From here to where?
Diana Sandy is concerned with a ‘crisis of confidence’
A Friend recently wrote, in a book review of A Man that Looks on Glass by Derek Guiton, that ‘The Society of Friends is in crisis’.
Is it … and in what way? A few years ago an elder commented to me: ‘If you ask 30,000 Quakers what the Society of Friends is all about you will get 30,000 different answers.’ Is that the ‘crisis’ then? That we don’t know what it is for and what it is about. If so, how has this happened?
There are still a few Quakers who grew up in the Religious Society of Friends – not many now. A few more Friends joined before ‘The Grand Change’ of 1970 and together they hold the few remaining strings to the Society’s origins and traditions that they inherited. Since the 1970s members and attenders, I feel, have been free to make it all up as they’ve gone along – hence, perhaps, the potential 30,000 different answers!
As one of those who grew up in a Quaker environment – Meeting, school and Young Friends – I imbibed Quaker things rather than studied them. I also made assumptions that I later had to challenge. As I made my way along in the Society I was obliged to explore the background to the Quaker enterprise from its beginnings.
Revisiting early Quaker insights
The time has come for us to revisit those early Quaker insights and revelations, both in the context of their time and in the context of our own. Are they still relevant and manageable in today’s world? I am no historian, nor am I an intellectual researcher. My understandings are just that – mine.
It seems that our Friend George Fox was born – nearly 400 years ago – into a world that was in many ways very similar to our own. It was a world that was expanding its horizons, challenging its hierarchies, increasing knowledge through the printing press (our IT!) and finding some religious and political rules unacceptable. People were also fearful for the future.
In that world, though, the notion of a ‘God’ was normal. The concept of a superior guiding – sometimes controlling – figure has been around for millennia in one form or another: ever since the human species has started to ask the questions ‘Why?’, ‘How?’, and ‘When?’ and found answers only in the supposed existence of ‘something other’. It seems, too, that humans were more at one with their natural world then and accepted ‘spirituality’ as fundamental and normal.
Little, if any, of that would be universally accepted in today’s world. Indeed, many challenge these concepts as delusions. Our modern world is taken over by science and technology. Creation can be explained in their terms very well and there are now explanations for almost everything. We have no need for a supernatural ‘Creator’ – a God by whatever name one chooses to use. Had there ever been a God on a throne up there on ‘Cloud Nine’ one of our rockets would have brought him [her or it] down to earth long ago!
What about ‘spirituality’ though? Does that still exist? Or is that just another delusion? Everything happens in the human brain, I’m told, so we are all capable of inventing and interpreting experiences in ways that make us happy or fearful or ‘guided’.
Something other
Our mathematicians and scientists have worked out when the universe began and when it will end. In George Fox’s day it was the earthly horizons that just got bigger. Today, it is those of the universe. Individually we appear to have become much, much smaller. Does that mean we have all become more insignificant? If we still maintain an awareness of ‘something other’ has that something – ‘God’ if you will – just got bigger and more transforming? Or is it just more out of reach?
George Fox established the Society of Friends of Jesus in the 1660s in order to focus the many revelations born out of the challenges of the day. This became the Society of Friends of the Truth (eternal Truth) as revealed to his followers. (‘Quaker’ was a derogatory nickname – not a label or heading).
Fox preached the potential for all to receive guidance from the Spirit, but this had to be channelled and tested in a disciplined, accountable way. The system he and Margaret Fell devised to enable this was set up in 1666 and lasted exactly 300 years – until 1966 – when its breakup was started. His structure enabled all Friends in all Meetings at all levels to be guided by the Spirit and for that guidance to empower the Society as a whole.
Unfortunately, that structure no longer exists. The Religious Society of Friends in Britain has, I feel, lost its most important source of guidance – its members’ insights. For many, our Society has become a friendly society, a sort of Sunday Club. Does that matter?
How do we now discern what is Truth?
So, what still exists from those early days? Can we still call ourselves ‘Friends of the Truth’ – God’s Truth; Eternal Universal Truth; and Spiritual Truth? How do we now discern what is ‘Truth’? Perhaps, though, we are deluding ourselves – there is no Truth.
What about this word ‘religious’? What does that mean now? Has the concept of spirituality become lost in space? Are we deluding ourselves that it ever existed in the first place? Does our intellect determine that our insights are delusions brought on by fatigue or fear or loneliness?
All this questioning and searching is not confined to the Society of Friends. The world has thrown us into turmoil and the way ahead is frightening and far from clear. The traditional Quaker Way would have been to centre into the power of the Holy Spirit, searching and waiting. Is that way still open to some, if not all, of us? If not, we need to search out the obstacles that now exist in our gatherings that have diminished our understanding of our faith.
If there is a crisis, it might just be a crisis of confidence in our traditional way of dealing with issues. Early Quakers were not afraid to tackle issues head on. We are naturally averse to hurting each other and there is fear that groups of Friends will leave the Society, although others might become members instead of attenders. There are many who are finding it difficult to commit themselves to become members – including some who have grown up in the Society – because they are unclear about what the Society of Friends is for now.
It is time for us all to find out. It is time for us all to start addressing the issues that have been diminishing us for half a century and more.
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