Squeezing out the Spirit?
Stephen Feltham is troubled by a leaflet from Friends House
Before the recent general election Friends House produced a leaflet to help Quakers in Britain with their discernment. It asserted that ‘our support for Quakers engaging with the election focuses on: climate change; nuclear weapons; forced migration; and economic inequality’.
Does it? Whilst these topics are undoubtedly high profile within the Religious Society of Friends I am confused by ‘our support’. On whose authority? The document was overwhelmingly despondent about the present situation in this country and never failed to place the word ‘government’ in close proximity to the bleak picture it painted. It mentioned government nineteen times, God, faith and spirituality once each, but Spirit and religion not at all. Are we not a Religious Society?
A simple and obvious truth, for me, is that the UK is a wonderful place to live. So much so that there are hundreds of thousands of people trying to enter it every year. Yet all Quakers in Britain can do is publish a leaflet with a political bias that overlooks what we all seem to take for granted. Is it possible, perhaps, that the habit of Meeting for Worship has become just a routine and that the joy of life and munificence of the Divine is overlooked by our preoccupation with earthly matters and, in consequence, the nurture of our souls is neglected?
Regarding the four areas we were exhorted to focus on, all I have seen within Quakers is a plethora of words that have patently overlooked the Quaker testimony to simplicity. They are jam-packed with superlatives and emotional soundbites that defy and deny any reasoned logical exploration.
Recently I was advised by a ‘lead’ manager at Friends House that they represent and act only on the wishes of our Quaker membership, and that the way to achieve the enactment of our wishes is via Local Meeting minutes being passed to Area Meeting for further minute and thence onwards to Meeting for Sufferings to sanction and encourage the Friends House staff to expedite. I received this advice following a reprimand from Friends House staff for not following rules they hadn’t published.
Should one, therefore, simply admire the leaflet and website produced as a result of following this process? Or are Friends House staff operating double standards and imposing bureaucracy on the rank and file whilst they get on with their own political agendas?
Has the Society (that cherishes equality) published the leaflet and set up the associated website via the same process that Friends House staff were so insistent that our special interest group observe? I am unaware of it. I have not seen any minute locally, in our Area Meeting or in any Meeting for Sufferings report. Whilst it is my perception that the political views of the majority of Friends may be to the left of the political divide, it is not universally so. Nonetheless, I am concerned that we are becoming a political movement that seems embarrassed by the concept of a spiritual ethos as the centre of our being.
Can it be said that the Quakerism one sees at Friends House is using the brand ‘Quaker’ and its associations to promote a particular liberal, social and political movement? I certainly have no problem with the concerns this movement addresses, or the good people who promote it, but I fear it has lost a connection with its Christian and spiritual foundation.
My concern with the withering of this connection between the spiritual and Quakers has led to me laying down tasks I was previously happy to discharge and to reduce my attendance at my Local Meeting. I am inexorably being driven to resigning altogether from Quakers – one of whose fastest growing special interest groups does not, it seems to me, believe in God!
It pains me to consider quitting Quakers. However, I am increasingly asking a question I believe more Friends will, sooner or later, have to consider: are we a Religious Society or some sort of movement? Is this what I joined? Is this what I really want? Am I still a member out of habit or because of renewed convincement?
Why has the Spirit been squeezed out of Quakers by social and political lobbying?
Comments
I hope Stephen Feltham will stay with the Religious Society of Friends and argue for his positions.
It so happens that I am a liberal, and have no wish to return under the Conservatives to the 1950s which I dimly remember.
However, to take up just part of Stephen’s concerns I too am worried that the testament to equality (valid in itself) is crowding out reflection and tolerance. It may be that the UK has been governed from the centre (or sometimes centre right) for many years now, but just maybe that is the best or only way a country with a large middle class can be governed?
Treating our political leaders as either demigods or monsters (according to taste) is very foolish. Most are people just trying to do their best according to their own lights. I think all sides should tone down the rhetoric before it leads to terrible consequences.
As for the most important underpinning of the article, it is a little early in the morning for me to be very articulate on this, but as far as I can see there is a spectrum within Friends. This ranges from those who believe in Jesus as a personal God, those who believe in God from personal experience, those who want religion without the trappings, those who like to label all the wondrous things that we cannot quite explain as God, through to those who simply feel that God is the good.
Personally I think the peak experience described in ‘Wind in the Willows’ by Kenneth Grahame in the chapter ‘Piper at the Gates of Dawn’ is as near as most of us can get.
By NeilS on 1st July 2017 - 8:18
I am in sympathy with Friend Stephen. I joined a contemplative movement dedicated to prayer, and to social justice squarely based on prayer. There was a Quaker orthopraxy. These days, I fear our Society is now another version of Oxfam with ‘worship’ added on. But who or what do we ‘worship’ these days? Beats me if I know!
Gerard Guiton
Australia YM
11 McGill Place
Alstonville NSW 2477
By AustraliaYMsec on 13th July 2017 - 8:06
Please login to add a comment
