Friends gathered in worship. Photo: The Friend.
‘Simple, radical, spiritual’? Keith Braithwaite reflects on the last of these three
‘However it works, why ever it works, it works.’
There’s a passage from Paul that you’ll have heard many times before: ‘Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things’ (1 Corinthians 13:4-7. NRSV).
Hold that thought.
Newcomers to our Meetings – enquirers, those who’ve only recently found that Quakers are still a thing – have questions that come up repeatedly: Do you have to believe the Bible is true to be a Quaker? Do you have to be a Christian to be a Quaker? Do you have to believe in God, the God of Abraham, to be a Quaker?
The short answer is: no. No… but with a large caveat: the vast majority of Quakers in the world (if perhaps not in Britain Yearly Meeting) do believe in God, and are Christians, and do believe that every word in the Bible is true. But do you have to? Do I have to? No. Friends do not require anyone to believe anything before we give them full access to our spiritual practice. We don’t make them study a catechism or pass through ritual initiation before they join us in our Meetings. The signs outside our Meeting houses say ‘all are welcome’, and it should be true, whatever their faith or level of spiritual development.
Another question usually follows: These people who don’t believe in God, what do they do in a Meeting for ‘Worship’, then?
In 1696 William Penn identified what early Friends were doing as ‘primitive Christianity revived’. But how primitive? Every church claims to be doing it right. Catholic and Orthodox churches claim a continuous tradition back to the apostles, and Reformed churches claim to have corrected the errors and misunderstandings which had slipped in over time. Early Friends, however, claimed that the apostolic church itself had returned, that the spirit, that is the Spirit, which animated the action we read about in the Gospels, was active again in the world in a way that it had not been for a long time.
So, how primitive? More primitive than Biblical inerrancy, which was innovated in the 1800s. More primitive than the theatrical mass innovated in the 1500s. More primitive than the Fourth Lateran Council of 1213, which innovated confession and attendance at a eucharist annually, and also the real presence through transubstantiation. More primitive than the Gregorian reforms of the 1070s, which innovated a hard separation of the laity and the clergy, that clergy be celibate, and a central religious authority in Rome. More primitive than the First Council of Ephesus in 431, which innovated the veneration of Mary. More primitive than the First Council of Nicaea in 325, which began the process of innovating a single Christianity that imperial subjects might be expected to follow. It also innovated Christianity as an aid to conquest, and, not coincidentally, innovated a creed to serve as a test, to see which side you were on.
The most primitive idea we have about the practices of the followers of the way of Jesus is in the epistles of Paul, which are earlier than the Gospels. So, what were those practices? The New Testament actually has very little to say about ‘worship’. In the time of Paul, worship was done by priests, sacrificing to a schedule, on an altar, in a temple devoted to a deity, atop a sacred mountain. That was worship, whether it was of the God of Abraham (and of Paul, and of Jesus) at the Temple in Jerusalem, or the gods of Greece and Rome, or of Mesopotamia, where you might have to build a mountain to raise a temple upon. That was worship, and it is little mentioned by the earliest Christians. The words used in the New Testament that seem to be about worship, aren’t really. There’s reference to homage to Jesus in person, there’s doing service to God, there’s doing service to the community (at your own expense!), there’s being devout, and there’s religious practice. But not much about worship as such.
Quaker Christianity is more primitive than the kind which introduced classical models of worship, perhaps intended to make the new imperial Christianity more familiar to Romans and Greeks. There’s nothing to stop a Quaker from attending such worship services, of course. Many do, and gain much by the practice. But maybe that’s not what our Quaker Meetings are actually for.
The communities to which Paul wrote held meetings not on consecrated ground, in temple precincts on high mountains, but wherever was convenient. As we do, in emulation of them. They met as equals in spirit, not as priests and laity. As we do. They met when it felt right to meet, not according to a set calendar of feasts and festivals. As we do. Well, we find that Sunday morning suits us these days, but midweek Meetings used to be the usual thing, too. And we can Meet at any time and any location. In the street outside an arms fair, perhaps.
