Letters - 09 February 2024
From Sadness and surprise to Global warming
Sadness and surprise
It was with sadness and surprise that I read about the laying down of Quaker Concern for the Abolition of Torture (Q-CAT) (letters, 26 January) – sadness because such a charity is more essential than ever nowadays, and surprise because I hadn’t heard of it. Had I done so I would certainly have supported it, as I have been a supporter of Survivor of Torture for quite a while.
In Mary Aiston’s article on preparing for Yearly Meeting (‘Action plan’, 26 January) it says that Quaker bodies are listed in Quaker faith & practice (Qfp) 6.18. I confess that I haven’t read Qfp from cover to cover so I looked hopefully at 6.18 but it only talks about Agenda Committee. I then looked up torture in the index and read 23.30 and 31 but there was no mention of Q-CAT there either.
May I suggest that it would be helpful to have a series of articles in the Friend describing and publicising all Quaker charitable bodies and similar groups?
Dorothy Woolley
The wrong side of history
Last Sunday I bit my tongue throughout Meeting for Worship, hoping to speak during Afterwords. I said that I was deeply distressed at being a member of a society whose leader had just cancelled our crucial aid to starving Palestinians on the basis of an allegation from a government that has shown scant respect for truth or international law.
I added that this made us complicit in the systematic killing of literally tens of thousands of civilians, including women and children. ‘Democracy’ commits us to responsibility for the actions of our leaders.
My outburst was followed by a seasoned and committed Friend who rose, giving not only support, but adding that they were considering absence from Sunday worship for the foreseeable future because the present state of affairs makes calm and collected reflection impossible. Others confirmed similar feelings.
We live in terrifying times, made worse by lack of accountability from our leaders. As our country steadily moves towards the wrong side of history we ask what is the collective response of Friends to the pusillanimous and craven actions of our government in the Middle East and elsewhere.
Mavis & Roger Iredale
Pacifist?
Like Tim Gee (quoted by Gerard Bane, letters, 26 January) I am still a pacifist, and I’m old enough to be a registered conscientious objector. But I don’t suppose I am the only Quaker pacifist who is challenged and conflicted by present day conflicts, notably Ukraine, Gaza and the Red Sea. But that’s nothing new. I have been conflicted all my life by my attitude to an event very early in my life, to wit, the second world war.
I know that I could not take part in lethal force and I know that I have an obligation to support peacemakers, from QUNO to the Friends whose court case was reported last week (‘Quakers in court for DSEI witness’, 26 January).
I know that I deprecate the actions of the USA and its allies in Ukraine in the past, aggravating Russia’s sense of insecurity, but I can’t find it in me to condemn the wish of Ukraine to defend itself from Russia’s invasion. I recognise the justifiable fear of possible Russian aggression in the Baltic states aggravated by that invasion.
I cannot be unsympathetic to the fear and anger that drive both Israel and the Palestinians in the present situation in Gaza. I don’t see how the USA, Britain and our allies could remain impassive as the drones and rockets of the Houthis attack shipping in the Red Sea. All that, just as I cannot see how, for all the injustices of Versailles that fuelled the rise of Nazism, Britain could not have gone to war in 1939.
I shall always hope for diplomatic solutions to conflicts but I am conscious that they are often not possible, given the failures of policy that precede them. Does that make my identification as a pacifist untenable?
Roger Sturge
Acknowledge and listen
I was disturbed when I opened the 19 January 2024 edition of the Friend to read so many letters about transgender people. And all of them expressing negative views. Perhaps I may try to offer an alternative perspective?
Moyra Carlyle says that it would be helpful if those who do not agree with her would understand that her concerns are genuine. Perhaps she could also acknowledge that the concerns of transgender people and those of us who love and support trans people are also genuine? As the parent of a transgender daughter, I have seen at first hand the very real difficulties transgender people face, and the very real courage it takes to transition. And I have also seen the positive changes and the real joy which transition can bring about.
And I too have concerns! Almost daily, multiple articles appear in the newspapers and media about another trans panic – bathrooms, passports, hospitals, sports… the list goes on, and there is very little evidence to back any of it up – no reports of trans people attacking women in bathrooms, no complaints about trans women in hospitals, no gangs of trans women taking all the top places in sports (or chess!). I am frankly surprised that some Quakers appear to have fallen for this nonsense.
But the effects of this ocean of hysteria and misinformation are only too obvious. Transgender people face endless online abuse, and physical attacks on trans people are rising, as are trans suicides. So, my concerns are not about ideas of sex and gender or some theoretical abrogation of women’s rights because a trans woman pees in the same bathroom as me; but for the physical safety and mental health of my daughter and other transgender and non-binary people as they are faced with this daily onslaught.
