Basically, what I said was similar to your “A tradition that loses the ability to explain itself becomes an empty form.â€? The idea is taken from MacIntyre’s discussions on narratives that go through an epistemological crisis. In other words, all large-scale programs/projects, traditions, and even human lives go through moments when the very way we conceive of the world is called into question; the very framework from which we investigate reality seems to be unreliable (or is discovered to actually be unreliable).

I’ve argued elsewhere that Quakerism in general is in this stage. We are losing or have lost our ability to make sense of our tradition in light of our tradition’s text and the challenges of modernity and postmodernity. I think the crisis is most apparent within liberal-Liberal Quakers and I would reference Pink Dandelion’s “Liturgies of Quakerism” to make that point. In this case what it means to be ‘Quaker’ is completely up for grabs – there is no agreed upon epistemological starting point or even common language from which to reconstruct a common identity.

I think that conservative and evangelical Friends are in the best position, for different reasons, to begin to reconstruct the story. This is why I also talked about convergent-Friends as an experiment and project, I see our works as self-consciously being aware of our tradition, its crisis, and attempting to rewrite the story using all our tradition’s resources while addressing the challenges and questions of today’s world.

So basically, that’s what I meant.