Friends together
David Boulton describes how seemingly disparate groups aren’t really so
Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre in Birmingham can be an inspirational place at any time, but when all sixty-two rooms are occupied by a big buzz of Quakers it is positively awesome. When the Friends in all those rooms are supplemented by a score more, accommodated overnight in neighbouring Fircroft College, I am lost in wonder, love and praise at the patience of staff and the skill of the cooks in feeding us all.
This is how it was recently when three Quaker groups were there at the same time, sharing the facilities. One was made up of Quaker representatives on local Churches Together committees, another was a kind of induction course for new Friends and the third was a gathering of nontheist Friends.
Each group had its own programme. The forty or so in the Churches Together group had the big Cadbury room in the old house, the forty nontheists the Quiet Room in the new wing. So at first we didn’t see a lot of each other, except in the dinner queue.
But by the Saturday morning tea break it seems that all three groups had begun to feel a little uneasy at our separateness. We were different groups, representing different emphases within the theological spectrum – but we were all Quakers. Couldn’t we, shouldn’t we, make time to get together? There was free time in the afternoon, so the nontheists invited Churches Together and Becoming Friends to a joint session. For me it was the highlight of the weekend.
Yes, there were the familiar tensions. ‘How can humanists, agnostics and even atheists be Quakers?’ ‘How can creedless Quakers play a part in trinitarian Churches Together?’ But we soon discovered there were nontheist Friends in the Churches Together group and Churches Together Friends among the nontheists. One Friend had absent-mindedly signed up for both programmes, not realising that they were running at the same time!
On Sunday morning we merged again in a single Meeting for Worship. We also shared the late night epilogues. The Churches Together group took responsibility for the Saturday night epilogue. They focused on the Society’s joyful acceptance of sexual diversity and the affirmation of same-sex marriage. On Sunday night the nontheist Friends invited reflection on William Blake’s poem ‘The Divine Image’, described as ‘religious and humanist, theist and nontheist’.
The nontheist group appointed a steering committee to organise a Nontheist Friends Network in Britain, open to all who would like to explore non-supernaturalist ways of being Quaker. This is no separation. One Woodbrooke weekend showed how, cheerfully acknowledging our theological differences, we can be committed Friends together. As the statement on diversity on BYM’s website puts it, ‘Some Quakers have a conception of God which is similar to that of orthodox Christians… Others would conceive of God in very different terms… Some describe themselves as agnostics or humanists or nontheists’. In the Religious Society of Friends ‘unity in diversity’ is not just a slogan. Living adventurously, we can make it a reality.
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