A message for David Cameron's government from 17th Century Quaker James Nayler:
God is against you, you covetous cruel oppressors who grind the faces
of the poor and needy, taking your advantage of the necessities of the
poor, falsifying the measures and using deceitful weights, speaking that
by your commodities which is not true and so deceiving the simple, and
hereby getting great estates in the world, laying house to house and
land to land till there be no place for the poor; and when they are
become poor through your deceits then you despise them and exalt
yourselves above them, and forget that you are all made of one mould and
one blood and must all appear before one judge, who is no respecter of
persons, nor does he despise the poor; and what shall your riches avail
you at that day when you must account how you have gotten them and whom
you have oppressed?
James Nayler - A Discovery of the First Wisdom from Beneath and the Second Wisdom from Above, 1653
There is an interesting article about James Nayler by Stuart Masters here.
Tuesday, 26 November 2013
Tuesday, 19 November 2013
Real Religion
"When religion is real, it throws the centre of our interest and our action right outside ourselves. It is not about myself at all, or only incidentally and for a purpose that is not my own. It is about the world I live in and the part that I must play in it. It is not to serve my need but the need of the world through me. Real religion is not something that you possess but rather a power that lays hold of you and uses you in the service of a will that is greater than your own."
John Macmurray, 'Search for a Faith', 1945
John Macmurray, 'Search for a Faith', 1945
Wednesday, 6 November 2013
A Testimony to Sustainability?
In 2011, British Quakers made the 'Canterbury Commitment' to become a low carbon sustainable community. This is an important landmark decision in these times as the evidence for possible runaway climate change gathers apace.
However, this commitment is often being framed as a new 'testimony'. Craig argues against this in his blog 'Actions not Principles - an introduction to the Quaker Testimonies'. But Blackheath Quakers have 'Quaker Sustainability Testimony' and in the USA, the SPICE formulation of our testimonies (Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Community Equality) has become SPICES with the addition of 'Stewardship' as reported in Friends Journal here.
But is 'Sustainability' a testimony in any spiritual sense? After all organisations such as Friends of The Earth and Greenpeace, and the Transition movement all testify to the same thing. And many Quakers are members of such groups, and many Meetings generously host them at their meeting houses. Craig mentions other testimonies: anti-slavery, temperance, anti-militarism and the practice of equal marriage. These too are testified to by all manner of political and social groups.
What we need is a distinct spiritual or religious testimony of our actions in the world when led by the spirit. If we just follow the spirit of the age, then we will just be like any other political pressure group, no matter how noble our aims. We are first and foremost a 'religious' society and we need to work out what that means and how it makes our witness distinctive, such that it adds to and deepens the political witness of those around us.
We have been here before, and right at the start of our witness: Margaret Fox berated our 'silly poor gospel' of being obsessed with how we dress and losing sight of the spiritual reason for plain dress. That reason was a witness to our testimony of equality, in a day when ostentatious dress was deliberately used to set people up against one another. The mistake, I believe, was to make 'plain dress' into a testimony when in fact it was a concern arising from equality and specific to the circumstances of the day. Such also is our concerns against slavery, for anti-miltarism and for equal marriage – all arise from our testimony of equality, and we look to the time when they will no longer be concerns.
With our very real concern for sustainability in the face of climate change and 'peak oil' we run the very dangerous risk, as Margaret Fox so presciently pointed out of
So where then is the spiritual testimony that informs our concern about sustainability and underpins our 'Canterbury Commitment'? Part of the answer was brought out wonderfully in our recent Meeting for Worship for business where we asked of ourselves ‘How is God leading us towards becoming a low carbon, sustainable community?’, and there was deep ministry about paying attention to simplicity as our guiding principle.
But for me, simplicity does not fully capture the spiritual underpinning of what it means to me to be in a low carbon sustainable community. None of our testimonies as commonly formulated does so, such is the radical and novel place we find ourselves in as we cope with these newly revealed concerns. But I think that Quakers do have a unique and special voice for our times as we worry about the destruction we are wrecking on the planet, and that is that we believe that everything is equally sacred.
If everything is equally sacred then we certainly cannot 'have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth' (Genesis 1:28) as so much of Christianity has it – at least until the recent past, and from which much of the destructiveness that has led to unavoidable climate change can be seen to have come from in the Christian West.
If everything is equally sacred then we can't even have 'stewardship' over the earth, as most thoughtful Christians would interpret the Genesis imperative, and so it would seem, do many Quakers. For to be a steward is to set oneself over and above something else, to treat the other as an object for our use, or even at best, our care. But if something is sacred then it demands our acceptance of it as it is and for itself – 'put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground' (Exodus 3:5).
