Our radical adventure
T Roger S Wilson considers a paradox at the heart of Quaker ways
As Friends, we are part of a worshipping community that is embedded within the much wider secular community. We are necessarily influenced by the changes in society generally, and this brings forward a continuing tension, as it always has. What do we accept and what do we reject? As Saint Paul advised: ‘Test all things; hold fast to that which is good.’
When I came to Friends in the early 1970s there were Friends who had been conscientious objectors in both world wars and a number of birthright Friends embedded securely within Quaker families. I still recall being startled by the solid chorus of ‘hope so’ in acceptance of minutes at the first Monthly Meeting I attended. The Religious Society of Friends has been relatively successful in attracting Friends like me, Friends who have grown up outside the Society, and this new diversity has changed that solid chorus to a more tentative collective mumble.
People like me know about meetings, and are inclined to believe that because of this we know about Meetings as well. This can be, I am afraid, something of a delusion.
Consider the paradox at the heart of our Quaker ways. Each Friend tries to discern the leadings of God individually (the number of different phrases we have invented for describing this process is itself a testimony to our differing perceptions). We have no other index of truth, no other guide. Why, it is reasonable to ask, have our Meetings not disintegrated into anarchy long ago? The English Revolution produced many radical groups that did not persist: how was our particular radical group different?
We seek unity. This is a fundamental characteristic of the Society of Friends. It follows that our decision-making process is not primarily directed towards the making of decisions. We build worshipping communities first and then allow our decisions to flow from those communities.
I come from Liverpool and have spent time at sea, so the image that appeals to me is that of the convoy. Most of the ships in any convoy can travel faster than the convoy, but, instead, they steam together, in unity. No ship is abandoned. Otherwise, the convoy would cease to exist, and its advantages would be lost. Many ships would never make port at all.
People like me are used to executive committees. We ‘know’ that they exist to make executive decisions. We ‘know’ that a meeting that has made no decisions is a failed meeting. We ‘know’ that the faster a decision is made the sooner we can get things done. When we join the Society of Friends it becomes startlingly clear to us that Friends are horribly bogged-down in some arcane idiocy that simply gets in the way of proper decision-making. In this perception we are in dangerous error. We have missed the point completely.
The building and nourishing of a true worshipping community is not something that is understood in our age, and to put that first is to be truly radical, truly adventurous. The wisdom of our age is not the wisdom that has brought us thus far – however fast, effective and entertaining it seems to be.
It is tempting to criticise our structures, to think that modernisation would clear out a lot of encumbering and outdated ideas and ways of doing things. But we should be sure that we know the value of what we have before we decide to throw it away. Reorganisation rarely delivers all that was expected in theory, and it often produces new and unexpected problems.
There are good reasons why our Local Meetings are clustered into Area Meetings for mutual support, why our concerns ‘bubble up’ from Local and Area Meetings, are considered nationally and passed out again for wider testing. There are good reasons why we don’t primarily exist to produce press releases, and why our interlinking worshipping communities are the keystone of our very existence. ‘Living adventurously’ doesn’t always mean altering what we are doing: it may well mean having the discipline and insight to understand more fully what we are doing and why we are doing it. That is the self-renewing radical adventure that we have inherited and which we must pass on to future Friends.
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