Friends and Doctrines
Marshall Massey
in Mechanics of Christianity, Mechanics of Quakerism, Quaker Sociology
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54 Comments
“Quakers don’t have creeds.”
I don’t recall hearing this said more than once or twice in the Friends meetings I’ve physically attended over the course of the past thirty-five years. But I’ve encountered it often on line, in Usenet conversations and on Quaker blogs.
I’ve encountered some Net-active Friends who repeat it over and over whenever anyone (not necessarily me) writes about the beliefs we Friends have historically held in common, the beliefs that have made Quakerism what it is today. It’s obviously important to them.
Some Friends seem to have misconstrued what creeds are, concluding that since we don’t have creeds, we also don’t have doctrines, catechisms, dogmas or confessions of faith.
Yes, we don’t have creeds. But no, we do have doctrines, dogmas, and confessions of faith. We once even had a catechism.
Permit me to explain —
The Value of Names
The five terms we need to be concerned with here — creeds, doctrines, catechisms, dogmas, and confessions of faith — are terms that have been enormously important in the evolution of Christian thinking, and also in the evolution of Western thinking generally, even outside the formal limits of Christianity.
They’ve been important because they describe ways of thinking, and of organizing ourselves, that humans do without even being conscious of it. By naming these ways of thinking and ways of behaving, calling them “doctrinal” and “dogmatic” and “credal”, we give ourselves a way of bringing them fully into consciousness, and talking deliberately about what it is we do. This helps us think about ways in which what we are doing could be improved.
Actually, I think this is rather similar to the way that naming a problem, and bringing it to full consciousness, can help two people mend a troubled relationship: “You know, dear, I’ve noticed that when we don’t agree about something, instead of talking it through, we both avoid the matter altogether, so that the problem keeps festering. Have you noticed this, too?”
In just this way, Christian groups, and to a lesser extent secular groups, have found it helpful to be able to say things like, “You know, I think X has become something of a dogma amongst us, and it shouldn’t be,” or “You know, I think we really need a clear doctrine about such-and-such.”
Thus the value of learning about doctrines, catechisms, dogmas, confessions of faith, and creeds, has to do with the ways in which thinking and talking about such things can help our communities endure in bad times, flourish in good ones, and pass on the best of what they have to new generations.
It also has to do with the ways in thinking and talking about such things can help us simply to understand ourselves.
Who are we, Friends? What are we doing? And what are we accomplishing, if anything? Bringing our doctrines, dogmas, etc., to consciousness, helps us get a grip on some answers.
As time permits, I hope I will have an opportunity to talk with you, my readers, about catechisms, dogmas, confessions of faith and creeds. But in this essay I think we need to begin at the beginning. I invite you to join me in looking at Friends from the perspective of the ways we have shaped our doctrines — and our doctrines, in turn, have shaped us.
What Doctrines Are
The word “doctrine” simply means “teaching”, or “a body of teachings”. A faith community’s doctrines are simply those things its members teach one another, and their children, their newcomers — and themselves! — by way of keeping their faith community alive.
We speak of these things as “doctrines” if we wish to break them out item-by-item, and as “doctrine” if we wish to emphasize the fact that the items link together as an integrated whole.
The purpose of doctrine, or doctrines, is two-fold: to convey the ideas that define and shape the community’s religion, and to nourish religious life and worship.
That first purpose, conveying ideas, is pretty intellectual. When it’s done right, it’s enormously helpful in clarifying areas where seekers are having difficulties.
But the second purpose — nourishing — can also give rise to doctrines that are poetic, suggestive, allusive, creative, intellectually hard to pin down, and likely to crop up in daily life at the oddest moments. Parables, for example, serve doctrinal purposes: Christ himself used them that way. When done right, they bring doctrines to life in beautiful ways.
Thus, for example, the doctrine of willing self-sacrifice can be taught intellectually, but it is also taught poetically and allusively, by stories such as that of Abraham and Isaac, that of Francis of Assisi renouncing his birthright, and that of the Quaker martyrs in Boston.
Such stories, in some contexts, can be a good deal easier to listen to, talk about, struggle with, and grow from. And they have this way of popping up in one’s thoughts — oh, as for example, when one is struggling with one’s teen-age son and his confession of misbehavior, and suddenly, as one is struggling with the temptation to bully the poor kid into submission to what is right, one thinks of Abraham and Isaac, and how Abraham was all ready to sacrifice Isaac to the God of righteousness, and the God of righteousness Himself said, No, don’t do it, and one suddenly realizes that bullying is not what it’s about —
Doctrines don’t have to be rigid, set in stone. Some faith communities, like the Roman Catholic Church and the Southern Baptist Convention, devote a great deal of energy to nailing down details of their doctrine in written form. But other faith communities are happy to leave things relatively fluid.
In the more traditional parts of the unprogrammed Quaker world, there are doctrines that have never been formally recorded, but that elders take pains to transmit orally and by example. This makes for considerable fluidity, since doctrines that lose their value can be quietly forgotten, and new doctrines evolve as needed without a lot of fuss. But this approach maintains fluidity without depriving the community of any of the real richness of its tradition. For this reason, it’s a very healthy set-up.
On the other hand, while doctrines don’t have to be rigid, they do need to exist. Doctrine plays an essential part in helping a seeker understand and evaluate the reasons for being part of a particular community — as, in liberal Quakerism, the doctrine that every person has some measure of the Light, or in evangelical Quakerism, the doctrine that the Holy Spirit that descended at the Pentecost is still here with us today.
Moreover, communities cannot function as communities without doctrines to guide them! It’s doctrine that teaches a community what to do when it gathers together. It’s doctrine that tells it how to make decisions, how to settle disputes, and how to keep the peace. It’s doctrine that tells it which priorities outrank which other priorities — as, in most Quaker communities, the priority of love outranks the priority of being correct. It’s doctrine that tells it what things are out-and-out wrong — for example, making a pass at your neighbor’s spouse.
We humans know much of this intuitively, so that when we come into a community where such doctrines are not clear, we clutch at whatever guidelines we can find — books of Faith and Practice, Quakerism 101 packets, whatever will serve.
But then there are those — particularly in places where Quaker doctrines are not clear, such as relatively young meetings and meetings with a high proportion of transient members — who, confusing creeds with doctrines, say that we Quakers don’t have doctrines. This is a mistake. It’s not just that (as we’ve already seen) no community can get along without doctrines, not even Friends. It’s also that Friends have always been quite forthright about the fact that they do have doctrines.
Volumes IV, V, and VI of George Fox’s collected Works are entitled Doctrinal Books. The subtitle of Robert Barclay’s Apology for the True Christian Divinity describes it as “Being a Full Explanation and Vindication of their Principles and Doctrines”.
The writings of prominent Friends early and modern are shot through with references to doctrines both Christian and Quaker, as in this lovely example from George Fox’s letter “To the King of France”:
You should have overcome evil with good … you should love enemies, let them be heretics, or whatsoever you call them, this is the doctrine of Christ; you should receive strangers, you should not imprison them….
Or this pointed one, from liberal Friend Howard Brinton’s 1952 masterwork, Friends for 300 years:
The Quaker doctrine of equality does not mean equality of ability, economic resources or social status. It means equality of respect and the resulting absence of all words and behavior based on class, racial or social distinctions.
Brinton, as it happens, wrote essays titled “Quaker Doctrine of the Holy Spirit” and “The Quaker Doctrine of Inward Peace”.
