Reflections on the ‘Red Book’: Location is everything!
A Friend writes about the importance of engagement
We know that Jesus identified himself with the suffering and the sinful, the poor and the oppressed. We know that he went out of his way to befriend social outcasts. We know that he warned us against the deceitfulness of riches, that wealth and great possessions so easily come between us and God, and divide us from our neighbours. The worship of middle-class comfort is surely a side-chapel in the temple of Mammon. It attracts large congregations, and Friends have been known to frequent it… In brief, he makes us all ashamed that we are not all out in caring for our fellow-men.
H G Wood, 1958
Quaker faith & practice 23.03
Why have I stopped attending my Local Meeting in favour of the Evangelical church just down the road? Well, it is definitely not for theological reasons. I am Quaker through and through! It’s also got nothing to do with location, for both my Local Meeting and the Evangelical church are within five minutes walking distance from my front door.
So, what’s the reason? Our local community is not widely considered to be a ‘desirable’ place to live, suffering as it does from chronic long-term unemployment and all the issues that come with systemic neglect and exclusion. Poverty, addiction, homelessness, mental distress, hopelessness and violence are not uncommon experiences for members of our community.
Despite being smack in the middle of our local community, my Quaker Meeting seems totally disengaged from its day-to-day life. Most of the members of our small Meeting are middle-class and drive in to our Meeting from the suburbs. And our practice of sitting in silence for an hour is so foreign to the ‘average’ person in our local community, it wouldn’t be too extreme to say it’s completely exclusive of ninety-nine per cent of the people in the area.
In contrast to this, the local Evangelical church is made up almost entirely of people living in the area. I find it far from comfortable turning up, for you never know who’s going to sit next to you, what they are going to smell like (to be fair, I’m not always sure what I smell like!), what story they are going to tell you from their last week, or what state of mind they are going to be in. Brokenness and vulnerability are the norm, but that creates a beautifully authentic and welcoming atmosphere, where everyone can be themselves, just as they are. There is a community garden out the back where we learn to grow, a shower so we can get a wash, a twelve-step group, art workshops, guitar sessions, and we eat together regularly, as well as exploring what an organic and authentic communal spiritual expression might look like for us. (It’s often chaos!)
I’ve realised that despite my many issues with their theology, I’m far more at home, far more comfortable, in this Evangelical church, grounded as it is right at the heart of my local community, than I am at my Quaker Meeting, which in comparison feels more like a Sunday silence club, very distant from those who I feel called to live alongside.
So, what am I learning from this Evangelical church? I’m learning that location matters. It matters where your house is. It matters which schools you choose to send your kids to. It matters who your neighbours are. All these things affect how we ‘do’ faith.
I remember reading a story about Gustavo Gutiérrez, one of the founding figures in Latin American liberation theology. He was being honoured with a faculty reception at a school where he was a visiting professor. There was a lavish buffet, and a senior professor in theology, carrying a plate piled high with food from the buffet, came over to him. He loomed over him and asked: ‘So, professor Gutiérrez, explain liberation theology to me.’ Gustavo Gutiérrez looked at him for a moment and replied: ‘It’s a matter of the stomach.’ ‘The stomach?’ the tall, portly professor asked. ‘Yes,’ he said. He looked pointedly at the professor’s loaded plate: ‘You do theology differently when your stomach is full than when it is empty.’
How we are Quakers will depend on where we are located. It is relatively easy to hold nice lefty values of equality, sustainability, truth, peace and justice, and even to sign petitions and join protests, but it is a more uncomfortable thing to move into a ‘deprived’ area and to give up ‘charity’ for real friendship with the most excluded and oppressed. As Gustavo Gutiérrez puts it: ‘A work of concrete, authentic love for the poor is not possible apart from a certain integration into their world and apart from bonds of real friendship with those who suffer despoliation and injustice.’
Bob Holman was someone who I was lucky enough to know who understood this. Giving up a comfortable life in Bath as an academic, he and his wife Annette moved their family up to the Easterhouse estate in Glasgow, where they immersed themselves in the life of the local community, running a project with the philosophy that ‘poor’ people are best helped by people who live with them, rather than lecturing at them. Annette and Bob’s radical discipleship deeply touched many of those in his local community, and inspired others, including myself, to try to follow their example.
With our societies more divided than ever, producing shock victories for Brexit and Donald Trump, we need more Bob Holmans! We need to reflect on Quaker faith & practice 23.03 and the words of H G Wood from 1958.
Comments
Thank you, Friend, for your frankness and the reality of your life experience. We are indeed a largely white and middle class people. On an individual level, Friends may successfully empathise with unfortunates who end up in prison, and with struggling farmers in the developing world, including the brave Palestinian shepherds who persist on their traditional lands in defiance of Israeli harassment; indeed we can name many other unfortunates with whom we feel a flow of compassion and may indeed engage with them on a personal level….but few of us do what you have chosen to do, actually to dwell in the poorest part of town.
Perhaps more mixing with congregations in the poorest neighbourhoods is a starting point. Action groups within the campaigning organisation, Church Action on Poverty, offer such opportunities including the insight we can gain from observing how strong and dignified people can be, who seemingly just scrape a living and bear all manner of indignities. Discovering this can really add depth to our oft repeated phrase, “that of God” in everyone. The need to find ways of healing the divisions in British society is vital indeed.
By c.d.penn@outlook.com on 11th May 2017 - 18:41
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