Letters - 29 November 2013
From the Quaker mutation to sexism
The Quaker mutation
The quotation from Kenneth Boulding in last week’s Friend (22 November) excited me. He saw Quakerism as a mutation with the potential to reform humankind. Perhaps all religions can be seen as Darwinian attempts to come to terms with the transcendent, each evolving texts, practices, beliefs and rules, comparable with the very different life forms that occupy ecological niches in our natural environment.
I am reminded of the recent World Council of Churches (WCC) consultations on Christian self-understanding in the context of Islam, Buddhism, Judaism and Hinduism. Each of the denominations, ranging from Orthodox and Catholic through to Evangelical, had to unpick themselves and face up to some (but not all) of the difficult issues that divided them amongst themselves, as well as between faiths.
Quakers were on the fringe of this exercise (not being WCC members). The Quaker mutation as we live with it strips away nearly all the institutional barriers to the underlying reality of spiritual experience. We should still remember that the word worship is used for all of our Meeting events.
I hope the words of Kenneth Boulding find a place in our revised book of discipline. And, I hope that he is right in expecting us, by letting our lives speak, to achieve a transformation in the wider world.
Richard Seebohm
Impressions
I enjoyed Jamie Wrench’s interesting account (15 November) of the Quaker prison chaplains’ conference, but was a little perturbed by the photo which accompanied it. What was this photo trying to depict? It appeared to have been sourced from the online photo website, flickr, and looked as if it may have been posed. It certainly was not of a prisoner in a UK prison. Prisoners are not handcuffed in UK prisons and I hope no reader gained the impression from this photo that they are.
Neil Johnson
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