Basic Christian Doctrine
But so far I’ve spoken of doctrine only from the outside — describing how its shape and activity fit into a larger picture. I suspect I should also say something about its inside — what it contains.
Let me begin, then, by speaking of what “doctrine” has historically contained for Christians.
Let’s bear in mind that Christianity is not fundamentally a tribal religion, but a revealed one. In other words, it’s not a religion that a community worked out together, like classical Greek paganism or modern Hinduism. It’s certainly been shaped by the community that has kept it alive, but at bottom it’s quite specifically the revelation imparted by a single individual, Jesus Christ.
And so its basic doctrine is not about how a community can function as a community. Its basic doctrine is about the revelation imparted by Christ; the doctrine describes what that revelation was and what it means.
Thus the basic doctrine of Christianity is a package of information about Christ’s life, teaching, death, resurrection, and rôle as Savior — the things which, when you get down to it, are what set Christianity apart from other religions and from the world. It’s not much more than a simple proclamation of this news — in Greek, the word for such a proclamation is kerygma, and the basic doctrine of Christianity is often referred to as the kerygma. In English, of course, we call it the “gospel”, or “the message of the gospel”. But I’ll stick to kerygma here, because it might help us avoid some of the popular meanings of “gospel” that don’t really fit what I’m trying to say.
This kerygma, then, is given heavy emphasis in Christianity, not just because it’s what sets Christianity apart, but also because it’s hard to believe, and easily distorted. (As Paul observed, it’s “foolishness to the Greeks”.) The history of Christianity can be seen as a continuing struggle to understand, preserve and transmit the foolish story of Christ’s life, teaching, death and resurrection, in the face of all the pressures of sweet reasonability, misunderstanding, forgetfulness, mythologizing, acculturation, and just plain entropy.
O reader, you may not believe the Church has succeeded in this struggle. You may believe that the picture the Church presents is not a true picture of what happened. If that’s how you see it, that’s okay. I have some suspicions trending that way myself, particularly when I’m in one of my sourer moods.
But it’s not my purpose here to affirm or deny the question of whether the Church has succeeded or not. What I’m saying is simply that this has been what the Church has understood its task to be.
Doctrine for the Needs of Christian Community
Earlier in this essay I pointed out that communities need particular sorts of doctrines in order to function as communities.
There’s plenty of room in Christianity for secondary doctrines — doctrines that go beyond the basic kerygma — to serve such purposes. There’s a general understanding, though, that the doctrines that perform this task for the Christian community (the Church) must be doctrines that follow naturally from the words and deeds of Christ and the apostles.
Christ, of course, stressed love, reconciliation and servanthood very heavily in his teaching — pure, common-sense basics for any community anywhere.
The apostles, especially Paul, did a good job of working out most of the other primary doctrines that a Christian community needs, such as the guidance of conscience and the indispensability of righteousness. All these doctrines have official doctrinal status in one form or another.
In addition, the early Church evolved activities of baptism, worship, preaching, hospitality to traveling ministers, the common meal, systematic charity to the sick and weak and poor, and a coördinating leadership, that served as means of drawing the community together. And so there also arose doctrines encouraging each of these things, although some of them (like the common meal) have since evolved away from their original forms almost beyond recognition.
Different parts of the Church today have developed the further implications of Christ’s teachings in markedly different directions. But that’s fine. It’s generally understood that there is room for such variation in the Christian world.
The Basic Doctrine of Early Quakerism
Turning then from the Christian world at large to the Quaker world in small, the first thing we need to recognize is that, when Quakerism broke off from the larger Christian world and became a separate sect, it did so because its idea of the kerygma to be proclaimed had come to differ, quite markedly, from the idea held by the Church as a whole.
The Church as a whole made the centerpiece of its kerygma, the message of the historical Christ. The Quaker movement arose in a place where everyone had already heard that message, so that it was no longer news. But the Quaker movement proclaimed a message of the living Holy Spirit and of Christ livingly present in our midst in this present hour. This — at least in that time and place — was something very new, and very much needed. And this became Quakerism’s own central kerygma and doctrine.
Nothing, in my personal opinion, in all of Quakerism today, is more widely misunderstood by Friends themselves, than this central kerygma and doctrine of early Friends.
Liberal Friends tend to forget that the new kerygma and doctrine of Friends was not detached from the old. Quakerism was never meant to be detached from the story of the historical Jesus Christ and his salvific rôle in the Universe. It was never meant to be simply about observational truth, or about the innate worth of each human being.
Friends clearly understood — not only in their first generation, but in every generation afterward, at least down through World War II — that the outbreak of the Spirit among them was a belated fulfillment of Christ’s missionary work, and a validation of what the first Christians had clearly said about the historic Christ’s pivotal rôle in the world.
The early Friends saw themselves as part of the same story as the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, and saw their own lives and experiences as being a part of the fulfillment of the promises that Christ made at the Last Supper in the gospel of John. It is very significant in this regard that they took their name for themselves — “Friends” — directly from the fifteenth chapter of John.
Later Friends gradually lost the first Friends’ keen sense of real unity with the first apostles, but they kept a weaker sense of continuity.
Thus the central doctrine of Quakerism was originally not just a premise about the Holy Spirit and the living Christ, but also a story about the workings of that Spirit and that living Christ through history — a story that just naturally contained the whole kerygma of Christianity. The central doctrine of Christianity dwelt — and still dwells — within the central doctrine of Quakerism as water dwells within a wave. This is something liberal Friends tend to forget.
Pastoral and evangelical Friends, on the other hand, tend to forget that the new kerygma and doctrine of Friends was different from the old. Its purpose was never simply to uphold the normative beliefs of Christendom. Its purpose, as the early Friends repeatedly said, was far more radical — to “overturn, overturn, overturn” the whole fallen world.
The Basic Doctrine of Liberal Quakerism
The Quaker movement came to its first dividing point at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
The new spirit of scientific rationalism was at work in the educated Western world, and Friends, being historically more open than most Christians to the idea of learning from the natural world, were readily infected.
Hugh Barbour and J. William Frost, Quaker historians, tell us that the split began in Ireland, with a Quaker elder, Abraham Shackleton. In 1797, as clerk of his local monthly meeting of ministers and elders, Shackleton openly refused to apply the word “Holy” to the Bible; he also expressed doubts as to whether God had commanded the Old Testament wars. His co-religionists were horrified, and in 1801, they disowned him — deprived him of membership in the Society of Friends.
The controversy came to North America soon after. Hannah Barnard, a recorded minister from New York, traveled to England in 1797, and later to Ireland. She was republican, egalitarian, and in sympathy with the French Revolution; and by the time of her trip to Ireland, she was ready to challenge not only the rightness of the Old Testament wars but also the story of the Virgin Birth. In a nutshell, she — like Shackleton — had imbibed the new spirit of rationalism and was applying it critically to the givens of her religion. London Yearly Meeting sent her home in disgrace, and she was disowned by her meeting in 1802.
Nonetheless, within twenty years, the spirit Shackleton and Barnard had embraced had become widespread among Friends throughout much of North America.
Friends imbued with the new spirit were rationalists because they turned common-sense reasoning as a critical tool upon the Christian revelation. They were widely regarded as rebellious, even as revolutionaries, by their opponents, not only because they dared contradict their elders, and even outshouted them in disputes, but also because many of them were, like Hannah Barnard, sympathetic to the ideals of the French Revolution and the cause of the common man. They found a good spokesperson in Elias Hicks, coalesced into a movement, separated from the Orthodox Friends in the late 1820s, and were known as “Hicksites” thenceforth.
