Diverse Questions from Daniel Wilcox

Note: this is a reply to a comment posted by Daniel Wilcox to my post of February 23, 2009 entitled "Why Do Some Quakers Hate to Talk About Sin?"


#1 I see you identify as a Beanite. Do you know where I can find a good biographical study of the Beans?

I do not not. I have found scraps here and there on the internet and in books such as that you mention, but in a phrase I read somewhere "The Beans await their biographer." (and I am not that person upon whom they wait)

Aside from such as I have gathered from these sources, I spent a week or so in the Swarthmore library with the Bean papers a couple of years ago and made a great many notes. I also spent a day in the Guilford College library with the collected minutes of the College Park Association. Much of what I have inferred from this stuff is probably wrong. There are sources I would like to look at--including the papers of Rufus Jones which I think probably contain many letters from Joel.

But, no, I cannot direct you to a biography. If someone else can I hope they will direct me to it, as well.

If you have read back through my postings over the years you know that central to my affinity with the Beans is their conviction that the divisions within the Society are to be lamented and removed. Our differences are gifts to one another, and in abiding together we learn from and are shaped by one another.

It is notions--propositional beliefs--that divide us one from the other and sap our strength as a people. It is the transformative experience and power that we share and, although that may seem lacking in the "other domains" of the Society, it is equally lacking in all. That lack, I think, is ameliorated when Friends worship and live in relationship with one another, rather than living and worshiping only with "like minded" Friends.

#2 Do you have a blog where you share your transformation from a Marine to one who opposes war?

I do not. It had to do with spending three years learning that everything I was taught growing up about such things was wrong because it didn't work and then a lot more years figuring out what was right. Years later, after sitting in meeting for worship for a year or so a lot of things became very clear to me.

When I was near the end of my time in the Marine Corps, and thinking of deserting in despair at being a part of all that, I met some Friends who--like Chuck Fager--were called to reach out in love, support and encouragment to those in the military. Big help to me even if I was not ready for the spiritual message that was behind (and very much not pushed at me) that which they provided me.

#3 Does it conflict with your faith in Jesus that most versions of Buddhism are atheistic?

Not at all.

Christianity and Buddhism are both imprecise labels and each of us applies our own "take" on them when someone uses the term--leading to a great deal of misunderstanding.

I am an empiricist in that I use that which changes me and don't pay much attention to things that do not. I am into the "what" rather than the "how" or the "why." I don't care about theological notions (lakes of fire, life after death, virgin births and such) that are not about how I am supposed to live (see the Sermon on the Mount) (see the Eightfold Path, for that matter).

I get direct guidance every day on how to live my life and I try (at least anymore) not to worry too much about where it comes from, the nature of the source of that guidance, or what that source is up to in providing me that guidance. It is hard enough to follow the guidance, let alone figure out what no person can ever really know. I can know what it tells me to do and do it. That changes my life (improves my condition and the condition of those around me). The other, I have observed in myself, turns into trying to change other people's lives--at least their propositional beliefs. Why try to change things about other people that don't matter? I am not big on propositional beliefs.

I do conceptualize in Christian terms and specifically the terms I find in Quaker writing because they seem to fit with my experience of this guidance. I think it's Christ, Light, Spirit and it appears to be doing that which early Friends said it does--shows us the problem areas in our lives and gives us the power to do something about them.

Atonement? Trinity? I don't know. And neither does anyone else. These are "rational" deductions (at least given the assumptions from which they proceed) pulled out of the air by people who are into the "hows" and the "whys" and too often led by these away from the "whats."

(Resurrection is different. I know from experience that if I ignore the guidance I am given because it seems too hard or no fun that I am "crucifying Christ," and locking it in the tomb of my heart from which it will emerge in no more than three days time to put it all in front of me again. As Marcus Borg asks, would a video camera in the garden have captured Jesus emerging from the tomb? I don't know. In light of my own walk, however, does that really matter? My experience with ignoring the Light, myself, in my own life, gets the point across to me.)

"My" Buddhism is practice, not belief. It is meditation that is modeled on Soto Zen and what Americans have developed as "mindfulness" practice. It means, more or less, just sitting and trying to stay in the moment for a period of time on as many days as I can muster the discipline to do it. I do listen to dharma talks (Zencast, etc.) and read various writings (from a lot of traditions), but I am not into the theology (even the non theology theology) of Buddhism.

