Mercurial > hg > rsof

<?xml version='1.0'?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="../../lib/xml/doc.xsl" ?>
<!DOCTYPE doc SYSTEM "../../lib/xml/doc.dtd" >
<doc xmlns:x="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
 <head>
  <title>Not a notion but a way</title>
  <author>Henry S. Thompson</author>
  <date>9 January 2018</date>
  <style>.bib p {clear: right; float: right; width: 75%; margin-top: 0pt}
         .bib name {display: inline-block}
         .bib div {clear: both}</style>
 </head>
 <body>
  <div>
   <title>Introduction</title>
   <p><emph>God, words and us</emph> <link href="#hr">[Rowlands 2017]</link> 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.</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 way 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> thing we can confidently say unites the membership of
Britain Yearly Meeting is that when we can we go to
Meeting for Worship.  Our identity is not 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, but
that's something Quakers have stood aside from: we don't do creeds.  And,
importantly, we're not the only religion that isn't best understood in terms of
belief.  Acknowledging this points us towards a better way to distinguish
ourselves, by shifting the focus from belief to practice, from
ortho<emph>doxy</emph> to ortho<emph>praxy</emph>.</p>
   <p>I don't claim originality in suggesting this:  John Punshon <link href="#jp">[Punshon 1987]</link> pretty much writes exactly this, and I think it's at the heart
of what Ben Pink Dandelion has been writing and saying for some time.</p>
  </div>
  <div>
   <title>We already know this</title>
   <p>Some well-known phrases illustrate the 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>A humble learner in the school of Christ</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>
    <item>... in the manner of Friends</item>
    <item>Swear not at all</item>
    <item>Live simply</item>
    <item>[A]lleviate suffering and seek positive social change</item>
    <item>[L]ive in the virtue of that life and power that takes away the occasion of all wars</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>
   <p>This emphasis on what we <emph>do</emph> as Quakers puts us, according to
Karen Armstrong, in line with the origins of the great monotheist religions:</p>
   <display><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><link href="#ka">[Armstrong 2000]</link></p></display>
   <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.  But once
we're <emph>aware</emph> of that, we can choose to step away.</p>
  </div>
  <div>
   <title>"And this [we know] experimentally"</title>
   <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 or 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
<emph>must</emph> 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 <emph>recognise</emph> 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 historical
figures, not contemporary celebrities, not
distant missionaries: they are each <emph>one of us</emph>.</p>
   <p>Whole books have been written about both of these, I have barely scratched
the surface.  The point is simply that <emph>this</emph> is what we need most to
be talking about, and we don't need to agree about the <emph>words</emph> in
order to get started, we just have to acknowledge that there is a shared
<emph>experience</emph> that matters, deeply, to us, and that its reality and
its significance are <emph>not</emph> compromised by our unsatisfactory
attempts to talk about it.</p>
  </div>
  <div>
   <title>There's nothing wrong with talking about belief</title>
   <p>It's natural to want to dig in to <emph>why</emph> we do what we do, and
belief language inevitably creeps in to this, precisely <emph>because</emph> we're not sure of ourselves.  And
it's not surprising that we struggle to come up with agreed answers.  The key
point to hold on to is <emph>that doesn't undermine the validity of the
doings</emph>.  Or, rather, it only undermines our faith if we <emph>let</emph>
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 <emph>does</emph> work for us.  So sure, keep trying
to figure out why.  But meantime, keep cheerfully practicing.</p>
  </div>
  <div class="bib">
   <title>References</title>
    <x:div><name>[Armstrong 2000]</name><p id="ka"> Armstrong, Karen, <emph>The Case for
God</emph>.  Knopf, New York, 2000.</p></x:div>
    <x:div><name>[Punshon 1987]</name><p id="jp"> Punshon, John, <emph>Encounters with silence: reflections
from the Quaker tradition</emph>, pp. 44&ndash;45.  Quaker Home Service,
London, 1987.  Also Friends United Press,
Richmond Indiana, 2006.  As quoted in <emph>Quaker
Faith and Practice</emph>, The Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of
Friends (Quakers) in Britain, 1995.  Available online at <link href="https://qfp.quaker.org.uk/passage/20-18/">QF&amp;P 20.18</link></p></x:div>
    <x:div><name>[Rowlands 2017]</name><p id="hr"> Rowlands, Helen ed. <emph>God, words and
us</emph>.  Quaker Books, London, 2017.</p></x:div>

  </div>
 </body>
</doc>
author	Henry S Thompson <ht@inf.ed.ac.uk>
date	Tue, 14 Jan 2025 15:02:12 +0000
parents	fd8bfd519828
children