Letters - 2 August 2019
From faith as therapy to pinpointing Friends
Therapeutic activity
Is the experience of being bound up in God a therapy? Do we adopt belief in order to help us cope with life’s setbacks, our imperfections, isolation, mortality and uncertainties? Be honest. The timing of our faith activity would suggest that many of us do.
If we can accept this, we reduce the danger of becoming presumptuous, distant, set apart. We make ourselves and our faith more accessible to those who regard us as subject to rationalisation.
As a therapy, faith seems effective and safe. People of faith live longer, happier lives. Our commitment to good causes helps others too. Faith then takes its place among eating habits, exercise habits, hygiene and socialisation as a means of preserving self. It may also preserve species and the environment. That capacity to preserve species and environment is, I believe, a criterion for the enlightenment of faiths.
Does this calculated approach destroy faith? It certainly keeps it grounded and could control our tendency to indulge in fantasy, raptures and notions. We would take scripture, tradition and culture with a pinch of salt. The arts come to be means of sharing the experience of faith rather than divine revelation. The universal, eternal God becomes immanent, a current among us, rather than controlling and transcendent.
Our belief – in other words, that which we hold dear – may then be the universal God immanent, the moral compass, the capacity for empathy, transcendence and inspiration. It enables us to bond with one another, to contract with one another. It is vital.
Alick Munro
It’s a privilege
Following Helen Carter-Shaw (19 July) I also feel very differently from Rosemary Wells (28 June), who described feeling sad and bewildered by the focus of privilege in the epistle from this year’s Yearly Meeting. Like Helen, I really rejoice that we are shedding light on the privilege many Friends in the UK enjoy, with the status and opportunity this brings.
For most British Quakers, we exist within a privileged niche, in a wealthy country, in a very unequal world. I believe our Quaker faith urges us to be concerned about this and stirred to take action to remedy this.
Our privilege does provide a cushion from suffering that the poor, marginalised or abused don’t share. When comfortable, it’s easy to do nothing. In striving for greater equality, I feel sure that what we stand to gain in joy and fulfilment is far greater than what we lose in comfort and ease.
I do agree with Rosemary that privilege does not provide ultimate protection from suffering. I believe it can prove a false refuge and act as a barrier to experiencing true empathy and spiritual depth.
I feel excited by our commitment to meaningful change in this area. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could take this forward with the energy it so urgently needs? We are ideally placed to do so with our many resources, our faith and our testimonies to equality, simplicity and sustainability.
Chrissie Hinde
Persona and promotion
It is said that bosses promote people in their own image. If this is correct, could it similarly apply to the election of politicians?
Do most Americans identify with, or aspire to, the characteristics and values of Donald Trump, or Britons to those of the new prime minister, who will promote to government MPs that reflect his persona?
If the answer is ‘yes’, all well and good, but if ‘no’ the respective electoral systems are not fit for purpose. We need to be able to elect leaders for whom the majority have respect.
Geoff Naylor
Truthful, honest and open
I have been subject to several organisational changes, and have led some as well.
The most successful ones are those that are truthful, honest and open with colleagues, and take a circumspect approach. Fully consult. No daft language about being ‘bold’ and so on (19 July).
Take some time to make the decision, but once made, act quickly.
Michael Richardson
Religious element
I was concerned to read, in the news section of the Friend (19 July), that our recording clerk had spoken, in relation to proposed staff redundancies, of ‘[the need] to adapt so we remain able to work for a sustainable and peaceful world’.
Mention was later made of ‘[proposals] to move to an integrated communications and fundraising team’.
I appreciate that these remarks may be incomplete or taken out of context, but I am left with the impression that the (Religious?) Society of Friends has now somehow degenerated into a Greenish, socially active protest movement. What became of the religious – dare I say Christian? – foundation of our belief in listening, and waiting to discern the will of God?
Naturally, along with most other Friends, I affirm the urgency of correcting our abuse of the planet’s resources and finding better ways to live harmoniously with others, but I have misgivings about the way in which our religious witness is diminished if we are seen as ‘just another, anti-everything protest movement’. The notion that communication is inseparable from fundraising tends to confirm this misperception.
If we obscure the fact that we believe the convictions that inspire some of us to take energetic, even law-breaking, action to be God-given, we sell Quakerism short, and we should not be afraid to assert our beliefs through fear of ‘offending’ those who do not understand or share the religious element of our Quaker identity.
Barbara Pensom
Conflict and communication
We have seen much in the Friend recently regarding conflict in our Meetings. We even have a record of it in Quaker faith & practice 10.22 by Joan Fitch from 1980.
Conflict, as such, is not the issue. We are, after all, humans. It is normal. What is not normal is the avoidance of addressing it, particularly in a spiritual body that champions peacemaking.
It seems some personality types are more averse to addressing difficulties than others. They can be seen as ‘avoiders’.
Then there are the ‘blockers’ – those who put obstacles in the way of further discussion, maybe a word, as if the oracle has spoken and that is final. They may be those who have been in positions of authority in their working lives, particularly in hierarchy-type organisations, and who do not like being ‘called out’ by those they deem to be lower down the ‘pecking order’.
Then those who must do all they can to protect our ‘precious Society’, want it to remain the same, in stasis, fixed and, ultimately, dead. Unfortunately that is where Britain Yearly Meeting seems to be heading.
When conflicts arise we must go through the discomfort of communication. Here is found spiritual growth, advancement in the life of the spirit. It brings that ‘zing’ to Meetings.
Gordon Slaymaker
Pinpointing Friends
In the map of the site of the Peterloo massacre (26 July) the position of the Quaker Meeting house is wrongly marked.
The Meeting house of 1819 was on the site of the current Meeting house in Mount Street, in the rectangle shown on the map immediately below Dickenson Street. The site the Friend highlighted was the new Quaker school, opened in 1819 either just before or just after the massacre.
The ten foot high wall which fugitives from the attack clambered over to reach the Meeting house still surrounds what was then known as ‘Quakers Yard’. It is the only surviving structure on the site of the massacre.
David Boulton
