Letters - 12 January 2018
From Quaker faith in action to Marcus Borg
Quaker faith in action
I was delighted to see the subject matter of the Friend’s 15 December edition and to read the interview with Judith Moran, the article about ‘Down to Earth’ and the piece commemorating the end of the celebrations of 150 years of Quaker Social Action (QSA), with the daunting conclusion noted in the celebratory material – celebration is a difficult word to use when the human misery continues.
At a recent meeting of QSA trustees, where I had the ‘pleasure’ of acting as clerk, I was thanked and I commented that Quakers do not thank each other or applaud, which bemused our new non-Quaker trustees. However, there are some people Friends should thank and applaud and Judith Moran is one of them. In the last few months she has won the Charity Times Outstanding Individual Achievement Award and was highly commended in the Third Sector Chief Executive of the Year awards. She has enabled the launching of a daring new project, Move On Up.
Even though QSA is not part of Britain Yearly Meeting it is one of the very public faces of Quakers in Britain, and Friends everywhere can thank Judith for enabling so many people to see Quaker faith in action and so many people to benefit through the work of QSA. Thank you Judith.
Peter Rivers
Assistant clerk of QSA
Peace and divine defence
In his ‘Thought for the Week’ (1 December) Roger Hill writes of often wondering if his pacifism is solidly 100 per cent and asks: ‘Wouldn’t I defend my family by whatever means were at hand?’
The answer can only depend on the precise emergency and the questioner’s traits. In my view the question has nothing to do with pacifism, which renounces war as being secular states’ and groups’ resort to anarchic violence and fraud in pursuit of their policies and desires.
In a notable twentieth century novel the heroine is saved from the local ‘ripper’ by the unexpected appearance of an acquaintance, who arrives just in time to grab a club from a hat stand and stun him.
It is eighteen centuries since Tertullian said of the scene at Jesus’ arrest that in disarming Peter he disarmed all Christians.
It is one century since Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy, the Anglican priest and poet, claimed that the sword – in other words aggressive weaponry – is useless for God’s work and that national armaments need to be supplanted by international services for law and justice. His arsenal is listed at Ephesians 6:11.
The cosmos is permeated by spiritual ‘Powers of Good, Powers of ill, Strewing balm, or shedding Poison in the fountains of the Will’ (Alfred Tennyson, Locksley Hall - Sixty Years After).
So, prayer for peace and divine defence is vital, however evil has come to be.
Frank McManus
The ‘Red Book’
With reference to the article ‘Revision of the “Red Book”’ in the 15 December issue of the Friend can I express my astonishment at the following extract: ‘Some Friends in BYM [Britain Yearly Meeting] felt “there is nothing in the current book that speaks to them”.’
I can understand, as is evident in my own Meeting, that there are those who find words like God difficult or impossible to accept, but I could, if you allowed me the space, list literally hundreds of passages in our current ‘Red Book’ that have no such references and simply convey the common humanity that should unite Friends, irrespective of individual beliefs. As one elder in our Meeting remarked recently: ‘It is a book of wisdom.’
Is there really nothing in the thirty-six pages devoted to our Peace Testimony that resonates with these Friends? Do they not relate, to quote just one example, to the beautiful passage describing how a young girl of three welcomed a new baby into her Meeting (Quaker faith & practice 10.09)?
I suspect that many of those who find there is nothing in the current book that speaks to them haven’t actually read all of it. If they have, and still feel the same way, perhaps they should ask themselves if they’re in the right place.
Richard Stewart
Brexit
Much of the debate about leaving the European Union has been around the direct effects on the UK, much of it to varying degrees speculative. The effect on the EU is much more certain and tends to be ignored.
I think it would be generally agreed that the UK’s departure weakens the EU. It will do so in the context of a changing political scene in Europe. The inclusion of the Freedom Party in Austria’s government is just the latest example, following the rise of right-wing government in Poland and Hungary.