The spirit of rational skepticism, which Hicksism had coalesced around, is innately corrosive to traditional doctrine. Nonetheless, due to the conservatism of Quaker religious culture, it took a long time for the basic doctrine of liberal (Hicksite) Quakerism to evolve away from that of the first Friends. The process didn’t really pick up steam until the 1890s.
Eventually, though —
The Holy Spirit lost its rootedness in the Book of Acts, and became for an increasing number of liberal Friends the simple light of social conscience and reason.
The word “Truth” gradually ceased to mean faithfulness and the message of the Christian Holy Spirit speaking through Friends, and came increasingly to mean honesty and factual accuracy instead.
The very word “Friend” fell gradually out of fashion, most members in the liberal Quaker world disliking the Biblical reference and preferring to speak of themselves and each other as “Quakers”.
Because liberal Friends do tend to form their own individual opinions about everything, there is some debate as to whether liberal Quakerism has any unifying doctrine at all. (I’ll come back to this point later in this essay.) But I personally think it does.
I would submit that, at this point, the kerygma of liberal Quakerism has now become one of the “Inner Light” (a.k.a. “that of God in every one”) as a light of consciousness, intelligence, and capacity for love that makes each human in some sense holy. Not only do most liberal Friends seem to believe in this doctrine, but their yearly meetings and other institutions affirm it, in one way or another, fairly regularly. Liberal Friends are even mildly evangelical about it.
The existence of any God beyond this Light is in sufficient dispute that I think it can no longer be regarded as a corporate doctrine. The truthfulness and relevance of the original Christian kerygma is also in dispute, and so can no longer be truthfully regarded as the water within the wave. There are still many deeply Christian liberal Friends, but for liberal Quakerism as a whole, Christianity is now more an optional thing.
And thus, while retaining much of the outward form of the original Quakerism, modern liberal Quakerism is in truth a much altered religion. Yet it still has doctrine, taught in Quakerism 101, in First-day School, in the pages of Friends Journal, in books such as Friends for 350 years, and in its various Books of Faith and Practice. And this doctrine includes at least a memory of the doctrine with which Quakerism began.
The Basic Doctrine of Pastoral and Evangelical Quakerism
Pastoral and evangelical Quakerism, too, arose from the infecting of the Quaker world by a spirit from outside.
But in the case of pastoral and evangelical Quakerism, the infecting agent was the spirit of evangelical Protestantism, and of the Holiness movement in particular. The infection was fueled by a reaction against the quietism of Friends in the eighteenth century, which had come to seem too arid and lifeless to support a vital religion.
George Fox and Robert Barclay had taught that each believer should silence his own will, so that the Holy Spirit could work through him. Nineteenth-century Orthodox (i.e., non-Hicksite) Friends became frustrated with the effort and patience this quietism required, and with the length of time one might have to wait for satisfyingly obvious results.
In place of quietism, these Orthodox Friends were drawn to the evangelical doctrine of substitutionary atonement — the idea that Christ did all the necessary work by dying for us on the cross, so that no further human work was needed except to give one’s allegiance. And they found the central idea of the Holiness revival, the idea that one might become sanctified instantaneously by the “baptism of the Holy Spirit”, to be just enormously appealing.
These influences tended to pull Orthodox Quaker doctrine back toward a standard-issue Protestant model. The kerygma of the life, death, resurrection, and saving rôle of the historic Jesus Christ returned to the forefront, displacing the kerygma of the early Friends as the center of Orthodox Friends preaching.
From the beginning, Orthodox Friends laid more emphasis on the teaching of doctrine than Hicksites did. The reasons were tied to the reasons why the Orthodox had rejected the Hicksites: they saw the teaching of good doctrine as essential to salvation. So they instituted First-day (Sunday) schools, and funded the publishing of doctrinal materials, well in advance of the Hicksites. They also placed a renewed emphasis on doctrinal instruction in sermons, and on the correct doctrinal training of ministers.
Orthodox yearly meetings began elaborating the doctrinal sections of their books of discipline, inserting details that matched the teachings of other Protestant churches — as Ohio Yearly Meeting (Orthodox) did, for example, in 1876. The 1891 Discipline of Western Yearly Meeting declared that “no one should be recorded as a minister whose doctrinal views are not clearly in accord with the Affirmative of the Questions” which the Discipline listed regarding God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit.
And the ultimate upshot of this drift back toward a mainstream Protestant kerygma was — quite predictably — the rise of a new missionary impulse that sent Orthodox Quaker missionaries out to India, China, Madagascar, Mexico, Jamaica, Alaska, Kenya, Bolivia, and Guatemala, to proclaim the old-fashioned gospel of mainstream Protestantism afresh.
Of course, the Holy Spirit and the living Christ remain important in pastoral and evangelical Quaker doctrine. But as in the liberal Quaker world, albeit to a lesser extent, their rôle, and the way they are understood, changed and diminished from what it had been in early Quakerism.
In modern pastoral and evangelical Quakerism, neither the Spirit nor the living Christ is now allowed to lead a Friend in ways that appear to contradict the teachings laid out in the Bible and in traditional Protestantism. This is a marked change from early Quaker times, when the Spirit was allowed to override Biblical statements on water baptism, church hierarchy, and slavery.
But this firm pastoral and evangelical commitment to the fixed teachings of the Bible has become very important, in recent years, in debates about universalism and homosexuality.
The Basic Doctrine of Conservative Quakerism
The third major branch of Quakerism — the Conservative branch — took more than half a century to separate from the rest of the Quaker world and find its own identity.
The original separation was one within the Orthodox ranks, dividing the Gurneyites (who evolved into modern pastoral and evangelical Friends) from the Wilburites, during the 1840s and 1850s. Further separations caused some of the remaining Gurneyites to withdraw from the rest into separate meetings in the 1870s and again in the early twentieth century.
The Gurneyites who had withdrawn in these latter separations gradually joined with the Wilburites to become “Conservative Friends”.
The original impulse of the Conservatives was to conserve both the form and the doctrine of original Quakerism. In practice, this didn’t turn out quite as planned.
The first generations of Conservatives were so concerned with conserving the whole of Quakerism that they made something of a fetish of conserving every possible detail — with the result that the focus of their religion became quite different from the evangelical focus of the first Friends.
They still preached the Spirit and the Christ amongst themselves, but they were not so filled with it that crowds gathered to learn what was going on. They sent few, if any, apostles out into the world.
Their struggles to conserve the details turned their attention so inward, so much upon themselves, that they largely ceased for a very long time to regard their kerygma as a kerygma — that is, as news for the proclaiming.
Conservative Friends were also influenced, rather like the pastoral Friends although to a lesser degree, by evangelical Protestant thinking: for a time, they exalted the idea of exact faithfulness to the Bible even more than the pastoral Friends did. There is still a very strong strain of this way of thinking within Ohio Yearly Meeting (Conservative).
The basic doctrine of Conservative Friends probably remained closer to the original basic Quaker doctrine than the basic doctrine of either the liberals or the pastorals. It remained a doctrine depending almost entirely on the Holy Spirit and the living Christ, without much reference either to atonement or to the “Inner Light” of reason.
But the simple fact that Conservative doctrine largely lost its flavor of kerygma was no small change. This elevated the community-conserving part of Quaker doctrine, while allowing the fire of the prophets to fade into the background.
Doctrine for the Needs of Quaker Community
With Friends, as with other branches of Christianity, secondary doctrines have emerged as branches from the central doctrine of the faith.
