Look within

Edward Hoare urges Friends to look to the past and within

Many Friends have found the attempt to divide Quakerism into two categories – ‘theist’ or ‘nontheist’ – increasingly tiresome because it refuses to acknowledge that there is a third category called ‘Quakerism’.

Mysticism

Quakerism is not a matter of accepting book learning, but of opening oneself to personal experience of the numinous. Although the strength has waxed and waned over the years, Quakerism is essentially mystical, sharing its roots with Christianity. Both the Sufis and many religions of the East also hold that the Living Spirit resides in us all. Quakerism offers a message, of both challenge and comfort, that we can all open ourselves to the unmediated Presence of God and, in the present climate of uncertain spirituality, it is timely that we look within the Name.

Seventeenth century Friends saw themselves as reviving the early days of Christianity – before the truth of the message was overburdened with the structure. They were readers of the Bible, particularly the gospel and epistles of John. From John 4:23-24, they learned that God is Spirit and that they that worship must worship ‘in Spirit and in truth’; from John 1:9, that there is ‘a Light that lights everyone who comes into the world’ (the Inward Light); and from John 1:4, the Epistle ‘God is Love’, and ‘Love and help one another’ (Service).

Light

The Quaker faith is in learning, like early Friends, to accept the reality of this power and deciding to put their trust in it. ‘This I learned experimentally,’ said George Fox. Like him, every Quaker has to make their own discovery of that which they may call God or Spirit and, then, has to decide whether to trust in it for guidance. Because it is the same Light that is in us all, Quakers are able to come together into that Light and when, in the silence, they share the sense of stillness, they can be led by it.

The direct contact with the divine is the Quaker ‘pearl of great price’. It does not come cheap: commitment and trust are needed because it may lead you where you are not sure you want to go.

Membership

Usually, there are three stages to becoming a member of the Religious Society of Friends. These are: the enquirer, who wants basic information; the attender, who wishes to gain experience of Quaker thought and ways and who is open to trying to test; and, finally, the becoming convinced of the reality of the Spirit we call the ‘Inward Light’, and so can be welcomed as a ‘convinced Friend.’ Friends have always welcomed those who have a sense of the numinous but whose doubts are unresolved. However, they do not normally suggest membership unless the attender shows that they do not deny the reality of the Spirit and would understand the concept of the ‘gathered Meeting’.

Evangelism

George Fox’s Quakerism was both mystical and evangelical. The strength of the latter was evidenced by his epistle to the governor of Barbados, where a significant number of Quakers had settled after 1656. However, for early Friends the guidance of the Inward Spirit was central, and it was not until the start of the nineteenth century that the evangelical influence began to be powerful.

Yearly Meeting did not agree to the teaching of the Bible at Ackworth School until around 1820, following the intervention of John Joseph Gurney, a prominent evangelical. As Peggy Heeks has shown (the Friends Quarterly, August 2012) the influence grew stronger, although not all Friends were of that persuasion. The picture The Presence in the Midst – of Jesus in a Meeting for Worship – although much loved by evangelical Friends, was condemned by more orthodox, since the Presence is spiritual and formless. In 1859 John Stephenson Rowntree reaffirmed the centrality of the guidance of the Inward Light, but it was not until 1888 that the turning point, leading to Liberal Quakerism, occurred. Universalism, that the Light was in all, was acknowledged by early Friends but lost ground with the growth of evangelicalism. It began to recover its voice almost a hundred years later.

Decisions

Although London Yearly Meeting survived the division between the orthodox and evangelical groups,  Canada and many of the North American Meetings split. Those who would divide our Yearly Meeting into the undefined categories of ‘theist’ and ‘nontheist’ bring, I believe, potential for trouble. We do not know these nontheist Friends’ beliefs well enough to know whether they deny (or explain away) the Inward Light or whether they recognise its centrality without giving it a name, and it should not have been so lightly attempted.

For too long our Yearly Meeting has ignored the yellow warning signals in the hope that, if we did nothing, the issues would go away. Margaret Heathfield’s Swarthmore Lecture of 1994 (Being together: our corporate life in the Religious Society of Friends), for example, raised issues that have still not been addressed. The start of a new century might be a good time to get to work. It is not too late and several voices are calling for us to start. In the recent outreach issue of the Friend (28 September) Linda Murgatroyd writes that ‘It would be helpful for the Yearly Meeting to invite a wide discussion about the underlying purpose of the Religious Society of Friends in Britain and even to try to come up with a short overall “mission statement” that everyone in the organisation knows and is signed up to’.

In language reminiscent of George Orwell, David Boulton has suggested (13 April) that, underneath, there is no real difference between the ‘theist’ and ‘nontheist’ groups; but in that he is premature. As Patricia Williams writes, in Quakerism, A Theology for Our Time, the material world science describes is remarkably spiritual:

Both the Tao Ching and the Bible may be referring, under imaginative distinctions of metaphor, to the same Spirit – and that Spirit may be one with the harmonious, if metaphorical, strings of the universe.

Scientists still have a long way to go before they catch up with the mystics who have been enlightened for many, many years.

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Comments

A short overall mission statement that everyone in the organisation knows and is signed up to” ??? Sounds a lot like the definition of a creed to me. My experience of god will never fit in your box, she/he won’t even fit in mine. That of your god within me and that of my god within you is peculiar and shines out and guides us both in the ways that we perceive to be right. Our paths may converge and diverge at different times. We are able to learn from each other and bless each other and “help each other up with a tender hand”. I came to the society as a fully paid-up card-carrying atheist. I had 20 good years of atheism behind me. You, you rotten lot, would not merely accept me; you wanted me as part of you complete with all of my odd views. That is/was more than mere tolerance. You have accepted me into membership and still my slippery god evades me. You have got me. Now, nearly 20 years since I first walked into a meeting house, now I am no longer an atheist but simply a theist. I am still incapable of saying the christian creed and believing it. I continue to find beauty and wisdom in the bible as I find them in the Bhagavad Gita, in the Upanishads and in the Qu’ran. You have not convinced me. You have given me the stillness and the space to find convincement. That convincement remains dynamic. However I will not sign up to your “mission statement” and if you threaten to sign up to mine I’ll change it. Be cheerful David Amos”

By David Amos(Numbers) on 18th October 2012 - 11:34

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Oh, how grateful I am, Edward Hoare, to read your article!That Quakerism is essentially mystical, sharing its roots with Christianity, is one of the paramount reasons I became a member. That this recognition of the ‘Light Within’ is shared by mystics worldwide, starting with the writers of the Bhagavad Gita over 3 thousand years ago is my understanding also, based on my reading of these and other ‘scriptures’. It is also good to hear said that this ‘pearl of great price’ doesn’t come cheap and that the inner Light may lead us where we’re not sure we want to go. I would add to this that, in my experience, this Path is not an easy one and we so need the support and fellowship of others ‘on the Way’. I have been dismayed, therefore, by the the ideas being put forward by some,within the ‘Quaker fold’, calling themselves non-theist, and seeming to suggest that the material universe is all there is! I could go on, but enough for the time being. In Frienship, Jacqui Poole

By mojacqui on 25th October 2012 - 10:42

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