If everything is equally sacred, what does it mean to throw something away? To put stuff in landfill, or send it somewhere out of sight, where they have lax environmental legislation? Everything that passes through our hands comes from a sacred place and should go to a sacred place. If everything is sacred then there is no place for a rubbish heap.
If everything is equally sacred what does it mean to treat our technology as toys to be played with to indulge our crude pleasures? And then to discard them in favour of the latest model? If we considered technology to be equally sacred, we would use it with care and proper attention, learning it's fit and proper place, and discarding it if it violated equality and simplicity in our lives.
If everything is equally sacred how can we ever think of anything merely in terms of its money value? Money destroys the sacred by putting a barrier between us and any possibility of entering into a relationship with it. This is why 'the love of money is the root of all evil' (1 Timothy 6:10).
If everything is equally sacred how can we allow so much of our stuff to wear out and not be properly maintained and cared for and even passed on to future generations so they too can see them as sacred? We should mourn the loss of our goods to wear and tear and remember the good and useful life they had with us.
In a secular age when the spirit of the age is to turn everything into a commodity for our selfish use with no thought of the morrow, it is vital that we develop a testimony to the sacredness of everything. We have a rich past of this testimony in action, and we are in good company for much traditional non-western spirituality also testifies to everything being sacred.With equality and simplicity in particular we will then have a rich and deep spiritual witness, which overcomes guilt and despair and enables us to cheerfully and courageously challenge the unsustainable society we are in, both in our own lives and in political action for change.
And we can look forward to the day when we can lay down this concern because we will find ourselves living in a low carbon sustainable community. And discover then whither the will of God will lead our testimony.
However, this commitment is often being framed as a new 'testimony'. Craig argues against this in his blog 'Actions not Principles - an introduction to the Quaker Testimonies'. But Blackheath Quakers have 'Quaker Sustainability Testimony' and in the USA, the SPICE formulation of our testimonies (Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Community Equality) has become SPICES with the addition of 'Stewardship' as reported in Friends Journal here.
But is 'Sustainability' a testimony in any spiritual sense? After all organisations such as Friends of The Earth and Greenpeace, and the Transition movement all testify to the same thing. And many Quakers are members of such groups, and many Meetings generously host them at their meeting houses. Craig mentions other testimonies: anti-slavery, temperance, anti-militarism and the practice of equal marriage. These too are testified to by all manner of political and social groups.
What we need is a distinct spiritual or religious testimony of our actions in the world when led by the spirit. If we just follow the spirit of the age, then we will just be like any other political pressure group, no matter how noble our aims. We are first and foremost a 'religious' society and we need to work out what that means and how it makes our witness distinctive, such that it adds to and deepens the political witness of those around us.
We have been here before, and right at the start of our witness: Margaret Fox berated our 'silly poor gospel' of being obsessed with how we dress and losing sight of the spiritual reason for plain dress. That reason was a witness to our testimony of equality, in a day when ostentatious dress was deliberately used to set people up against one another. The mistake, I believe, was to make 'plain dress' into a testimony when in fact it was a concern arising from equality and specific to the circumstances of the day. Such also is our concerns against slavery, for anti-miltarism and for equal marriage – all arise from our testimony of equality, and we look to the time when they will no longer be concerns.
With our very real concern for sustainability in the face of climate change and 'peak oil' we run the very dangerous risk, as Margaret Fox so presciently pointed out of
“minding altogether outward things, neglecting the inward work of Almighty God in our hearts, if we can but frame according to outward prescriptions and orders, and deny eating and drinking with our neighbours, in so much that poor Friends is mangled in their minds, that they know not what to do, for one Friend says one way, and another another”Just the sort of thing that is happening in meetings across the country right now as Friends struggle with widely varying levels amongst each other of 'outward prescriptions' to being 'low carbon'.
So where then is the spiritual testimony that informs our concern about sustainability and underpins our 'Canterbury Commitment'? Part of the answer was brought out wonderfully in our recent Meeting for Worship for business where we asked of ourselves ‘How is God leading us towards becoming a low carbon, sustainable community?’, and there was deep ministry about paying attention to simplicity as our guiding principle.
But for me, simplicity does not fully capture the spiritual underpinning of what it means to me to be in a low carbon sustainable community. None of our testimonies as commonly formulated does so, such is the radical and novel place we find ourselves in as we cope with these newly revealed concerns. But I think that Quakers do have a unique and special voice for our times as we worry about the destruction we are wrecking on the planet, and that is that we believe that everything is equally sacred.
