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.

First Conscious Contact with the Divine

My first conscious contact with the divine came a few years before I found Quakers.

My life until then, in the religious sense, had been one of seeking, though I would not have known to call it such. I found much that resonated with my condition and my experience in many faiths, and sought out opportunities to learn more of further traditions. At the same time, each generally had things that didn't ring true to me.

As a student, my house was visited by missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, commonly referred to as Mormons – a convention I shall follow here, for brevity if nothing else. I wasn't actually in at the time, but a housemate and a friend were, and had arranged for a return visit to start hearing what they had to say; they did this not because they had any idea that they might be converted, being settled in their own beliefs, but because they thought it might be interesting. And so I heard about it, and arranged to be there when the missionaries came back.

Update: Normal Service to Resume Shortly

It's been a bit quiet here.

This was not intentional, nor is it reflective of my attitude to the future of this blog. Various personal matters, and my preparation for a Woodbrooke course I'll be speaking at, The Impact of Diversity of Belief on Quaker Practice, at which I'll be focusing on non-theism and business method, have taken time that I might otherwise have used to prepare more material for you, here.

While the rest of my life goes on, the paucity of time that has led to the dry spell on this blog should be coming to an end, and normal service will resume shortly. This includes some pieces of deliberate writing partially coming from my preparation for the course mentioned above, and some written ministry that's brewing and maturing.

So stay tuned!

The Source of Illumination

I illuminated Christ all the way to the cross;
I illuminated Siddhartha Gautama, under the Bodhi Tree;
I illuminated Mohammed, in the Cave of Hira;
I illuminated the Vedas, I illuminated the Tanakh;
Will you allow me to illuminate you?

Written August 2017

Again, and Again, and Again

Do you come to me asking for rules?

You will not receive them.

Simple algorithms, “if this, then that”,

Are not the fruit of the spirit.

Come to me with questions that are timely,

When you need an answer,

When the choice is before you.

Come to me for inspiration,

For principles,

For paths and pathfinders.

Do not come to me for maps.

 

For the land you would navigate cannot be mapped, being ever-changing.

The wisdom you would understand cannot be stated, being complex beyond your ken.

The rules that determine right action cannot be written, though you covered every page in every book in all the world.

You cannot take from me and then never need me again; if you would know how I would have you act, you must ask again, and again, and again.

Written August 2017

The Wise Child

There was once a village. The village sat on a road, and there was much traffic through the village as people travelled along that road. This brought wealth, as travellers stayed at the inn, and sometimes a traveller would decide to stay in the village longer, setting up a home and establishing a livelihood. Most of the villagers came from families who had lived in the village for generations, or who had married in from nearby villages.

In one of these families, there was a child. The family, and the child, were walking through the village one summer's day, greeting other families as they passed them in the street or walked past their houses. They passed the house of the local minister, and exchanged pleasantries as they were working on their garden. They passed the cottage of the teacher in the village school as they were hanging laundry, and complimented them on their work. They passed an elderly couple who were taking a similar walk, and respectfully exchanged greeting. They stopped at a village shop, and bought bread and cheese and fruit for lunch, and stone bottles of various drinks, and packed them in a basket they had brought, with a brightly coloured cloth they used for picnics; and the parents bought their child a wooden toy, and they exchanged news and gossip with the shopkeeper.

Then they passed a dyer's house, with great tubs in the yard, and the family stirring the cloth to be dyed, and they said nothing. The child asked, “why do we not greet them, as we go about our business and they go about theirs, and compliment them on the vivid colours and patterns they make on cloth?” The father replied, “that family came here from far away, and they are not like us; they do not worship as we do, and we cannot trust them.”

The child thought for a moment, and took out the cloth from the picnic basket. “Did they not dye this cloth, that we bought and use on days such as these? Do they not drink the same water we do, and also use it in their work?” The parents could not think how to respond, so the child took the cloth and turned to the dyer's family, held it up and said, “see this cloth you dyed; we will be using it today when we have our lunch, and it is wonderful to be able to picnic on such bright, happy cloth. I am glad that we could get such pretty cloth.” The dyer's family smiled, and thanked the child for their praise.

On Sin and the Liberal Quaker

Sin isn't something you hear liberal Quakers talking about very much. I suppose that is largely our modern tendency towards non-judgementalism, as well as the increasing tendency to avoid religious language. As most people think of it, talking about “sin” is talking about things that you are religiously forbidden to do, and we don't tend to do that any more.

However, there have been several conceptions of sin, even just among Christian scholarship. The various major branches of the Christian church have their own formal, theoretical conceptions, and practices stemming from these, while theologians have expounded their own views at different points in history.

Thomas Aquinas held sin to be contrary to virtue; referencing Augustine of Hippo, his Summa Theologiae describes it as being “word, deed or desire contrary to the eternal law”, seeing this as superior to competing definitions of it as contrary to reason, or as an offence against God. I must admit, with limited background in Christian theology, I find many of distinctions made in this analysis baffling, but an important distinguishing point seems to be that sins are defined and differentiated by the “end and object”, or motive, for the sin. Adultery is differentiated from murder not by the difference in the acts, but in the difference in why they are committed, in what the sinner seeks to get, obtain or induce by committing the sin. However, it does not require that the sinner conceives their act as sinful, and that sin may come from a misplaced desire to do good. Really, the whole text is a work of philosophical logic applied to theology, as much theological writing is, and I wonder if this might be part of the source of the objection to rational approaches to faith among Quakers, now and historically. It is certainly cold to me, and seems vastly inferior to drawing our understanding of the Divine, and of right action, from lived experience. Reason has its place, but cannot supplant that experience. However, I digress…

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.

