Thought for the Week: The Quaker Way
Ian Kirk-Smith reflects on a Way that is rooted in seeking
In the seventeenth century, particularly after the English civil war, small groups of ‘Seekers’ could be found throughout England. They were people who had become disillusioned with the established church. They had not, however, rejected religion. Far from it. They were a people who sought spiritual nourishment.
The problem was that they could not find it in the Church of England. It was, as the established church, an institution that they were forced to attend and to support through compulsory tithes. The service – with its recitations, rituals, promptings and prayers – had lost its power for them and, indeed, over them.
Most of the Seekers were hard-working, self-reliant, and independent-minded people. They were used to making decisions for themselves. They did not like to be told what to think.
The Seekers yearned for an authentic spiritual experience. They wanted to be active participants rather than passive recipients and sought a religion that would connect and engage. The organised church, for many of them, was corrupt. Their preferred form of worship was one without any minister or priest. Many chose simply to sit in silence waiting upon God’s revelation.
Religion, at that time, was closely bound up with power, politics and class in a way that is inconceivable today – so their actions were profoundly radical. They sought toleration for all. They demanded that participation in a church be entirely voluntary. Their radical position on religion had inevitable implications for their views on political, economic and social matters.
Quakerism has deep roots in the Seeker tradition. Many Seekers went on to form the basis of the early Quaker movement. In their search for a more engaged and authentic Christianity – for the values and practices of the early church – they found a focus on love. This concern for love, and not sin, became a distinguishing mark.
Today, the Quaker Way continues to affirm, as the writers in this special edition of the Friend demonstrate, the very best of the Seeker tradition. It is not about creed and ceremony, sin and salvation. It is about living life in a particular way and of being true to certain values.
Harvey Gillman celebrates the importance of openness and tolerance in contemporary Quakerism. He touches a common chord with early Seekers when he writes that the spiritual life ‘is not a path of certainty. It is a voyage of discovery’. Jan Arriens stresses the radical edge that has always distinguished the best of Quaker faith in action. Friends, like their forerunners in the seventeenth century, have always felt a deep moral prompting to speak truth to power.
Jennifer Kavanagh addresses an enduring challenge for all Friends: that of finding a balance between ‘the contemplative’ and the ‘active’ and of holding them ‘together in unity’. Other Friends share their thoughts on central Quaker concerns such as peace, simplicity and sustainability and explore some elements of Quaker faith and practice today and the challenges ahead.
All the writers, as contributors do every week in the Friend, offer strong personal insights into the Quaker Way. It is a way rooted in seeking. Contemporary Quakerism is a radical, positive, optimistic and adventurous way. It is a way that welcomes, with a tender smile, people with big hearts and open minds.
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