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date	Wed, 13 Dec 2017 12:26:48 -0500
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+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><meta name="copyright" content="Copyright &#xa9; 2017 &lt;a href=&#34;http://www.ltg.ed.ac.uk/~ht/&#34;&gt;Henry S. Thompson&lt;/a&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;a href=&#34;http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en&#34;&gt;CC-BY-SA&lt;/a&gt;"/><meta http-equiv="Content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"/><style type="text/css">
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+</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"><hr/><h1>Not a notion but a way</h1><div class="byline">Henry S. Thompson</div><div class="byline">13 Dec 2017</div><div class="copyright">Copyright &#xa9; 2017 <a href="http://www.ltg.ed.ac.uk/~ht/">Henry S. Thompson</a>&#160;<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>[subtitle] is a good thing to have done,
+thoughtful, worth reading but, for me, ultimately disappointing, an opportunity
+missed.  Maybe focussing on the language that divides us was necessary, and the
+light this book shines on the nature of that division, what is and isn't
+important about it, is valuable.  But it feels to me that it got trapped by its
+own success and never got past a fundamental assumption which guaranteed its
+eventual limitations:  it gives good advice about what kind of language
+<i>not</i> to use, but is much less useful about what kind of language we
+<i>should</i> use.</p><p>The key, mistaken, assumption is that what we need to talk about as
+Quakers is what we <i>believe</i> (or don't believe).  There are a few
+oblique mentions of alternatives in the book, but it's almost all about belief.
+That's not the right place to look for what unites us as Quakers.  After all,
+we've all heard it said, indeed many of us have said ourselves, that the
+<i>single</i> thing we can confidently say unites the membership of
+Britain Yearly Meeting is that when we can we meet together in something called
+Meeting for Worship.  Our identity is not fundamentally determined by what we
+believe, but by what we <i>do</i>.</p><p>If you only look at the language of belief, you miss a whole different
+way of looking at religious identity.  Choices with respect to the language of
+belief are what distinguish many, even most, Christian denominations from one
+another, but that's actually a game we Quakers 'officially' declined to play a
+long time ago: we don't do creeds.  And we're not the only religion that
+isn't best understood in terms of belief.</p><p>I was moved by my disappointment with where the theology think tank has
+left us to try to write down what I see as a better way to
+distinguish <i>us</i>, to try to shift the ground of looking for language
+that we can unite with, that works for us, from belief to practice, from
+ortho<i>doxy</i> to ortho<i>praxy</i>.</p><p>I don't claim originality in suggesting this:  John Punshon, as quoted in
+QF&amp;P 20.18, pretty much writes exactly this in 1967, and I think it's at the heart
+of what Ben Pink Dandelion has been writing and saying for some time. I'd
+be surprised if there weren't others who will read this and say "But that's
+what I've been saying for <i>years</i>".  I can only apologise for not
+having read more widely or, increasingly likely, that I have simply forgotten
+what I <i>have</i> read.  My excuse for writing this none-the-less is to
+try to encourage people to read <i>God, words and us</i>, but avoid the
+not unreasonable conclusion from doing so that
+belief-talk is what matters most.</p></div><div><h2>2.  We already know this</h2><p>Quoting a few well-known phrases will help me make my 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>[need a quote for equality/justice testimony]</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
+Karen Armstrong, right back at the heart of 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>
+<p><i>The Case for God</i>, 2000</p></div></blockquote><p>Armstrong suggests that contemporary Judaism and Islam have retained
+their original self-definitions centred on orthopraxy ("uniformity of religious
+practice"), whereas Christian denominations in the
+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
+orthodoxy is fundamental, as well as strident parodies of all religious people
+as little better (indeed more dangerous) than flat-earthers, we should have
+fallen into adopting their language for our own internal discourse.</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
+language may be all very well, and give us a warm feeling of in-group-ness when
+we hear it, but what does it actually amount to here and now? It may be
+interesting in an intellectual sense to hear that historical Christianity and
+contemporary Judaism were/are founded on practice, but we're not about water
+baptism or attending Mass or circumcision keeping kosher.  What's so special
+about Meeting for Worship that it can sustain us in unity, preserve the
+effectiveness of our business method and allow our disagreements about belief
+language to be recognised without fear?</p><p>It's simple, really.  In Meeting for Worship, on a good day, we
+experience two things:  a presence and a possibility.  That's why we keep
+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
+"gathered" meeting.  We say "Meeting for Worship is not just meditation".  We
+know it when it happens.  It's
+elusive, and if we try to pin it down we lose it, that feeling that we are
+joined with one another into something more than just our physical co-location.
+Accepting that it is "not just me" isn't easy in the resolutely individualistic
+culture we live in today, but if there is one item of faith we
+<i>must</i> confess, at least to one another, it is the truth of that
+experience, joining with and encouraged by 350 years of history and hundreds of
+Meetings around the world today.</p><p>What possibility?  The technical term for it is 'immanence'.  We see and
+hear it in the witness of those around
+us: the possibility of living an inspired life.  We <i>recognise</i> it
+most vividly in Meeting for Worship, when we hear authentic ministry, 'authentic' because it comes from someone
+we know is speaking as they live.  It cannot be be faked, it is unmistakable,
+terrifying and uplifting in equal measure.  It
+calls us to what we aspire to.  It is at once daunting (how can I possibly do
+what they do) and reassuring (it is possible).  These are not celebrities or
+distant missionaries, they are each <i>one of us</i>.</p><p>Whole books have been written about both of these, I have barely scratched
+the surface.  My point is simply that <i>this</i> is what we need most to
+be talking about, and we don't need to agree about the <i>words</i> in
+order to get started, we just have to acknowledge that there is a shared
+<i>experience</i> that matters, deeply, to us, and that its reality and
+its significance are <i>not</i> compromised by our unsatisfactory
+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
+it's not surprising that we struggle to come up with agreed answers.  The key
+point to hold on to is <i>that doesn't undermine the validity of the
+doings</i>.  Or, rather, it only undermines our faith if we <i>let</i>
+it.  If we restricted ourselves to only doing things if we understood why they
+worked, we'd have very little left.  And, as the previous section tried to
+explain, we know that what we do <i>does</i> work.  So sure, keep trying
+to figure out why.  But meantime, keep cheerfully practicing.</p></div></div></body></html>

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