"Theism vs Non-Theism"?

Within liberal Quakerism, and particularly concerning theological diversity, an area of particular tension has been what some have described as “theism/non-theism”, or even (as in the rather provocative title of this piece) “theism vs non-theism”.

For those of you not involved in British Quakerism (or, if you are, have been living under some sort of rock), I should say that, a couple of years ago, Quakers in Britain started a process of considering revising our book of discipline, Quaker faith & practice. This involved appointing a group to prepare us for making a decision about revision, and to lay some groundwork and preparation for any such revision – knowing that there will have to be a revision at some point in the future. The “Book of Discipline Revision Preparation Group” (BoDRPG) recently reported on their work with a recommendation to Meeting for Sufferings that Sufferings, in turn, recommend to Yearly Meeting that a revision process begin. Their recommendations had a lot of specifics about how this might be done, the order to do things in, and reflections on perceived risks (the meeting papers in question are available online, if you'd like to look at them yourself).

One of these perceived risks was related to theological diversity – particularly the question of non-theism. In order to help address this, they set up a “theology think tank”, with suitable Friends asked to be involved in discussions around theological diversity in Britain Yearly Meeting. They produced a reasonable volume of material published in the recent volume God, Words and Us (which is one of the various books I am currently working my way through – but I'm finding it very good so far), and also gave their own concluding notes that are included in the BoDRPG report to Sufferings.

Back from Woodbrooke

As previously mentioned, I was privileged to be invited to speak at Woodbrooke's course on The Impact of Diversity of Belief on Quaker Practice: Discernment, Decision Making, Worship. That course is now over, and I'm back home. You may have noticed that I posted a piece of written ministry on Thursday – The Contemporary Quaker Maze. This arose during reflection on an excellent session from Craig Barnett (no relation) on Tuesday morning, leading to a feeling that British Quakerism is in a period of profound transition; where that will take us is hard to know, but it definitely depends what we all do now.

The purpose of inviting me was that I deliver a session specifically on Quaker Business Method, in the context of diversity of belief, specifically non-theism; this session was delivered, over two 90 minute sessions, on Wednesday morning. With a course title and description like that, I had no idea what sort of people would be coming. Would they be open-minded about diversity of belief? Would they be worried about the increasing presence and visibility of non-theism? Would they feel that Christianity is being driven out of British Quakerism? Would they be worried that their own, less traditional beliefs, would be driven out by people who are worried about these things? It made things a bit more nerve-racking, and indeed I was more careful with presentation because of this. It is an issue that is a live source of worry for people with all sorts of positions.

What is "Written Ministry"?

You'll notice that, at the time of writing, the majority of posts on this blog are in the “ministry” category. As noted in the About page on this blog, this category contains written ministry. As also noted there, this means

“…it is not something I have carefully thought about and written down, revised, and optimised to make the point I'm trying to make; rather it is something I feel compelled to write down, and make very limited choices about myself. In short, it is the same as the Quaker tradition of spoken ministry during Meeting for Worship. I feel called to write it, and like any ministry in Meeting for Worship, I believe it to be divinely inspired.”

However, even to other Quakers, this may still be a very strange and unfamiliar concept, so I will try to write some more about what this means, and what the experience is like.

When we talk about “ministry”, in the Quaker context, there are a range of possible meanings. The most obvious, often, is that of speaking in Meeting for Worship. However, we also talk about the ministry of a person, or an organisation, in terms of the service it does for the Religious Society of Friends, and for wider society. A ministry of teaching, or of hospitality, or of outreach; of service to the poor, or engagement with government. These are all ministries, and some produce written results. In that sense, a great deal of writing by Friends is the product of their ministry, including some names that many would recognise writing today, such as David Boulton, Derek Guiton, and Pink Dandelion. I do not deny the validity of any of that as ministry, but it should be distinguished from what I speak of when I say “written ministry”, as will hopefully be clear from this post.

Non-theists Under the Bed?

A while back, in Local Business Meeting, my Meeting heard about concerns voiced by members of a reading group. They had recently read and discussed Derek Guiton's A Man that Looks on Glass, which led them to question the impact of the increasing (or increasingly visible) open presence of non-theists within our Meetings. There was concern that non-theists did not believe in an external divinity, and thus how they could believe in divinely inspired ministry or the seeking of divine guidance in worship for business. That non-theists wanted to change the Religious Society of Friends to fit their views, rather than the traditions and experiences of the Society so far.

It is not the first time I have come across concern about this among the Religious Society of Friends, nor the first time I've come across it seemingly prompted to Guiton's book. I shan't try to respond directly to the book itself, not having read it, and I like to hope that the excerpts I have seen quoted represent the most anti-non-theist parts of it. However, as a non-theist Friend, I think I can respond somewhat to the concerns people often appear to express in response to the book.

Non-theism doesn't have any one, universally accepted, definition. It's fairly consistently considered to be the complement of theism, but that in itself lacks universal definition. I tend to work with the definition I was taught in school – that theism describes any religious belief in which there are one or more deities, that they posses what we might call individual, personal identity, and that they are willing and able to directly affect the world as we experience it every day. Some would say that the god(s) must have created the world, or be omnipotent etc. Still others would make the definition broader, rather than narrower.