Membership, Convincement & Belonging

There are many ways of belonging to the Quaker family. There are those who are part of our community without identifying with our faith, fellow-travellers who participate in some, even all of our activities but do not consider themselves Quakers. There are those of fervent religious belief in the spirit of the early Friends. There are those who call themselves Quakers but deny the religious nature of the experience, or who recognise it as religious but are still patiently waiting for a direct experience of the Divine that they recognise. There is, of course, the division between member and attender, and other terms we throw around – newcomer and enquirer being quite popular ones.

We don't seem to have a coherent view, however, of these different dimensions of belonging, of being part of the Quaker community, of being a Quaker. In this post, I will be exploring some elements of this “belonging space”, to borrow mathematical terminology.

The "Transmundane"

A term I often use when discussing spiritual life is “transmundane”, or “the transmundane”. This isn't a word in common currency, so even looking up its definition in a dictionary doesn't necessarily reflect how it is used – especially by me. So I thought it was perhaps time for me to attempt an explanation.

Online dictionaries tend to give a definition along the lines of “beyond the physical world”, or “existing beyond the world”. This is a simple etymological explanation, as one of the meanings of “mundane” – a technical one, rather than the vernacular usage – is “of relation to this physical world, as opposed to a heavenly or spiritual one”. “Trans-” as a prefix, of course, means “beyond”. As an aside, it is very much a development of this meaning, via some specific usages, that leads to the usage in words such as “transgender”, via a sense meaning “across”, but the root meaning is “beyond”. This does not mean that “transgender” means “beyond gender”, and I generally frown on arguments from etymology when determining the meaning of words. Linguistically, I'm very much a descriptivist.

What the Heck is Non-Theism Anyway?

This seems to be a question that is appropriate, given thought and worry within our Yearly Meeting (that is, Britain Yearly Meeting) at this time. I don't doubt there are other unprogrammed Yearly Meetings with similar concerns. There's a lot of discussion and worry about non-theism, and perhaps as a consequence, much discomfort among some non-theist Friends that we are no longer feeling as welcomed and a part of our Religious Society as we once felt. For there can be no doubt that we've been around for quite a while, but there is an almost sudden increase in worry about us. Whether this is because of increased visibility, or because of concerns being aired by visible or weighty voices among us, I couldn't say. At least, without some in-depth study, and I doubt anyone is going to fund me to do that.