Chief among these are the doctrines concerning the testimonies. These doctrines are not the testimonies themselves, although many modern Friends do not understand the difference.
In general usage, “testimony” is what a witness gives in a case before the law: it’s anecdotal evidence that might help settle an unanswered question. For example, a witness might testify (provide testimony) that a man accused of a serious crime was in his house as a guest that night, and so could not have committed the crime in question.
Testimony is thus retrospective: it describes what has happened in the past, rather than prescribing for the future.
And traditionally, the testimonies of Quakerism were understood in just this way. A Quaker testimony was something that Friends could provide to the world at large, and also to the Judge seated in their hearts, by way of evidence of the difference that their faith and practice had made in their lives so far.
An example would be that Friends testified of how they had been led again and again by the Holy Spirit to refuse to take off their hats before people of supposedly “superior” class. This testimony became referred to as the testimony of “hat-honour”. It was retrospective: it described what Friends had generally done in the past, rather than prescribing for the future.
Originally, then, Friends’ testimonies bore witness to the essentials of their faith. The testimony of hat-honour bore witness to Friends’ faithfulness to the leadings of the Holy Spirit; the testimony against wars and fighting, and the testimony against tithes, bore witness to Friends’ faithfulness to teachings they had found in the Bible.
Friends were not “upholding the principle of equality” by refusing to take off their hats; they were not “upholding the principle of nonviolence” by refusing to take part in war. They were not, in fact, acting on abstract principle at all. They were simply being faithful to the Spirit and the historical Christ, and their actions “were a testimony” to this faithfulness.
This distinction is important because it shows us that early Quakerism was not a philosophical position. It was a discipleship.
But the thing is that, once you live in discipleship to the Holy Spirit and the historical Christ, obeying their strictures in all the matters where their strictures can be clearly discerned, this changes you. It changes your values, your attitudes, your emotional temperament.
And as a result, you start behaving differently in other matters as well. You not only refuse to doff your hat; you also learn compassion for the people you’ve insulted by refusing to take it off. You not only refuse to engage in fighting, but you start looking for better ways to settle your disputes.
Early Quakerism had been a movement under severe attack from the world. Its members were powerfully stimulated by persecution to apply the love they found in the Holy Spirit, and the teachings they found in the New Testament, to the meeting of one another’s material needs.
A wide variety of practices thus arose — practices of taking up collections for suffering witnesses in their midst, of sponsoring their widows, orphans, and poor, of subsidizing travel to knit their communities together, of marrying within their faith, and so forth.
As Quakerism entered its second generation, Friends began looking back at the ways in which Christ and the Holy Spirit had led them to act, and recorded these things systematically to document the testimonies and sufferings they had borne for Christ’s sake and the Spirit’s. In doing this, they began writing Quaker history.
But then they went a step further, and formed the expectation that their children, and new converts, would continue to uphold these same testimonies. They began preaching sermons, and writing minutes and memoirs and doctrinal texts, teaching the testimonies as imperatives.
Teaching the testimonies as imperatives, was in fact a way of answering the questions that I posed at the beginning of this essay: Who are we, Friends? What are we doing?
And we have already seen that every teaching is a doctrine! So this is where doctrines touching on the testimonies first emerged — very early in the history of our faith.
Hundreds of years have passed since then, of course, and experience has taught Friends that many of the testimonies — such as that against hat-honour, and that against “marrying out” — which earlier generations regarded as imperatives, really are not. In the late nineteenth century, Friends began simplifying their lists of testimonies, tossing out the ones that no longer seemed important, and reducing the remainder to short lists of principles such as “peace”, “equality”, and “simplicity”. This gradually restored to secondary doctrine the fluidity it had possessed in the first years of Quakerism, and that we see in it today.
But fluidity was not the same as total abolition. “Marrying out” may no longer be forbidden, but “marrying in” is still seen as a delightful development. (And why not?) “Not giving hat-honour” may no longer be required, but our modern doctrine of “speaking truth to power” expresses the same underlying spirit.
Thus the practices that hold Quakerism together as a path, the practices that hold Friends communities together, and the practices that make Friends recognizably Friends in the eyes of the world — all these are reflected in the doctrines of Quakerism. This is truly how far the doctrines of Quakerism extend.
So Do Liberal Friends Still Have Doctrines?
Now, in the liberal part of the Quaker world, because rational skepticism has done so much to corrode respect for doctrine, there are those who contend that their form of Quakerism is not doctrinal at all, but is rather a matter of right practice (“orthopraxy”) alone.
In more conventional terms, the first half of this assertion is tantamount to saying that even the doctrine of the “Inner Light” is not sufficiently accepted by everyone in the liberal Quaker world to be treated as basic. I touched on this issue earlier in this essay.
But the second half of this assertion amounts to a statement that the doctrine of the testimonies — the teaching that we should practice nonviolence, simplicity, etc. — now controls. What were originally patterns of evidence showing how the Spirit and Biblical discipleship changed people’s lives, have now become prescriptive principles, more or less divorced in many liberal Friends’ minds from the Holy Spirit and Bible that they once pointed to.
If this is so, liberal Quakerism has largely evolved from being a discipleship into being a philosophy in the old Greek and Roman sense of that term. And maybe this is so. I’m not presently convinced, but I’m open to the idea.
But even if this is the case, it’s still a situation in which there are doctrines concerning the testimonies. Liberal Quakerism can’t get by without doctrines, any more than any other religion can.
Note: The exploration of creeds and related phenomena
that begins in the essay above, is continued in a
second essay here.
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Reader Comments (54)
Marshall,
I would like to question one very small aspect of what you have written here, one that I don't think affects your overall point very much at all. But for thoroughness' sake maybe you can address my doubts about what you have said concerning the name "Friends". You wrote
I agree with you that "early Friends saw themselves as part of the same story as the book of the Acts of the Apostles and saw their own lives and experiences as being a part of the fulfillment of the promises that Christ made in the Last Supper in the gospel of John." However, I'm not so sure that they took their name for themselves from John 15, or even that they ever consciously took "Friends" as their "name" for themselves at all. I think it's possible that you have seen evidence of this that I have not.
It may seem strange to question whether the early Friends took the word "Friends" as a name for themselves. I'm not clear that they didn't, but also not clear that they did (- - or if they did, when they did). Whether they took the name from John 15 seems to me even more open to question.
It's certainly clear that "Friends" (and later "Society of Friends") eventually became a name. Maybe this was a natural end-result once Fox and others began to address the convinced as "Dear Friends," in their epistles. But I can't help but notice that Fox seemed willing to call just about anybody "Friend", including Oliver Cromwell. And I also can't help but notice that in many documents where one might expect Fox or other Friends to refer to themselves by their collective name they do not use the word "Friends".
The Title Page of Barclay's Apology speaks of "The People in Scorn Called Quakers", but it doesn't say anything like "but should really be called Friends".
Barclay's earlier work "A Catechism and Confession of Faith" he calls himself "a servant of the Church of Christ", not "a servant of Friends".
The elders at Balby issued their famous epistle of advice in 1652. The postscript is addressed to "Dearly beloved Friends...", but in the rest of the document they refer variously, to "the brethren" and to the "children of Light". The document is said to be give forth at "a general meeting of friends in truth at Balby in Yorkshire" and to be "from the Spirit of truth to the children of light". It isn't clear to me which, if any of these expressions is being used as a "name" and which as merely a description.
George Fox, also published in 1661 "Some Principles of the Elect People of God Who in Scorn are Called Quakers", but he too omitted saying that they should instead be called "Friends".
