the best preparations for such communion. It may be sheer emptiness, an absence of words . . . But it may be an intensified pause, vitalized hush, a creative quiet, an actual moment of reciprocal correspondence with God. Though there be not a word spoken, yet is the true spiritual worship performed. The function of a meeting is to bring a lift to life, a vision to the soul, a fortification for the tasks that are before us. George Fox was always anxious to bring men to “sit under their own vine; to ‘fix their eyes on Christ their teacher’ and not to depend on himself or any other preacher or leader.
True ministry is not simply the expression of views of truth or ideals of conduct. We need to wait for that sense of call that comes to us from God through the fellowship of hearts that are bound into harmony by the flowing through them of the tides of God’s living presence. We covet for our church, not only a ministry which springs up out of the life of the Meeting itself, but also the utterance of a message in apostolic power, which will triumph over spiritual deadness and opposition in the congregation. Fox said, “If any have anything upon them to speak, in the life of God stand up and speak, if it be but two or three words, and sit down again.”
The sacraments derive their origin from the Church and not from the mind of Christ, or from his clear commands. In Baptism we have the change from the complete immersion of a convert, to the sprinkling of an unconscious infant. In the Eucharist we have the change from a common meal to a solemn rite. [The Biblical evidence for both sacraments are not part of the original gospel content, but were later insertions]. Quakers find from their religious experience that Communion and the cleansing and renewing baptism of his Spirit are possible without ritual. [We see] ritual as leading to confusion between outward sign and inward reality.
Neither a majority nor a minority should allow itself in way to overbear or to obstruct a meeting for church affairs in its course towards a decision. We are unlikely to reach truth or wisdom if one section imposes its will on another [as in taking a vote. We rely on] attaining a group consciousness of the course to take.
Our objection to forms is that they would confine us to that which is too little—they hamper and check the living exercise of the spirit which is necessary for real worship and inward growth. Some theology and some practice in common there is bound to be, though it may be left fluid and welcome change.
Conceptions of God—There is a vast difference between knowledge about God and knowledge of God [i.e.] a recognition of God’s presence in the experience of [one’s] own heart. The scriptures are unique and irreplaceable not because they are inspired as no other writings are, nor because they are preserved miraculously free from . . . error, but because they record the main stages in the discovery or revelation of the great truths of God. Friends accepted the Bible as inspired, but they would not call it the “Word of God” because for them it was not the final rule of faith and duty. Early Quaker testimony had: freedom from literal acceptance of the scripture; new ideas on pre-Christian and non-Christian people; true following of the New Testament Christianity. We highly value . . . the Scriptures . . . but we believe that the Light of Christ alone can implement and interpret them.
God cannot be ethically present in the unethical; God cannot be personally present in the impersonal. God can only be entirely present in a being capable of containing and expressing God in God’s essential truth. The essence of religion appears to be the recognition of divine purpose in the world, and the endeavor to make that purpose our own. Faith is not being free of doubt, any more than courage is being free from fears. Faith is a determination to act on something we are not quite sure about. The center of faith is belief in ourselves [what we can do spiritually]; belief in God is only its reasonable unfolding. Belief in God is an act of our whole nature by which we take hold of the unseen and the eternal and are able to have communion with it.
[Our] attempts to express the nature of God [are best described by] Maximus of Trye in the 2nd Century A.D.: “God, the father and fashioner of all that is, older than the sun or sky, greater than time and eternity, and all the flow of being; is unnameable by any lawgiver, unutterable by any voice, not to be seen by any eye. But we, being unable to apprehend his essence, use the help of sounds and names and pictures [of this world] . . . yearning for the knowledge of him, and . . . naming all that is beautiful in this world after his nature.” The creative power is in the world . . . and it is ceaselessly active. The God we have found is not omnipotent but evolutionary, progressive, growing in power and revelation of God’s self.
The central fact in the religious history of humankind is the life & personality of Jesus Christ. The 1st thing we need to know is that God is like Christ, not that Christ is like God. [Some overemphasize Christ’s divinity; some overemphasize Christ’s humanity]. Jesus shows us the divine life humanly lived & the human life divinely lived. The 1st Christians were conscious of his present guiding spirit; Christ’s authority for them was internal not external. Fox challenged his hearers: “You will say ‘Christ said this, & the apostles say this’, but what canst thou say?” We shall believe many things because [Jesus] said them . . . But we must go on to something further if his work for & in us is to be completed; the Jesus of history must become the Christ of our experience.
