Letters - 09 February 2018
From worship and truth to an apology
Worship and truth
Could ‘our, laudable, lack of creeds or set beliefs’, which Martin Hartog (26 January) extols, in fact be the cause of the difficulties that some individuals, who are unfamiliar with the corporate nature of our silent worship, appear to be having?
In welcoming ‘all faiths and none’ are we somehow obscuring the beliefs that George Fox and the early Quakers held? Have we forgotten that George Fox heard a voice which said: ‘There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition,’ and when he heard it his heart did leap for joy?
Apart from the band of Friends serving on the Quaker Committee for Christian and Interfaith Relations (QCCIR), we seem to have fallen off the Christian radar, somewhere between a whole chapter devoted to us in Worship and Theology in England Volume V: the Ecumenical Century 1900-1965 by Horton Davies, and our non-appearance in last year’s The Bloomsbury Guide to Christian Spirituality.
Is this because we have stopped praying in our public worship? Or is it because there is little teaching offered in our spoken ministry?
Early Quakers described themselves as ‘Friends of the Truth’ and were clear about where truth was to be found. Surely, today, our Religious Society can do better than leave it to individual Friends to discern, from their own experience, which parts of Quaker faith & practice turn out to be true?
Deciding how we proceed with regard to the Scriptural Reasoning movement within other churches and faiths might be a start.
Christopher J Green
Membership and attendance
I hear Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) Agenda Committee are anxious to encourage attendance at BYM by young people, and also by attenders. I would absolutely concur with encouraging young people to attend; I am less sure about attenders. BYM is, after all, the annual meeting of members of the Religious Society of Friends.
Perhaps it is the Brexit negotiations and talk of ‘cherry-picking’, or the current free-market dogma that pervades most of our government thinking, that colours my unease. But the notion that one can have one’s cake and eat it, that we welcome contributions or criticism from any and all participants with no obligation or responsibility, and that we do this in an organisation with no leaders, strikes me as unsustainable.
We would be far better engaged in exploring with attenders what stops them being prepared to join us than making it completely unnecessary for them to do so. Coyly referring to ‘Friends not in membership’ doesn’t help, either.
Time was when merely standing alongside Friends in public established one as a Quaker and invited imprisonment and other forms of retribution. Today, it’s more formal, but a lot less dangerous, to make that commitment.
So, what’s stopping you?
Jamie Wrench
Uneasy with term
In common with Eric Walker (2 February) I also find myself uneasy with the term ‘overseer’ because of its association with slavery.
It is difficult to find a suitable synonym, but perhaps the term ‘pastoral carer’ (or even ‘pastor’ if something shorter is needed) could be an acceptable alternative? This does seem to be the description of the role used in Quaker faith & practice.
Wendy Gwatkin
Use of language
I am sorry about my somewhat delayed response but I have just read the ‘box’ at the bottom of the article on the Bhopal article (8 December).
It may be that this section contains information received from India, but I would like to comment on the language used.
I am a retired disability social worker. Neither ‘suffers from’ nor ‘mental retardation’ would be used nowadays by anyone working in this area. ‘Has’ will suffice, and ‘learning disability’ is the acceptable description for someone with an impairment of this kind.
Long gone are the days when ‘idiots’ and ‘imbeciles’ were official categories, but many other terms persist: ‘mentally handicapped’ still appears occasionally and ‘wheelchair-bound’ (instead of ‘wheelchair user’) is quite common.
I know it is quite difficult to keep up with changes in the use of language and what is considered appropriate, but Friends have a testimony to equality and a generally enlightened approach, which to my mind makes this even more important in a Quaker context.
Joy Paul
The Bhopal disaster
I would like to respond to Martin Wright’s very thought-provoking article in the 8 December 2017 issue of the Friend concerning the Bhopal disaster.
It is an extraordinary indictment of society that there are still multiple issues, more than thirty years after the event, which have not been addressed, and many people are still suffering because of it.
It is also a reflection on the multinational corporation that was originally responsible – a large American corporation which has now been merged twice with other larger multinationals and who have failed to face the issues.
I think that we as Quakers could write to our MPs asking them to bring some pressure on the DowDuPont Inc chemical company informing them of the ongoing environmental problems that are bringing so much damage and grief to thousands of people.
This might at least stop them continuing to turn a blind eye.
Jane Smith
Belonging
I was delighted to read Harvey Gillman’s letter (2 February) with his ‘Why that “but”?’ I have always experienced a tremendous sense of belonging with the spirit, a spirit which pervades everything – you, me, the world, the universe – a spirit which somehow is everything, which somehow underlies everything in a way that is mutually interdependent.
It’s a spirit which, as James Nayler observed, ‘delights to do no evil’. I would add that, in my own experience it delights in itself as well as in me, often filling me with a great joy, at times almost unbearable, verging on pain or fear. I think this spirit delights in everyone and everything, and that somehow it is possible for anyone to experience and live with this delight. As James Nayler also said, it ‘delights to endure all things’.
That delight can confront me at any time and feels odd, almost perverse (though I would not be without it!) when I’m in pain, whether the chronic physical pain of arthritis, or spiritual and mental pain, as experienced in 2012 when I was told I had cancer.
We all belong to the spirit and as such I belong to you and to everything, I am part of you and of everything, and you all belong to me and are part of me and of everything.
Noël Staples
Children and worship
With regard to Jan Lethbridge’s letter (19 January) concerning the children presenting sessions at a summer gathering, they are doing so in a spirit of worship rather than performing a set piece which merits applause.
I know many children who have been involved in this and it is made very clear to them that it’s part of a Business Meeting and worship, not a performance, and they don’t expect applause.
Dawn Beck
Apology
Unfortunately, a mistake was made in the presentation of a letter last week. Our apologies to those concerned. The correct version is below.
Friends concerned about the maintenance of poverty in the UK will welcome the news of Claire Ainsley’s appointment at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) to take forward its plans to end poverty (19 January).
Poverty is, after all, people seriously lacking the necessary resources to be able to share ordinary inclusive levels of living. The cause of poverty is the unequal distribution of personal and public resources by society’s structures, not poor people’s individual behaviour or deprived experiences.
Friends will be familiar with burning problems such as food poverty, homelessness and destitution which are among the current visible signs of poor people’s serious lacks of adequate resources for social inclusion and freedom of choice.
The 2016 JRF report on ‘solving poverty’ is full of ideas about how to cope with the consequences of such evils, but since campaigning about the inadequately unequal resources which cause poverty to begin with is treated as ‘political’, JRF as a charity avoids doing so.
In this context, Friends will want to support JRF and Claire Ainsley in finding better ways than in the report of implementing Joseph Rowntree’s original insight that ‘much of the current philanthropic effort is directed to remedying the more superficial manifestations of weakness or evil, while little thought or effort is directed to search out their underlying causes’.
John Veit-Wilson
