77 .bib div {clear: both}</style><title>Not a notion but a way</title></head><body style="font-family: DejaVu Sans, Arial; background: rgb(254,250,246)"><div style="text-align: center" class="head"><h1>Not a notion but a way</h1><hr/><div class="byline">Henry S. Thompson</div><div class="byline">9 January 2018</div><div class="copyright">Copyright © 2018 <a href="http://www.ltg.ed.ac.uk/~ht/">Henry S. Thompson</a> <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en">CC-BY-SA</a></div></div><div class="body"><div><h2>1. Introduction</h2><p><i>God, words and us</i> <a href="#hr">[Rowlands 2017]</a> is a good thing to have done,
98 ortho<i>doxy</i> to ortho<i>praxy</i>.</p><p>I don't claim originality in suggesting this: John Punshon <a href="#jp">[Punshon 1987]</a> pretty much writes exactly this, and I think it's at the heart
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99 of what Ben Pink Dandelion has been writing and saying for some time.</p></div><div><h2>2. We already know this</h2><p>Some well-known phrases illustrate the point:</p><ul class="naked nolabel "><li>Let your life speak</li><li>Be patterns, be examples</li><li>A testimony to the grace of God as shown in the life of ...</li><li>A humble learner in the school of Christ</li><li>[For Quakers] Christianity is not a notion, but a way</li><li>As Friends we commit ourselves to a way of worship</li><li>Come regularly to meeting for worship</li><li>... in the manner of Friends</li><li>Swear not at all</li><li>Live simply</li><li>[A]lleviate suffering and seek positive social change</li><li>[L]ive in the virtue of that life and power that takes away the occasion of all wars</li></ul><p>And an old family story:</p><dl class=" "><dt><b><a name="visitor">visitor</a></b></dt><dd>Are you a Christian?</dd><dt><b><a name="host">host</a></b></dt><dd>[pause] You'll have to ask my neighbour</dd></dl><p>This emphasis on what we <i>do</i> as Quakers puts us, according to
100 Karen Armstrong, in line with the origins of the great monotheist religions:</p><blockquote class="vanilla"><div><p>"Religion as defined by the great sages of India, China, and the Middle East was not a notional activity but a practical one; it did not require belief in a set of doctrines but rather hard, disciplined work..."</p>
104 main have shifted much more towards defining themselves in terms of orthodoxy ("correct belief").</p><p>It's not surprising that, surrounded as we are by churches for whom
108 we're <i>aware</i> of that, we can choose to step away.</p></div><div><h2>3. "And this [we know] experimentally"</h2><p>But, what does that have to do with us, you may well ask? All that old
118 coming back, because at some level we know we need to keep having that experience.</p><p>What presence? The technical term for it is 'transcendence'. We're not very good at talking about it. We refer to a
142 attempts to talk about it.</p></div><div><h2>4. There's nothing wrong with talking about belief</h2><p>It's natural to want to dig in to <i>why</i> we do what we do, and
150 to figure out why. But meantime, keep cheerfully practicing.</p></div><div class="bib"><h2>5. References</h2><div><b>[Armstrong 2000]</b><p id="ka"> Armstrong, Karen, <i>The Case for
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156 Friends (Quakers) in Britain, 1995. Available online at <a href="https://qfp.quaker.org.uk/passage/20-18/">QF&P 20.18</a></p></div><div><b>[Rowlands 2017]</b><p id="hr"> Rowlands, Helen ed. <i>God, words and
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