Open for transformation: Being Quaker
Philip Allum writes about the 2014 Swarthmore Lecture
Open For Transformation: Being Quaker is, for me, one of the most important and timely Swarthmore Lectures for a long time. I write from the perspective of one of the majority of British Friends who was not at Bath to hear the lecture by Ben Pink Dandelion at first hand. However, I have read the book and watched a recording available via the internet. One of the purposes of the Swarthmore lectureship is to interpret to Friends something of their message and mission: to feel the pulse of the contemporary Religious Society of Friends in Britain. And this lecture does just that. I find it refreshing to read a Quaker author these days who is honest enough, and not afraid, to talk about God in explicit ‘God language’.
Ben Pink Dandelion argues that over the last 150 years our Quakerism has been revisioned within the context of an increasingly secularised wider society. The way we belong, the way and what we believe, the way we recognise our diverse gifts and offer service, and the way we communicate to people outside the Society, have all been subject to this revisioning. We no longer have a separate outward identity: gone are the plain dress and the plain speech. The direct influence in our lives of the Meeting community ends at the door of the Meeting house. Have we accommodated ‘The World’ by allowing Meeting for Worship to become shorter by half an hour each century of our existence?
As Friends we know that we can encounter the Divine directly and, as Quakers, we are part of a community rooted in the experience of transformation. We choose a form of worship to nurture that experience. We have developed practices of discernment that enable us to recognise and understand what that experience asks of us. And we find the Divine transforming us, and our approach to the rest of humanity, and calling us to a distinct way of life – our Testimony. This is a call to a covenantal relationship with God as a community. Quakerism is not a DIY religion; it is a Do It Together religion.
We have allowed our oral version of what Quakerism is and demands of us to become less robust than the printed version that appears in our Book of Discipline. Face to face, we are fuzzy even while ‘The Red Book’ offers clarity about ‘What it means to be a Quaker today’. A sort of gap has been allowed to open up. Ben Pink Dandelion maintains that many Friends now see the provisions of the Book of Discipline as being optional: a sort of supermarket to match our supermarket Quakerism where we pick and choose.
This Swarthmore Lecture is no doomsday scenario. Our numbers may be steadily falling but Ben Pink Dandelion identifies three things that will help us move forward. First, we need to be wary of secularisation and to strengthen our spiritual identity. We seem to have lost our teaching ministry. Why do we find it so hard to teach when about a third of us are teachers? Second, we need to maintain the reality of a religious society, inhabit our faith and accept God-led change. We need the courage to ‘sit more lightly’ in relation to structures that no longer serve us. We need to remember that our Book of Discipline embodies and affirms our theological stance on the primacy of transformative spiritual experience – of being led to ask the right questions rather than the correct answers. Third, we need to embrace passion and joy.
Where I differ from Ben Pink Dandelion is that I can see no reason why our process of discernment cannot include such things as consultation, taking soundings or professional advice. We do have a process of ‘threshing’ as part of our discipline, where we work through an issue without the pressure of having to make a decision.
The Religious Society of Friends has its origins in dissent and in prophecy, and we need to keep discernment at the top of all our practices. We are a priesthood of all believers, speaking and acting prophetically in the world. We remain Open for Transformation.
Comments
This is a good reflection on the Swarthmore Lecture which we also watched, with much appreciation, through the internet.
Regarding meeting for worship, I notice that spoken prayer seems to be much less common in our unprogrammed meetings than it was in the past. Does this reflect a change in our understanding of ‘God’?
Donald Thomas, Nairobi
By Kenya Quaker on 16th October 2014 - 17:24
Philip
Your response is interesting. Thank you for it.
I listened to the lecture on You Tube.
Lately, I no longer use the word Transformation, instead a think only about Formation. I apply transformation for things that change from one thing into another. I do not think that we are changed from flesh into spirit, but that while the flesh persists, we are born spiritually and live spiritual. We may rearrange our lives because of spiritual light, but flesh remains flesh and spirit remains separate as spirit. Being Quaker is a person’s response to the forming that is underway within. This forming is reality … at least spiritual reality. Then Quakerism would be our personal and collective actions taken in response to the present and actual experience of being of and from the Light. The actions come together in practices, books, disciplines, etc.
First, there is experience then knowledge of the specific reality which is called Christ. We should be able to testify that there is such a reality and that it ‘works’ based on personal experience and knowledge. That reality shines through our selected actions driven by our being spiritual after Christ, in the hope that it (not we) stirs other to turn to the activating inward Light.
I think that formula that worked and does work. Moreover, I also think that this is the reality that will stand and work in our changing world.
kind regards
By aldoquaker on 18th October 2014 - 15:59
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