I cannot remember the last time I heard a Friend in my Yearly Meeting talk about sin except to say we don't talk about it or should not talk about it.
I have been thinking through a lot of things in light of a recent opening that the thrust of the Quaker movement was originally pretty much a rejection of Protestantism, and that the fragmenting of the movement--which began almost at the beginning and eventually undermined the Society of Friends by dividing it into separate domains --amounts to a re-introduction and acceptance the Protestant norms among Friends.
Quickly added, Friends (and everyone else) can certainly hold to Protestant thinking if they so choose--Protestantism and those who organize and conform their spiritual lives around its ideas are certainly within the ambit of the radical inclusiveness I am wont to talk up. I just find that confused thinking and action results, at times, when people are not clear about what that means.
If one says that someone's sins are forgiven that usually means that past wrong doings are laid to one side and no longer count against one. There may be outcomes from these which cannot be changed but when Jesus as advocate argues our case for everlasting life he will not have to address those charges. This comes from a Protestant belief in the nature of people--we are flawed by The Fall and we are pretty much doomed to fall short on things and, even though grace will, once in a while, allow us to come through in a good way, that's how it's going to be. Atonement and a lot of other bed-rock "fundamentals" of Protestant Christianity are based on this notion of people as hopeless wretches--only an undeserving elect of whom are going to do well in the end.
Our sins, then, are a body of deeds and we have no hope that we can stop amassing them.
George Fox--at least the early George Fox--and the likes of Penington and Naylor did not talk about sin in this way, at least not exclusively. They saw sin, rather, as the states of mind (conditions) (conditioning?) that give rise to the acts (of evil) that most people call, today, "sins."
One cannot do anything about past acts, but one can certainly do something about the continuing states of mind where those acts orginate. See, for example, Fox's Epistle #10. It's about escaping sin--not giving into "addicitions." Also, see the quotation from Penington at the top of this blog. They talked up that we can overcome sin in a way that would make Calvin spin (and did make English magistrates confiscate property).
Quakers were very much about a process of transformation that put an end to the evil deeds through a spiritual transformation that took, for example, away the occasion for all wars. This meant that people's states of mind would not include, any longer, that which moved them to war.
This drove the Protestant authorities nuts just to hear. People are too depraved for this kind of "progress," in the Protestant ideology.
And I think that's why it drives Liberal Friends nuts, today, to talk about sin: we tend to see it in the Protestant way instead of the Quaker way--the classical Quaker way. Not enough of us understand the difference to use that difference in a constructive and liberating way.
Liberal Friends, me among them, don't like the idea that we are are all worthless, helpless, hopeless spiritual worms condemned to doing evil with no hope of doing better this side of the grave. And we don't think it's helpful to constantly put ourselves down or to turn ourselves over to those authorities who cannot help but try to manipulate us into doing what they want us to do even though we know it's wrong and contrary to the openings Christ gives us and every other person on earth. Some of us seem to think that's vision of people as bumbling evil-doers is "Christian" but actually it's "Protestant."
Of course, Liberal Friends I know are not so big as Penington (see, again, above) was on "Quakerism" as a pursuit of transformation. Far too many of us are pretty darned self-satisfied and believe that the only transformation that needs to happen is that others need to vote for liberal Democrats, recycle more and listen to NPR. Oh, and lately, drive a Toyota Pious cheerfully across the earth in a socially responsible way that looks out for that of God in everyone.
Liberal Friends, I think, could benefit by thinking about the idea of sin as states of mind, rather than actions, because I think that leads to the conclusion that the eradication of these states of mind is not complete in us and we are supposed to be doing something about that.
I feel great sorrow, sometimes, when I hear Friends--myself included--speaking from greed or anger or lust or sloth or covetedness or pride (which did I leave out? It's a quiz! Can we even name--let along confront--the Seven Deadlies?) with no apparent sense that something is going on that needs to be changed.
Sometimes we look back at the 17th Century and are tempted to think that there was just some big misunderstanding and that's why Mary Dyer was hanged by the Protestants in Boston. But that's not true. Quaker ideas and practices threatened the foundation of the Protestant society from which it sprang. Only when Barclay and others gave the movement a firm shove back toward Protestantism did they allow us to affirm--rather than swear--in our quaint little way. Barclay assured people, for example that the Spirit would never contradict the Bible (and the Protestants heard him say the Spirit would never contradict their notion of what the Bible said or that it was truly the "word of God.")
But there is a huge leap from "Christ has come to teach his people himself" to "the mission of the Holy Spirit is to help us correctly understand scripture." Huge.
Quakers did not start out as Protestants--at least the brightest lights of movement did not. By 50 years later, of course, the cross currents were pulling many back to that shore. Those who wish to reside on that shore are welcome to do so. I live, in this regard, by Gamaliel's wisdom. But I think Liberal Friends could benefit it teasing out the difference between Protestantism and Quakerism.
It might help orient us.
