'Oh dear. From time to time we embrace secular creeds instead, with all the insights and the dangers they bring.' Photo: Portrait of Robert Burns, by Alexander Nasmyth, 1787
Set, apart: Rob Paton on our own ‘unco guid’
‘We know what can happen when people don’t just seek the truth but become convinced they have found it.’
Rabbie Burns, Scotland’s national poet, had an uneasy relationship with the kirk – to put it mildly. Presbyterians, like Quakers, were ‘dissenters’. They became fierce defenders of their self-governing communities of the faithful, where each individual could have direct access to Divine inspiration by reading the Bible. This was the legacy of John Knox, and why Burns, born to a humble farming family, was literate (education in Scotland ran far ahead of England).
Alas, we know what can happen when people don’t just seek the truth but become convinced they have found it. They become what Burns called the ‘unco guid’ – the rigidly righteous. Burns was on the wrong end of their strictures and shaming on more than one occasion. He saw through it. Indeed, it inspired a great – and hilarious – poem, ‘Holy Willie’s Prayer’. This skewers the self-righteous hypocrisy of those who set themselves up as keepers of the moral order.
Of course, Quakers didn’t fall into that trap… well, OK, maybe a bit in the past. But we don’t have a creed and so not nowadays, surely? Oh dear. From time to time we embrace secular creeds instead, with all the insights and the dangers they bring. Like ‘inclusiveness’, which has been known to seduce some into an unco guid version of our Equality Testimony: ‘We want to be inclusive, we know what that means, and it is really important. So we are not going to include you if you are unwilling to agree with us on this.…’ Whoops!
Or consider ‘safeguarding’: an honourable attempt to face up to dangers and evils in the world, it has turned into a grapeshot-cannon of procedures. All through 2021 I had a ring-side seat as a combination of circumstances and procedural obscurity prevented one box from being ticked in our Area. Those involved – centrally, at area level, and locally – agreed there was no risk to users of our Meeting house. Yet there seemed to be no way forward that was compatible with how we were variously understanding our roles in the Society. Deadlock.
Then, shortly before Christmas I slept on the problem. The next day I wrote to some of those involved. Here is part of what I said: ‘I realised that I have to seek beyond or behind my role… Do I have my role? Or does it have me? In New Testament terms, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” Or perhaps Fox might ask: “Quaker faith & practice saith this and our roles and policies say that, but what cans’t thou say?” And I realised very clearly that in every sense we need to make light of this. Lest we find ourselves mounting high horses – with a risk of becoming earnestly ridiculous.’
The matter has now been resolved. But I discovered that we Quakers, too, can be the unco guid. I learned the expression ‘Quaker smugness’ on a course at Woodbrooke. I fear it circulates (and resonates) for a reason. As Burns said: ‘O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us; To see oursels as ithers see us!’
