For the record, no, I do not agree with your assessment of the New Testament texts in general and Luke in particular. It seems to me that mere propaganda pieces would not convey the clarity of insight and inspiration that I find in the NT.

We Friends have maintained, all through our long history, that the form of the Church is important. That is why the structure of our Society differs from the structure of the Church of England, and from the structure of the Baptist churches, and from the structure of the Roman Catholic Church. If we hadn't felt the form was important, we wouldn't have made those changes.

We did not do away with the distinction between laity and priesthood because an exceptional person cannot save a community. We did away with that distinction because we agreed with Luther that all believers are members of the priesthood. This is a matter of historical record.

While we believe that only Christ can save a human being, we also believe that Christ can work through any human being to assist in the salvation of another. This is why we have human ministers. Because we labor for one another's salvation, we also have elders and overseers and clearness committees to help us in our times of spiritual difficulty, and we have a collective discipline, spelled out in our books of discipline ("Faith and Practice"), which we help one another live up to.

While we believe in continuing revelation, this does not mean that we leave books, tradition, and law totally behind. Rather, our 350-year-old testimony has been that continuing revelation fulfills the original thrust of the books, the tradition, and the law. If you happen to be associated with a yearly meeting, you might like to take a closer look at your yearly meeting's book of discipline ("Faith and Practice"). You will find that, for example, it recommends regular study of the scriptures, and it continues many of the traditions handed down from previous centuries. If you disagree with these points, your quarrel is with your yearly meeting, not just with me.

I don't believe that FGC is "denying someone a powerful resource for personal development" by saying that no sweats are to be held at Summer Gatherings. People can always go somewhere else for their sweats, after all. FGC is merely saying that its Summer Gatherings are not the appropriate place.

In the same way, FGC is not telling anyone how to pray. It is simply saying that certain sorts of prayer are better conducted somewhere else.

I have no trouble living with a fundamental disagreement with you, friend.

After Jesus’ death there were many Christian sects, and there were already many Jewish sects, some of which provided the earliest Christians. All of these sects were at war with each other. Wars which cost people their reputations, social positions, and sometimes their lives.

The collected texts we call the New Testament are often propaganda pieces from this war. Some (Luke) are not even religiously motivated.

Though all of this propaganda, and loss through translation, I think I see Jesus, the man who might have been part of God in a way the rest of us are not.

Based on this, I consider myself a Christian.

I believe Jesus said that God created the Sabbath for man, not man for the Sabbath. In the same spirit, I believe that the church, the congregation of believers not the steeple house, was created for man not man for the church.

The form of the church is unimportant, only the support it gives to the members of the congregation, to the community, is important.

An effective spiritual community does not live by bread alone, but it must have bread as well as worship. To be effective, our community must deal with both the spiritual needs, and the social and physical needs of its members.

I truly believe that spirituality is individual. I do not believe that one person can save another. If an exceptional person could save a community, why did we do away with the division between laity and the priesthood?

Unless you do not believe in continuing revelation, you must consider the bible, testimonies, Faith and Practices, etc. to be guides toward a personal relationship with God that transcends books, tradition, or law.

Sweats, or saunas, or whatever you call them have always had a mental health component. Most of the sweats I am aware of are part of anti-drug programs. Run by or sponsored by Native Americans, they welcome people of all faiths and ethnicities.

To deny someone a powerful resource for personal development or healing because you own the rights to it is no different than denying someone medicine because you have a patent on it and they can’t afford your price.

I am sorry that the only way Alice Lopez can feel better is by hurting someone. She is justified in her feelings of being dispossessed, but that does not justify her withholding help from others, especially kids.

Aside from the commercial metaphor, prayers belong to God, not to people. No one has a right to tell others how to pray. No one can own God or the means of connecting to God.

I hope this gives you a better idea of what I meant in my very brief post last year. A Friend just reminded me of this discussion, and so I reread it. It has taken me a while to respond because I have been starting a new life. At least the issues have had time to season.