War & Peace—Be faithful in maintaining our testimony against all war as inconsistent with “Christ's" spirit & teaching. Live in the life & power that takes away the occasion of all wars. War & Christianity are contradictory ways of life. We utterly deny all outward wars & strife, & fightings with outward weapons, for any end, or under any pretence whatever. . . Christ's Spirit . . . will never move us to fight & war against any man.
The 4 fundamental grounds for opposition to war are: New Testament (external authority); Conscience (internal authority); Personality (transforming power of love and the supreme worth of personal life; Irrationality (insanity of war). We do not rest our witness for peace on isolated texts; war is a contradiction of the message, spirit, work, and life of Jesus Christ. It is not consistent for anyone to claim that his Christianity as a way of life stops him from war, unless he is prepared to adjust his entire life. Fox proposed to live in such a spirit that no thought or word is sowing the seeds of conflict. We probe into our lives, to search out the seeds of war, which may find nourishment in our selfishness or our clinging to material possessions.
The man who compromises daily with his religious ideals can't easily stand out suddenly for them in a crisis moment. When pacifism becomes simply refusal to fight it has lost the virtue [& ability to convert an opponent]. It must be an active power that makes peace. Our conviction that all war is unchristian prevents us from giving military service to the state, but calls us to serve our nation in others way even at the cost of much personal sacrifice. There is a right & possible way for the family of nations to live together at peace. It is the way exemplified in the life & teaching of Jesus Christ. There can be no great civilization, no enduring peace, no fellowship of nations ... without the culture of the spirit & ... the principles of life which lie at the heart of Christ’s message & way of life. Quakerism recognizes that religion has a definite ethical principle ... for humanity's guidance, a principle which strikes at the root of injustice, & should eliminate all the causes of war—that of the infinite worth of all human personality. We must care for the soul [by working] for conditions in which the spirit is free.
Quakerism and Society—In your daily work, and in your social and other activities, be concerned for the establishment of the Kingdom of heaven upon earth. While making provision for yourselves and your families, be not too anxious, but in quietness of spirit seek 1st the Kingdom of God and God’s righteousness. To be able to transcend money, culture, and color bars, and free of all dividing prejudices, is the function of a Quaker. The foundation of the teaching of Jesus is the unlimited love of God to all. Religion is man’s response to that love.
The central thought in Quakerism, the indwelling spirit of God in all, must find an outward expression in service, [such as assuring] the opportunity of full development, physical, moral, and spiritual . . . to the whole community. True service is the outward form of true worship. Finding the Will of God in relation to society and industry is [done by]: stimulating members to experiment . . . with creating a standard higher than the conventional one; & educating public opinion toward a clearer understanding of the implication of the teachings of Jesus which haven't yet been worked out in the [larger community]. The thing that matters in our social structure is human personality; we shall not allow ourselves to lose this essential fact in abstractions. We shall go behind [them] . . . to the people who make them up and who are the only realities that give meaning to the words.
The great task of the future [in industry] is to see that deciding what is produced shall be done in the consumer’s interest, for whose ultimate benefit both Government and industry exist, with the profit motive occupying a place of small importance. We must accept our share of responsibility for finding a liberal, democratic, and Christian approach to the new society. Friends in their work try to be constructive, and therefore have never just given charitable relief, but have tried . . . to help men and women to a creative activity of their own—to restore their self-respect and help them to feel that they are wanted.
Not by exploiting and impoverishing our neighbor, but by strengthening them economically will we be able to reap personal benefits. Every individual needs to make their own contribution to [solving social problems through making] changes in themselves, their environment, and their personal relationships. Jesus did not work for people; he became as one of them and worked with them. Many evils arise from the inadequate systems for dealing with economic forces in industry. The Society of Friends asserts that the [economic] evils around us are not inevitable; it is within human ability and power to order economic life on a rational and Christian basis.
We ask friends to be considerate as to the extent to which they make others work on the first day of the week. The 1st-day of the week should be a time for worship & religious service, fostering family life, rest & leisure, & intellectual & spiritual refreshment. We believe that all forms of gambling & all speculative means of obtaining money are contrary to Christ’s spirit; it is also a symptom of unrest, of a craving for excitement & relief from life’s tedium. John Woolman’s chief objection to the consumption of spirituous liquors was that it hindered communion with God. We believe that social drinking customs of the country are largely responsible for lapses into intemperance of many in all classes of society, who would otherwise be useful citizens.
We recognize it to be our duty as Christians to inform ourselves regarding those of other races and nationalities within our own country, and regarding other nations having a civilization different from our own, [in order to] establish a high standard of conduct toward them. Concern and cooperation with the American Negro’s full attainment of civil liberties is the current focus of our work. No task is so fundamental or urgent as that of converting the brotherhood of man from a respected phrase to a living practice.
