Maxim 11

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.

The Sanctity of Discernment?

A bench in the Meeting House at Scattergood Friends School,
Iowa. Photo by David Morris, used under CC-BY 2.0 license.

Discernment, the process of making decisions or otherwise being guided by the Spirit (usually through the Quaker Business Method), is extremely important to Quakers. It is probably the most significant practical application of faith among liberal Friends – our faith that we will be guided, our faith that we have faithfully discerned that guidance. In both a practical and emotional sense, it is one of the most fundamental cornerstones of our faith tradition.

It is also, though we may hate to admit it, a source of difficulty. For if a decision or statement, a determination or a course of action, is based on divine guidance, who can gainsay it?

Yet is something, once discerned, settled for all time? Plainly not, or the history of our Religious Society could not be as it is. And indeed, two Meetings might be approaching the same question at the same time, be in very similar traditions, even be part of the same Yearly Meeting – or even some closer association, such as Local Meetings in the same Area Meeting, in the organisational structure of Britain Yearly Meeting, or Monthly Meetings in the same Quarter as some other Yearly Meetings arrange things. They might be close neighbours in close accord on many things, both faithfully follow our business method regarding the same question, and reach different conclusions. How can this not call into question our faith – our trust in this process, in the guidance of the Spirit – indeed, call it into question at its very foundations?

Why Are We Here?

It's a question we often ask. Sometimes it's because we managed to go into Boots or Marks & Spencer during the lunchtime rush when there's no good reason we had to be there then. Sometimes it's when we're at a family gathering and realise that we're doing no good to ourselves or anyone else. That's not what I'm writing about now, though. I'm talking about it as an existential question.

Some people have put forth answers they believe to be spiritually inspired. The difficulty there is that these people have produced so many different answers. How to know which is right? In a sense, it is part of the overall question of religious “truth”, and I approach it in a similar way to that in which I approach general universalism. The inspiration is not there to give us the correct answer, but to give us the answer that will help us, at the time it is inspired.

Aphorism 10

What the Light Isn't

When we talk about our different conceptions of the Divine, we tend to speak in positive terms. That is to say, we talk about what we can say the Divine, Light, God or whatever you want to call it is, what characteristics it has. This is understandable. This is how we usually think about things in life, and if we try to list everything any given thing isn't it tends to take a lot more time than describing what it is.

However, in the case of the Light, perhaps we should talk about that more. That's why I'm going to try doing so – talking about what I think the Spirit is not, as I conceive it and in my experience. This is actually a tool, a theological approach, that is as old as organised Christianity. Apophatic theology, or theology of denial, also known by the Latin expression via negativa (“negative way”, perhaps better thought of as “route of negative expression”, was applied by some of the Church Fathers based on an intellectual tradition that long predates Christianity. It reached its non-Christian philosophical peak among Pagan Neo-Platonism, a school that flourished for over a century in Roman (and later Byzantine) Greece – until Justinian cracked down on Pagan thought as well as Pagan religion.

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):

Maxim 10

Quaker Worship and Meditation

Those who are familiar with meditation, often from the popularisation of Buddhist meditation methods, but not with Quaker worship practices, often get the idea that they are very similar. I have read accounts of Quakers who first came to a Quaker meeting because they had been enjoying Buddhist meditation, but moved to an area with no sangha or meditation group, and were advised that what Quakers did was like meditation. There are, obviously, some superficial similarities – a whole bunch of people sitting in silence being the obvious one – and even some comparability of the inward practice, but there are fundamental differences that clearly separate the two experiences and practices. In this post, I'll be exploring the points of similarity and difference, and exploring the virtue of Friends maintaining both practices.

On Days, Months and Names

Early Friends quickly shed the common names for days of the week and months of the year, instead referring to them by number. Sunday was “first day”, Tuesday “third day”, and so on. Likewise, July became “seventh month”, November “eleventh month”… you get the idea.

The usual explanation given for this is that the names themselves were of pagan – that is, pre-Christian – origin, giving regard to, variously, Germanic deities (like Woden and Thor), heavenly bodies (like the Sun and Moon), Roman deities (like Janus and Mars), and deified Roman “emperors” (Julius for Julius Caesar, not technically an emperor, and Augustus for his heir, generally recognised as the first emperor). I suspect the last four months, as named in English, would meet with early Friends' approval – except they were misnamed, and naming them in English is much more in line with plain speaking. It would be interesting do delve into early Quaker sources and try to get to the bottom of the practice, but for now we will accept the usual explanation as enough to be getting on with.

Aphorism 9

Three Marriages

Marriage is an important idea to many people. Whether as a matter of recognition of commitment, and the importance of equal access to legal recognition, or as a vital spiritual experience, it is important. Even for those who reject the concept, it is important in that rejection. One must acknowledge that there are some who consider it an utterly irrelevant idea, but that does not alter the fact it is important to others.

What is marriage, though? It has so many interconnected ideas, so much history – indeed, so much divergent history – and so much individual interpretation, that it is hard to form a coherent and consistent idea of marriage.

It has struck me, however, that there are three basic elements or dimensions to marriage. In fact, while these three do relate to one another and impact one another, they may also each stand entirely on their own. As such, we might consider them independent sorts of marriage, though in many marriages all three will be present.

A Quaker Yule

Even thirty years ago, the word Yule would not have been completely foreign to English-speaking ears. After all, we've used the word Yuletide to refer to the Christmas period for some time. Indeed, the cognate jul exists as a modern word in the Scandinavian languages to refer to the Christian holiday of Christmas.

These days it's not unusual for people to be aware of the pre-Christian roots of the word, referring to a midwinter festival or holiday in the Germanic world. The exact practices among Germanic pre-Christians varied; while their languages and cultures, and indeed religion, shared common roots and themes, there was considerable cultural variation. We know, or at least think we know, of the dísablót and álfablót of the Norse, the public and private sacrifices that took place (as best we can tell, in some periods and some places) around the shortest day of the year, the winter solstice. The first honoured, perhaps placated, the dísir, a range of female spirits and gods, and the Valkyries; the latter the elves, mythic and folkloric figures attributed a great range of impacts of daily life. As the names suggest, each of these was a blót, an act of ritual worship generally involving a sacrifice, generally of an animal (though the similarity of “blót” and “blood” is generally understood to be coincidental). Some sources and evidence indicate that there was also human sacrifice, though evidence that is not questionable generally points to this being exceptional, and generally associated with war.

So far, so much interesting (if hideously simplified for brevity) history. What does it have to do with the world (or society) today, and especially what does it have to do with Quakers? We are not, after all, Germanic pre-Christians.