‘There are no foregone conclusions. Our answers are still unfolding.’
Take the pledge: Clark Seanor talks apologetics and inclusion in Britain Yearly Meeting
‘I want to talk with people, not just to them.’
Apologetics are philosophical arguments made about why certain religious beliefs should or shouldn’t be held. I am not under the impression that these arguments make up a significant amount of our faith practice, so it feels strange to write an article about them. I am using the word ‘argument’ because apologetics stand for or against something. They attempt to be watertight, to be grounded in some kind of evidence, and to withstand counter-arguments.
I do not consider Quaker faith & practice to be a collection of apologetics; nor indeed most ministry that I have heard or read. Ministry is intended to come from leadings by the Spirit, or at least from the heart. No matter what justification we give to it, ministry is something that is shaped by us as much as we are shaped by it. We speak on that which we feel is important in the moment, in the hope that the light in what we are meaning to say will shine in through the cracks.
Ministry is not perfect. It is not all-encompassing. We meet together and discern what comes from that of God in us. Discernment is a slow, difficult process, in part because what we are doing is not apologetics. There is often no argument, just a statement of feeling. Sometimes, feelings are mutual. At other times, they are more contentious. Often we interpret others’ words in our own ways; they speak to us in a manner unforeseen by the Friend giving ministry. We say what we say with the humility of knowing that we cannot speak with true certainty – we are all fallible – but with the hope that truth may be found in what we say. We try to speak in a way that enables others to find that truth.
There are multiple ways of understanding ministry; this is just my own. This is not itself an apologetic.
Apologetics for Quaker ministry do exist. There are Bible verses that can be quoted, for example. There are also apologetics against Quaker ministry as we practice it in liberal Quakerism. Most of these aren’t explicit: they take the form of arguments in favour of appointed ministers. Most denominations don’t see the need to form apologetics against Quaker ministry, because our insistence on it relies on an interpretation of Bible verses that they do not share.
Part of what brings us together as Quakers is an acceptance of a set of shared premises, which may or may not have grounding elsewhere. We try to work our way through these premises, on our own and together, in many different ways. Why we minister, and what happens when we do, is something we still discuss. That is what enables me to write about it. There are no foregone conclusions. Our answers are still unfolding. They will be unfolding for as long as there are Quakers. To be a Friend is to be part of that unfolding.
Apologetics aim to be based on reason, where the premises and conclusions are known. They fix things in place. Despite this, apologetics can still be flexible: the act of reinterpretation undoes them and changes the argument, so that the conclusion must change too. If these reinterpretations are considered valid by the faith community, it may adjust the way it considers those conclusions. It can also ensure that things cannot change – that reinterpretation causes splintering and forks in the road.
I am writing this article because I feel as though there is a turn towards apologetics in Quakerism, and because I feel as though I am a part of it. I am a Christian Quaker and understanding the relationship between those two words is deeply important to me. I am also writing it because, three years after Britain Yearly Meeting pledged to become an actively anti-racist church, and to welcome trans and non-binary people, I still do not feel as though I could bring my black relatives into a Meeting. I am not confident that nothing would be said that would make them feel out of place, well-meaningly or unthinkingly. I have seen it too many times. And with Britain Yearly Meeting’s new pledge to uphold the rights of transgender people – a redoubling of previous statements – I don’t know how to feel as a transgender person myself. When the pledge was made, I was hopeful that it would lead to greater understanding of my own experiences. Even when misunderstood, however, I usually felt welcomed. Friends always respected my ability to determine who I wanted to grow into; to take the time to think about it; to talk it over. Now I feel as though these conversations have been closed off. When I talk or give ministry about being trans, people rarely respond to me about it. I am always grateful to those who do, even if we do not understand each other – even if it is clear that what they have taken from what I said is not at all where I thought the point was going to be. I want to talk. I want nothing more than to talk. I want to talk with people, not just to them. That is what makes me feel welcome.
Something is not working about the way we deal with pledges. I do not believe that they have their intended effect. Because of this, I have been wondering about what, exactly, a pledge is. Is a pledge a form of apologetics? There is typically a reason and a conclusion. Pledges are rigid. You are not supposed to change them, or they break. If, at this point, Britain Yearly Meeting gave up on its commitments to inclusion, I think it would be a bad thing. It would be equivalent to saying that unwelcoming and discriminatory views and behaviours were, in fact, welcomed. But the problem with fixing something in place is that it makes it extremely difficult to advocate for positive change outside of its limitations. The anti-racism pledge made by Britain Yearly Meeting implies that Quakers were uniformly unaware of Quaker involvement in the slave trade, or ignoring it. It erases the lengthy efforts made by Quakers and others to raise this awareness. It makes it appear as though everything was the result of a single Meeting. It is understandable why. It was made at a boiling point. It was the culmination of many sorrows. But the framing puts Britain Yearly Meeting at its centre, and pushes out the daily happenings of Quaker life.
I hear, every so often, from people who feel they are always at risk of needing to be the anti-racist voice in their Meeting, because everybody else is white. I am mixed-race in a way that means that, in most circumstances, I am effectively white. I know what these people mean because for me it can be conditional. I can throw myself into that position. I can leave it. But I rarely see others do so. It is isolating.
