Letters - 09 December 2022
From Common worship to Gender identity issues
Common worship
In the 25 November issue, Harvey Gillman asked the question ‘What, where is the communion that makes us a community?’
At Frederick Street Meeting, in Belfast, we have an occasional early finish to the Meeting for Worship. This gives time for a short, prepared talk, designed to stimulate discussion when we return to the circle again after socialising with our refreshments. Previous subjects have been ‘Trust’, ‘Prayer’, ‘Hope’, ‘Attunement’. The most recent was ‘Community’.
But on this occasion we were encouraged to take a step back and focus on ‘the bedrock of our Meeting as a worshipping community with God at hand to lead us in our service’. We were reminded that worship in our age-old Quaker style is a group activity, where our separate lives connect, trustfully. Clearly we have our differences. That is evident in many ways, including the manner and content of spoken ministry. But we are prepared to join together as a worshipping community, seeking ‘to know one another in the things that are eternal’.
We were reminded that we are all participating, none spectating. A gathered Meeting is something that no one of us creates individually. Rather, it comes about through us all, led by and led into communion with the Holy Spirit and into fellowship with one another.
Everyone present at the talk chose to stay on to share the many thoughts that arose. And further personal consideration during the following week led to several pieces of spoken ministry the following Sunday.
In Belfast, ‘Community’ has its own particular significance. In other contexts the word ‘interface’ would imply connection. Here, however, an interface is used to mean a point of closure, a barrier. The society has developed many signals that form ‘us or them’ clues, all designed to keep people apart. What we are doing in our Meeting for Worship is the opposite. As we were reminded in our talk, Thomas Kelly wrote helpfully: ‘Worship does not consist in achieving a mental state of concentrated isolation from our fellows. But in the depth of common worship it is as if we found our separate lives were all one life.’
So, in answer to Harvey Gillman’s question, we find the communion that creates our community in our common worship.
Christine McNeill
Aseem Malhotra’s talk
Quiet Company was right to host Aseem Malhotra’s talk (25 November). He is a consultant cardiologist who supports traditional vaccines and who counts among his acquaintance the current and former editors of renowned medical journals (one, Richard Horton, was in the audience).
He was part of the British Medical Journal’s (BMJ) ‘Too Much Medicine’ campaign and writes about the corruption of medicine by the pharmaceutical industry. If space allowed I would quote Richard Horton (Lancet) or Richard Smith (BMJ) or Marcia Angell (New England Journal of Medicine), all current or former editors, saying the same.
It’s true that Aseem warns of dangers from the Covid vaccines after initially recommending it. His father died following a vaccine booster. This prompted him to spent nine months researching the data and this made him change his mind about Covid vaccine safety and efficacy. Some now call him an anti-vaxxer because of this. He admits that he knew very well how pharmaceutical companies cheat and how regulators collude but couldn’t imagine it would happen with a vaccine.
The trouble at Friends House, however, was not that Aseem now calls for a suspension of Covid vaccinations but that there was a small but noisy element of the audience who had come to heckle, to shout abuse and to disrupt. These were the real anti-vaxxers for whom Aseem was a traitor because he didn’t go far enough for them; the sort of people who believe that the Covid vaccines are bioweapons and who wanted him to say it.
I was present at the event and it did turn rather ugly. Here was a doctor risking his reputation and career to speak truth to power and, in fairness, the vast majority of the audience loved him for it. He is the sort of person that Quakers should host. He bases his opinions on evidence, is able to listen to both sides, admits when he is wrong and has the courage to speak unpopular truths. You can find a recording at youtu.be/vw7YXUZ1SL0.
Oliver Müller
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