The terrible sufferings of our forefathers in 17th century prisons have given Friends a special interest in prison management & the treatment of crime. Society is in measure responsible for the criminal, a fact which emphasizes the duty of meeting moral failure by redemptive care. While condemning unrighteous acts, we should also seek to have offenders treated in a manner conducive to strengthening moral character. We have often expressed our objection to capital punishment; it fails as a deterrent. Many crimes are closely connected with property; it seems to many that most crime is traceable to possessing private property & unequal wealth distribution. Quaker principles applied to our life as citizens demand an unceasing care to see that the laws are good [& fair].
Social service as a vocation can best be undertaken by those especially qualified by training. But there remains for every individual an opportunity for service in daily life and at special times. It is the duty of society considered a fellowship to help every citizen to gain the best life; it is the duty of each citizen to do his part to create, maintain, and enrich that fellowship.
He is the truest patriot who benefits his own country without diminishing another’s welfare. One who works to improve the civic, economic, social, and moral condition of his country is more truly patriotic than one who exalts one’s own nation at the expense of others or supports and justifies its action irrespective of right or justice.
Friends recognize the obligation of obedience to the government or else of submission to its authority, as the Inward Light leads: acceptance of the penalties of disobedience where conscience does not allow conformity; efforts by non-violent means only, to change objectionable principles, practices, and laws. The something of God in all is the final court of appeal and not the church, or the bible, or the state.
A living religious community ought to be from its very nature in some respects ahead of the State of which its members are citizens; there is at times a conflict between the good and the best. In political resistance emphasis is placed on citizen’s rights; in religious resistance the emphasis must rather be on duties. Early Friends did not regard the State and its policy as a non-religious matter. When called to serve in public office, Friends should consider the public good rather than personal preference and convenience.
Personal Witness for the Truth—Maintain that charity which suffereth long and is kind. Put the best construction upon the conduct and opinions one of another which circumstances will warrant. [When] it may be necessary to disclose the failings of others be well satisfied as to the purity of your own motives. Our attitude towards life should tend to free us from the bondage of material things, and make us concerned to give the first place to the things of the spirit; such service is hindered by the love of money [and possession]. Friends should seek to discern how much of their income or property can be spared and wisely distributed for the benefit of others. Simplicity does not mean that our lives shall be poor and bare, destitute of enjoyment and beauty, but the possessions or activities that capture the heart and lessen our simple and steadfast devotion to the cause of the Kingdom of God must go.
Business in its essence is a vast and complex movement of social service; however, some may abuse its methods for private ends. Sincerity of speech is closely allied to simplicity and has an emphasis on essentials and a suppression of the corrupt or false. Care is needed to avoid and discourage the insincerities and extravagances that are prevalent in the social world. Regarding oaths, Pythagoras says: “Let no man call God to witness by an oath, no not in judgment; but let every man so accustom himself to speak, that he may become worthy to be trusted even without an oath. We regard the taking of oaths as contrary to the teaching of Christ, and as setting up a double standard of truthfulness.
The completeness of the response of Friends to the Inward Light led to exceptional sensitiveness to moral issues. If we are possessed of a considerate & helpful kindliness, and by a gentle and graciousness which reflects the Christ life, our neighbors are at once made happier and stronger and more able to bear their own burdens.
Publishing the Truth—The aim of education is the full & harmonious development of the resources of the human spirit. Seek for your children that full development of God’s gifts which true education can bring. Be zealous that education may be continued throughout life, & that its privileges may be shared by all. Education’s task is that of helping people at all stages of their lives to achieve an inner harmony, and a sense of wholeness which will develop the creative possibilities of the individual to their fullest capacity. Quaker schools: provide for the education of children in a free and definitely anti-militarist atmosphere; give many opportunities for educational experiments; are an indispensable means of helping to maintain and spread our view of truth.
We come into the world endowed with a natural capacity for reaching out after all that is good, with an instinct for the things that give life and joy. Truth being so much greater than our conception of it, we should ever be making fresh discoveries; complete knowledge is always beyond us. We must not overstress one aspect of truth to the exclusion of other truth.