There is something interesting and unsettling about the fact that a Quaker Meeting is one of the only places where I, and sometimes other people, become eminently aware of my ethnic background. I am not sure that this is right.
In history, there have been enslaver Quakers and there have been abolitionist Quakers. The only reason that we can say that our ministry contributed to the abolition of slavery is that those abolitionist Quakers saw something that was made to be normal, and spoke against it. If the Quaker pledge for anti-racism had been made in this explicit understanding, then maybe things would be happening differently now. Instead, I see either a sentiment that everything has been resolved, or that everything has been left irresolvably hanging. There is a sense that there is nothing more to unfold, or that what is left can no longer be unfolded. We cannot move forward because we believe we are already there, or because the process of doing so might reveal that we are not nearly so far forward as we would want to hope. Our mixed heritage complicates things and requires us to ask more and deeper questions. We cannot be, simply, inheritors of one or the other. Our actions and motivations do not become good or bad simply because we are Quakers.
Anti-racist readings of the Bible often draw from liberation theology, a way of reading the Bible that envisions it as a source of strength for downtrodden and oppressed peoples. Liberation theology asks questions of other traditions and lays the ground for new ones. It presents new assumptions about the relationship of the Bible to the world.
I think that it would be fair to say that many Quakers are inspired by liberation theology, and that Quakerism contains some similar themes. But it’s worth noting that Quakerism is not definitionally included. One of the reasons for that is that Quakerism did not originate among oppressed people to whom Christianity was brought and imposed by an oppressing colonist group. Quakers have, at times, been oppressed, but the circumstances are so different that they really ought not to be compared. The kind of Quaker anti-racism that is espoused by Britain Yearly Meeting carries a perspective with it that, while targeted against oppression, begins at the starting point of an oppressor, or at least somebody who has the capacity to oppress. It asks: I am free, why isn’t everybody else? This is powerful, and it is ours, but it can’t be confused with the theological perspectives that we are trying to learn from. And it loses its weight if you are yourself oppressed or downtrodden in some way, because it requires somebody else to free you.
I want to try to use this as a context to discuss the struggles between transgender and non-binary Quakers, and those who do not believe that our statements about our genders should be affirmed within Meetings. These struggles are attached to broader political discussions over what kind of place transgender and non-binary people might have in society. The discussions are unnerving for many of us because they cover things that we have been able to do without much question up until relatively recently: go to the toilet when we need to, go to the hospital and have the same anxieties over getting a bed as everybody else, be called by the name we want to use, and so on. Those who do seek medical intervention face many geographical, financial, and institutional barriers, but those who disagree present the situation as if it is too easy to transition. It’s really jarring and strange to talk with people who are on the other side of the divide. They often lean into the argument that what transgender people are ultimately trying to do is switch or eliminate their sex. That may be the language that some transgender people use but it is far from a representative viewpoint.
It seems to me that gender is, in its own way, something that unfolds as we discuss it. Something that resists our attempts to fix it into place, one way or another. Our categories – male and female, transgender and cisgender – come in and out of existence and change form and meaning over time. Maybe in the future, if I am lucky enough to be remembered, somebody will look back at me in the way that we look at historical figures who don’t seem to fit into our understandings of gender and sexuality and label them retrospectively. I hope that they do. It would mean that things have changed, and hopefully in a way that leaves people happier. But I do not want people to do it for me while I am alive. I do not want people who see themselves as free to decide for me. I want to unfold things for myself, and to not have my conclusions written out for me. If I cannot presuppose that my fellow Quakers will shape our religion in a way that gives me a place within it, then that is a risk that I have to take. This is the problem we have always faced: the challenge of coming peacefully to mutual understanding. How can we truthfully espouse the Peace Testimony when we cannot be at peace among ourselves, when we allow peace only to be silence, unbroken and unchallenged?
To be clear, I have a position that I have settled in, and it’s that everybody – including transgender people – should have bodily autonomy and be able to make decisions for themselves about how they would like to be treated. I also believe that taking people at their word is the kind thing to do, whether it’s immediately understandable or not. If nothing else, I would like to be kind. At times, however, it is necessary to say things sharply or bluntly, in ways that do not feel good to say or hear, and which take time to take in. Sometimes this is what it takes to express things authentically. I want to be able to respond kindly when I feel hurt, so that I may expect the same from others. I want to be understood when, if met with something blunt, I respond sharply in a way that seems unkind. I want other people to understand what they are doing when they do things that hurt. I would like people to understand that not everything that hurts helps in the end. I want a reinterpretation of the ground that sits underneath Britain Yearly Meeting’s pledges. I would like it if Quakers who use apologetics to defend their position would explain the ground they see themselves standing on first. Above all else, I would like it if we could come to see words as a kind of deed: something that not only inspires action but is a kind of action unto itself. Maybe then we could speak more thoughtfully.
Comments
I am not free until everyone is free.
I am a white trans woman. Speaking with a Black cis woman, I know my oppression is not the same as hers, but I desire her liberation because it is part of my own. I have some privilege. People with privilege could see their loss at the lack of the voices of those seldom heard, and step aside. I do not need positive encouragement to speak. I need dismantling of the blocks that prevent me being heard.
By Abigail Maxwell on 12th October 2023 - 8:38
By Linda Curnoe on 14th October 2023 - 8:16
By Linda Curnoe on 14th October 2023 - 8:17
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