If everything is equally sacred then we certainly cannot 'have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth' (Genesis 1:28) as so much of Christianity has it – at least until the recent past, and from which much of the destructiveness that has led to unavoidable climate change can be seen to have come from in the Christian West.
If everything is equally sacred then we can't even have 'stewardship' over the earth, as most thoughtful Christians would interpret the Genesis imperative, and so it would seem, do many Quakers. For to be a steward is to set oneself over and above something else, to treat the other as an object for our use, or even at best, our care. But if something is sacred then it demands our acceptance of it as it is and for itself – 'put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground' (Exodus 3:5).
If everything is equally sacred, what does it mean to throw something away? To put stuff in landfill, or send it somewhere out of sight, where they have lax environmental legislation? Everything that passes through our hands comes from a sacred place and should go to a sacred place. If everything is sacred then there is no place for a rubbish heap.
If everything is equally sacred what does it mean to treat our technology as toys to be played with to indulge our crude pleasures? And then to discard them in favour of the latest model? If we considered technology to be equally sacred, we would use it with care and proper attention, learning it's fit and proper place, and discarding it if it violated equality and simplicity in our lives.
If everything is equally sacred how can we ever think of anything merely in terms of its money value? Money destroys the sacred by putting a barrier between us and any possibility of entering into a relationship with it. This is why 'the love of money is the root of all evil' (1 Timothy 6:10).
If everything is equally sacred how can we allow so much of our stuff to wear out and not be properly maintained and cared for and even passed on to future generations so they too can see them as sacred? We should mourn the loss of our goods to wear and tear and remember the good and useful life they had with us.
In a secular age when the spirit of the age is to turn everything into a commodity for our selfish use with no thought of the morrow, it is vital that we develop a testimony to the sacredness of everything. We have a rich past of this testimony in action, and we are in good company for much traditional non-western spirituality also testifies to everything being sacred.With equality and simplicity in particular we will then have a rich and deep spiritual witness, which overcomes guilt and despair and enables us to cheerfully and courageously challenge the unsustainable society we are in, both in our own lives and in political action for change.
And we can look forward to the day when we can lay down this concern because we will find ourselves living in a low carbon sustainable community. And discover then whither the will of God will lead our testimony.
Friday, 1 November 2013
Actions not Principles - an introduction to the Quaker Testimonies
The Quaker testimonies
are often misunderstood as a list of values or principles that
Friends are expected to agree with, and then try to put into
practice. Until very recently, Quakers had a shared understanding of
our testimonies as actions that testify to our experience of
reality. The testimonies are not values, principles, ideals or
beliefs. Our testimony is our behaviour, as it witnesses to the truth
of reality that we have experienced for ourselves.
Early Friends were
clear that having the right principles or beliefs was of no use to
anyone, without a personal insight into the reality
that underlies all religious language:
“Christ
saith this, and the apostles say this;' but what canst thou say? Art
thou a child of the Light, and hast thou walked in the Light, and
what thou speakest, is it inwardly from God?"
(George
Fox, quoted by Margaret Fell, 1694)
The focus of testimony
for early Friends might seem surprising. George Fox's emphasis in his
letters to early Quaker communities was above all on Friends'
truthful use of language, and rejection of worldly customs and
official religious practice.
“Friends, keep at
a word in all your dealings without oppression.
And keep to the
sound language, thou to everyone.
And keep your
testimony against the world's vain fashion.
And keep your
testimony against the hireling priests, and their tithes, and
maintenance.
And against the
mass-houses, and the repairing of them.
And against the
priest's and the world's joining in marriage.
And your testimony
against swearing, and the world's corrupt manners.
And against all
looseness, pleasures, and prophaneness whatsoever.
And against all the
world's evil ways, vain worships, and religions, and to stand up for
God's.”
(George Fox, Epistle
263, 1668)
These testimonies were
specific challenges to the social hierarchies and oppressive
State-Church institutions of 17th Century England. The
'sound language' included addressing everyone equally (as 'thou')
regardless of their social position, refusing to use flattering
honorific titles (such as 'Reverend', 'Your Honour' etc), refusing to
swear oaths in court, and a commitment to absolute truthfulness and
plain speaking, without social lies, exaggeration or equivocation.
