Letters - 09 September 2022
From Inreach and outreach to Misquotation
Inreach and outreach
I welcome the grants awarded to Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) for inreach. But the recent contributions from Terry Faull (5 August) and Geoffrey Durham (19 August) illustrate the need for funds to BYM for outreach as well. Even Quaker Week looks as if it is focused on inreach as much as outreach this year.
When there was a BYM outreach committee it encouraged Local Meetings to hold practice sessions so Friends could role play to be ready to answer the ‘What do Quakers believe?’ type questions. Your readers must be aware of the decline in numbers of Quakers, and our ageing membership, which make it difficult to do as much good as we could do in faith and practice.
The world needs more Quakers. So I hope the next tranche of funds to come to BYM will be for outreach.
Penelope Putz
A rich tradition
I read Jan Arriens recent article (26 August) very seriously. Jan writes in his article: ‘In my experience, Friends can have difficulty ministering at all on deeper matters’. This is a bit harsh, in my view. Surely, reducing – ‘killing off’ – a living vocabulary that is available (such as ‘God’, ‘worship’, and so on) does not help this problem, as Jan suggests. It removes a rich tradition of vocabulary, and therefore only makes discussion even thinner and one-dimensional. If one was cynical, one might even suggest this is what is required.
Secondly, Jan also uses the argument that we ‘cannot turn the clock back’. What exactly does this mean? In addition, what does it imply? Is the implication that theists are somehow old fogeys – or even rusty bicycles? Who is suggesting that and if so why? What those who speak of God are doing is describing their felt religious experience in the here and now, in this very present moment. Now. There is no ‘turning back of the clock’ going on here. It is not old-fashioned to them. This is a false, rhetorical, indeed derogatory, analogy. Rather, I think, we should want to listen to this present speech.
Finally, Jan elides and skates over the change from ‘inward light’ to ‘inner light’. This is, fundamentally, about the shift from the transcendent – a vital category in religion, to the immanent, alone. This has very significant consequences, which Jan might want to ponder more – as Charles Taylor does in A Secular Age, for example.
For these several reasons, despite my serious read, I think Jan’s analysis is wrong, and misguided.
Neil Morgan
Boris Johnson
I am troubled by Deryck Hillas’ sweeping judgement on Boris Johnson as ‘the worst prime minister in British history’ (5 August). I presume that by ‘his cronies’ he refers to probably the most diverse cabinet, in terms of ethnicity, gender and social background, in the history of our nation.
I don’t question his right to hold such extreme views, but I do question whether he should rehearse them in the pages of what I hope is still a religious periodical. Those of the same faith who hold different views have to choose between permitting such judgements to pass unremarked, or get drawn into a potentially prolonged debate.
We should judge any prime minister primarily upon their will and ability to fulfil the commitments upon which they were elected. In this, the present incumbent has, against all the odds, been spectacularly successful.
If I asked readers of this letter to raise their hands if they had, at some point, found themselves in breach of one of the complex Covid regulations, I suspect that numerous copies of the Friend would flutter to the floor. Prime ministers, like us, are human, and are sometimes caught out, even by their own regulations.
In historic retrospect I believe that Boris Johnson will emerge as not only a good prime minister who honoured his election promises and diversified his cabinet, but a great prime minister for his far-sighted and effective handling of unforeseen national problems, notably the pandemic. However, I would question whether this is the place to argue my case.
Clive Ashwin
James Lovelock
I found Kenneth Cukier’s article on James Lovelock (12 August) profoundly interesting. I had no idea of his Quaker background, and feel that that fact greatly illuminates his thinking.
It so happens that I bought, only a fortnight ago, a second-hand copy of James Lovelock’s The Revenge of Gaia, from 2006. It is filled with much forward thinking. Naturally, with my interest in population growth, I looked in the index to see what he had to say about that.
He had no doubts about this subject. He writes: ‘The root of all our problems with the environment comes from a lack of constraint on the growth of population… now it has grown to over six billion [in 2006, now eight billion], which is wholly unsustainable in the present state of Gaia… our next task will be to ensure that our numbers are always commensurate with our and Gaia’s capacity to nourish them. Personally I think we would be wise to aim at a stabilised population of about a half to one billion…
‘In the end, as always, Gaia will do the culling and eliminate those that break her rules. We have the choice to accept this fate or plan our own destiny within Gaia…
‘Our task as individuals is to think of Gaia first. In no way does this make us inhuman or uncaring: our survival as a species is wholly dependent on Gaia and of our acceptance of her discipline.’