Testing Ministry

In a Quaker meeting, be it simple worship or worship for business, or any other sort of focussed worship, the contributions we make are not simply things we wish to say, or our spontaneous or planned thoughts on a matter. We are led to speak, or as some would put it compelled to speak, by the divine. I would like to share some thoughts on this process.

For now, I'll work on the uncomplicated case of a plain, ordinary Meeting for Worship. We gather in the silence, each of us waiting, ideally attentively, for the urgings of the Spirit to prompt us. It may occur to us that there is something we could say; in the most extreme case, we may find ourselves on our feet and speaking before we are quite sure what's going on, but that is quite rare in my experience. More often, an idea, maybe some specific words, start to come together in our minds. As you try to maintain stillness and inward silence, this may become clearer, more settled, and you know at least what you will start with should you stand to share it. However, part of this process is what we call “testing” the possible ministry. We are often reminded, especially in business sessions, of the need to test ministry before speaking. However, we don't often discuss what it means in any detail.

At the simplest level, as I've often heard said, we test it under the question “is this something for the meeting, or is it just something for me?” Less often, I've also heard that a question to test with is “is this from the Spirit, or from my own thoughts?”. Both valid questions, and certainly not entirely interdependent. You may feel a leading in worship that is leading for you, not a message for the whole meeting, but is still a genuine leading of the Spirit. You may also have a wonderful idea that is worth sharing with Friends, but is not actually Spirit-led; you want to save that for conversations outside of Meeting for Worship. However, what the question of testing ministry ultimately comes down to is “should I share this?”

On Loss of Privilege

Some of the angriest and most aggressive prejudice we see today comes from those who believe that their own group – men, white people, non-disabled people, the economically well-off, straight people, cisgender people, and so on – are under threat, and are now being disadvantaged in the name of political correctness. They see civil rights as an attack on white people, feminism as an attack on men, pride as an attack on those who are cishet. Generally speaking, they are wrong.

It is helpful to understand where they are coming from, though. Not to excuse it or justify it, but simply to understand it. Understanding is the starting point for all constructive action in such cases.

It is easy for a person who is not oppressed in a certain way not to realise what it is like to be oppressed, to assume that their experience is the default, baseline, way everyone experiences things. When that experience then changes for the worse, when they lose advantages, or others are given them, it seems unfair, it seems that they are being attacked.

Do not focus your rejection of prejudice on these people, though do what you can to help them understand, or at least counteract their impact – and always reject their prejudice. The real villains in this scenario are those who fan the resentment of those experiencing a loss of privilege, usually for their own personal gain or political ends.

Written August 2017

Don't Brush Your Beliefs Under The Carpet

One of the things that first attracted me about the Quaker approach to faith, at least as practised in Britain, was the lack of dogmatism around belief. That people could have radically different conceptions of what it is that we seek contact with in Meeting for Worship, or what the nature of that contact is. That there were Buddhist Quakers, Jewish Quakers, Muslim Quakers, Hindu Quakers, Pagan Quakers, all as well as the “default”, original, traditional Christian Quakers. To me that spoke of a tremendous humility on the part of the community as a whole, as well as a wonderful openness. It also told me there was an incredibly rich range of experience and insight to draw on, that we could share our different experiences of the divine and all learn, be challenged and stimulated into a broader outlook and improve our consciousness of the divine.

As I became more involved, started identifying as a Quaker, and throwing myself into things with the enthusiasm of a convert, my impression of humility and openness was largely borne out – not perfectly or universally, but it was certainly the trend. Of course, I learned that not all Quakers in the world were like Quakers here in Britain; not even most of them, in fact. Britain Yearly Meeting is a major liberal YM, but liberal Quakerism isn't the only Quaker tradition. Detail about the different traditions is a subject for another post, but suffice to say that the degree of openness about theology is a particular characteristic of liberal Quakers, and while it may be found in other traditions, here and there, it is not a basic characteristic of any of them.

Fountains and Plumbing

It will be familiar to most Friends that spoken ministry flows forth from some like fountains, others in occasional bursts, and still others never find themselves speaking in worship.

But a fountain does not function alone. The water that is the Spirit is brought to the fountain by pipes, perhaps helped along by pumps, and just in this manner the whole worshipping community helps along the Spirit, whoever happens to be the mouthpiece.

Yet still, ours is a transformative faith, and our pumps and pipes should not assume that is always to be their role, vital as it is. If we allow it, the Spirit may transform a pipe, even the deepest buried, into a wondrous fountain, that we may all appreciate the beauty and bounty of it – be it for a day, or for years to come.

Written May 2017

What is your Penn's Sword?

I have often heard the story of Penn's sword held up as an example, however apocryphal it might be, of the transformative power of the Spirit in our lives, if we are open to it.

To me, it is much more than that. It raises to each of us a question – what is there, in each of our lives, that we are wearing as long as we can. Perhaps it is profligacy – foreign travel or imported fresh food that harm the environment, vain fripperies to enhance our appearance, or gadgets owned for their own sake, rather than their utility. Perhaps it is hate, wishing harm to others however justified it may seem, or jealousy, wishing others to lose things because we cannot share in them. Perhaps it is pride or ambition, the desire to be lauded or thought indispensable.

What change may the spirit work in each of us, if we let it?

Written May 2017