George Fox wrote: “Let all nations hear the sound by word or writing. Spare no place, spare no tongue nor pen, but be obedient to the Lord God; go through the world and be valiant for the truth upon earth; tread and trample all that is contrary under. Be patterns, be examples in all countries wherever you come.” While the Truth is eternal, our understanding of it should enlarge, and our expression of it must change. Often we have been too modest to preach Quakerism outside our own meeting, and so we preach Christianity, but a Christianity that leaves a place for a certain kind of war in the hearts of the people we convert. The Christian missionary discovers not only God but also humankind. In Publishing the Truth our service lies in a world of humans, every one of whom has the divine seed within them. When noble impulses are stirred within, let us be quick to respond by word or deed. [If not responded to] such impulses deaden the conscience.
We hold that liberty of conscience is the common right of all men and essential to the well-being of society. When, therefore, the Government requires of any that which is prohibited by one’s conscience, the duty of civil disobedience ceases. Christianity requires the toleration of opinions not our own lest we should unwittingly hinder the workings of the spirit of God.
Penn reminds us that the humble, meek, merciful, just, pious, and devout souls are everywhere of one religion [e.g. heathens, Turks, Jews, all the several sorts of Christians]. Man is only truly man as he receives and obeys the inner voice. Many seeking men have experienced this throughout history, even before Christ. We believe that Jesus’ revelation of God as Love is the highest conception of God possible. Our conception of God and of Christ is distinctly westernized, and to that extent partial and limited; we are increasingly coming to see that the East has its contribution to make to the full experience of God in Christ.
Can we not rise to the thought and the practice of a great Quaker brotherhood, organized to serve the world of God’s children by changing the unnatural anger and aversion which makes them enemies into that loving cooperation which will turn the whole world into a Society of friends?
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138. An Apology for Perfection (by Cecil E. Hinshaw; 1964)
About the Author—Cecil Hinshaw attended Friends University, Kansas, Denver University, Iliff Theological School, & Harvard. Cecil Hinshaw was professor of Bible, Religion at Friends University, & William Penn College, Iowa; he was dean & later college president. He resigned in 1949 after efforts to integrate college & supporting conscientious objection. He served the American Friends Service Committee & the Fellowship of Reconciliation. Cecil Hinshaw worked with Committees of Correspondence, an intellectual forum against nuclear proliferation. The author believes the Society of Friends owes more to ethical perfectionism than to mysticism.
A religious movement, viewed through lenses of a past age & the present scene, offers a truer insight into a religious faith’s meaning than can be obtained without such perspectives. Every religious movement is a response to [& an attempt to withstand] problems & questions that men struggle with at a certain time in history. Conflicts of thought that marked the differences of Quakerism, Calvinism, & materialism are repeated today.
Seed Bed of Quakerism—Our world is so different in many ways from England in 1650 that a quite lively imagination is necessary for us to understand their thought-struggles. And yet, in 1650, the masses of people probably lived lives even less restrained & disciplined than do the masses today. And indulgence in material possessions showed itself in the desire for the latest fashions in fine clothes. Much of the preoccupation with religious questions in 1650 was superstitious and superficial; only a small minority showed a vital spiritual hunger.
Then as now, there was a religious vacuum, with numerous sects trying to fill that vacuum; there was and is restlessness and disquiet, hope and longing. [The New Calvinism wants us to understand, as the Old Calvinism did], that any attempt [or any belief in the ability] to avoid sin involves us in the worse sin of pride. The way to salvation appears to be the same. This salvation, as for the Calvinists of the 1600s, is a relationship that means acceptance of us by God in spite of our sin.
In contrast, an Episcopal Bishop said, “This is the catechism of the ignorant & the profane.” A similar view of hopelessness about human nature & about our world [existed in both periods]. Enjoyment of what is at hand for the time available is a normal & natural attitude when hopelessness about the future and the world dominates our thoughts. It is reasonable to conclude that the basic religious problems now are the same as they were then.
Mysticism, Quakerism, Ethical Purity, and Spiritual Power—For George Fox, only the term “perfection” was adequate to describe the life [of ethical purity] he sought & believed he achieved. The ethical purity concept may seem to conflict with the mystical religion concept. There is a mysticism in which union with God is the final goal of religious endeavor. This type of mysticism sees the ethical struggle as a means to union with God rather than as an end in itself; [St. Theresa, Fenelon, & Guyon, fit into this mysticism]. Another type of mysticism reverses the emphasis. Holy obedience & ethical perfection are seen as goal; [mysticism provides the means]. St. Francis used this emphasis. The same person in different periods of one’s development may represent both emphases. Quaker mysticism has been closer to Protestant pietistic groups (Mennonites, Brethren, & Moravians).