Reincarnation, for example, is one of those "notions" of which I can never really know the truth (like life after death in heaven) and that doesn't really matter, anyway, if I am on the Eightfold Path, if you know what I mean (or conforming to the Beatitudes).

Karma is more complicated than I used to understand and, although I don't obviously care about how it plays into reincarnation, my experience is that our actions have far reaching affect on our own lives and those of others so we should be careful about the actions we take.

A Buddhist practice can sit on top of any spiritual conceptualization without "interfering" with it.

#3 If it is true that we as humans first need inner transformation, why is it that the Quakers who put the most focus on sin and repentance (such as California Yearly Meeting, as it used to be termed), show a contrary spirit when it comes to actions? When I was a member there, many members actually supported nuclear weapons, etc. I still don't understand that.

I don't either, but I don't think that approving of war necessarily invalidates a focus on sin and repentance. I think it just goes to the point of my original posting about the two takes on sin. If one thinks that sin is a body of actions we cannot help but accumulate because of our nature, and that the office of Christ is to get those "taken care of" for us, then it makes sense that we can, albeit with great regret and even sincere angst, do that which we are specifically told not to do because we cannot help it.

If one experiences sin as states of mind, from which the office of Christ is to help us withdraw or escape, then one is led to try to lay down those states of mind that come together to create nuclear weapons/war in general (including the wars in which we engage every day with ourselves and others in our lives) and to testify against them.

Unfortunately, Friends' testimony in regard to such things doesn't always get presented in those spiritual terms. Too often public testimony is expressed in worldly terms.

A petition to the Portland City Council in support of a condemnation of the war in Iraq, for example, is based on the fact that we were led into it by lies and deception and that the money spent there is better spent on classrooms and medical care at home. Yes, but Quakers would be opposed to that war even if there had been WMD's and even if there was plenty of money at home for education and health care.

We are opposed to war because we come from a place in which the occasion for it does not arise--we are committed to laying down the states of mind (greed, fear, pride, lust) that take people to war (and laying them down long before a situation is so far out of hand that someone can smugly turn around and sneer "What now, Mr. Pacifist?")

And I don't necessarily think the transformation comes "first" in the sense that we wait til God is finished with us before trying to get anything different done in the world, although I don't think real change can happen in the world without real change in people.

I do think that, like two children who start digging on opposite sides of a dirt pile, intent on meeting in the middle to create a tunnel, our outward conforming to the guidance of Christ and the inward working of Christ in us go together--magnify, build on, one another. I do not think that either, alone, gets through.

#Why do you think Quakers who talk about sin so often strongly support sinful actions, but Quakers who seldom talk about it, often are the most proactive in countering sin?

I don't think they necessarily are, although I do think they think they are. Joyce Meyer once said that the sins that have others stuck look easy to overcome while our own seems impossible. I know a number of Friends with that outlook who are still engaged in re-building the Gulf Coast, and who are as anti-war and who are mourning climate change.

My frustration is with Liberal Friends who often display a conceit about our own righteousness that is at least equal to that of those with bumper stickers that say "Christians aren't perfect, just saved."

Motes and beams.

I think that Friends who never utter the word "sin" or "repentance" are often as afraid, greedy, cruel, covetous, proud, angry and dismissive of the suffering of others as those whose conversation (and conceptualization) is riddled with those words. I think that such Friends can be as manipulative and coercive (albeit in a more passive aggressive way, perhaps) as those who go to war or approve of others going to war.


Thank you, Daniel, for the opportunity to answer your questions. It is the gift of an occasion to grow to be put to explanation.

For Richard M.

note: this is an answer to a comment posted to a previous post. As I explained in a comment of my own to that post, so much was raised by Friends' comments there that I wanted to address all in an orderly fashion, so as to lose none and keep any strands of conversation that might arise separate from one another. I'm answering Richard M, here, and ask for patience in regard to the rest. I will get to you.

Richard commented:

"The biggest problem I have with this post is your equation of Protestantism with Calvinism. It is true that Calvinism is one major form of Protestantism but it is far from being identical with it. Protestantism represents all the groups that broke away from Catholicism and they broke away for many reasons. The Calvinists broke away because they adopted a more pessimistic view of the human condition than did the Catholics but others, among which were the Quakers, adopted a more optimistic view of the possibilities for human transformation than did the Catholics. And, in my own reading of Quaker history, there hasn't been any tendency for Quakers to become Calvinists. Quakers of all persuasions remain more theologically liberal than Catholics not, like the Calvinists, more conservative."

