The other friend speaks: Guest Post by Nick Thorne

To clarify my argument in response to the last post, my argument isn’t that we’re all Quakers or that Quakerism is some panacea to which we all unwittingly aspire. I wouldn’t call myself a Quaker. My argument is that in modern Britain, across all Christian denominations you find many people who identify with their Church, but don’t buy into it 100%. How many people who were baptised Catholic really believe in papal infallibility? How many Christians today really believe in the virgin birth, the Immaculate Conception and transubstantiation? Some do, but millions don’t. Similarly, there are many who don’t think of themselves as Christian, but who still believe in some form of higher power. In other words, there are many people who have some kind of spiritual belief, but who can’t fully identify with the church they attend or simply don’t go to any church at all. And the Christian denomination which best accommodates this widely held position is the Quakers.

What makes Quakerism so different from other Christian denominations and so distinctive, is its insistence on total equality. One of the key beliefs of George Fox, who founded Quakerism is that “there is that of God in every man”. The Quakers took this literally, arriving at the logical conclusion that there is no more of God in an aristocrat than there is in a peasant. On that basis the Quakers refused to acknowledge people’s titles, famously even the monarchy: they referred to everyone by their first names, something which they were persecuted and imprisoned for. Since their emergence in the 17th century Quakers have pursued this philosophy of egalitarianism in demanding human rights and social welfare. Thomas Paine, who was instrumental in the American Revolution and the philanthropic Rowntree Family who tackled poverty in England were all Quakers.

At the time of the Reformation the Catholic Church forbade its congregations from owning a Bible or reading it themselves on the basis that the priest must be the mediator between God and man. The Protestant Churches put a greater emphasis on education and participation, but none more so than the Quakers. Quaker meetings are not led by a priest at all. 

I am an atheist but have attended two Quaker meetings out of curiosity. A Quaker meeting is meditative and begins in silence, and the silence may continue for the entire duration of the meeting. There is that of God in every man. Therefore anybody can stand up and make a contribution. At the meeting in Brighton, this took place four or five times within the hour. One man brought up the problematic line in the Bible “no one comes to the father but by me”. He observed that he doesn’t want to go to heaven if his Jewish, Islamic and atheist friends can’t join him there. Another brought up the miraculous plane landing on the Hudson River which had happened recently, asserting her view that close encounters with death can be very instructive. Four years on I can still remember what they said. 

Inevitably some contributions are more interesting than others – I found the meeting in York very dull. But because there is no fixed programme, each meeting is different. Unlike any other Christian denomination, at no point do they say the creed. This has a huge impact in making everyone feel welcome. There is no pretence at homogeneity. Nobody is forced to repeat words they don’t understand or believe. Difference of belief isn’t viewed as a problem. Rather than being convinced that their belief is the one and only truth and that everyone else is going to hell, Quakers seem to be more interested in questioning and exploring their own beliefs and those of others further. 

At the end of the meeting everyone stands up and shakes hands. The guy sitting next to me remarked that he hadn’t seen me before, and we began a very open and frank discussion of each other’s beliefs. I was fascinated to hear that he considered himself a Quaker but not necessarily a Christian. He believed in a God but not a Biblical God, Jesus with caveats and not in the Holy Spirit. So Quakerism doesn’t even demand belief in the trinity. Given that only a couple hundred years ago Europe was torn apart by religious wars in which ‘heretics’ were slaughtered for holding the outrageous belief that Jesus paid for his sandals, this is amazing progress. After no other church service have I ever felt able to discuss religion with other members of the congregation. 

Given its openness it is perhaps surprising that Quakerism isn’t more popular. Why is there a Christian Union at Sussex University, which condemns homosexuality in the gay capital of Britain, and no Quaker society? Perhaps the answer is that unlike other sects, the Quakers weren’t trying to convert everyone else. 

As I said I would not call myself a Quaker and wouldn't want to go to a Quaker meeting every week. But if I had to join a Christian denomination I would chose Quakerism and I think you would too.