The functional type of mysticism, centered on the struggle for ethical purity, is evident in the spiritual pilgrimage of George Fox. [A specific event on “the 9th day of the 12th month, 1643,” highlighted the lack of moral integrity in his friends, and was a watershed in his spiritual development. He was admonished] to accept and live with human frailties, to give up the search for perfection. This Fox could not do, and the result was despair and hopelessness for a period of some months. He came to understand that temptation was normal, for Jesus had been tempted. At the climax of his conversion experience, Fox heard the words “There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition.” Mysticism was, for Fox, a practical, utilitarian, divine power that supplemented his own will in the struggle against sin. He wrote: “They who are in Christ, the 2nd Adam, are in perfection, and in that which . . . makes free from sin . . . thou that deny perfection, has denied the ministers of Christ’s work.
The Content of “Truth”; The Work of the Light Within —A question once used in some MMs was: Is the Truth prospering among Friends? The content of Fox’s truth was perfection, and a holy and sinless life. He was imprisoned for a year for claiming that “Christ, my Savior, has taken away my sin; and in him there is no sin.” Such a claim of purity can easily be misunderstood as a pretension of divinity, which was punishable as blasphemy. George said: “If your faith be true, it will give you victory over sin and the devil, purify your hearts and consciences, and bring you to please God and give you access to God again. . . There is a time for people to see that they have sinned, and a time for them to confess their sin, and to forsake it, and to know the blood of Christ to cleanse from all sin . . . Of all the sects in Christendom, I found none that could bear to be told, that any should come to Adam’s perfection before he fell; to be clear and pure without sin as he was.”
The 1st function of the “light within” on the soul of one receptive is to show the nature of evil [& bring awareness of sin]. The 2nd function is the illumination of the content of the perfect life, to know how one ought to live. The 3rd function of “light within” is to provide the power to live according the divine standard A 4th function was to bring all true seekers together into unity on their understanding of the content of the perfect life.
Quaker Testimonies—Standards of Purity—A consideration of Quaker testimonies shows more evidence that Quakerism historically has been essentially an ethical struggle. [While not obeying the command to kill men] is a valid reason for our position, that is a modern emphasis and is not found to any significant degree in early Quaker thought. It was the violence, the hate, the selfishness in fighting that bothered them. Fox was perhaps more concerned with what violence did to the one who used it, [the spiritual loss involved, than he was about the victims]. The origin of the testimony was in the ethical struggle for lives without conscious sins. [The reason for not honoring men with titles and removing hats] was their conviction that the desire to honor men arose from the selfish motive to flatter others for personal gain and to be flattered in return.
Pitfalls for Quakers—The essential differences between Ranters & Quakers were: Ranters carried mysticism to a pantheistic conclusion; Ranters didn't practice the Quakers’ stern discipline. William Penn writes: “For they interpreted Christ’s fulfilling of the law for us, to be a discharging of us from any obligation & duty the law required, instead of condemnation of the law for sins past. . . that now it was no sin to do [what was sin before].
One of the reasons for the continued vitality of Quakerism has been its ability to transcend its beginnings. The larger truths implicit in their early stand gradually became evident to them as the years passed. One of the more important limitations of early Quakerism is to be found in its view of human nature. There were important gaps in their knowledge, especially where the struggle for ethical perfection involved them in strains and stresses beyond the capacity of the human mind and spirit. [We should not] say that expression of emotions is necessarily desirable, but purity is not to be attained by denying what exists in us, [or by taking on] more stress than we can deal with constructively. Barclay (“perfection proportional and answerable to man’s measure”) and Pennington (“. . . a state of perfection does not exclude degrees.”) both emphasize that the growth in perfection was necessary and possible as a person lived up to that measure of light he had received.
[With this lofty goal came the danger of pride when Quakers thought they had achieved perfection]. In fields like economics and politics, [Quaker perfectionism] led them into mistakes. A country is often better off with an impure but experienced and wise leader than with a foolish saint. Helping other countries necessarily involves extraordinarily complex problems, often not understood by well-intentioned people who are concentrating on the purity of their desire to help needy people with a loving spirit.
[Quaker Ideals in Human Society]—No perfection of deed is possible in human society where actions & decisions involve millions of people. The greater danger is in refusing to recognize the real nature of man & the society in which he lives. But the fact remains, as it does in any similar survey of early Christianity, that Quakerism in its early years accomplished moral miracles. While other more sophisticated & worldly-wise people stood on the sidelines, the rash daring & unquestioning idealism of the Friends built a tradition of service to humankind still honored today. Their successes far outweighed their failures & went beyond theories & theology.