What seems likely to me is that the word "Friends" was at first just one of several possible descriptive terms that subsequently became, through repeated usage, an actual name. The word "Friend" would also fit neatly into the syntactical hole that was left by the removal of terms like "Sir", or "Madam" from the Quaker vocabulary. One who didn't want to say "Good morning, Sir!", or who wouldn't begin a letter "Dear Sir" could instead say "Greetings, Friend!" or begin the letter "Dear Friend".
I have not found any instances where an early Friend (pre-1700) explicitly claimed that this word "Friend" was used as a name because of the way Christ used it in John 15, and other Friends I have known have also failed to find such a reference. That doesn't mean it isn't so, of course, but I am still left wondering.
I hope I am not being overly picky about such a trivial detail. I know that I can be. If I am doing it again, feel free to tell me so.
- - Rich Accetta-Evans
P.S. re Lorcan's latest comment. (Hi, Lorcan)
I think Lor's best point is that face-to-face communications sometimes work better than these on-line dialogues. This is especially so when the contexts different people work from can be so radically different. Even in person I often have to work very hard to understand what Lorcan is saying, and I think he may find the same of me. We often seem to use the same words ("liberal", "conservative", "pharisee", "sadduccee", "objective") to mean almost diametrically opposite things or such wildly different things that entirely new words seem called for to clear up the confusion. I feel tempted to "set the record straight" about the history of schism and separation in England as well as here, but will refrain because of the inevitable communication difficulties just described.
P.S. re Lorcan's latest comment. (Hi, Lorcan)
I think Lor's best point is that face-to-face communications sometimes work better than these on-line dialogues. This is especially so when the contexts different people work from can be so radically different. Even in person I often have to work very hard to understand what Lorcan is saying, and I think he may find the same of me. We often seem to use the same words ("liberal", "conservative", "pharisee", "sadduccee", "objective") to mean almost diametrically opposite things or such wildly different things that entirely new words seem called for to clear up the confusion. I feel tempted to "set the record straight" about the history of schism and separation in England as well as here, but will refrain because of the inevitable communication difficulties just described.
There is our Richard ... ( Hello Richie!) .. knows me so well ... even says it twice, =)
Absolutely ... words are rather dangerous things if you use them the same way twice, they become much to free of ambiguity, and ambiguity is our only defense against fascism, to muse on the words of an Israeli historian, whose name I forget for the moment... "Germany attempted a land without ambiguity, a word of absolute certainty." Certainty is always a great threat to love.
For me a computer screen or a conversation is what a good wall is to old Gully Jimson, what a telephone booth is when he feels like channeling the Duchess of Blackpool..., so I fully endorse both of Richard's last posts, identical as they may be, and that is right from the horse's mouth.
Call the neighbors up from down below and let's have a party, unless they've gone to Borneo to study the dance ... in that case, we'll just paint right here.
Thine in the light
lor
What seems missing to me in this conversation is the aspect of doctrine which I find most fascinating. That is, doctrine as functional. What uses do individuals and communities put to doctrine?
The scariest use to which doctrine is put is the gatekeeper role. This I think is what causes (and apologies for the use of the term for all who so object -- but words are useful handles at times) "liberals" to reject the baby with the bath and so reject doctrines creeds and such.
Gatekeeping is simply about setting the boundaries to a community and setting a guardian at the gate to keep the folks without a ticket from gatecrashing the party. Gatekeepers get a bad rap sometimes. But as Frost pointed out: walls can make for good neighbours. And with all due respect to the universalists present, just because I do not recognize a fellow as a member of my tribe doesn't mean I'm sharpening my axe to send him into the afterlife.
There are also far more interesting (to me) uses for doctrines. A doctrine tends to lead a person either to acceptance or to action. For example, the teaching that there is that of God in everyone (and I acknowledge the issues under discussion around the legitimacy of this doctrine with the Quaker context) can lead me to refrain from taking violent action in response to another's actions or it can lead me to work for justice on behalf of those I deem oppressed.
Doctrine is also heuristic and hermeneutical. It provides guidance on how to interpret my experience -- and here is where I part company with liberal Quakes generally -- I seriously doubt the capacity of adult human beings to experience without significant notional interpretation. So how do I know whether my "leading" to go naked as a sign is a genuine leading of Christ's Spirit in me/through me? One way is that I consult the established teachings and interpretations of my faith community.
And doctrine provides a common language to communicate and share and dispute. We may disagree about the "meaning" of the word Light -- but our common use of the term and our insistence that it labels something of significance both in our individual spiritual experiences and our shared life is itself helpful for us to enter into relationship with one another, work together and otherwise function in the same community together.
It is through these various functions of doctrine that faith community (i.e., "meeting" or "church") becomes possible.
Dear fFriend Marshall:
Hicksites, Gurneyites, Wilburites, Indians, and Att. Gen. Janet Reno
Well, about 4:30 am the full moon's light woke me up, and Cathars would say provided me the model to describe why thee thinks I am not speaking to thy essay, and I think thy essay does not speak to some Hicksite's condition.
I find the Hicksites of my childhood to think more like Indians I know, than cowboys, than say, Janet Reno. One day, I had the honor of being appointed a judge in a Native Nation's court, which brought me to Harvard where Janet Reno was telling us about the jails, nonnative police and new courtrooms, she could provide our courts. Justice Mary Winn, of the Colville Nation, said that she could answer with a concise legal argument why they did not need these things, but instead she would tell her a story...
And I think that is just it. For Indians, and Hicksites and many scientists these days, the world is ... not ordered as many once thought. Western science, and some theological movements saw the world as boxes moving forward into the future on a conveyor belt. So, for example, anthropologists sought a human line, unbroken and ordered. Instead we are discovering a mass of vines and tendrils. Hicksites and Indians, rather than a line of boxes on a conveyor belt, would more likely see boxes in a river, sometimes grouping together, sometimes tumbling over each other, forming new patterns. We do not look at the boxes and their content, but rather the river. Openness, rather than skepticism, yes, we are not too sure about the conveyor belt, but the river even holds the boxes that think they are on a belt, and that is OK as well...
So, where does this fit into the above? Well, for a start, Gurneyites, Wilburites, Orthodox and Conservative Friends - possibly Liberal Friends, named themselves, Hicksites were named by others. We came to be called Hicksites, by those who read us off the conveyor belt, while we still accepted them in the stream of the river. A fFriend of my childhood's comment on thy analysis said, it falls a bit short when one looks at the map of Quaker theological trends, produced a few years ago, and rolled up in our meeting's library. There is at first, one RSOF. Then a split into Orthodox and Hicksite, then a hundred years where the orthodoxy splits into sub groups all stating that they are original Quakerism then, next to this branching tree of splits, one Hicksite river. So, terms like rational skepticism, are lost on us, we are more than that, we are not skeptics, we are open, wide eyed, and staring at the moon at 4:30 in the morning.
Mary Winn's story? Well, it was about the spirit of the sky trying to get the Geese to fly in a straight line. That's another thing... Indians have a different sense of time, there is always time for a good story, and it really is not much of a tangent, there is not a term like "thread drift" among most Indians I know ... so do indulge me... "Ms. Reno," she said, "once the Geese all flew in a V, and the spirit of the sky came and said, that is disorderly ... if you all fly in a straight line, there will be apparent authority, the strongest will be a wind break for all the others. The Geese said, 'none of us are strong enough to be the leader all the time, so in a V one or another can slide into that place...' 'Stop all this discussion and just follow me, I will show you how it is done.' So the spirit of the sky took off, with all the geese behind, in a straight line and the Eagle looked down and said, Hmmm, dinner. He got behind the Geese and one at a time ate every one. The Spirit of the Sky landed and the Creator said, 'Where are my Geese!?' The Spirit of the Sky said, I didn't do anything to your Geese, it was the Eagle!' Ms. Reno, you tell me that you didn't do anything to the Indians, it was drugs, alcohol, crime, and follow you a little longer, but we don't have enough Indians to keep following you, we have to go back to flying in a V.
