A close-up view of a battery. Photo: By Mika Baumeister on Unsplash.
Beyond doubt? Harvey Gillman wonders if Friends could be more positive about their faith
‘Sometimes I wish we would not be so afraid of declaring what we have found.’
In a radio interview on the BBC Radio 4 Sunday programme, our Friend Tim Gee (general secretary to Friends World Committee for Consultation) described his coming back to Friends as ‘a mountain top experience’, an ecstatic experience of relationship with God. ‘I quaked,’ he said.
This sort of description, of coming (back) to Quakerism, is very rare among contemporary British Friends. Wow, I thought, there is real passion in this description. Shortly after this, in our local Meeting for Worship, Advices & queries 1.02 was read out: ‘Appreciate that doubt and questioning can also lead to spiritual growth and to a greater awareness of the Light that is in us all.’
Both the interview and the reading pointed to a greater awareness of the spiritual basis of our community. But I could not help feeling that the language of the second would appeal more to the Society as we find it here and now. Sometimes we cannot even use the word ‘God’ without a phrase like ‘or whatever we may mean by that’. It is as though being more definite would exclude others, with a sense that we must not be too definite about what we have found.
Many of us have come from places where we felt constricted, where our experiences have been downplayed, and we are afraid now of being seen to be laying down too many rules for others. But I admit to really appreciating Tim Gee’s description of his experiences. Yes, we can doubt, we can be the people of the eternal perhaps (or perhaps not), the people who doubt credally. Sometimes, however, I do wish we would not be so afraid of declaring what we have found. Finders as well as seekers. Explorers of the great continent of the Spirit.
We sometimes worry that the people who come to Friends in Britain may be theologically diverse but socially monolithic. We are middle-class, white for the most part, well educated and quite articulate. Is this surprising when a lot of our advertising stresses the individualistic, experimental, rational, hesitant? The poster which sums this up for me best is the one which states: ‘Thou shalt decide for yourself’. I find nothing in itself wrong with that as a general message, but is it really one that gets simply to the essence of the Quaker way? Of course, much of our advertising proclaims (if that is not too strong a word) our commitment to social reform, peace, and environmental awareness. These are indeed powerful messages worth sharing with the world. But when we attempt to put into words the spiritual underpinning of our testimonies, we often resort to abstractions such as ‘the Light’ or ‘faith’. When we put out our message(s), who do we think we are speaking to? People like ourselves no doubt – tentative, reserved, not too passionate. Fearful, perhaps, of too much enthusiasm?
In writing this, I admit to my own limitations. I was the outreach secretary for Britain Yearly Meeting for quite some time. I have been guilty of some of these hesitations, and this vagueness. Having left that role over twenty years ago, I now wonder what Quakers today have to say in an age of increasing anxiety, where people are learning from an early age to doubt, to mistrust, to deconstruct and to be mistrustful (rightly) of the strident certainties of those who know, who claim to have a direct line to the eternal, who use religion as a shield to protect themselves and as a sword to attack others.
We worry, also, how we can maintain our own Quaker institutions, how we can fill requirements for posts at Meeting. We seem to spend a vast amount of time on these preoccupations. We look back to our origins and dream about a transformed future, as though the shaky present can be redeemed by reference to other more confident times.
‘To what positive vision are our negative responses pointing?’
Quakerism is full of religious/spiritual refugees who bear on their shoulders past hurts, for whom doubt is a sign of resistance. I myself came to Friends to be free of past religious burdens. But ‘freedom from’ is only the first stage. ‘Freedom from’ must surely lead to ‘freedom to’. I have known several people who rejoiced to find Friends, who at last could breathe freely, but after a time wondered just what this new space could offer as they pursued their exploration of Spirit and community. What is it in our experience that we can really affirm, that can be tenderly, even joyfully, shared with others? And what in their new freedom can they share with us?
My own return journey to Friends, in my late twenties, was triggered by listening to an evangelical eucharistic Anglican hymn, describing the breaking of Christ’s body for healing of the world. That theology was not, and still isn’t, mine, but listening to the vibrancy of that hymn opened a door for me into a sacred space that I am still exploring. It was a life-changing experience.
I realise that this way of speaking may not describe the experience of many people. I know of Friends who might describe their ministry (if they use that word at all) as something much less dramatic. I admire the Friend who once said his work for his Meeting was ‘the mains and the drains’. The divine comes to us in many different ways.
Some years ago, in this magazine, I challenged Friends to go beyond a definition of Quakerism that worked in terms of the negative. Yes, we don’t have priests, or hymns, or a religious calendar, or titles etc etc etc. My challenge was to ask ‘What do we have?’. The response from Friends was overwhelming, and we produced a pamphlet called ‘This I Affirm’. It was recently pointed out to me that the word ‘protestant’ derives from pro test – in favour of a witness. In the name of what do we testify? If we protest, in the name of what truth are we witnessing? To what positive vision are our negative responses pointing?
For me, at the heart, nay, the soul, of the Quaker vision, is the outrageous revolutionary command that we answer that of God – the sacred, the inviolate, the precious – in all life, including ourselves. Answer not just in words which are always, ultimately, a clumsy currency, but in the way we are in, and with, the world.
I must admit my spiritual life is now much more ordinary than I would have described in the past. I find prayer next to impossible in any conventional sense. My theology is increasingly minimalist. One of the highlights of my ‘religious’ life recently took place during a visit to a monastery. It was not the liturgy, not the religious books around, nor the chapel. It was sitting with my partner in the garden watching the golden leaves falling from the trees in a rare hour of sunlight. My watching, our silence, was my worship, my communion, my interconnectedness – self, other, the world around in an embrace of Spirit. It did not deny the violence taking place in many parts of the world, the hunger, the pain, the threat all around of global destruction. But it was an affirmation of the sacred in the face of great universal political anxiety.
Can we proclaim that paradise is still possible in what sometimes seems like a descent into hell?
Comments
Actions speak loudest. If Friends think that re-organisation and the renaming of rooms at Friends House are the most important actions that we can undertake in this broken world, then that is the message we will be putting out. But it’s all words.
Friends Relief and the kindertransport spoke louder than words. There is much need in the world still, not to condemn but to uplift.
By Roger W on 5th December 2024 - 15:17
This speaks to me. Ministry for me is often a matter of attention, whether that’s to a piece of music, leaves falling, what a person is saying, or what love requires of me. Years ago, a Friend said to me ‘So often people think they’re listening, when all they’re really doing is waiting to speak’.
By Lucy P on 9th December 2024 - 11:25
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