If you truly believe, as your post seems to say, that we are bound by books and history, you and I will need to live with a fundamental disagreement.

In the light,

Conrad

And no, without knowing the meeting, I dare not guess what Christ has to say to it. Christ speaks individually to each person's condition, and I'm sure you know quite as well as I do that one person is not the same as another.

I'm not saying all this to be difficult, or to dodge your question. I respect the sincerity of your question!

But have you read my postings on my witness workshop at Baltimore Yearly Meeting? They begin in this posting and continue through this one and this one.

The witness Nathan bore to David, which I discuss in some detail in this three-part report, is the classic example of how true witness works. And it's clear that Nathan's witness worked so well in part because he knew David's situation, and knew how he could reach David's conscience. — Whereas, for my part, I don't know even know which meeting you're talking about, let alone know its members. And that is part of the problem.

There is also the fact that the situation of the homeless is only part of the overall picture. There is also the meeting's relationship with the power structure in which it is embedded. And the perilous situation of all humankind vis-à-vis the global ecosystem. And the meeting's members' relationships with each other, and with Christ. These things cannot simply be ignored, in favor of a narrow focus on the homeless. Any minister worth her or his salt will open her- or himself to that God who looks at the total picture and who speaks to us accordingly.

I wept through many nights after reading, studying and hearing of the rape and pillage of the people who were here first. Out of respect to Native people I don't attend sweats or encroach on that which belongs to them. I remember the faces of my Native peers and their stories and I observe their right to have something, at least one thing that we don't take away.

One native author said you took the best of everything we had, our land, our young men, our children and now you want our religion too -- will it ever end?

It is worth sacrificing something you love and find meaningful so as to not offend, especially not when we have our own religious traditions. I know that many Indians are deeply vexed about the casino selling their spiritual traditions too. What a casino does to the consternation of many traditional people does not justify white encroachment on Indian property. I consider adopting the sweats a theft.

Let us give them the honor and respect they were denied for 500 years. It is just the right thing to do in the name of honor and protocol.

Many thanks for sharing your thoughts. I am actually in full agreement with most of the points made on the web page you've copied here.

You might want to learn a little more about Friends (Quakers), however. Our community never "collaborate[d] in the genocide of the American Indian". Try using Google to do a search on the combined keywords "Quakers and Indians", and read what your search turns up. Certainly, Friends treatment of the native Americans was far from perfect; but it was nevertheless far superior to the way all other Anglo groups behaved, and collaboration in genocide was never, ever, any part of it.

From the New Age Frauds Plastic Shamans Forum Main page:

Do you think you are "Indian at heart" or were an Indian in a past life? Do you admire native ways and want to incorporate them into your life and do your own version of a sweat lodge or a vision quest? Have you seen ads, books, and websites that offer to train you to be come a shaman in an easy number of steps, a few days on the weekend, or for a fee?

Have you really thought this all the way through? Have you thought about how native people feel about what you might want to do?

Please think about these important points before you take that fateful step and expend time, money, and emotional investment:

Native people DO NOT believe it is ethical to charge money for any ceremony or teaching. Any who charge you even a penny are NOT authentic.

Native traditionalists believe the ONLY acceptable way to transmit traditional teachings is orally and face-to-face. Any allegedly traditional teachings in books or on websites are NOT authentic.

Learning medicine ways takes decades and must be done with great caution and patience out of respect for the sacred. Any offer to teach you all you need to know in a weekend seminar or two is wishful thinking at best, fraud at worst.

Most of these FRAUDULENT operators are not the slightest bit reputable. Some, such as Robert "Ghostwolf" AKA Robert Franzone and Forrest Carter, have actually been convicted of fraud. Some are sexual predators who prey upon their followers. "Sun Bear" AKA Vincent La Duke was a serial rapist who was facing numerous charges when he died, including the rape of girls as young as fourteen.

Women should be extremely wary of any " teacher" who claims sex is part of an alleged "ceremony." Most of these FRAUDULENT operators have been caught making complete fantasies of what many whites WISH natives were like. Another way to say it is that they are outright liars and hoaxers. Some, like Carlos Castaneda, were exposed as long as three decades ago.