Looking to order things ... put things in place ... becomes a little close to creedal, as well as a little like flying in a straight line. We Hicksites, like the Geese are not so much skeptical of straight lines, as open to the realization that there are no straight lines in nature. Some may see a little New Agey Quakerism in my imagery here ... but I come to it honestly, having walked many many miles with natives on both sides of the line the US and Canada drew on the one earth. So ... do Indians, Hicksites and Quakers have doctrines... sure... as in Quakerism: a view from the back benches "Social Order (Friendly Corrosion)- The thing which should be said about the concept of a social order is that we are for it -- we believe in a system of expectations which ties people together sufficiently well so that they can concentrate on the important things." But, once that order becomes fixed in static terms ... well, things begin to split apart ... so we tend not to be skeptical about the elements of that order, as much as the reality of single systems ... openness.
Thine in the light and our funny ever changing V
lor
Lorcan, I see by your comments that the term "rational skepticism" rankles you a bit. You prefer terms like "open to new light from many sources".
Just speaking for myself, though, what you are doing is making a distinction without much difference.
My Merriam-Webster dictionary offers such meanings for "skepticism" as: "the doctrine that true knowledge or knowledge in a particular area is uncertain"; "the method of suspended judgment ... characteristic of skeptics"; and "doubt concerning basic religious principles". It seems to me that such meanings point nicely to the reason why most members of the liberal branch of Quakerism think there's some need to be "open to new light".
After all, if one doesn't think that the knowledge in a given area is uncertain, if one doesn't see any reason to suspend judgment, if one doesn't have any doubt concerning basic religious principles, then one isn't going to see any reason to wait for "new light" — any genuine "new light" can be counted on simply to confirm the old.
I agree with Rich's assessment that your version of the history of the Orthodox-Hicksite separation appears to leave a bit to be desired. Among other things, the historical record shows that the English Friends sided for several generations with the American Orthodox as against the Hicksites; I've seen much evidence that many Hicksites did not "still accept [the Orthodox] in the stream of the river"; and it is a matter of partisan judgment which side in that unhappy separation was the "mainstream".
I much enjoyed your parable of the geese. And I'm charmed that you have chosen to make your case in such native American language at almost exactly the same time that George Price has finally commented on my essay about the FGC sweat lodge controversy. He too made his case in native American terms, invoking Raymond Bucko's native American friends alongside his own. I wonder: was it truly, as you seem to say, something about the winter moon that brought this sudden outbreak of native Americanism to the surface?
— It was a gorgeous moon!
Rich Accetta-Evans writes, "I'm not so sure that [Friends] took their name for themselves from John 15, or even that they ever consciously took 'Friends' as their 'name' for themselves at all. I think it's possible that you have seen evidence of this that I have not. ... Whether they took the name from John 15 seems to me even more open to question."
You've driven me to the history books to check the record, Rich!
All the sources I personally have access to, concerning the origin of the term "Friends", begin with the researches of William C. Braithwaite about a hundred years ago. In his book The Beginnings of Quakerism (1912), 2nd edn. ed. by Henry J. Cadbury (1954), Braithwaite pointed to a letter written in 1652 by the first-generation Quaker Thomas Aldam (Swarthmore Collection iii.40): "Our Friends are driven in union more close together," Aldam wrote, and also, with reference to the Quaker Jane Holmes and her companions, that they had "no freedom to come amongst any Friends very little." These seem to be the oldest surviving written appearances of the term.
It's easy to find other documents besides, in which seventeenth-century Friends clearly identified the members of their movement as Friends. Quite a few of the letters written by Friends in the early 1650s made use of the exhortatory phrase "all Friends", without any modifier such as "my" or "our", thus applying the absolute term "Friends" as a name for all faithful members of the movement. For example, I note a general letter written by George Fox in 1654, directing that "...All Friends, submit yourselves one to another, in the fear of God, and be one with the witness of God in all, and look at that..." — and another such letter written by William Dewsbury in 1655, directing that "all Friends who make mention of the name of the living God, examine your hearts, search them, and try your ways in the light that comes from Christ, and with it, read your condition in the book of conscience."
An essay written by Edward Burrough in 1662, described those who may legitimately participate in Quaker meetings for business as consisting of "all Friends in Truth as they are moved to come for the service of Truth", and refers to "the faith of Christ professed and practised by Friends". The minute whereby London Yearly Meeting established birthright membership read, "All Friends shall be deemed members of the Quarterly, Monthly and Two-Weeks meeting within the compass of which they inhabited or dwelt the first day of the Fourth Month, 1737 ... and the wife and children to be deemed members of the Monthly Meeting of which the husband or father is a member, not only during his life but after his decease."
Taken collectively, such evidence as this seems to me to show a clear pattern — a stronger evidence than any single item taken separately — to the effect that Friends accepted this name "Friends" as their standard designation for themselves from at least the early 1650s.
As regards the question of whether the term was a clear reference to John 15, I have till now been guided by Rufus M. Jones, who wrote in The Faith and Practice of the Quakers (1927): "They were influenced in their use of the name by Christ's words: 'I have called you friends'...."
I note that Jones's statement is not so positive as mine: I had written that Friends "took their name for themselves — 'Friends' — directly from the fifteenth chapter of John," whereas Jones said only that "they were influenced". Nor does Jones provide any corroborating evidence. So I may have overstated my case on that point.
However, given how absolutely drenched in conscious biblical phraseology all the early writings of Friends were, I'd be purely astonished if the term "Friends" were anything but a conscious reference to John 15. For given the powerful resonance of John 15, and its direct applicability to the understanding that early Friends had developed of the nature of true Christianity, what other meaning of "Friend" could they have preferred?
It's quite true that Fox, in the early chapters of his Journal, includes many letters in which he addressed even his enemies as "Friends". I believe that this was of a piece with the early Friends' expectation that the whole world was capable of being reached by the Gospel. In other words, Fox addressed his enemies in this way, not because they were capital-F Friends, but because he was trying to speak to the highest part in them, the part that was capable of becoming capital-F Friends.
And as for the use of other terms ("brethren", "children of the Light", &c.) at the same time as Friends — well, I myself have been known to do the same. Why should those whom we count as Friends, not also be quite legitimately describable as fellow children of God, and therefore as our brethren?
Dear Marshall:
I am not sure that there is no difference between an open mind and skepticism, for example, several fFriends were talking about the possibility that the Ossuary of Yeshua Ben Joseph, called Jesus Christ was found with enough genetic material to identify him as the child of the remains of his mother, Mary, brother Joseph, son Juda, and by that, his wife Marimne also called Mary Magdalene. We were discussing the relationship of statistical probability with elements of culture and DNA discovered, when two more conservative, in thy use of the term, passed and said, "All that is nonsense." Their stance was skeptical, judgment before examination of the evidence, rather than open to the possibility that...
Ah my...
thine in frith and fFriendship
lor
Why John and not James?