And I am deeply afraid as to what the future may bring for transgender people if even a few of the measures which have been proposed by some of the ‘gender concerned’ ever become law. To focus on just a few aspects: if you cannot safely use a public toilet, if you cannot access necessary medical treatment, if you cannot obtain ID which correctly reflects your gender, then you are excluded from normal life.
I would ask correspondents to have some compassion, and just as Moyra asks ‘trans campaigners’ to avoid ‘intemperate language’, I would ask the same of them. Trans people are not an ‘ideology’ still less an ‘extreme ideology’, nor are they ‘gangs of masked, hooded, black-clad transactivist men’. If you want trans people and trans allies to join you in listening and searching for our way forward together, then you need to acknowledge and listen to us as well.
Cherry Lewis
Nontheist gathering
I was puzzled reading the news report about the nontheist Quaker gathering (‘Quakers consider links between meditation and worship’, 19 January). It quotes one of the texts under consideration from Geoffrey Hubbard, sharing his experience of ‘something other than “myself”… being a participant in the whole of existence, not limited to the body or the moment… that one understands the nature of divine power…’
For me, these words describe a genuine religious experience at the heart of my Quakerism. Can anyone explain how they fit in with the Nontheist Friends Network belief that religion is a human creation?
George Penaluna
Global warming
I wonder how many Friends who read this publication use YouTube. It can prove very useful to learn new skills and hone up on old ones. My husband and I have been watching Sabine Hossenfeldet’s videos and have been very impressed. She is a German physicist. Her recent video – ‘I pray these numbers are wrong. I wasn’t worried about climate change. Now I am’ – should be of interest to all of us.
It is an observation that the figures that have been used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and world scientists might not have got it quite right. There has been new information found that needs to be added to the calculations.
Maybe it’s time for everyone to stop flying and for those who can to ride bicycles to work.
Barbara Mark
Comments
Non theist Gathering.
I am grateful for George Penaluna’s comments.
I struggle with non theism. It seems to define itself in opposition to a God whose existence it denies.
I am not confident that it offers a coherent perspective.
In friendship
Richard Pashley. Bull Street Meeting.
By Richard Pashley on 8th February 2024 - 9:35
While I’m not a member of the Nontheist Friends Network I am a theological non-realist. I accept people’s descriptions of their spiritual and religious experiences, I accept that the experience was real for them. I don’t accept that anyone else’s religious experience contains content which has to be real for me. People tell me that they have a direct personal relationship with Christ Jesus, and I believe them. People tell me that they have a direct personal relationship with Sri Krishna, and I believe them, too. I don’t experience either of those myself. And I don’t think that I should expect or be expected to.
It seems clear to me that religious experiences are real, religions are a human creations in response to those, deities have no existence outside of human religious activity, and I see no contradiction between those propositions.
As Kierkegaard said (or, has “Johannes Climacus” say) of his Christianity: subjectivity is truth. The truth of religious experience is to be the subject of it. What may or may not be the objective truth turns out to be of little interest.
By Keith Braithwaite on 8th February 2024 - 10:35
We all have our own individual experiences of Truth. However, the Religious Society of Friends is not just about the individual. It is also about what holds us together as a corporate body.
Given that we are now admitting into membership those who regard the concept of God solely as a human creation, can we honestly say we remain committed to the belief upon which Quakerism is traditionally based that we can “discern the will of God through the discipline of silent waiting” (Quaker Faith and Practice, 302)? I am not sure that we can. Some of us may subscribe to this belief, but not all. So, the issue arises as to what can Quakerism say as one. What holds us together as a corporate body?
By Richard Pashley on 8th February 2024 - 11:25
The name of our church is “The Society of Friends”, the determiner “Religious” these days only gets added in secular contexts, presumably to avoid confusion with other friendly societies: we’re the religious one. It’s notable that only during the Evangelical spree of the mid nineteenth century did “Religious” appear in the title of our books of discipline.
Anyway, speaking as a theological non-realist my answer to the question “can we honestly say we remain committed to the belief upon which Quakerism is traditionally based that we can “discern the will of God through the discipline of silent waiting”?” is: emphatically yes.
And I note that cleaving to this business process is pretty much the only thing that all branches of the Society agrees on, from Kenyan Evangelicals to British nontheists to Californian syncretists. The really interesting thing, for me, is that it seems to work independent of any explanatory framework which may or may not be applied. So why would we, famously non-creedal, want to demand that Friends sign up to any particular explanatory framework?
By Keith Braithwaite on 8th February 2024 - 12:00
I am interested to hear that the name of our church is now the “Society of Friends”, on the basis that the determiner “Religious” only gets added in secular contests. I would be interested to know when we decided to drop the word “Religious”. Was a decision taken at Yearly Meeting or by Sufferings, and if so when?