An important & basic contribution that Quakerism makes today is a witness to experiencing immediate knowledge of God. The divine life operating in humankind is the reason for our hope that the world, with its meaning & value, can be viewed without despair. Those who have never had such knowledge, even those who question their existence, can still know God in human experiences. The certainty of God’s presence among Quakers has been a quiet one without emotional assurance or visions. The more sensitive we become, the more life becomes testimony to God’s presence sustaining the world of God’s creation. In our despairing & materialistic world, there are oases of hope & succor to those who can understand & know that God lives & works with them.
A 2nd contribution is a restatement of Quaker faith that human nature has potential for goodness far beyond the evidence our world produces today. [But the very real tragedies, poverty, racism, & religious pride that we choose to see & treat honestly] must condition & affect whatever we think about human nature. Without denying the evil that is in man, we remember the evidence of man’s ability to share. We know by faith & experience that we are God’s children & our destiny is the beloved community. We have our choice of having this faith, believing & living as though it were true, or of living on the assumption that human nature is basically evil.
A Religion of Integrity—A 3rd function of Quakerism is in the search for integrity. Not merely honesty in our relations with other people, but honesty with ourselves and honesty with God in all of life. Failure of reform has as much to do with the low standards of morality among business and government that deal with corruption as the corruption itself. [Dishonesty is now often cloaked in respectability and acceptance]. The roots of deceit are deep in our society, imbedded in our methods of business and advertising. [The increasing] “preaching up of sin,” as early Quakers would call it, is the natural accompaniment of the growing acceptance of immorality.
The time will come when society will be ready for the prophetic word & exemplary deed pointing to higher standards of integrity, when more & more people “hunger & thirst after righteousness.” [The high esteem in which Quakerism is held] may be evidence of this hunger & need. We may lack vision of the future & confidence in our destiny, but nothing can take away the integrity with which we face even apparent meaninglessness. The fact that the people who will be drawn to us by a testimony of integrity will be a widely varied & curiously assorted group should neither surprise nor dismay us, for it is inevitable that any vital new movement will evidence [diversity] in its adherents. Words & profession are of little importance & sometimes more of a liability than an asset. The reality of a life that refuses to accept & sanctify known evil is the important & essential issue.
The Needs [and Call] of Modern Quakerism—Any significant human endeavor requires the acceptance and practice of a discipline. It is in the practice of “holy obedience,” as contrasted with theories, where we are inevitably tested. Contrary to the usual assumption of the modern person, every act and every decision has some relation to morality. And those who attempt to attain the heights of moral achievement need to climb with other pilgrims rather than try to scale the peaks alone. We gain enormously in help and encouragement from a close association with those who are sharing with us in the most difficult search one ever attempts.
For reasons perhaps beyond our knowledge, the divine power is most often and fully revealed to the waiting, prepared, and expectant group. Coming together once a week for worship is hardly a sufficient basis upon which to build this life together and with God. [We need to be creative in finding] ways to study together as well as worship together. Without believing that ultimate goals will be realized in human society, we can believe that God’s power works, in cooperation with the efforts of all, to the proximate realization of specific goals [e.g. the end of segregation and international warfare]. This confidence must be related to a conviction that God calls us to specific tasks meaningful in our time. We must believe that God works now with us to the realization of [what is best for society]. Our times require the accomplishment of goals beyond our human strength. God’s cooperation with us can make them possible. We dare to believe we are called now to divine-human cooperation in realizing the dreams which poets and prophets have pictured.
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112. Two Trends in Modern Quaker Thought: A Statement of Belief (by Albert Vann Fowler; 1961)
About the Author—Albert Vann. (1904-68) & Helen W. Fowler (1907-68) were poets, freelance writers, & editors. Albert was born in Syracuse, NY, in 1904; He earned an A.B. in History from Haverford College in 1927 & studied Psychology & Journalism at Columbia University. He did freelance writing & wrote poetry. He married Helen Frances Wose in 1937; They collaborated in writing poetry. (e.g. Meadville Trilogy (Lion of Judah, Scylla the Beautiful, & Landcastle)) As a pacifist, Albert V. Fowler joined the Fellowship of Reconciliation, & in 1940 joined the Society of Friends. The couple spent the years 1946-1947 at Pendle Hill; They founded the literary quarterly, Approach, which included poetry, short stories, & critical work, primarily by young authors.
In this extrovert age we are apt to forget that what men do is conditioned and circumscribed by their faith. [Jesus and Paul looked to people’s faith as the source of their healing]. There are in modern Quakerism two distinct varieties of belief: universal; and particular. The universal variety accepts Christianity in its Quaker interpretation as but one religion among many. [In a way it] stands apart from all religions and looks at them with an appraising eye. The particular variety is inseparable from the faith it professes. It accepts Christianity as the one divine life that is reproducing in the individual the character of the historic Jesus Christ.
