Multi-coloured signs listing out 'SPICES', fixed to a tree. Photo: Courtesy of Quakers in Canada.
Testimonies: Ol Rappaport on a Quaker paradox
‘Our testimonies were never meant to be bullet points on a poster.’
Our testimonies were once a defining feature of Quakerism. Enigmatically, they were like the Rollright Stones or the weapons of Monty Python’s Spanish Inquisition: their number changed whenever anyone tried to count them. For me, that was part of their mystical charm: they were elusive, real, and they guided us.
But in the half-century since I first set foot in a Meeting house, we have become less mystical and more political. For decades the only Quaker MP was Richard Body, a Tory. To me this apparent anomaly of allegiance proved something very important about Friends: we were united by our diversity, a paradox, like the number of Rollright Stones.
Yet in our rational, non-paradoxical twenty-first-century Quakerism, we have counted these testimonies. We have nailed the jelly to the wall. There is even a handy mnemonic to remind us what they are – SPICES: Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Community, Equality, and Stewardship (or Sustainability). What strikes me, looking at these, is that they are all very much our public face. They are predominantly political ambitions, and say very little about our inner spiritual life, as individuals or as communities.
In the 1990s, Friends House peace secretary Mary Lou Leavitt described a testimony as ‘a consistently lived witness’. Surely, then, the reasons why we have never resorted to priests, sacraments, creeds, or celebrated festivals, are themselves testimonies? None of these have made it into SPICES, despite being the bedrock of our spiritual practice.
Even the Bible, so dear to earlier Friends, is treated cautiously but respectfully, not reverentially: ‘[Fox] steadily refused, and his consistent followers have to this day refused to call that precious book The Word of God,’ said the Manchester Conference of 1895.
Our testimonies were never meant to be bullet points on a poster. They are the fruits of lived experience, not policies. They are the overflowing of the inward Spirit into daily life. They are living things, not slogans printed on paper, not even recycled paper.
Once we listened together in silence for guidance; now we receive it in press releases from Friends House. Where there was mystery, we have managed procedure and processes; where there was mystery, we have invoked rationality. It is progress of a sort, but progress away from the dangerous, luminous edge that first made us who we were. Friends did not define, they described, and they waited for the Spirit to be revealed. But now we seem anxious to explain ourselves: to government departments, to charities, to each other. Reacting reflexively to every ripple of news.
Paradox could again be our native air: silence as the deepest speech, stillness as the most radical action, and unity through diversity. To live by that tension would be again to live by faith. We should again treasure paradox, and jettison the neat and tidy, rational, political, presentable.
‘The humble, meek, merciful, just, pious, and devout souls are everywhere of one religion.’ William Penn, 1693.
Comments
Our only dogma is that we have no dogma, but we do try not to be too dogmatic about that.
By Roger & Margaret Wilson on 23rd October 2025 - 11:43
As others have observed of those alleged The Quaker Testimonies: love does not appear in the list!
By Keith Braithwaite on 23rd October 2025 - 15:40
I do not think Quakers are more political than we ever were. Some join us for the activism, stay for the Spirit. Some try the silence of worship and love it, and become activist. Always some of us are intensely political. From his repeatedly expressed views on trans people and on Gaza, Ol may appear to be one of them.
Ol, I believe your sense that Quakers are political, and receive top-down political guidance in “press releases from Friends House”, arises from the fact that you cannot accept the clear Quaker discernment about trans people. Our welcoming of trans people comes from our Quaker principles: seeing there is inner light in everyone leads us to accept trans women’s leading that they are women, trans men’s leading they are men, nonbinary people’s leadings about their identities. You, when you “affirm concepts such as ‘sex is determined at conception’, ‘you can’t change your sex’ or ‘you can’t be born in the wrong body’ - views [you] share with Trump” as you put it, are not only going contrary to the clear discernment of BYM, but also the principles of the Quaker way.
You are arguing from a wholly secular standpoint, that in your view sex is in some way “objective” and that therefore trans women should be treated as men. You are the one denying “the fruits of lived experience”- mine, that I am a woman, and that of thousands of years of trans people in history and in all cultures.