‘This is all about how we talk to each other in our Meetings.’
What did they Meet to do? They spoke to each other. They read scripture to each other. They shared their worries and their joys. Paul says: ‘Pursue love and strive for the spiritual gifts and especially that you may prophesy. For those who speak in a tongue do not speak to other people but to God, for no one understands them, since they are speaking mysteries in the Spirit. But those who prophesy speak to other people for their upbuilding and encouragement and consolation. Those who speak in a tongue build up themselves, but those who prophesy build up the church’ (1 Corinthians 14:1-4). Older English-language translations talk about ‘edification’, building up. Building up each other, encouraging each other, consoling each other, and also building up the church, which is the community.
Paul wants our prophetic speech to be intelligible, and also intelligent: ‘in church I would rather speak five words with my mind, in order to instruct others also, than ten thousand words in a tongue’ (1 Corinthians 14:19, NRSV).
Since those who Meet do so as equals (although not all with the same gifts): ‘Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others weigh what is said. If someone sitting receives a revelation, let the first person be silent. For you can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and all be encouraged’ (1 Corinthians 14:29-31, NRSV).
Scriptures sometimes get jumbled up, and passages are even are added in error. For example, the nearby passage in 1 Corinthians about women not preaching seems to be an outraged scribe’s editorialising, which got incorporated into the text in error. We reject the novelty of Biblical inerrancy, so that’s a thought we can think: the scriptures are wrong about women preaching. We also are equipped to not necessarily agree with Paul about how and why the process of collective prophetic speaking works (although reading what he said, without all those later innovations in mind, can be surprising). Those of us who are not Christians, or not theists, might read Paul as trying to make sense of his own transformative experience in terms that made sense to him, but we aren’t bound to understand ours in the same terms.
Scriptures often get quoted out of context, too. The opening about love, for example, 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, is often deployed at weddings. It’s good advice for that kind of meeting of two minds and hearts, but that’s not what Paul is talking about. He is talking about right spiritual practice. Paul says that prophecy without love is empty noise, and even that great faith, faith that might remove a mountain, without love is nothing. Those famous properties of love appear after a list of spiritual gifts, and before a passage about the end of speaking, thinking and reasoning like a child. This is all about how we talk to each other in our Meetings.
And so, some read the properties of love as guidance for Meetings. In Meetings, be patient with those who rise to speak, and those who do not. In Meetings, be kind to those who speak even if they say things hard to hear. Do not envy those who speak if you do not. Do not insist on speaking. Do not keep count of who’s spoken and who has not. Do not, perhaps especially in Meeting for Worship for Business, expect to get your own way; love does not.
And what is the point of all this? To get better. To build each other up… in love. However it works, why ever it works, it works. Our Meetings are a sort of spiritual, emotional gymnasium, where we help each other train in being patient and kind; being not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. In not insisting on our own way. In not being irritable, keeping no record of wrongs. Rejoicing in the truth. The training we receive in our Meetings helps us, and helps us to help each other, to bear, believe, hope, and endure.
So perhaps this is what is done in our Meetings by those who don’t believe in God. They, along with Christian Quakers and Jewish Quakers, Muslim Quakers and Hindu Quakers, with Buddhist, Taoist, Goddess-worshipping and several more kinds of Quaker I doubtless should have thought of, are joining in a spiritual exercise, the goal of which is mutual upbuilding, encouragement, consolation, and learning. Guided by love.
That’s our spiritual practice. All are welcome.
Comments
Thank you, Keith. Best wishes for continued discovery on your journey. My wife Kate and I are in London once a month since we transferred our Quaker Membership to Westminster late last year. Would enjoy meeting up for lunch sometime. Dan Daniel Flynn & Kate McNally, Rue des Prés 73, apt. 12, 4802 Verviers, Belgium
Dan: Mobile and WhatsApp: +32 474 710 173
https://www.woodbrooke.org.uk/people/daniel-clarke-flynn/
https://thespiritualforum.org/podcast/letyourlifespeak Kate’s interview on YouTube.
By Daniel Flynn on 29th November 2024 - 11:16
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