A lot can happen in 20 years – Part 5
This follows on from Part 4.
As mentioned in Part 1, I realised that it’s exactly 20 years since I entered the full-time workforce, and a lot can happen in that time, so thought I’d share my road to reason. This is a continuation.
Upon coming to a decision about Buddhism, I then chose to examine an aspect of Christianity that had I no experience of: the Religious Society of Friends (or Quakers). They seemed to be non-existent where I grew up, so it wasn’t until I moved to the UK that I learned more about them in passing, and eventually decided to investigate them in greater depth. My understanding is that the Quakers in the UK are notably different from those in the US — my friends there speak of Quakers there as if they are fundamentalist or fire-and-brimstone organisation, which is nothing like the Quakers I’ve come across here.
In the UK they meet in a Friends Meeting House (a church by any other name, but usually without many of the trappings) with the chairs arranged in a rough circle so that everyone can see one another, and the meeting consists of everyone sitting in silence. There is no preaching, no sermon, no tub-thumping, no agenda being cast down from the pulpit — just people sitting and quietly reflecting. It remains this way until someone feels moved to speak, at which point they will stand and calmly say their piece, then resume their seat; later on someone else may feel moved to speak (sometimes in response, sometimes not), and this continues until the meeting finishes. Once finished, everyone stands and shakes one another’s hands with a smile, and then everyone retreats to the canteen/dining area where everyone shares lunch, with most people having brought a plate of food to share.
With the exception of one meeting where a member clearly felt strongly about his son being sent to war and subsequently feeling moved to speak out against it (followed by another member gently providing Biblical platitudes, resulting in the same man feeling moved to speak out again against his son’s predicament, and so on), which drove home the unfortunate nature of the concept of “being moved to speak”, all of my attendances at Quakers meetings were delightful. Regardless of such instances of emotion-driven speeches, it is a truly welcoming and peaceful environment. In fact, one of the members of the same local Buddhist group I once attended is a regular attender at the Quaker meetings — they are so welcoming that one does not even have to profess Christianity (or indicate that you’re willing to “sign up”) to attend and be truly welcome, unlike every other religious organisation I’ve ever attended, before or since.
My experience with the Quakers showed that they are as much, if not more, about community and spirituality than religion and dogma, and those are attributes that I’m sure anyone can respect, admire and appreciate. However, they are prey to the same faults as other Christian groups: the adherence to the Bible as infallible, the belief in God/Jesus/Holy Spirit (the Trinity), and to the belief in the concept of “being moved” to speak. My biggest concerns were that nearly all such motions were from the speaker’s personal life or recent headline news. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to fathom that the source is mundane, not divine.
Continued in Part 6.
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I’m not sure the Religious Society of Friends can be written in quite that fashion.
>the adherence to the Bible as infallible,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaker#The_Bible
It’s also worth noting that their (British Quaker’s) main book – Quaker Faith and Practice – far from being considered infallible, is actually revised every 25 years or so.
>the belief in God/Jesus/Holy Spirit
>(the Trinity),
I’ve met plenty that don’t.
>My biggest concerns were that nearly all
>such motions were from the speaker’s
>personal life or recent headline news.
>It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to
>fathom that the source is mundane, not
>divine.
Actually your typical invisible floating dragon will work through a person in ways that are far too subtle for a rocket scientist to fathom
You make a fair point with Biblical infallibility with regards to Quakers, I must agree. In fact I don’t recall seeing one opened at the meetings I attended, and I have a copy of Faith & Practice. However, replacing the Bible’s endlessly interpreted and copied stories with the feeling of being commanded to speak God’s word or will is replacing one problem with another: on one hand strict adherents to the Bible are blind to its glaring faults and inconsistencies, and on the other hand you have a person given authority who believes his thoughts are divinely-inspired commands.
The belief in something like the Trinity is not absolute in any religion or sect, nor are most things other sects may consider fundamental requirements. I know mainstream Christians who don’t believe in the Trinity (or are willing to suspend their disbelief if it buys them a ticket into Heaven), or either consider the whole Bible or only the New Testament to be relevant, or Muslims who consider the numerous hadith to be too contradictory to be a reliable source, Catholics who consider transubstantiation to be as ridiculous as the prohibition on contraception, Buddhists who consider Gautama divine or merely an enlightened mortal, that there was only one Buddha or that there are and have been many, and so on.
I think the point is that you’ve focussed on the Friends while I provided generalisations along with my other Christian experiences, more from the desire to avoid writing a novel on what was already a multi-part post. It’s not as though I’m claiming authority on any of the religions or sects I’ve investigated — ultimately critical thinking and skepticism requires that the interested party investigate it themselves, and perhaps treat my contribution as a data point.
Yes, what I’m saying is that I feel that many of the generalisations that can be made about Christians do not apply to Friends.
I’m not sure belief in the Trinity is a fundamental requirement of Quakerism. Non-theism seems to be considered controversial rather than heretical, and is tolerated. (Quakers do tolerance very well, but that possibly means that a lot of extremely woolly thinking is tolerated too)
I’m sure the belief that God works through spoken ministries is problematic, but the language you use to describe the process doesn’t gel very well with my experiences. In my view, one drawback of attributing speech to a divine source is that it undervalues human potential and the distillation of thought that can take place within silence only broken by the occasional person standing to speak.