Equality Is More Than Equal Treatment

Equality is one of the most consistent values across the world family of Friends, and has a long and proud history as a Quaker value. Early Friend recognised the essential spiritual equality of men and women, and of rich and poor. Of course, there were hiccups on the way; Quakers were slower than we like to admit to recognise the evil of slavery, and meetings for church affairs (aka business meetings) were long segregated by gender. Still, the essential idea of equality, while it might not always have been as strongly held as it is today, is an important Quaker tradition, and is recognised as a core Quaker testimony by all groups of Friends that make lists of such (at least as far as I am aware).

What do we mean by equality? Equality before God was certainly always an important idea for Quakers, with no ordained clergy. There were those known as ministers, but this was a description of what they did more than who they were. They travelled in the ministry, held public meetings aiming to convince those outside of the Quaker fold, and developed reputations for inspired and powerful ministry in worship. For this, they were known as ministers, but this was essentially a recognition of certain gifts and activities, rather than giving them any authority. The source of authority remained the Spirit itself, and that dwelt equally in all.

Why I Write a Quaker Blog

It's an interesting time to be a Quaker in Britain – and many other Yearly Meetings are having their own interesting times, albeit over different issues. Here in the UK people seem to worry about theological diversity, about falling numbers, about how we attract and nurture newcomers, about whether we are really giving all the spiritual nourishment we can. Among some pastoral Meetings across the Atlantic, there are also divisions on theology, and on how gender and sexual minorities are treated – welcomed, affirmed, or scorned. Of course, the latter point has a connection with the former, but which is at the forefront varies somewhat.

Here in Britain Yearly Meeting, we are faced with a call to revise our Book of Discipline, which some fear will bring painful differences to a head. We have a declining, ageing membership – where anecdotal reports suggest that many of our newly convinced Friends join us, as members or attenders, in middle age or later. We have quiet, but increasingly vocal concerns being expressed about the quality of our discipline in Quaker processes.

In this context, then, I will answer the question – why do I blog?

Spiritual "Zones of Proximal Development"

We have all of the ingredients we need for our
individual and collective development - we just
have to recognise them and work out how to
put them together.

Following some recent online discussions, I feel like it's worth spending another post exploring some learning theory, how it relates to Quaker practice – and what we can take from it to improve that practice. Previously, I wrote about communities of practice, and now I'll be looking at the idea of zones of proximal development.

ZPDs, as they are more concisely known, as a way of talking about what it is readily possible for a given learner to learn. There is what they already know, what they can already do, and there are those things that would be a struggle to attempt, and in between is the ZPD, the things that they can reasonably learn, or the things that they could do with help and guidance. This is a much simpler idea than communities of practice – in these last couple of sentences, the fundamentals of it are covered. Of course, there's more to it than that, but that's the basics all done. Given, in many spiritual situations, liberal Quakers' aversion to “teaching”, it might seem hard to apply this, but I think it has a particular application to spiritual development that doesn't require any sense of the didactic. It is this interpretation and application that I intend to explore in this post.