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74 </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">14 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> is a good thing to have done,
75 thoughtful, worth reading but, for me, ultimately disappointing, an opportunity
76 missed. Maybe focussing on the language that divides us was necessary, and the
77 light this book shines on the nature of that division is valuable. But it feels to me that it got trapped by its
78 own success and never got past a fundamental assumption which guaranteed its
79 eventual limitations.</p><p>The key, mistaken, assumption is that what we need to talk about as
80 Quakers is what we <i>believe</i>.
81 That's not the right way to look for what unites us as Quakers. After all,
82 the
83 <i>single</i> thing we can confidently say unites
84 Britain Yearly Meeting is that we go to
85 Meeting for Worship. Our identity is not determined by what we
86 <i>believe</i>, but by what we <i>do</i>.</p><p>If you only look at the language of belief, you miss a whole different
87 way of looking at religious identity. Choices with respect to the language of
88 belief are what distinguish many, even most, Christian denominations, but
89 that's something Quakers have declined to play: we don't do creeds. And we're not the only religion that
90 isn't best understood in terms of belief, and recognising that points us towards a better way to
91 distinguish ourselves, by shifting the focus from belief to practice, from
92 ortho<i>doxy</i> to ortho<i>praxy</i>.</p><p>I don't claim originality in suggesting this: John Punshon pretty much
93 writes exactly this in
94 QF&amp;P 20.18, and it's at the heart
95 of what Ben Pink Dandelion has been saying for some time.</p></div><div><h2>2. We already know this</h2><p>Some well-known phrases 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>As Friends we commit ourselves to a way of 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>It's not surprising that, surrounded as we are by churches for whom
96 orthodoxy is fundamental we should have
97 fallen into adopting their language for our own internal discourse. But we
98 need to shake that off, and embrace our distinctive nature.</p><p>Emphasising what we <i>do</i> puts us, according to
99 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>
100 <p><i>The Case for God</i>, 2000</p></div></blockquote><p>Armstrong suggests that contemporary Judaism and Islam have retained
101 their original self-definitions centred on orthopraxy ("uniformity of religious
102 practice"), whereas Christian denominations have shifted much more towards defining themselves in terms of orthodoxy ("correct belief").</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? That old
103 language may give us a warm feeling of in-group-ness when
104 we hear it, but what does it mean to us now? It may be
105 of intellectual interest to hear that historical Christianity and
106 contemporary Judaism were/are founded on practice, but we're not about water
107 baptism or keeping kosher. What's so special
108 about Meeting for Worship that it can sustain us in unity, preserve the
109 effectiveness of our business method and allow our disagreements about belief
110 language to be recognised without fear?</p><p>It's simple, really. In Meeting for Worship, on a good day, we
111 experience two things: a presence and a possibility. That's why we keep
112 coming back, because at some level we know we need 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
113 "gathered" meeting. We say "Meeting for Worship is not just meditation". We
114 know it when it happens. It's
115 elusive, and if we try to pin it down we lose it, that feeling that we are
116 joined with one another into something more than just our physical co-location.
117 Accepting that it is "not just me" isn't easy in the resolutely individualistic
118 culture we live in today, but if there is one item of faith we
119 <i>must</i> confess, at least to one another, it is the truth of that
120 experience, embracing 350 years of history and hundreds of
121 Meetings around the world today.</p><p>What possibility? The technical term for it is 'immanence'. We see and
122 hear it in the witness of those around
123 us: the possibility of living an inspired life. We <i>recognise</i> it
124 most vividly when we hear authentic ministry, coming from someone
125 we know is speaking as they live. It cannot be be faked, it is unmistakable,
126 terrifying and uplifting in equal measure. It
127 calls us to what we aspire to, here and now: These are neither historical
128 figures, contemporary celebrities nor
129 distant missionaries, they are each <i>one of us</i>.</p><p><i>This</i> is what we need most to
130 be talking about, and we don't need to agree about the <i>words</i> in
131 order to get started. There's nothing <i>wrong</i> with talking about
132 belief&#x2014;it's natural to want to dig in to <i>why</i> we do what we
133 do, and belief language creeps in to this, precisely <i>because</i> we're
134 not sure of ourselves.</p><p>So, guard against being <i>consumed</i> in such
135 talk, and remember that it's the
136 <i>experience</i> that matters, and matters deeply. Its reality and
137 its significance are <i>not</i> compromised by our unsatisfactory
138 attempts to talk about it. We know that what we <i>do</i> works for us. So sure, keep trying
139 to figure out why. But meantime, keep cheerfully practicing.</p></div></div></body></html>