Roger Plenty
Succinct descriptions
Advices 8 and 9 give succinct descriptions of Friends’ worship, its manner and expectations. Trying to modernise the wording to appeal to a wider society with jargon that is currently in use for other purposes will only confuse matters.
Quaker faith & practice is currently undergoing revision. I feel strongly that members of our Society should feel some obligation to respect the ‘Christian discipline’ of its present subtitle. Just because wider society is changing it is not incumbent on us to change with it, rather the reverse.
Peter Copestake
‘White privilege’
Alan Ricker (5 August) seems to be conflating – or confusing – the idea of being ‘anti-racist’ with the currently fashionable mythology of ‘white privilege’, and by implication tarring anyone who won’t sign up to this as being racist. That really won’t do. One can be just as vehemently anti-racist without subscribing to that particular dogma – and a dogma it certainly is.
I remain mystified by whatever Alan Fricker intended to convey in suggesting that homeless junkie street-beggars somehow have a higher ‘rank’ if they are white than if they are black. In any case it doesn’t even look to be true. It is hard to see how those unfortunate people could sink any lower. However, why let mere facts stand in the way of a good slogan?
Peter Bolwell
Call for peace
Thank you Miriam Ryan (12 August) for sharing with us about the Irish president’s wife Sabina Higgins’ call for a negotiated peace for Ukraine.
It means so much to me knowing that someone on these isles with political connections has spoken truth and craves peace through negotiations, not the military solutions resorted to by the world’s powerful.
Maris Vigar
Misquotation
Kate McNally (26 August) misquotes Robbie Burns’ two lines from ‘Ode to a Louse’ in the Friend. They actually read: O wad some Power the giftie gie us / To see oursels as ithers see us!’
There is no mention of ‘God’.
It is perhaps a good idea to put this right in the next edition of the Friend.
Noël Staples
Comments
Our Friend says that Boris Johnson has been “spectacularly successful”, and that most people broke covid regulations, even Friends.
When I came to Friends, I was a Conservative voter. I have canvassed for the Conservative party. Now, I am convincedly of the Left.
When I read such remarks I am tempted to social media type refutation. A reference to vomiting and brawls would fit 280 characters. Feel the burn.
In conversation, I am tempted to an emotional reaction. In my view, the Conservatives’ approach to the Good Friday Agreement and the Northern Ireland protocol Boris Johnson signed endangers peace in Northern Ireland and endangers the Union, both of which are important to me emotionally. So my voice rises, my face gets fixed, and the words which must be heard blast out of my mouth. I am not interested in hearing, only in formulating what I say next. I may interrupt.
Even if what the Guardian on one side, the Telegraph, Mail or Times on the other, report is objectively true, the emphases of each side are so different that Friends may have different impressions on the success of Boris Johnson, and what it means for the country.
Being a Quaker does not mean that we have the same view on immigration or white privilege, even though we value Equality and these issues affect that. It certainly does not mean we have the same views on economics.
Many Quakers are passionate about politics. In such disagreements, let us calm and centre, and be prepared to hear each other. Let us be careful of the truth of our statements. Let us not make an evaluation- “worst Prime Minister” or “spectacularly successful”- before being clear on facts.
And let us be mindful of the different views of Friends, and how others may be as passionate as we are even if they disagree. Let us hear each other in Love.
By Abigail Maxwell on 8th September 2022 - 8:52
Penelope Putz, re “in reach and outreach”, well written, essential unity, liberty and clarity, thank you. food for thought - is outreach easily being diverted to in reach, to reassure ourselves perhaps. We Quakers love words, words describe our everythings, without words we have nothing, yet paradoxically, Quakers have discovered silent worship as our faith core. Worship without words. I am very pleased that Rugby local Quaker meeting is running a “please join us” “special meeting for worship” this Quaker Week whose advert is welcoming, includes an essential grounding from Quaker.org.uk and offers a experience. We have ordered materials from Quakers in Britain for visitors to our special meeting to read but hope that a Meeting for Worship will suffice for words. Maybe “A Meeting for Worship” says 1000 words.
Pease Is there a way I can copy and paste the image of our advert to this page?
thank you again Penelope Putz. best wishes David Fish Rugby local Quaker meeting.
By davidfishcf@msn.com on 8th September 2022 - 10:43
I have blogged on disagreeing well, meeting each other in love, and the potential pitfalls: https://clareflourish.wordpress.com/2022/09/08/quakers-and-politics/
By Abigail Maxwell on 8th September 2022 - 11:57
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