Thought for the Week: Friends
John Punshon reflects on what unites us across many divides
Unless one has knocked about the Quaker world a bit, it comes as rather a surprise to meet the Programmed Quaker Meeting for the first time, complete with hymns, a pastor, a sermon and, if you are lucky, a bit of silence thrown in. It might be easy, as a citizen of the Quaker homeland, to say that such shenanigans are hardly what one would call Quaker and feel, let’s face it, a bit, well, superior. However, if one were to live in the Meeting for a few months, as opposed to attending a Meeting on an isolated occasion, a rather different picture might emerge.
Meetings are programmed not only in parts of the United States but also in many Quaker congregations in Africa, Latin America and Southern Asia, which might not have the same cultural assumptions as us, but have no less a claim to be called ‘Friends’. They operate systems of Monthly and Yearly Meetings that would be familiar to us, and conduct their business in reliance on divine guidance, which again, like us, is embodied in a Discipline, as Faith & practice is traditionally known, subject to review as circumstances change. These documents usually contain some sort of Advices & queries section, as ours does. They are instantly recognisable.
As with us, Meetings have small committees of senior and experienced members, notable for wisdom and judgment, who have the primary responsibility for the spiritual oversight and pastoral care of the group. Pastors are responsible to the Meeting through this committee, and are distinguished by function not status. There are no rituals, no ordination, no baptism, no communion. Worship is certainly programmed, as is ours, when you think about it. For our part, we have a strong behavioural creed which lays down a range of conventions designed to ensure the right holding of our Meeting for Worship, and properly so.
Things are never what they were, and never stay the same, of course. Quakerism has developed in different directions in different parts of the world, and will no doubt continue to do so. Our testimonies to human equality, peacefulness, simplicity and truth-telling have a life that is independent of our forms of worship. They unite us across many divides. Moreover, it sometimes comes as a surprise to realise how much the programmed tradition among Friends looks back to the same historical tradition as us. Colegio Jorge Fox in Honduras (unknown perhaps to many British Friends) is called by this name for a reason based on more than sentiment. In Burundi, Congo, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda, Friends from that same tradition are living out the Peace Testimony, sometimes in the wake of unspeakable violence.
Actually, these Friends might question us, and claim that George Fox did not tell Friends to sit in silence and feel the ‘that’. Instead, he told them that there was one, Christ Jesus, who could speak to their condition. Perhaps there is more of authentic Quakerism among those other Friends than meets the eye.
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