A Matter for all Christians—While a Quaker issue, it is also of great importance to individual Christians outside the Society of Friends. The universal and particular varieties are each the center of emotional viewpoints and convictions which need to be understood. The universal is supported by liberals who think of themselves as tolerant, open-minded and in the forefront of scientific discovery. The particular is supported by those whose lives are rooted in a common Christian experience and in the doctrines of Christianity. They think of themselves as conservative and orthodox in the positive sense of those words.
The word orthodox is defined as “sound in opinion or doctrine”. The term underwent a popular change until now it has taken the connotation of reactionary and conventional. In the same way the word conservative has changed from a positive [i.e. preserving the good] to a negative term [i.e. opposed to all innovation]. There is a refugee psychology in Quakerism which pushes Friends away from the traditional Christian viewpoint.
Non-Christians as Members?—At the Blue River Quarterly Meeting, Arthur Morgan said: “The inner feeling that the Christian faith is uniquely true, and is in a class by itself, different from all other religions, is not a harmless error.” What should be done is to seek out the great truth underlying all religions, not the small truth in each of them. Morgan also said: “The Christian religion is a human product, an accumulation from many sources.” The Christian religion should come to see itself as one of the great but fallible traditions.
Arthur Morgan is convinced the time is coming when these provincial mythologies will have had their day. Non-Christians, he believes, look at the Christian attitude of representing the one true faith as exploitation, spiritual imperialism, bigotry, and arrogance. The times are calling for a more universal vision of religious truth, which Quakers can help bring into focus. The belief in the inner light led early Friends to [carefully consider a problem] and then let it rest in the expectation that an opening would occur which might disclose truth. It seems possible to him that committed persons of other faiths might have a stronger interest in what they find in the Society than do many who are born in that tradition and the lives of all concerned might be enlarged and refined.
To contribute to an interfaith fellowship of fallible men trying to find a good way of life together is something Arthur Morgan believes Friends can do for world peace and for a deeper and more inclusive religious outlook. His argument does not touch on the wide divergence of thought about the nature of God which is so characteristic of the universal variety. It conceives God principally as an impersonal force, a prime mover, a first cause, and not as a personal God dealing directly with men in an intimate relationship.
[The picking & choosing of religious faith elements from a variety of sources, can be done through] a rigorous, disciplined, & scholarly search for the truth, [or it can be done only to] suit one’s own tastes & needs. [There is also the extreme of] the religion of pure personal experience, an interior monologue unrelated to any external facts or situations. It isn't personal experience that is important in the religious life, but what is experienced. The universal variety allows for an almost infinite number of different [variations] of God, from the Father Almighty to theoretical [human] abstractions. The Quaker’s particular variety strips the Gospel concept of God of dogma and outward sacrament to free the Spirit so that it could speak with equal authority at a later time.
A Resurgence of Interest—There is a resurgence of interest in the particular variety of belief. John McCandless quoted from the London Yearly Meeting Discipline of 1922: “To us (the unity of Christians) consists in the one Divine life that is reproducing in them the character of the historic Person, Jesus Christ; which, while it is something far deeper than any definition of His Person, is for Christians the final manifestation of the character of God Himself. Faith is not only a belief in truth but a surrender to truth.” [The universal variety’s position] represents to John McCandless a widespread and unparalleled disloyalty to Jesus Christ.
The modern, tolerant, scientific, undogmatic view of Christianity as one of the outstanding religions of the world is untenable to John McCandless; he finds it impossible to know religious truth from the outside. He believes that to insist religion be tolerant or liberal means that we worship not God but tolerance or liberalism. He insists that the scientific attitude is maintained in invalid areas, and to unwarranted degrees, in order to indulge doubts that prevent man from coming to terms with Christ’s demands on him. Early Friends believed the New Testament’s original vision had been revealed to them; it was their responsibility to demonstrate it. McCandless said: If Quakerism is . . . Truth, then it is universal and inescapable; if it is not Truth, it ought to be laid down.”
The Inherent Risks—The first risk inherent in the particular variety of Quaker belief is of a rigid formalism, a narrow fundamentalism, and [too much] reliance on the past as the source of inspiration and achievement. The gravest danger is that [in trying] to live it one steps out of the popular current of religious thinking and takes a stand against the tide.
Clear distinctions can be seen between the universal and the particular. Universal emphasizes seekers and the search; particular emphasizes what has been found. Universal mainly looks for something new; particular is centered on something eternal. Universal is concerned with open choices; particular is concerned with the choice already made. Universal love is a general concept unconstrained by particular detail; particular love is delineated in the life and teachings of Jesus and in his relations with God.