"And the scripture was fulfilled which saith, Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness: and he was called the Friend of God." (James 2:23)(AV1611)
A quick note, which I must think more about... It is true, as I say above, that English Friends did send missonaries to the US to "convert" the Hicksites... but at the same time there was and is a liberal wing of an undivided English yearly meeting. It is also true, when I visited Irish Meetings, I met gay Irish Quakers who were relieved to be able to speak openly about their hopes of someday being able to labor for equality in their meetings.
Part of the story of schism in the US, may well be the history of freedom here. Britain and Ireland there is a tradition of walking in line... so it might be that liberal Friends were closeted, as Irish gay Friends were, not very long ago... it would take some examination.
But, also one has to say the decentralization of our faith makes it possible for English Friends to not divide over our own divisions... it might also be, just as England backed the South in the Civil War, they were not part of the cession, English Friends might have more or less backed the orthodoxy without joining the fray, had they done so, perhaps liberal British Friends might have been forced to divide.
Must think and read a bit on this...
I should also point out there are a number of books on the sociology of the split in the US. As to Hicksites not accepting the Orthodox in the same stream, it is one thing to say we don't accept alienating Friends as being Quakerism, and another to say, get out of the house.
All the best
thine in firth and friendship and Friendship
lor
David wrote, "The scariest use to which doctrine is put is the gatekeeper role." (Etc.)
Hi, David! When doctrine begins to be used that way, we cease to call it doctrine and start calling it dogma. It's my intention to make dogma the topic of some later essay.
"Doctrine" merely means "teaching". As long as it remains doctrine and not dogma, its scariest use is for — oh, you guessed it, didn't you? — indoctrination.
I do like your list of other uses for doctrine.
As to the choice between tying the name "Friend" to John and tying it to James —
The early Friends made frequent use of James 2:23, always to support the idea that one didn't have to be a nominal Christian to be saved. But Christ was at the very center of their own doctrine, and they were at endless pains to prove their Christianity to their critics. So it doesn't seem terribly likely to me that they'd have deliberately taken their name from a scriptural passage they regarded as having been written to justify a non-Christian.
It made infinitely more sense for them to take their name from a passage that stressed the importance of being joined to the living Vine, the importance of doing what the living Christ commands us, and the importance of loving one another as Christ had loved them. — Or so it seems to me.
I raised the issue of James because I actually find James much more congruent with Quaker practice than John. They certainly drew on James as they developed their conscientious objection to military service. But also the emphasis on holiness -- to live without sin on this side of eternity. And also simplicity of speech.
Lorcan wrote, "I am not sure that there is no difference between an open mind and skepticism...", and "Their stance was skeptical, judgment before examination of the evidence, rather than open to the possibility...."
Lorcan, friend, I try to use words according to their standard dictionary meanings, unless there is clear evidence that the context requires using a word in a more specialized, technical way.
Find me a dictionary definition of "skepticism" from a good, reputable dictionary — Merriam-Webster is probably the best for U.S. English — that says there is no difference between an open mind and skepticism, and I'll accept that there is none.
Find me a dictionary definition from a good, reputable dictionary that says that "skepticism" means judgment before examination of the evidence, and I'll accept that that is what it means.
I don't think you can do either one.
When I was defending my use of the term "skepticism" above, I quoted three Merriam-Webster dictionary definitions. They describe how I was using the term.
Dear Marshall, dear friend and Friend:
Well, ... not being skeptical of thy search, but being open minded to the possibility my connotations of the two words were incorrect... I went to Merriam Webster's Dictionary and the Thesaurus of the same, and found the following"
Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
skepticism
Main Entry: skep·ti·cism Pronunciation: \'skep-t?-?si-z?m\ Function: noun Date: 1646 1: an attitude of doubt or a disposition to incredulity either in general or toward a particular object 2 a: the doctrine that true knowledge or knowledge in a particular area is uncertain b: the method of suspended judgment, systematic doubt, or criticism characteristic of skeptics 3: doubt concerning basic religious principles (as immortality, providence, and revelation)synonyms see uncertainty
Webster's Thesaurus
skeptical
One entry found for skeptical.
Entry Word: skeptical
Function: adjective
Text: 1 inclined to doubt or question claims [it's good to be skeptical about what you see on TV]
Synonyms disbelieving, distrustful, doubting, incredulous, leery, mistrustful, questioning, suspecting, suspicious, unbelieving
Related Words paranoid; critical, puzzled, quizzical; careful, cautious, guarded, leery, wary, watchful; cynical, experienced, knowing, sophisticated, worldly, worldly-wise; curious, inquiring, inquisitive, nosy (or nosey), snoopy; uncertain, unconvinced, undecided, undetermined, unsettled, unsure; hesitant
Near Antonyms green, ingenuous, innocent, naive (or naïve), simple, simpleminded, unknowing, unsophisticated, unworldly, wide-eyed; certain, confident, positive, sure; callow, inexperienced, raw; childlike, idealistic, impractical; beguiled, deceived, duped, gulled, tricked; careless, heedless, unsuspecting, unsuspicious, unwary
Antonyms credulous, gullible, trustful, trusting, uncritical, unquestioning
open-minded
One entry found.
open-minded
Main Entry: open–mind·ed Pronunciation: \?o-p?n-'min-d?d\ Function: adjective Date: 1828 : receptive to arguments or ideas
— open–mind·ed·ly adverb
— open–mind·ed·ness noun
No entry for open minded in the thesaurus, so, used the word receptive...
receptive
One entry found for receptive.
Entry Word: receptive
Function: adjective
Text: willing to consider new or different ideas <needed a partner who was receptive to new ways of managing the business> -- see OPEN-MINDED 1
So, the connotations of the word for liberal Quakerism is negative the one I use is positive. Frankly, I think that if we are children of light, seekers of truth, the inheritors of a revolution against religions of authority rather than truth -- that is to say, like Mary Dyer, the truth is our authority, not authority the truth, then we must be open minded, and not skeptical. Skepticism closes the mind, open mindedness is, an English fFriend reminded me we should do the other day, walks with joy over the earth greeting that of God in all we meet.
Open to thee, and in frith and dear friendship
lor
PS
I note a slight confusion as well.-Thee writes: "Find me a dictionary definition of "skepticism" from a good, reputable dictionary -- Merriam-Webster is probably the best for U.S. English -- that says there is no difference between an open mind and skepticism, and I'll accept that there is none." I actually said there IS a difference, as, to me, the connotations between the words are exactly opposite.
I did use a double negative, on purpose, "I am not sure that there is no difference between an open mind and skepticism" in response to thy comment, "Just speaking for myself, though, what you are doing is making a distinction without much difference."
"My Merriam-Webster dictionary offers such meanings for "skepticism" as: "the doctrine that true knowledge or knowledge in a particular area is uncertain"; "the method of suspended judgment ... characteristic of skeptics"; and "doubt concerning basic religious principles." It seems to me that such meanings point nicely to the reason why most members of the liberal branch of Quakerism think there's some need to be 'open to new light.'"
We are open to new light, not because we are skeptical of the enlightenment of past fFriends, but rather in recognition that revelation continues in each generation. If we were to be bound by the revelation of the past, we would still abide slavery, believe the sun revolves around the sun, believe God instructed our spiritual ancestors to commit genocide. There is a difference between human art and revelation. By art we seek to describe revelation. Our books, stories, words ... are simply art which seeks to describe revelation. If we are bound to the art, we create idols. So, remain open to that still small voice in ourselves and others.
