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  <title>Not a notion but a way</title>
  <author>Henry S. Thompson</author>
  <date>11 Dec 2017</date>
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  <div>
   <title>Introduction</title>
   <p><emph>God, words and us</emph>[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
<emph>not</emph> to use, but is much less useful about what kind of language we
<emph>should</emph> use.</p>
   <p>The key, mistaken, assumption is that what we need to talk about as
Quakers is what we <emph>believe</emph> (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
<emph>single</emph> think 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 <emph>do</emph>.</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 <emph>us</emph>, 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<emph>doxy</emph> to ortho<emph>praxy</emph>.</p>
   <p>I don't claim originality in suggesting this:  I think it's at the heart
of what Ben Pink Dandelion has been writing and saying for some time, and I'd
be surprised if there weren't others who will read this and say "But that's
what I've been saying for <emph>years</emph>".  I can only apologise for not
having read more widely or, increasingly likely, that I have simply forgotten
what I <emph>have</emph> read.  My excuse for writing this none-the-less is to
try to encourage people to read <emph>God, words and us</emph>, but avoid the
not unreasonable conclusion from doing so that
belief-talk is what matters.</p>
  </div>
  <div>
   <title>We already know this</title>
   <p>Listing a few well-known phrases will help me make my point</p>
   <list type="naked">
    <item>Let your life speak</item>
    <item>Be patterns, be examples</item>
    <item>A testimony to the grace of God as shown in the life of ...</item>
    <item>[For Quakers] Christianity is not a notion, but a way</item>
    <item>As Friends we commit ourselves to a way of worship</item>
    <item>Come regularly to meeting for worship</item>
   </list>
   <p>And an old family story:</p>
   <list type="defn">
    <item term="visitor">Are you a Christian?</item>
    <item term="host">[pause] You'll have to ask my neighbour</item>
   </list>
  </div>
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author	ht
date	Mon, 11 Dec 2017 14:03:28 -0500
parents
children	bbda1b9895b2