You probably are asking yourself, "Aren't any of these people for real and a good way for me to learn?"

We (native people and our supporters) realize that most of you do not know any better, at least not yet, but we hope you learn about these matters from more reputable sources and in a more respectful manner.

If it says New Age or Shamanism on the cover, it's not a good source for learning about natives. Find out which authors can be trusted before you pay money to operators who harm us all.

Please understand the following points about native spiritual ways:

Native belief systems are COMMUNAL, not focused on the individual's faith like Christianity, and are TRIBE-SPECIFIC. There is NO "generic Indian" form of spirituality. There are as many differences from tribe to tribe as there are between Hinduism and the Church of England. No one would think of teaching those two as the same and calling them "Indo-European," yet many of these FRAUDULENT operators teach a thrown together mishmash of bits and pieces of different beliefs.

TRADITIONAL elders are very cautious about changing rituals and mixing different customs, it does happen, of course, but only after lengthy discussions that can take decades. FRAUDULENT operators are very casual and haphazard in what they do, in a manner that shows they have no understanding of or respect for the sacred.

TRADITIONAL elders DO NOT believe that any ceremony can be done by anyone who feels like it. It's that same caution and respect for the sacred. Yet these FRAUDULENT operators will let anyone do their inaccurate version of a ceremony if they have the money. Vision quests, for example, are intended for young boys age 12 to 14, but boys don't have much money, so these FRAUDULENT operators sell "quests" for hundreds or thousands to mostly middle-aged men and women.

There is also the matter of telling people they can be shamans and charging them for it. If you were interested in Judaism, would you pay money to someone who said he could make you a rabbi in just one weekend seminar? If someone did this and then claimed Jewish objections were foolish, we would recognize he was anti-Semitic. Think about the lack of respect these operators show to native people and beliefs, and to their own followers, by defrauding people.

Native people DO NOT use the label "Shaman."

Think also about how it makes it harder for natives and whites to get along when whites have been given an untrue picture of native cultures. We have to learn to get along and we can't do that as long as whites give support to operators who push a fraudulent version of what we are like."

There are non so blind as those that will not see. I am ashamed to be associated with any group that won't see cultural appropriation as the racist act it truly is.

Read for yourselves:

http://newagefraud.org/smf/index.php?PHPSESSID=33b1fa6379e2234d6021dbabcecc8c50&topic=859.0

One thing that puzzles me is your assertion that "the Inipi ceremony is and was and always will be the sole cultural property of the Lakota." As I understand it, sweat lodge ceremonies are practiced by many native American peoples, not just the Lakota, and the other native American peoples who practice them don't have to obtain permission from the Lakota in order to do so.

If George Price, who leads the Quaker Sweat Lodge, has obtained permission to do this from spiritual leaders who were not Lakota — and I know, for example, that a Cherokee medicine man has blessed what he does — then I don't understand how Lakota could overrule that permission. The Cherokee are not underlings of the Lakota, are they? They have independent authority to permit such things, do they not?

Let me say something else, something important. On your web page dealing with the Quaker Sweat Lodge, you indicate that this web page — the one you're reading right now — is in some sense the web page of the Quakers who are doing sweat lodges. It is not.

This is only my personal site, not the web site of Quakers generally. And I belong to an entirely different branch of Quakerism, one that does not permit sweat lodges at its events.

I have no control over the people, like George Price, who are doing these Quaker sweat lodge things. My involvement, such as it is, is simply that of a person in different branch of the same religion who is concerned about the direction in which George Price's branch is going. I suppose that would be maybe comparable to the sort of involvement you could have with something the Crow Nation was doing on its own lands.

If you want to influence the people who can forbid Quaker Sweat Lodges permanently, you need to be talking to Friends General Conference at friends@fgcquaker.org.

Of course, I remain keenly interested in your views, and you are always welcome to post them here as well.