I’m not sure if this will be read, or what the convention is for time in responding (your initial post here is several weeks old). I just feel I have to say I’m so very refreshed by the depth and care of this conversation. I’m just now getting up to speed with it all, and it is so hopeful and reassuring for me. In one of your responses in this thread, you touched on the issue that’s been bothering me for so long, but I’ve been unable to clarify it – and you did so well. It is the dualities of the modernist camps that presuppose any reconciliation. All of these nested binary arguments. For so long, I’ve felt like “who cares whether scriture/tradition or experience is a primary authority”, but was co-opted by movement XYZ to carry its baggage. But I intuitively knew it was a dead-end! I’m so glad to know there is a “place” where the conversation is moving in a different direction.

To me it seems your response is that it’s not arbitrary, because we do share primary texts, which is true in a sense, but one way of looking at “liberal liberal� Quakerism is as a *rejection* of primary texts. As you know, I personally am quite interested in looking at the musty old pamphlets, but it’s not something I see as organically connected to (let alone necessary for) authentic spiritual living, Quaker or otherwise.

You’re absolutely right here Zach – especially on account of the rejection of primary texts. But remember that part of convergence is trying to be Quaker in the contemporary world, given contemporary questions. Part of our argument is that wrestling with the primary texts and the tradition, is partly what constitutes us as Quakers. We think getting rid of them is a move away from any stable notion of Quakerism, and in the end those who reject the primary texts may not have the resources: a) to know how to be QUakers any longer, b) carrying the tradition in any coherent sense.

In other words, we’re all trying to make sense of today, one interpretation says to reinvent yourself, get rid of your history or the major points that don’t seem to work any longer, and go one your way. That is one interpretation, a very powerful one in our society in fact. Convergent Friends are offering another interpretation, one that is trying to be more historical in nature. Only time will tell which interpretation makes more sense, but I suspect the constant concern of our dying Society of Friends may be linked to some of the bad interpretations that have carried us to the point we’re at now.

So part of our interpretation, which I see you will disagree with, is that the texts and tradition are in fact very important for an authentic Quaker life. I think that everything we do, think, believe is shaped (and can be reshaped) by “traditions” (intellectual, religious, etc), so much so that even saying we don’t need tradition or the primary texts is itself an intellectual tradition. Thus, recognizing the importance of these influences in our lives we should try to be shaped within both our local communities (churches, meeting houses, etc) and the historic community (the narrative of a tradition) partly through the reading and wrestling together through the primary texts but even more so the life of the community and its practices.

If you’re saying they can’t be reconciled without abandoning their current position for something more traditional, then you’re actually granting my point. Stated differently, we might have migrations from various branches, but there will be no reunification. And that was all I meant by the “kumbaya� remark — loving gatherings and personal connections where one tries to hold one’s affiliations loosely does not at the end of the day eliminate the need for choosing where you stand, in an intellectually coherent way. At some point people are going to have to decide what they see as the highest spiritual authority — personal experience or historic Christianity for example. But you can’t serve two masters.

We are saying the same thing here but I need to offer one clarification. No one is calling for reunification, at least from the convergent Friends group. We’ve never said it and it’s not our intentions. This is something that has been said a a lot. We’re not calling people to abandon their current positions for our mode of thinking. We’re not trying to overpower anyone, have the better debate, or take over some yearly meeting. We have no intentions whatsoever to become a legal organization, take people’s jobs, fire leaders, and force yearly meetings to get along. I think these all can be fears that people have about any group that begins to organize. But this kind of response would not only be enforcing a violence on others that is non-Quaker, but it would also be living within an assumed Constantinian version of Christianity, which the historic peace church has always been against.

Rather, we are trying to encourage Friendship and covenant, mission and Quaker practices – things that can go beyond boundaries.

