So the bare facts that most every Friend “knows” about early Quakerism, cannot really be taken as proving that the early Friends had no unwritten equivalent to a creed within their own communities.

The apostles’ hearers were called upon “to keep” what was being proclaimed to them — and the Greek word for “to keep” in this passage is psylassein, which means “to guard, watch over, protect, preserve”.

So they were not being told to “obey” these things as one obeys a commandment. Rather, they were being entrusted with a hard-won new wisdom, as a guard is entrusted with the care of a treasure (“that which seems good”). And they were being entrusted, too, with the task of converting that wisdom from theory into practice.

To entrust people with a new wisdom and a great task in this way is quite a compliment to the people so entrusted. It says that you see them as intelligent, capable and responsible, and that you see their judgment as worthy of trust and respect.

Thus the meaning of “dogma” in the mainstream Christian world has changed very significantly in the past nineteen centuries and a half: from meaning something empowering, something that “seems good” and that ordinary believers are wise and reliable enough to uphold in the best possible way, to meaning something inhibiting, something that is to be enforced on the untrustworthy by expulsion from the Church if need be.

The intriguing questions are, Why did this happen? — and, What good purpose was it supposed to serve? For we may be sure that the Church did not permit such a change without some reason that seemed good to it at the time.

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 full 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.

Each of these groups has the sneaking suspicion that, if it loses the struggle over the Quaker Sweat Lodge, this will be the first step toward losing more and more — until, ultimately, it will lose its chance for its kind of Quakerism altogether.

And for these things, the community needs more from its leaders than courtesy and charity; it needs true spiritual direction, foresight, and a corporate discipline. And if the leaders or coördinators fail in their duty to provide these things, and instead allow the community’s energy and resources to be dissipated or squandered, the community is endangered.

Is there any liberal Quaker reading this, who doesn’t wish the right wing would listen to their “whys” for once, and not just caricature their positions?

But is it too much to point out that liberals, including Quaker liberals, overlook the conservative “whys” and caricature the conservative positions in the very same way?

This whole idea of kharismata drives home the fact that, for Peter and Paul, Christianity was not just about “accepting Christ as your personal savior”. Far less was it only about the liberal social gospel of political and economic justice for the poor, or the Christian Right’s agenda of stopping abortion, homosexuals and socialists, or the Quaker worshiper’s hope of having a nice deep meeting for worship.

Christianity was also, and above all that, about walking the path, and thereby opening a door through which Christ himself could re-manifest in the world.

If even one person manifests the body of Christ … that will be a bit of the Good News made flesh: people will be drawn to it, and will want to be in community with that person and with Christ. As with Paul and Silas’s jailer, their conversions will not be far off.