Comments on: FAQs: What are the practices of Quakers?

By: Martin Kelley

Martin Kelley — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 19:11:31 +0000

It’s not just 1980s anarchists turning to Quakers–the flow started the other way, when activist Friends in the 1970s started building activist communities built on a Quaker model stripped of spiritual motivation. This eventually coalesced into the Movement for a New Society. For six years in my twenties I worked with a spin-off, New Society Publishers, and this was my first experience of Quakerish process (our staff evaluations were “clearness committees”). When I started getting more deeply involved with Friends I had to rethink these familiar routines, realizing that now we were using them to seek the direction of the Holy Spirit. Only later did I realize that some of the processes I thought were traditional Quaker were just the modern de-Quakerized processes brought back to Friends (“clearness committees” as we know them started in the 1970s and functionally replace the old committees of ministers).

It’s wrong to think that liberal Quakers aren’t evangelical. We’re fiercely so, it’s just that what we do is evangelize and export Quaker values without the Quakerism. Look at our Friends Schools (with a 2% Quaker student population), look at AFSC, etc., Quaker institutions whose primary audience is not Friends. Unfortunately we’ve gotten so good at articulating a non-Quakerly Quakerism that we’re afraid to talk religion. I don’t think the divide between process/values and religion serves either function well and that we’ve ended up being more marginal than we’d like to believe both in our activism and our spiritual direction.

By: Chris M.

Chris M. — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 22:17:01 +0000

The same thought occurred to me about the word “consensus.” The practice in Pacific Yearly Meeting, at least, is clear enough that we are seeking “unity.” And here’s the religious substructure that David refers to: That we are seeking unity with God’s will for us as a community at that point in time.

Unprogrammed Friends certainly can vary in practice, took from a “lowest common denominator” seeking of whatever will get people to agree and move on, to a deep and powerful searching together for Way to open. The latter is what we’re after, in my opinion.

– Chris M.

By: C. Wess Daniels

C. Wess Daniels — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 14:59:54 +0000

David,
Thanks for the clarification. I can see the importance to the point you were making and will definately include that important distinction from now on. I agree with you that often times what gets picked up from the Quakers example is the generally the “corporate wisdom embeddd in the group” and if that’s what it gets simplified down to it leads to something secular and disconnected from the life of the Spirit. Anyways, I appreciate your points made.

And I see and know what you mean by fragments as well. And oddly enough I’ve seen this secularized-consensus among Evangelical Friends.

By: david

david — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 11:39:05 +0000

Sorry if I was unclear.

The notion that what we do in business meeting is “consensus” traces back to a book called Beyond Majority Rule written by a Jesuit political scientist. Based on that I recall activists showing up on our meeting doorseps in the 80s looking for advice on how to run their groups on pro-anarchic principles.

What we do in in M4W4B maps closely to the consensus based decision making of secualr anarchist groups. But there is a religious sub-structure to it. We are not just seeking the corporate wisdom embeddd in the group — we are seeking something more transcendant.

And I have run into folks deliberately correcting people when they refer to our processes as consensus. there is a backlash to this political read on what we do. Partly from a concern that we often settle for mere consensus when something much more holy is possible.

Now it may be these folks are splitting hairs. But it also indicates that the label of consensus is not one that Quakers share but a lable owned by own of teh “Quaker fragments”. I’m not sure what else to call “Quaker fragments” — I think its descriptive but it too comes from a particular theological stance — Hauerwas and Willimon describe Christianity after the fall of christendom as life amongst the fragments.

By: C. Wess Daniels

C. Wess Daniels — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 01:10:52 +0000

David,
I’ve been rolling your comments over in my head this afternoon and was hoping you’d help clarify somethings so if my position or “slant” if misrepresentative I can fix it.

Can you explain what you mean by,

“Its interesting that your spin on these practices comes from quite specific cluster of fragments within those communities.”

I just don’t think I understand what you’re saying here.

I do think I understand what you example means, that I have used an external label to name an internal practice? Would you say that is correct? And that by using this kind of label I’ve misdirected the implications from theological to political? If this is so, it’s certainly not what I meant to do, and I think the point can be salvaged. I agree that the theological virtues of this practice such as silence, equality, humility, are what enable Quakers to embody this kind of worship meeting and polity.

However, if I’ve read this correctly I hope there are two further points that can be made and that you’d agree with.
A) That these theological virtues and the context of the worshiping community as exemplified in the “open meeting” has political implications.

B) What is done in open meetings can be translated if all the theological virtues remain in tact to other Christian communities for people like Makeesha above who find this a “better account” of how the body should function.

Finally, and this is something I should have mentioned in the post more clearly, none of these practices can be understood in isolation from the very cultural context and narrative history from which they were birthed. That is why this post is as long as it is, and should be much longer. In order to completely understand open meetings, if we are ever to translate them into new contexts, we must first understand their narrative continuity within the tradition and this continuity is something my 1300 word essay failed to do.

David – I look forward to your response (as well as others) and trust that you’ll be able to help sharpen the discussion further.