If no such decision was ever taken, on what authority is it being asserted that the word “Religious” has been dropped?
By Richard Pashley on 8th February 2024 - 15:38
That’s the wrong way round: search the Journals of early Friends, their Epistles, and our historical Books of Discipline and you’ll find the phrase “Religious Society of Friends” is very rare. We should better ask: why have Friends recently started adding the word “Religious”?
By Keith Braithwaite on 8th February 2024 - 16:29
We were originally called “The Religious Society of Friends of the Truth”. We then became the “Religious Society of Friends”, as endorsed by the current book of discipline (Quaker Faith and Practice).This was approved by Yearly Meeting in 1995. The previous book of discipline, entitled “Christian Faith and Practice in the experience of the Society of Friends”, approved by Yearly Meeting in 1959, uses both phrases; “The Society of Friends” and “The Religious Society of Friends”.
Whatever our differences about the title of our church , I am not in unity with the view that the Quaker Business Method “works independently of any explanatory framework” as Keith Braithwaite suggests.
It may be that my experience of the Quaker Business Method and of Quaker worship is different to Keith’s.
My experience is that Meeting for worship and meeting for worship for business tend to implode if there is a loss of affinity with the faith perspective out of which they evolved. In such a situation Meeting for worship seems to become an opportunity to meditate in a friendly setting. The experience of the gathered meeting seems to be lost. Meeting for worship for business seems to become an exercise in consensus decision making, rather than discernment.
I feel that faith and practice are co-dependent. It is therefore my view that the current criteria set out in Quaker Faith and Practice at 11.01 regarding membership should be retained. This defines the threshold that should be established in determining whether an applicant should be admitted into membership. It is essentially theocentric in nature. I hope it survives the current process of revision.
In Friendship
Richard Pashley (Bull St Meeting).
By Richard Pashley on 8th February 2024 - 17:36
From what you say here, my experience of Quaker business meetings is very much the same as yours. Indeed, a gathered meeting is a very different thing from a friendly opportunity to build a consensus. I marvel regularly at the wisdom, compassion, insight, and imagination of a gathered Quaker Meeting. It far exceeds anything I’ve seen any secular setting.
I’m always quick to address the widespread misunderstanding that our process is “democratic” or “consensus-based”, it emphatically isn’t. It is, in a word I heard for the first time recently from an American Conservative Quaker and strongly agree with, “pneumocratic”: we are led by the spirit. Quite so. Without that we are lost. What turns out not to matter is what (or who) we think that spirit is or where it comes from.
QF&P 11.01 says nothing, quite carefully says nothing, about what an applicant for Membership must believe to be accepted. We’ve never had such a test. The old “Church Government” is more explicit, saying at section 831 “Membership, therefore, we see primarily in terns of discipleship, and so impose no clear-cut tests of doctrine or outward observance”.
By Keith Braithwaite on 8th February 2024 - 17:58
Thank-you for your response.
The guidance given in QFP is not a creed, but it is a light to guide us which has been approved by Yearly Meeting and therefore carries authority (or at least it should do).
As you will be aware it states (in part) at 11.01 that applicants for membership should at least be committed to the fundamentals of Quakerism. These are listed as “the understanding of divine guidance, the manner of corporate worship and the ordering of the meeting business, the practical expression of inward convictions and the equality of all before God.”
I feel that the concept of “divine guidance” implies a commitment to source and a power which is both within and without given the way in which our form of worship and decision making is defined in chapter 3 of QFP.
I am mindful that we believe in continuing revelation. Faithfulness does not require us to replicate the faith perspectives of previous generations. We have to redefine ourselves in the light of contemporary understanding if we are to avoid becoming anachronistic.
On the other hand, as we redefine ourselves it seems to me that we have to remain faithful on some level to the experience of Truth upon which Quakerism was originally based. Otherwise, we tend to become whatever anyone wants to say we are and the original experience of Truth is lost. I feel that this is what has happened to contemporary Liberal Quakerism.
I feel that we need to engage in a dialogue with our own tradition. What parts have become anachronistic and what parts need to be retained if Quakerism is to be true to itself? I hope that the outcome of such a dialogue would be that we remain grounded in the experience of the Light upon which Quakerism was traditionally based.
In Friendship
Richard Pashley Bull St Meeting
By Richard Pashley on 8th February 2024 - 19:15
I am in Membership and I believe that I am committed to all of those things listed in 11.01. What I’m not committed to is that “God” is Christ Jesus, nor that “God” is YHWH, nor for that matter that “God” is Brahman (nor Vishnu, nor Krishna), nor that “God” is Allah, nor that…and so on. And I find that this does not signify.
By Keith Braithwaite on 8th February 2024 - 19:25
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