Title role
Gosh! I think George Fox might be spinning in his (somewhat secular) grave. We have learned in the Friend (‘Now we are seven’, 13 March) that the proposed working title of our new, modern, up-to-date book of discipline has quietly dropped the word ‘faith’ from the title.
Has anyone else noticed this? No longer faith & practice, but Our Quaker Way. Does this have an implication?
We can practise, find our way if you like, with golf, or the piano, or tying our shoelaces, but we don’t need faith in any of that. So Our Quaker Way, which seems to me to be the old Quaker practice without faith, is a new idea to conjure with.
The word ‘Christian’ was, as we all know, equally gently dropped over half a century ago in the history of our ongoing communal Quaker trajectory. So today we have another step change in the history of the evolution of the title of our book.
The question I would like to raise is: if we drop ‘faith’ from our book title, having previously dropped ‘Christian’, as presumably a thought-through decision, what is implied thereby for the ongoing path of the evolving ‘Quaker Way’? What might that new shape be? Would George Fox recognise this new ‘Way’? Does any of this stuff matter, as we forge ahead to modernity?
I want to put on record that, as a member of our community, I am very sad and very troubled by this apparently-subtle change, made on our behalf by the Revision Committee. My hope is that this decision – which some might consider bold, modern, innovative and forward thinking – might receive some further thought.
Neil Morgan
Family matters
Most Quaker testimonies can be paired with each other. Truth goes with integrity, equality with justice, nonviolence with mediation, and earth stewardship with simplicity. Each part of each pair cannot exist without the other. Truth cannot exist without integrity, nor integrity without truth, and so on.
But the testimony of community stands alone. It is self-evident to me that its pair is family, and that neither can exist without the other. The Quaker founders would never have thought that families could be so compromised as to need a supporting testimony, but they have been. Searching Quaker faith & practice for the word ‘family’, I find that it is used only thirteen times.
In the stillness of the night, and in your quietest moments, I ask that you place families in the Light. Family is where love is first found. I invite you to share my concern that the subject is of sufficient importance to be made a testimony, and furthermore that it is essential for community to function.
William Summers
