Quakers and Christianity

It’s a pretty common question online, in various question-asking-and-answering communities, and indeed offline when talking to people about our faith: are Quakers Christian? Seems like a simple question, doesn’t it? Well, the answer is, as ever, not anywhere near as simple.

If you want my short answer, it would be “some are”, but then others would say “yes”, despite the obvious presence of Quakers who do not identify as Christian, or “no”, despite the obvious presence of those who do.

If you want the quickest answer that is minimally misleading, I’ll have a go at that. Quakers grew out of Christianity, in a time and place where Christianity was the assumed norm, an almost, and to all practical purposes, universal faith – but where there were many varieties of it, most varieties suffering some degree of persecution. Christians who hold that a credal statement is a necessary characteristic of being a Christian – be it a specific formulation such as the Nicene Creed or a more general belief in, for example, the Trinity – would reject Quaker institutions as Christian, from early in our history, due to both our rejection of creeds and our acceptance of diverse forms of Christian belief from the very beginning. However, all early Quakers would call themselves Christians, indeed they generally felt they were ‘restoring’ true Christianity.

#BlackLivesMatter: A White British Quaker's Perspective

'Slave Trade' by John Raphael Smith, after George Morland's
‘Execrable human traffick, or the affectionate slaves’

Recent events have brought back to wider public consciousness that rallying cry, “Black Lives Matter”. It comes from the United States of America, but its resonance is felt around the world. As we see from the incidents that prompt outcry, it is most easily associated with excess deaths of black people – but it’s about a lot more than that.

Now, most Quakers in Britain are white. Not all of us, by any stretch, but definitely most. We’re also mostly relatively educated, with a much higher incidence of post-graduate qualifications than the general population, and there’s a definite tendency towards being culturally middle class. This has a lot of results, some of which I’ve written about before, but one of them is a real difficulty in engaging with the deep issues that underlie the statement that Black lives matter. I’ve seen Quakers in public on social media respond to that simple statement with one of the most problematic responses that we see everywhere – that “all lives matter”.

Why is that statement a problem? After all, don’t we – with our pacifist tradition and believe in a sort of universal divinity – really fundamentally believe that all lives matter? Yes, of course we do. It would be silly to suggest otherwise. In fact, especially among Quakers, it’s so obvious that it doesn’t even need saying. So why do we need to say that Black lives matter?

‘Birthright’ Quakers

For quite some time, Quakers have found it worthwhile – or at least traditional – to have an idea of who is formally part of our Religious Society. Quite naturally, we refer to people who have such formal status members; in Britain, we refer to those who have some degree of relationship with a Meeting but are not in membership as attenders. Membership has formally existed for some time, and while there are naturally voices who wish to see it abolished – and even more who wish to see it reformed – it has persisted. In Britain Yearly Meeting, we (supposedly) require that people in certain roles be members, though the only role that this seems to be universally applied to is that of trustee, a restriction that has sound legal basis. Quaker faith & practice recommends that clerks of meetings, elders, overseers, treasurers, registering officers and members of nominations committees should be in membership (Qf&p 3.24).

Nowadays, people principally come into membership in Britain Yearly Meeting by applying for it, and going through some sort of process. This usually involves a visit from seasoned members who talk about the application with the applicant, and produce a report, which is generally a sort of spiritual biography, though it can take many forms, and largely serves to help the Area Meeting as a whole to better know the new member. There are also provisions for a child to be brought into membership on the application of a parent or guardian, and I consider both the adult and child processes below.

Our Unjust Pride

Quakers are proud of our historical support for important issues of social justice – prison welfare, slavery, women's rights. I wonder if we would be so proud if we understood properly the history of these things.

For some issues, we have truly been leaders, at least among religious communities. We have been at the forefront of acceptance and welcome for non-heterosexuality, though it still took us longer than, we may think in hindsight, it might. I don't know enough to say either way about the work of Elizabeth Fry, among others, on prison welfare. But to take the example of slavery and women's rights, two that Quakers are particularly proud of (especially on the western side of the Atlantic), we shouldn't be so proud of.

It's not that we were on the wrong side of history. And it's not that we weren't ahead of a lot of other people. It's that we had the call, delivered as usual by individual Friends, and we resisted it.

Plain Dress

In researching this post I am indebted to the PhD thesis The Relinquishment of Plain dress: British Quaker women's abandonment of Plain Quaker attire, 1860–1914 by Hannah Rumball of the University of Brighton (2016).

A painting apparently of Gracechurch Street Meeting in London
(no longer extant), circa 1770. Artist anonymous.

One of the most distinctive things about Quakers, for a significant chunk of our history, was our plain dress. Like several other sorts of nonconformists, this gravitated towards a fairly consistent set of clothing, a distinctive grey cloth. This might be seen as typified by the Quaker Oats logo, in its various incarnations over the years, though it has been suggested that whoever was behind the branding of Quaker Oats (not, by the way, an actual Quaker company – they were just trading on the reputation of Quakers) got us mixed up with Mennonites.

