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+ <head>
+  <title>Not a notion but a way</title>
+  <author>Henry S. Thompson</author>
+  <date>11 Dec 2017</date>
+ </head>
+ <body>
+  <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>
+ </body>
+</doc>