01-07-2007 15:13

On Terry Wallace’s “Misunderstanding Qua

Gerry, 
 
I appreciate your calling my attention to Terry Wallace’s “Misunderstanding Quaker Faith and Practice (Friends Journal, Jan 2007, pp.6-8, 44 http://www.friendsjournal.org/contents/2007/0107/index.html). Furthermore, I share some of the broader concerns expressed in your online response http://palmettofriends.org/content/view/29/1/. For example: 
 
• that explicit, formal creeds can distract us from attending to continuing revelation; 
• that such creeds can be abused as tests for who does or does not belong; 
• that credal differences about the nature of God ought not to prevent us from affirming and sharing our experience of God; 
• that valuing the unique revelations of the Bible is not the same as attributing to it final authority on doctrinal matters; or 
• that (as Jim Wallis points out in God’s Politics URL), American culture has falsely polarized theological discussion into emotionally hostile ideological camps, thereby suppressing genuine prophetic dialog. 
 
Nonetheless, Friend Wallace in fact speaks my mind, and I find nothing to disagree with in his article. He voices with articulate objectivity most aspects of a deep concern with which I have struggled for two decades. 
 
Many of us “1960s-70s liberals” came to Quakerism first as a refuge from the abuses we had experienced and/or witnessed, done in the name of the religious orthodoxies under which we were raised. We welcomed the opportunity Quakerism seems to offer us, both to speak our individual “heretical” leadings without risking condemnation, and to extend what we though of as a universal inclusiveness to our friends and acquaintance of other races, cultures and religions. 
 
However, Quakerism is not merely a refuge, a place for seekers to wait. It is a specific spiritual discipline of centering down in silence and making oneself vulnerable precisely where one feels least comfortable with regard to faith and practice. How else can either an individual or a meeting be open to receive a greater measure of the Light than to give public voice to one’s own convictions and then listen tenderly to the heartfelt testimonies of those with whom one most disagrees? 
 
The finest recent demonstration I have seen of this process is also found in FJ: Kate Griffith’s “Conversations from the Heartland “ (Oct 2006, pp.9-12, 50 http://www.friendsjournal.org/contents/2006/1006/feature1.html). 
 
I encourage all of us Friends to read these two articles side by side, and then to let them lie fallow together, without acting on the urge to defend our own present convictions. 
 
Blessed Be, 
Michael

http://walhycra.blogspot.com

IP: 207.69.138.10

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