The vision behind the EU was to make war unthinkable in Europe. In respect of western Europe it has been successful and as it spreads its influence eastwards so war becomes unthinkable there. The EU faces some difficult challenges of diplomacy in the Ukraine and those parts of the former Yugoslavia that remain outside it. The withdrawal of the UK can only hinder progress there.
The effect of our departure on the future of the EU is what really depresses me, much as I am angered by the potential impact on me and my family (two of whom live in Germany).
Roger Sturge
Most of us can do very little about Brexit; it was a democratic decision, if a narrow one, and we must live with it. Personally, I voted to remain, being a lover of several European languages, and well remembering the important reasons for which the European Union was founded – of preventing a repeat of those devastating European wars.
But perhaps because it has grown too big, the EU is now pursuing a policy of exclusive trade deals, designed to keep the benefits for those developed nations inside and to keep others out.
It would not hurt us overall to have a slightly lower standard of living – we just need to distribute it more fairly. So, let us concentrate as Quakers on the priorities Clive Ashwin (24 November) mentions.
Elaine Miles
Organisation
Do we care about how our Meetings are organised and run? In 1985 I became a member of the Religious Society of Friends. At my Local Meeting I did my duty as overseer, elder and clerk. Then I retired and moved. At my new Meeting the overseers didn’t appear to know their job. I even discovered attenders who had been made overseers. The reason I believe they were not fully informed was that ‘Church Government’ was included in Quaker faith & practice and therefore overlooked.
When I became a member my Area Meeting gave me two books, thereby keeping ‘Church Government’ separate, and easily read and understood.
For the sake of the future of Quakerism, I would ask that these books be printed separately, in two volumes.
Raymond Hudson
Mind and spirit
Kevin Hogan (27 October) puts forward a version of the reductionist view that the mind does not exist independently but is simply a function of the brain/nervous system. In the light of modern research this view is no longer tenable. A large volume of evidence has been put together by neurosurgeons and psychologists to show that the Spirit, the eternal ‘Me’, my self-awareness does exist.
It has ‘alien’ properties such as our inability to locate it. It enables us to be aware although the brain/nervous system is thoroughly and sufficiently anaesthetised or is temporarily non-functional due to disease. It helps to explain experiences such as those of near death and those of out of the body.
Forty years ago my mother had a sudden loss of consciousness. She said this as she recovered: ‘I see, it isn’t time yet. Go back and carry on the good work’. Who was she talking to? This led to an interest in George Fox’s basic experiences and research into the literature dealing with these topics.
It seems we may be living in a sea of consciousness to which one day we will return.
Peter Boyce
Marcus Borg
Roger Matthews (6 October) wonders why the American Episcopalian Marcus Borg might appeal to Quakers. Marcus Borg was well connected with Quakers and was keynote speaker at one of the Friends General Conference gatherings seven or eight years ago when one of his many books on the historical Jesus first came out.
He was asked, in the discussion session after his talk, which of the many Jesus books he most recommended. Instead of plugging his own works and those of his colleagues in the Jesus seminar he embarrassed (but delighted) me by citing my Who on Earth was Jesus? Unhappily, however, he mistitled it Who the Hell was Jesus? before correcting himself and commenting that the misspoken title would probably sell more copies!
David Boulton
Comments
As a member of the Progressive Christian Network I received the last issue of Progressive Voices in which the Borg Memorial Lecture was given by Robin Meyers.
His lecture began ” How I became a heretic… with the help of Jesus. Robin sees that church and state in the USA and in this country co-existing in harmony and few heretical voices are raised in criticism. It is important as Christians what we are doing , rather than what we say we believe. Marcus Borg said “our preaching must be 1. Biblically responsible,2 Intellectually honest 3 Emotionally satisfying 4 Socially significant.
In the Chair’s letter, Adrian Alker, a retired Anglican priest, intimated that as he now attends Sheffield Meeting he has been reading George Fox’s journal. How many Quakers can claim that.?
By TWJ 123 on 16th January 2018 - 21:21
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