Truthfulness was
central for these early Quakers (one of their earliest names for
themselves was the 'Friends of Truth'). For them, Truth was not an
intellectual conviction, but an existential commitment to speaking
and acting truthfully; refusing all participation in falsehood, and
bearing witness ('testifying') to the reality of the world as they
knew it in their own experience:
“Early
Friends testified to the truth that had changed them by living their
lives on the basis of that truth. The reality of their life (and of
human life) shone through in their lives because they were open to
that reality and lived in harmony with it. Lives lived in the truth
would then resonate with how other people lived their lives, and more
specifically with the deep sense within them that they were not
living well, not living rightly. When Friends spoke honestly and
truthfully to people, when they dealt with them as they really were,
without pretence or projection, when they met violence with
nonviolence and hatred with love, people knew at some level they were
being confronted with the truth, whether they liked it or not.”
(Rex
Ambler, The Prophetic Message
of Early Friends, and how it can be interpreted today - full
text available here)
Many early Friends also
arrived independently at the rejection of violence – 'fighting with
outward weapons'. For most Friends, this was not based on belief in a
universal principle that 'all violence is wrong' - they accepted the
right of government to use violence to suppress evil-doers and
maintain public order. Instead, the first Quakers experienced a
series of 'openings' – spiritual experiences of insight, that
progressively revealed to them their own motivations and compulsions,
as well as their fundamental connection to other people, to the
living world and to the underlying spiritual reality of God. Through
these experiences, Friends were discovering that they could no longer
participate in exploitation or violence against other human beings.
They found themselves in that spiritual condition, the 'covenant of
peace that was before the world was', which freed them from the
delusions, ambition and hatred that led to violence, oppression and
war. They recognised that while most people were still not living in
this condition, there was still a need for the State to use force to
maintain law and order. Their public testimony and mission was aimed
at bringing all people into the same 'covenant of peace', which would
gradually make violence and oppression impossible for everyone.
The important thing
about all these aspects of Quaker Testimony was that they were
specific actions, discerned in response to specific circumstances.
This is why the actions that have been considered 'testimonies' by
Quakers have constantly changed over time, in response to changing
social conditions and the new discernment of Friends. Some early
testimonies have been abandoned, such as the testimony against music
and the arts, which was originally a rejection of Restoration
England's decadent aristocratic culture. New testimonies have also
emerged in the areas of anti-slavery, temperance, anti-militarism,
and most recently the commitment to become a sustainable, low-carbon
community, and the practice of equal marriage.
It is only very
recently that the concrete acts of Quaker testimony have been grouped
together under the familiar set of headings, 'Simplicity, Truth,
Equality and Peace' (or in the USA more usually Simplicity, Peace,
Integrity, Community and Equality). The 'STEP' classification was
invented in 1964 by Hugh Barbour in his book 'The Quakers in Puritan
England', as a way of grouping together the great diversity of
concrete Quaker testimonies into a few manageable themes. While this classification
can be useful as an aid to memory, it has unfortunately had the
effect of giving the impression that Quaker testimonies are a set of
universal ethical principles or values that we are supposed to try to
'put into practice'. Trying, and inevitably failing, to live up to a
set of principles of moral perfection is a fruitful source of guilt,
but of little else. Fortunately, this is not what Quaker testimonies
are.
The fundamental value
of the corporate Quaker testimonies is as a guide to discerning our
own leadings. By reminding us of the ways in which Friends have been
led in the past, individually and collectively, the testimonies can
help to sensitise us to the areas where the Spirit may be nudging us
in our own lives and situations. By reflecting on the traditional
Quaker commitment to plain and truthful speech, we might be become
aware of a vague discomfort with the ways that we sometimes evade
honest and open communication. Or by attending to the ways that
Friends in the past have simplified their possessions and commitments
in the service of a more spiritually unified life, we might feel
drawn to the possibility of a less scattered and hectic lifestyle.
These kinds of feelings are movements of the Spirit - 'the promptings
of love and truth in our hearts' (Advices & Queries:1). They
have a very different quality to feeling inadequate about all the ways
that we fail to live up to absolute standards of ethical perfection.
They are personal and unique; each of us will be led differently at
different times in our lives, because each of us has our own
experiences, talents and contribution to offer to the world. One of
the gifts of being in community is that each of us brings something
different, and that none of us has to try to do everything.
The Quaker testimonies
can be a resource for all of us, to remind us of how the Spirit has
worked and is working among Friends, and to point us towards the
Inward Guide, to listen to how it is speaking to each of us in the
depths of our hearts:
“Dearly beloved
Friends, these things we do not lay upon you as a rule or form to
walk by; but that all, with a measure of the light, which is pure and
holy, may be guided: and so in the light walking and abiding, these
things may be fulfilled in the Spirit, not in the letter, for the
letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life.”
(From the Epistle from
the Elders in Balby, 1656)
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