Quaker Shaped Christianity: How the Jesus story and the Quaker way fit together, by Mark Russ

Author: Mark Russ. Review by Tim Gee

The Woodbrooke tutor Mark Russ is known for encouraging Quakers to engage with radical theology. In Quaker Shaped Christianity we learn something more of his journey: first rethinking the Christianity he encountered as a child, then discovering more inclusive spaces like Greenbelt and the Society of Friends.

This isn’t a book about Jesus’ ministry (fortunately for me, since I’ve just published a book on that). Instead he focusses on what might seem like the thornier questions of the crucifixion, resurrection and second coming.

I like the personal and poetic use of religious words here, rooted in scripture and experience. God is ‘deeper than I can fathom and broader than I can span… the liberating space within which we live and move and have our being’. Sin is ‘the broken tangled nature of the web’ that leads to racism and the system failure behind the climate crisis. The cross is an inward experience of ‘dying to a reliance on the death dealing powers of the world’. Salvation is ‘abundant life’ found in helping others. The resurrected Christ is a ‘spirit of freedom’ we can experience in Meeting for Worship, as well as more unusual places. The second coming is the dynamic process of God’s arrival into the world.

Flashes of personal insight abound: Mark experiences God while sharing pizza or protesting the arms trade. He shares how, during his wedding, the question ‘How could anyone deserve something this good?’ led to the answer ‘talk of who deserves what isn’t how God works. God makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous (Matt 5:45). I was opened to abundant love through grace not guilt’.

The tone is gentle throughout, but with ready critique. The idea that entering heaven requires a set of specific beliefs is described as ‘damaging and deeply unbiblical’. Similarly belief in the rapture is described as ‘terrible theology’, based on ‘the flimsiest of biblical foundations’.

If you don’t like Mark’s writing, I get the impression he would still be delighted that you engaged (his Christianity is ‘a community of argument and debate’). This is a book to be conversed with and about. In that spirit I would depart from the author on a couple of points. The first chapter describes the search for the historical Jesus as a ‘dead end’, but it was a part of my journey of faith. Similarly a discussion setting up Christianity against universalism doesn’t quite make space for the kind of Christian universalism I feel drawn to.

But these kinds of differences, as he emphasises, are part of the point: ‘The God of Jesus is a God of broad places where people can breathe, live and thrive. I see the holding of different beliefs within the Quaker community as part of this spaciousness.’

As the introduction to the book says, if you are completely new to Quakerism and Christianity, this is probably not the place to start. But readers of the Friend are likely to be fairly familiar with both. This is a book to be enjoyed as written ministry, to see what seeds it might plant or nurture in you.

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