Quaker renewal: The testimony of a transformed life
Craig Barnett continues his series on Quaker renewal
One of the most important of the original Quaker insights is that our testimony is what we do. It is not what we say we believe or what we claim to value that matters, but what we say with our life. Our testimony is all of our actions – a whole way of life that testifies to the reality of our experience of God. If we have encountered spiritual reality and been changed by it we will lead a transformed life, and that is our testimony.
The specific actions of Quaker testimony have always been very various, and have changed over time in response to different situations. For the first Quakers, the most important forms of testimony were plain and truthful speech and the refusal to pay church tithes. Later, Quaker testimony developed in many directions, including opposition to slavery and war, support for refugees and prison reform. It is only since the 1950s that all of these very diverse kinds of Quaker testimony have been grouped into the familiar lists, such as ‘Simplicity, Truth, Equality and Peace’, simply as a convenient way of explaining and interpreting them.
Unfortunately, since then we have got into the habit of talking about the Quaker testimonies as though they were a list of principles or values that we are supposed to accept, and then try (and inevitably fail) to ‘live up to’. Testimonies have become ideas in our heads, that we have to work out how to apply to real life. This emphasis on a list of values tends to undermine what is most essential about the Quaker way; that it is a way of practice, rooted in experience, not in principles or beliefs. Testimony is our faithfulness to the promptings of love and truth in our hearts. It is what fills the heart and flows into action. Testimony is faithful, Spirit-led action that aims to communicate, to challenge and to transform relationships and power structures.
Our corporate testimony is all of those actions that we have discerned together as a Yearly Meeting, including the rejection of violence and the commitments to peacemaking, speaking truthfully, refusing to participate in gambling or speculation, and becoming a low-carbon community. These aspects of our life together are not an arbitrary list of rules or principles. Quaker testimony aims to reveal something true about the nature of reality, the world as it really is, not just our personal, subjective values.
By reminding us of the ways in which Friends continue to be led into action, these corporate testimonies can help to sensitise us to areas where the Inward Guide may be nudging us in our own lives. Each of us will be led differently at different times, because we all have our own unique experiences, talents and contribution to offer to the world. One of the gifts of being in community is that each of us brings something different, and none of us has to try to do everything. We may be led to testify in very various ways, but if our leadings are genuine all of our actions will harmonise and complement each other because they all flow from and point towards the same reality. Through the discernment of the whole community we are helped to see where our own blind spots and resistances are, to become more aware of the areas where we are less inclined to heed the promptings of love and truth in our hearts. The aim is not to be morally perfect, but simply to become more whole, more true to reality and faithful to the way that the Spirit is moving within us, for our own flourishing and for the healing of the world.
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