The traditional Quaker dress in England was very practical. Indeed, the goals of Friends' choice of clothing were to be practical and little else. It was to be humble, not concerned with fashion, and eschewing fripperies and ostentation. This was a matter of virtue in itself, and of demonstrating virtue in the world, as Fox is said to have set out on many occasions, including this epistle (numbered 250 in at least some collections):

On Titles

One of the little details of Quaker practice that is not completely unheard of outside of Quaker circles – though that does not mean it is well-known – is our rejection of titles. That is to say, we traditionally do not use such things as “Mr”, “Mrs”, “Miss” etc., preferring to simply use names.

There are several reasons behind this. One is our view of equality; especially in the society in which the Quaker movement developed, a huge range of titles existed and reinforced the expected structure of society, of social interactions, and of status. Nobility was still considered important by many, and the titles of right or of courtesy that went with them were often insisted on. Titles and styles related to offices under the crown, such as “judge” or “doctor” (usually for those who have achieved a certain degree of study – academic doctors or doctors of divinity – rather than physicians) were important, and people of standing who could claim neither noble nor official title often sought a knighthood. Those entitled to the style of “esquire”, not a general formal term as it is now in the UK, nor a term conventionally restricted to certain professions as it is now in the US, would often insist upon its use. As such, the rejection of titles stands for a rejection of the formal and conventional delineations of standing and status, as well as of the forms that derive from them (such as the giving of hat-honour, one of the most noted rejections of convention among early Friends).

For International Women's Day

It's International Women's Day, so let's talk about women.

Let's talk about the fact that mainstream history has a tendency to treat women's contributions in one of two ways. Generally speaking, it's either minimised, or mythologised.

Boudica led a revolt of several native tribes against the Romans in Britain. It was a big thing in its day, and Camulodunum (among others) certainly noticed, but in the grand scheme of things it was another provincial rebellion that was put down by the Roman Empire. The long-term strategy against such events was romanisation, which continued and succeeded across southern Britannia, and to variable extents as you went north.

The Death of Fox

From the title of this post, you might have supposed that it was going to be a sort of tailpiece biography, covering the time shortly before and after the actual death of George Fox. Another possible interpretation would be that I was, out of all character, joining in with the sporadic habit of some Quakers online, bemoaning how unlike Fox most Quakers are today.

In either case, I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed. Rather, it is a reference to The Death of the Author, an essay by the French literary critic and author Roland Barthes (it's original French title itself being a play on the title of Le Mort d'Arthur, but that's too tangential a path for me to dive down here), and of the literary theory concepts that derive from it.

The essential principle of the essay, and the related (but separately posited) theory of the “intentional fallacy”, is that the author is not the authority when it comes to the meaning of a piece of work. Once an author has created a work, they might tell you what their intent was, you might infer it from other sources, but intent is not the determining factor of meaning. I don't say that this theory is universally accepted in the study of literature; I also probably don't understand it perfectly, not having studied literary theory or analysis, so please don't rely on my explanation (or lecture me too harshly if you know it better – I'm glad to learn more, but please keep it friendly).

Dogmatic Non-Dogmatism and Rituals of Non-Ritualism

Why the flowers?

Quakers, at least of the liberal variety, are generally considered to have no dogma; Quakers of all stripes reject creeds, even if they have been known to organisationally endorse documents that look a lot like them. Unprogrammed Quakers eschew ritual.

But do we really? Are there not ways in which our non-dogmatism becomes dogmatic, and our non-rituals become ritualistic? In this post I will be exploring these questions, what I have learned from Friends in many places, what I have experienced myself – and what I think we should take from that.

A Quaker Christmas

As I described in my previous post regarding Halloween, Quakers have a traditional testimony concerning times and seasons, that different days and different times of the year not have liturgical significance. However, as I also set out in that post, we can see value and benefit of festivals without ascribing them inherent religious significance.

In this post, I shall be applying the same approach to Christmas, and all of the things that go with it, both liturgically and culturally – advent, epiphany, even the secular new year celebration.

What Happened to Quaker Missionary Zeal?

How do we, how should we, share our gift of Light?

In the early years of the Society of Friends, there was a strong focus on evangelism, of proselytising with a missionary zeal. While this is still found in parts of the pastoral and evangelical branches of the world family of Friends, over here in the liberal branch it has died away, pretty much completely. What happened, and should we be concerned? I shall attempt to answer this, for myself at least, with something of a whistle-stop tour of some relevant Quaker history. This will, by necessity, be somewhat light on detail, and will generally avoid making caveats around the different interpretations and versions of events that different factions hold to. This should not be taken as my version of events, or my preferred interpretation, just what I have managed as a fairly quick summary, covering the key points without attempting to make sure every little detail is included. Please do not use this as a source in your own learning about Quaker history – but the names and summaries may work as a jumping off point for your own reading.

Like many liberal Quakers, the lack of proselytisation is associated in my mind with some of the characteristics of liberal Quakerism that I most value: uncertainty about traditional religious “big questions”, universalism, theological liberalism. The idea that there is no “one true way”, that we can all find the spiritual path that is suited to us, and that this might be found in any number of different faiths. Of course, these are also factors that would seem pretty strange to many Friends in the earliest days of the Society; they were absolutely and definitely Christian, even if that Christianity was fairly orthodox. Universalist sentiments arose not too long after, from Friends such as William Penn and Mary Fisher, but they weren't about integrating different theological backgrounds into the community of Friends; rather, they were about respecting and valuing other faiths, rather than dismissing them – but they remained entirely separate and other, if not entirely “other”.