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Interlude - A humble jumble

I’m currently in the process of moving, and my latest post is still under construction. Rather than give you something rushed, here’s some things I’ve come across in the past few weeks of researching and writing that might whet your appetites for what will hopefully be the subject of future posts or that are just plain interesting or fantastic.

1. Something I found to (maybe) keep me humble:

http://xkcd.com/774/

2. Some things that might intrigue you (I know they did me):

British Muslims for Secular Democracy

The Ottoman empire's secular history undermines sharia claims | Tehmina Kazi | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

BBC News - Gay-friendly 'mosque' opens in Paris

3. And something I am evangelical about:

https://spenden.wikimedia.de/spenden/?page=DefaultLayout_en

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Lie back & think of England: the church, the state & all the interesting bits of gay marriage

"Religion in its quintessence is a relation between God and man; it is perversion to make it a relation between man and man…"  - A Modern Utopia, H.G. Wells

My brother became a swinger, recently.

That is, he’s joined a swing dance club at uni with a lady friend of his. Once upon a social gathering, Group A were making much of this as a topic of fun, as any right minded group of friends and siblings would do. Group B were digesting the momentous-whether-you-like-it-or-not news that the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill  - which proposes to introduce gay marriage in England and Wales - had been approved by the House of Commons by a pretty nifty margin of votes. One of the people at said gathering, not so heartened at the news as myself, got their conversational wires a bit crossed. The new law, they said, was like if my brother decided that he wanted to dance only with men, so everyone else in the club had to as well. Rubbish, said we, as quite clearly the proposed laws merely make it possible that he can do so if he so chooses, whilst taking an important step toward stopping the objections of others from preventing him. The new law allows those denominations at are okay with it – Quakers, Liberal Jews, Unitarians etc – to hold same sex marriage ceremonies in their places of worship. But - in what is a messy but entirely appropriate compromise by a state in terms of meeting the needs and aspirations of two of its constituent communities - other religious groups that have objections are exempt.

Now, we could rehash the tired arguments about scriptural support or condemnation for homosexuality and so on. However, I propose we could acknowledge that marriage - whatever certain people have construed it to have been – is now both a religious and a civil construct. Rightly, the secular state has decided it’s not its job to decide one way or another if a given religious group should permit such a thing. Rather, it has laid the groundwork so that they can, if they feel they can get on board with what most people clearly regard as an idea whose time has come (also, this).

For me, there’s a more interesting nugget of religious-flavoured intrigue in the devilish detail of the new law.  

 

 While in theory it’s up to individual religious groups – or their high level decision making bodies – to choose, the law actually specifically bans the Anglican Church from performing same sex marriages. The reason for this special mention is that as the Established, ‘official’, church it is intertwined with civil structures, and may thus have been open to legal claims that it is bound to marry all-comers. Given that the bill still has to make its way through the House of Lords, it’s worth pointing out a specific form of this state-church fraternisation. The House of Lords includes 26 bishops of the Church of England, the so-called Spiritual Peers, or Lords Spiritual. Even if we leave aside the issue of an unelected upper house, a majority of polled Britons disagree with the political power vested in these bishops.

 

Indeed, the distribution of faiths or no-faiths as revealed in the recent census (See Table, below) would seem to beg the question of whether it is appropriate or representative for not only a single religion, but a single denomination, to have access to the legislature by right. Representatives of other faiths have beenappointed to the House of Lords, but none are there by right in the same way, and in any case I’m not sure sharing out the suspect entitlement is necessarily the best way to approach this issue. 25% of 26 Lords Spiritual of No Religion, anyone? Rather, the million dollar question is how comfortable you feel with the idea that anyone should automatically get to play a direct role in matters of state, purely on the basis of which church they represent? 

Christian	Buddhist	Hindu	Jewish	Muslim	Sikh	Other Religion	No Religion	Religion Not Stated
59.3	0.4	1.5	0.5	4.8	0.8	0.4	25.1	7.2

 

Percentage of People in England and Wales that Identify as a given religion (or lack thereof)

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