In that, we sometimes transcend the skepticism of past generations of "our own people." I recall, with sadness, the lack of honesty in our meetings, when fFriends who God created Gay, had to hide who they were from the fear and hatred of them in our Meetings (I hear in some meetings this is still the case). Do I feel that we should be bound to this hate and prejudice because we are skeptical about turning away from the mistakes of our past? No, I am open to the light of our Gay and Lesbian and Transgendered members, and listen with an open heart to those who are not, and that voice within leads me towards love of both and discernment, in this generation towards full loving inclusion of the fFriends, who, I am ashamed to say, my culture, even my Quaker culture had once made me uncomfortable. As Galileo Galilei said, "It moves," the earth as well as our faith.
Again thine in frith
lor
By all the energy being devoted to it I take it that "skeptical" has become a pejorative in the popular culture. While skepticism may have limited play in faith communities -- if skeptical is a pejorative then democracy is becoming at risk.
As for dictionaries: they are at best reports of what language scholars the common usages were 3-5 years before the publication date. And anyway -- anything less than the OED is best used for for tinder.
David-
It does seem to me that "skeptic" can have a connotation of simply being "contrary" these days.(I think of "Global Warming skeptics" - who aren't at all interested in objectively examining all the information, but generally will throw out any tidbit that might confuse people for a bit longer)
However, in the context of this blog we are really only discussing religious circles, aren't we?
I certainly read the word to imply that a skeptic is more removed from spirit than a "true believer" (I don't mean to put these words in anyone's mouth).
From my perspective this is boiling down to whether we think that we can, as just people, can know the truth wholly and accurately, ever.
For some it seems to be that believing that they do (at least sort of) is "faith" - that the Bible can tell them the truth, and no further illumination is necessary, or history, or angles, that they can in ANY way know the truth, in its entirety, and simply not need any new revelation.
For me, the very nature of faith is knowing that there is a truth (/God/Goodness) and that I myself will never fully know it. That's what continuing revelation is. And without it, as Lor points out, we might well have held on to slavery, violence and many other things that seem unholy now (at least to me) because we were so assured that we had already arrived and there was nothing left to learn.
Marshall,
It's been a crazy 10 days, to say the least, but I'm back--and I'm choosing to skip the long thread that has been carried out thus far by Rich, Lorcan, and you so that I might stay focused and get through your remarkable essay.
In your comment to me, made seemingly long ago, you wrote: I'm advocating that they be recognized for what they are – doctrines... Yes, this is more to what I was getting at: recognizing that Friends do have doctrines, even if the word does not pass through our lips.
Continuing on...
Basic Doctrine of Liberal Quakerism
I am intrigued by the concept of "rational skepticism" but find I just can't "go there." Not sure why but I won't spend the energy trying to force myself to.
In the middle of this section, though, you describe how Liberal Friends now refer to "Truth": The word “Truth” gradually ceased to mean faithfulness and the message of the Christian Holy Spirit speaking through Friends, and came increasingly to mean honesty and factual accuracy instead.
I would say that you are making the distinction between truthfulness/truthtelling from The Truth. When I hear Liberal Friends speak of Truth, it is not so much about honesty and factual accuracy as much as it is about "I am entitled to express what I understand to be the Truth." Do you know the parody of the round, "Why shouldn't my goose"? It goes:
Why shouldn't my truth
Sit as well as thy truth
When I've pondered my truth
Twice as long as thou (thee)?
I more frequently hear among Liberal Friends language that seems to point to the belief (or misunderstanding or interpretation?) that there is no one single Truth to be known or revealed or even sought after, but rather that we seek a way for all our individual, personal truths to be reconciled by whatever solution we hope for. A subtle but significant distinction from the doctrine (can I use that word here?) that we can know the capital-T Truth when we wait on the Lord for guidance and instruction, and at that point, we will brought into unity with the Spirit.
And I can't find it now, but either in this part of your essay (I haven't read further, at this point) or in a comment somewhere above, was a reference to the theological diversity within Liberal Friends. I would say that that breadth of belief is because of how Liberal Friends have interpreted the concept of "tolerance"--that such tolerance of differences, when one engages is the larger life of the meeting, for example, becomes very close to meaning "incorporation of" or "acceptance without question, concern, or threshing."
This is why, I believe, I hear many (but not all) Liberal Friends welcome without concern attenders who say they have a regular Buddhist practice or Pagan practice, etc., but I sense that Conservative Friends are more likely to say nothing at all--perhaps waiting for a relationship to be built so that the difficult things could be said with tenderness--or respond with, "You will have to wrestle with that in relation to who we are as Friends."
I myself have had to seek for words to this effect regarding someone who is relatively new to Friends who very much wishes to be among Friends but does not yet seem ready to yield to and embrace a fully Quaker manner of discernment, worship, etc. I have written elsewhere that Quakerism WELCOMES everyone but Quakerism is not FOR everyone.
And once again, I must move onto other things. Drat! This conversation again is to be continued, I pray...
Blessings,
Liz Opp, The Good Raised Up
Pam, I always love it when thee is in a conversation, thy comments are always so well tempered. Thy comment leads me to a good description of the difference between skeptical and open minded, and the Hicksite tradition as opposed to a hegemonic Liberal Quakerism. My theological upbringing, makes it possible for me to be skeptical (as an inward passing discomfort) about Friends who come into meeting and cross their legs on the benches, palms up, or speak in meeting about their Sufi "spiritual masters," or any number of other things.
However, early on, the Hicksite tradition remained open minded to the practice of others, as long as it does not interfere with the worship of others in the meeting. So, lines are drawn, for example if Friends where to attempt to create outward sacraments in meeting. Or, I have not been convinced by those fFriends who wish to create a vegetarian advice on spiritual grounds. I am rather sure that my acceptance of God's ordering of the world places we humans in the role of scavengers and omnivores. However, an advice about the health concerns of eating too much meat, like the advice against abusing drink, is not offensive to me.
I am no more made to feel my meeting is less Quaker when a fFriend gives a message which is based in a belief in astrology (again a faith I am not convinced of... ) than I am by a message which is Gurneyite. For me, it is not because I believe that there are many truths, but rather, the truth is much more complex than we humans can discern without faith. That does not mean rejection of obvious fact in the face of traditional belief. When a fact becomes obvious to me, because seventeenth century teachers of our faith believed otherwise, does not bind my mind or steer my soul.
I have noticed many who worry about Quaker practice becoming corrupted and losing definition are often converted to Quakerism, after a period of seeking among other faiths. Perhaps it is because they need to feel they are doing Quakerism correctly ... and some, who I have gotten to know through blogs, have left Quakerism because of an apparent lack of definition.
I do worry about this. I feel, thy point about elders might approach the issue, better. I think we have lost something in abandoning the gentle guidance of recognizing elders. I think, in elders, we don't have unchangeable moral guides or spiritual masters, but a rooting of our faith in our past in a way which is not fixed as a written doctrine is fixed.
Skepticism about the doctrines of others in our faith, is like assumptions, an ego, sometimes born of fear, fear of corruption of our faith, fear of change, and as Hicks said, quoting the bible, fear is the greatest barrier to perfect love. It is that love, which Jesus taught, is the basis of faith in God, that love that makes there be no tribe, and should lead us to unity in our faith, not because all Friends find the same language of God, but because we all love each other perfectly well. If all religions did that well enough, we would not need any words to create boundaries between our faiths, religion would only be called love, and in that be, I think, what Jesus taught, and that when it incorporated those to whom Jesus' name means nothing at all.
Thine in frith and fFriendship
lor