The Clear distinction—For the universal attitude, religious authority resides in the individual, the finite; for the particular attitude religious authority resides in Christ, God, the infinite. For the universal, Jesus is among many prophets; for the particular, Jesus is the divine’s unique revelation. Freedom to the universal means lack of constraint in doing as one chooses. Freedom to the particular means lack of constraint doing what God chooses.
A Third Group—[This group] acts to blur and blunt the distinguishing features and to keep the 2 varieties from clashing with each other, and to avoid another schism. It mitigates and restrains differences that cannot be reconciled. The third group is both a buffer and a sincere and earnest combination of both the universal and the particular. This group sees in Quakerism a reconciling power between Christianity and the other great world religions; it has its counterparts throughout much of modern Christianity.
Modern Quakerism thus proclaims two quite different beliefs, with a third group trying to draw them together. The resulting confusion is kept beneath the surface and is not openly acknowledged. It has been easier to bring the two together on a basis of common work [e.g. American Friends Service Committee (AFSC)]. Many convinced Friends have come through the universal door. Many, having looked to the Quaker Meeting as a source of inspiration and deepened faith, pass beyond it to find fuller meaning elsewhere.
A Continuing Conversation—This, one of the most important problems facing modern Quakerism, is left to personal debate instead of being considered soberly in public, seeking the sense of the Meeting & a minute to record it. The universal argument is that [when] the Christ-figure is a stumbling block to someone seeking a religious faith, it is more important to remove the stumbling block than to obstruct one’s religious search.
Like Paul carrying the gospel to the Greek and the Roman world, the Society of Friends is reaching and nourishing the religious life of the unchurched against strong opposition within its own ranks. It is also better to set aside a Quaker testimony than to turn the seeker away, in the hope that one will grow into acceptance of it. Modern Quaker opinion holds that the wise thing is to stress the differences between Quakerism and traditional Christianity in order to keep from being swallowed up as just another sect. Another universal claim is that the importance of Jesus’ sayings depends solely on their undoubted truth and not on who set them forth.
An Anti-Christian Attitude—The motive behind western civilization’s and the universal’s anti-Christian attitude seems to be a desire to be free of Christian dispensation and discipline. Men’s and women’s historic faith is giving way under pressure from the great storm of secularism which has been brewing for almost 200 years. The most persuasive and misleading argument in this attitude is the claim that the Christian gospel must be tailored to fit the modern mind. Those giving way want to believe that they are breathing new life and vitality into a religion that has lost its appeal to the present generation, rather than that they are betraying the figure on the cross. Now that Robert Barclay’s interpretation (i.e. Barclay’s Apology) has been abandoned under the pressure of secularism, Quakers are free to indulge in imprecision to the full.
Butterfield’s Summary—Herbert Butterfield defends the view that the screen between God and man was torn and broken in the person of Jesus Christ, and that the divine stepped straight onto the stage and into the story. Christian religion’s central idea is that divinity is made incarnate in a personality more human than the human one. He makes it clear that if basic Christian beliefs seem out of keeping with the thought of the 20th century, there are grounds for believing they must have been equally anomalous to the Roman Empire.
Christians make a mistake if they fear scholarship or if they believe too readily its infallibility and competence. One of the terrible elements in history for Butterfield is the fact that the Church began a policy of persecution as soon as it was in a position to do so, and fought wars to preserve their persecuting power; this is a comment on human nature, rather than an argument against Christianity. Sometimes the Church fought bitterly when the world stood for [what turned out to be the right cause, later accepted even] by the clergy themselves.
Butterfield wonders how many generations it will take to heal the deep-seated and understandable resentments against [past Church abuses]. [Looking at] the intimate life of the Church, and the spiritual labor of humble men, he finds the most moving spectacle that history has to offer, [where charity abounds].
Secularism’s Advance and Openness to Truth—This discussion cannot be understood without some attempt to explain the advance of secularism in western civilization. C.S. Lewis calls it “the unchristening of Europe.” Lewis is quick to add there are a great many Christians in the world today just as there were a great many skeptics in the past. But religious belief and practice was the norm; today, he believes it is the exception, and committed Christians in the minority. The unchristening of the West which has probably not yet reached its peak, underlines the need of the Society of Friends to bring the conversation between universal and particular out into the open. [Whether the universal path or the particular path is chosen], most friends want to have it grow from a common concern of the Society as a whole after the topic has been explored openly and at length.
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