We’re also offering another interpretation, people who call themselves convergent do so because they say they want too. Not because they are offered a bullet proof argument, but because these ideas hit on stuff they’ve always believed or have been interested in. Therefore, the group that comprises of convergent Friends is anything but arbitrary. The whole point of it was finding a name for an experience so many Friends have been talking about for a really long time (long before QuakerQuaker). In fact, if you read the last Chapter of Doug Gwyn’s book “Covenant Crucified” you’ll see a convergent-type Friends theology beginning in that 1995 text. I also encourage you to take a look at Brent Bill’s post on his blog where he discusses a desire for something else, the something else he names sounds very much like what we’ve been calling “convergent Friends.” I think his experience is more common than we might thing. Even more historially, we can see what happened at the St. Louis Group in the 1970’s. This is all to say, this isn’t an arbitrary gathering in the sense that we pick people we like, or find where we find the people to convert to our ideas. Rather, we’re finding the people who are already thinking and talking about this stuff and giving it a name.

Granted we’re developing the conversation, even as you and I dialogue, but we’re finding that the people are already at the table waiting to discuss these matters. Having someone name it has helped the process. I’ve found this to be true in Britain as well. Convergent Friends believe that this is the work of the Spirit, something far from arbitrary on our account.

–”And I’d love it if you could clarify what specifically you mean by “ahistorical.â€?

Yes, I can see how this was completely unclear, sorry about that. I mean letting our history speak on its own terms. The Enlightenment is ahistoric insofar as it roots authority within the metanarrative account of science, over against tradition. I think, a better word for it would be a-traditional. And I agree with what you added about saying a number of people within the camps are not a-historical. But we may be a-traditional insofar as they make either the individual-self or science the litmus test for what parts of tradition to pay attention to and what parts to ignore.

I will work on being clearer with that as I can see how it would be misleading.

As far as hacking, good question. No, I certainly don’t think every aspect of tradition bear equal authority for us now, I was more referring to being reckless about how we use it and understand it, your omissions and misrepresentations is a much clearer way to state that.

Thanks for your comments and questions Zach and I hope that this is more clear, even if you ultimately don’t agree with it.

In short, we can learn something from everyone who is at the table. But the $64,000 question is, who is at the table? Why should we assume that the various “branches of Quakerism” are the people with whom it is most important we learn from, and not someone else? Personally I think liberal Friends would benefit more from dialogue with UUs, secular humanists and Buddhists as with the other “branches of Quakerism.”

That’s my first objection to convergence, that it’s an arbitrary selection of dialogue partners. To me it seems your response is that it’s not arbitrary, because we do share primary texts, which is true in a sense, but one way of looking at “liberal liberal” Quakerism is as a *rejection* of primary texts. As you know, I personally am quite interested in looking at the musty old pamphlets, but it’s not something I see as organically connected to (let alone necessary for) authentic spiritual living, Quaker or otherwise.

Beyond that, despite having read MacIntyre in college I must say I’m at a loss to make concrete sense of your rather academic argument about the incommensurability of liberal and pastoral Quakerism. If you’re saying they can’t be reconciled without abandoning their current position for something more traditional, then you’re actually granting my point. Stated differently, we might have migrations from various branches, but there will be no reunification. And that was all I meant by the “kumbaya” remark — loving gatherings and personal connections where one tries to hold one’s affiliations loosely does not at the end of the day eliminate the need for choosing where you stand, in an intellectually coherent way. At some point people are going to have to decide what they see as the highest spiritual authority — personal experience or historic Christianity for example. But you can’t serve two masters.

And I’d love it if you could clarify what specifically you mean by “ahistorical.” On Quaker history, there is certainly a lot of wishful thinking that goes on in each branch, and a lot of ignorance and apathy in the liberal and pastoral branches. But there are also people — liberal Quakers and I presume pastoral ones as well — who do in fact care about Quaker history, care about accuracy, but at the end of the day do not feel constrained to conform to the points of view of past Friends. “Christianity is more important than Quakerism,” I believe I’ve heard it said in pastoral circles. In other words, there are people whose attitude is “Fox said that, and it gives us a helpfully broader historical perspective to recognize this, but I say this instead” — rather than “I say this, and who cares about Fox,” or “I say this, and isn’t it nice that Fox happened to perfectly agreed with me?” I think there are quite a lot of liberal Quakers in this camp, and I see nothing pejoratively ahistorical about it.

Same goes for “hacking away” — what do you mean? Does any rejection of a traditional Quaker position count as hacking away, or are you talking about omissions/misrepresentations of what those positions were?

Warm regards,
Zach