‘We affirm that something loving, guiding, and worth listening to is active now, here, in our community.’ Photo: Telling the Truth About God book cover
Telling the Truth About God by Rhiannon Grant
Author: Rhiannon Grant. Review by Jonathan Wooding
If you think theology is now irrelevant to Quakers, think again. Rhiannon Grant shows us that to ‘theologize’ remains an exciting and, indeed, daring venture, once we acknowledge how it might be misused. Her own efforts to be honest about God fall within a radical tradition. She writes: ‘Any form of religiosity in a generally secular society can be seen as counter-cultural.’ That sounds pretty Quakerly. Where religious terminology has expired, become redundant, obsolete, or misleading, that is where the Quaker theologian must be.
Grant takes her lead from John Robinson’s 1963 Honest to God, and is quick to point out the modest limitations of the theological enterprise: ‘[Theologizing] is not something which takes us away from other aspects of Quaker work, such as prayer or activism.’ Her evaluation of prayer’s decisive significance is heartening. She is clear about ‘the need to live closely with whatever it is “God” is’ through prayer: ‘Being a practising Quaker is going to bring us back to that, over and over, regardless of our beliefs. In traditional language, this is the continuing attempt to pray: to say to Thou, who already knows, what is in our hearts.’
The notion that once we’ve sorted out our beliefs then we can start praying is a misconception that is rightly ditched. Praying is a practice available to every individual, regardless of belief; we know that psalming and poetising pre-exist metaphysical speculation and creedal coercions. After all, however convincing our ‘proofs’ of God’s existence, no single proof is going to lead someone to take up a life of prayer. You have, just, to suck it and see.
The chapter entitled ‘In everyone’ is particularly bracing with its openness to asking the question whether the ‘God of modern Quakerism… [is] small and weak and hardly worth worshipping’. It is right to ask such a question if we are to be uncompromisingly honest. The answer seems to be that truthful claims about God may well seem reductive or meagre to those who require a more assertive assessment of God’s providential attention. But Grant’s book does not leave us bereft; her God operates in the real world, for instance, rather as fictional characters do. And our behaviour is theologically affirmative: ‘Quakers act as if we believe that something more than ego and really present in the world can guide a decision making process.’ She goes further: ‘We affirm that something loving, guiding, and worth listening to is active now, here, in our community.’ Not so meagre, after all.
Grant remains convinced by this more radical theological tradition, one distinctively Quaker: ‘There is so much which is distinctive (and, some Christians might say, heretical) about the Quaker movement.’ She mentions ‘post-Christian’ traditions, God as a ‘human creation’, and she freely admits, ‘This kind of talk can sound blasphemous’. But she affirms the continuing agency and expressiveness of God-language nevertheless. Telling the Truth about God confirms that Quakers need not throw out the theological baby with the creedal bath water.
Comments
This is a really marvellous review . It’s well balanced ,lucid ,deeply informed and spiritually thoughtful - and at the same time very clear . Its probably the best book review I’ve read in the Friend for some time , done with great skill and artistry . It’s also an addition to the book itself .
congratulations ,and thanks for writing it !
By Neil M on 7th September 2020 - 19:38
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