Being a Quaker
Martin Drummond considers identity and spirituality, members and attenders
Eric Bramsted’s reflections on culture, religion, identity and Israel (11 July) bear upon my own uneasy thoughts about what it means to be a member of the Religious Society of Friends today, and the unfortunate habit of excluding attenders from certain items of Area Meeting business.
Membership was not felt necessary in the early days of the Society, being introduced in the eighteenth century for the purposes of internal census and administering poor relief. Many Friends now rejoice in it but, while it may still be felt necessary for some practical purposes, I feel that a close eye needs to be kept on what it is thought to mean. The trouble is that it feeds far too easily into a Quaker sense of ‘specialness’ that is completely at odds with the testimonies that Friends profess. I find this so distasteful that, in spite of having Quaker antecedents going back to the seventeenth century, being brought up in a Quaker family and attending a Friends’ school for seven years, I cannot bring myself to apply for membership.
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