Some people to whom their trans denialism matters a great deal, will choose that trans denialism over Quakerism. In my experience, people who fall for such beliefs cling to them as desperately as anti-vaxxers or chemtrail believers cling to their phantasms. But it skews their perceptions: Ol perhaps really believes that he is the one at the “luminous edge”, along with his fellow believers in trans denialism. But he is an unreliable guide to what that luminous edge might be.
Abigail Maxwell.
By katemackrell@mac.com on 24th October 2025 - 7:52
Editor: I believe that the above comment amounts to a personal attack which is not suited to the online presence of a Quaker publication.
By Keith Braithwaite on 24th October 2025 - 21:41
Keith, the article is an attack on our Society. Our Society remains religious and spiritual: it is Ol who has become political. I quote some of his political beliefs, which I consider repulsive, irrational and dehumanising, but which remain on this website. Then I point out how his views skew his understanding of Quakers. Without this context, people might actually believe the Society was more “political” now than it has been at least since the Manchester conference. I don’t think that is true. Do you? If so, why? Can you adduce evidence? If it was “political” in 1800 to oppose slavery, it was also the product of long discernment. In the same way, trans inclusion, which Ol opposes, is the product of discernment and living the Quaker way.
SPICES, used in the US, or STEPS, used in Britain, are handy acronyms to introduce people to some of our ideas, but anyone who has been Quaker for any length of time will build up an understanding of testimony as a seamless robe, from the leadings of Friends and their own personal leadings. To reduce the experience of a Quaker of five years’ standing to the acronym misjudges us.
By katemackrell@mac.com on 24th October 2025 - 22:30
That comment was by Abigail, Kate’s partner.
By katemackrell@mac.com on 24th October 2025 - 22:32
Friend, I decline to be cross-examined.
Editor: is the above reality what the website of the Friend is for?
By Keith Braithwaite on 25th October 2025 - 12:16
Keith, what do you mean, “above reality”? Do you really think there are different versions of reality? I am not cross-examining you: I want to understand, and I think other readers of these comments might too.
Truth and reality are extremely complex, but there is nevertheless one reality. Individual humans cannot comprehend reality, but can be more truthful than less. That is the lifetime’s work of Truth (T in “STEPS”) or Integrity (I in “SPICES).
In this one reality, there have been trans people for thousands of years, and there is no such thing as “gender ideology”. Quakers are not “political” in a bad way welcoming trans people, any more than we were “political” in a bad way opposing slavery.
What is The Friend for? I am deeply saddened that the editor has chosen to print Ol’s article, as I believe it comes from Ol’s dispute with the Society on particular issues- see his views which I quoted above- rather than any useful contribution to considering how “political” our society is, or whether that might be a necessary corollary of being Quaker. But, the comments section has to be for elucidating problems with articles.
I deny that I am attacking Ol here. How else could I give the necessary background?
Abigail Maxwell
By katemackrell@mac.com on 25th October 2025 - 15:07
It’s a autocorrect typo: read “really”.
By Keith Braithwaite on 25th October 2025 - 16:51
Whatever. Nobody’s reality, even Ol’s, should exclude another human being.
Abigail.
By katemackrell@mac.com on 25th October 2025 - 19:11
I am in unity with Ol Rappaport where he says “Our testimonies were never meant to be bullet points on a poster. They are fruits of lived experience, not policies. They are the overflowing of the inward spirit into daily life. They are living things. Not slogans printed on paper.”
By Richard Pashley on 27th October 2025 - 16:18
“We have counted these testimonies. We have nailed the jelly to the wall.” No.
The testimonies in the acronyms SPICES or STEPS are useful in an elevator pitch, useful in telling an enquirer something memorable about Quakerism which gets over a lot of information in an easy to remember way. And, the mere five or six words are fruitful for meditation. The acronyms or mnemonics are useful. If they were the end of all our exploring, I would agree with Ol that Quakerism was trivialised, but they are not. First the enquirer has the acronym, then Advices and Queries, then Quaker Faith and Practice and other works, and all the while worship, talking with other Quakers, and living our lives. STEP was part of my residential introduction to Quakers at Woodbrooke; STEPS is one of the tools I use to introduce Quakerism to people.
Abigail.
By katemackrell@mac.com on 30th October 2025 - 15:16
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