‘We can play a ‘goodness’ game – profess love and goodwill for all – but how real is it?’

Thought for the week: Piers Maddox sees inconvenient truth

by Piers Maddox 16th October 2020

There’s a space between theism and nontheism that is important to explore.

Early Quakers witnessed the breakdown of village-based community, with enclosures driving the landless into towns. Merchants cheated, and you doffed your cap to your rich masters. It was the beginning of capitalist society. Those Friends felt the Spirit of Truth (an inner guide to ‘rightness’), which they identified with Jesus. To deny it would have been blasphemy. It was something real, inside, an essence behind the biblical words – but they knew you didn’t have to be Christian to feel it.