Richard, I can see the distinction you make between Protestants and Calvinists and will not quibble with you about that although I disagree with you. I think that Protestantism is Calvinism--that the notions that Calvin refined certainly existed before he came along but he put them into a "coherent" body that forms the ground upon which this strain of spirituality stands (and from which, at times, it deviates).

I don't think that the faith and practice of Friends, originally, was anything but a repudiation of--and not a mere deviation from-- that body of notions and forms.

I do, however, think I see a whole lot of "drift" among Friends over the years toward Calvinism/Protestantism.

I think, in fact, that all of the major schisms in the Society of Friends have, at bottom, notwithstanding any social or economic or spiritual reasons some in the Society at a particular place at a particular time wanted to establish Protestant/Calvinist notions as the Faith and Practice of Friends.

This is perhaps most obvious in the course of events in Iowa Yearly in the last half of the 19th Century that ended in some of its members "going over" to Iowa Conservative and a few others ending up in California--stripped of their certificates of ministry and disowned (although later re-instated so that their membership could be orderly transferred) for not "believing," among other things, that the Holy Spirit descends upon a person not at birth (as the book of John was commonly been held among Friends to say) but when they are "saved" as is pretty standard Protestant/Calvinist theology.

Of course these notions were part of the movement from the beginning--the people gathered to it had been steeped in them. George Keith tried and failed to establish them as the norm. It was said by some, though, that his manner, more than his ideas, limited his success. Barclay had a more subtle and long term success. My understanding is that as Friends moved from an "end times" to a "mean time" point of view, toward the end of Fox's life, there was quite a bit of editing of early writings that attempted to pull Quakers into the "mainstream."

The first Friends, however, notwithstanding that they carried Protestant/Calvinist notions as part of their spiritual DNA (did I just write that?) were dissatisfied with the result of the Protestant/Calvinist forms, which is why so many had laid down them down and sat in waiting worship until Fox came along and set them in motion (or Christ did so through Fox). These notions and forms were still there, of course, ready to re-appear and re-appear they did.

Again, as I originally wrote, I am not saying that's a bad thing and they shouldn't.

I am saying that some Friends, especially liberals, have trouble with the concept of "sin" because they see it in terms of Calvin/Protestantism; in its propositions and the deductions that proceed from them. Not believing (or perhaps experiencing) humans as born hopelessly wretched this is not helpful to them.

I am saying that the other view of sin--as states of mind (as opposed to a body of bad acts) upon which Christ (the Spirit, the Light) can "work with us" or "work on us"--revealing the need to change and providing the power in which we can stand to accomplish that--may be helpful to these Friends.

We can change (or be changed) this side of the grave; there is hope for our maturity and developing (or having developed) our fitness for a particular purpose. At least, there is solid evidence in the literature of Friends through the years to show that. The phrase "talking up sin" appears there as characterizing that which Friends rejected.

But there is also a "creep" in that same literature of the notion that we cannot change or be changed, along with other notions and forms that were talked up by Protestants and Calvinists--forms and notions away from which those in the movement that would become the Society of Friends walked purposefully. Steeple house, professors...

I have frequent contact and fellowship with Evangelical Friends and know for myself how much Calvinist/Protestant notions have been absorbed into the faith and practice of many Friends. This didn't happen over night. And again, I think it's fine. Not helpful to me but fine if it's helpful in the spiritual transformation (see the Sermon on the Mount) of those who hold to them.

As a Beanite I hope and expect the Society will again be the whole it was once, with such a diversity of belief as exists among us held, as similar diversity was held 300+ years ago, in a tension that was mutually edifying. I cannot deny, however, my own view that the "Protestantization" of the Society of Friends is a condition that complicates this Beanite vision.

As a Beanite I affiliate formally with no particular formal domain of the Society so as to be open to "correspondence" with those who are a part of any and all--even those not currently in correspondence with me. Although many even here do not know this, it's why North Pacific Yearly Meeting is not affiliated with any of the separate domains of the Society--at least for now.

We must all get home. None of us must be left behind.

Our differences are not be glossed over or ignored--but they are also not reason for us to be divided. Each of us has something for the Society, and the Society has something for each of us.

If seeing sins as a body of bad acts is helpful in developing that pure heart, that mourning condition, that peacemaking practice that's fine.

"Quakerism" is an empirical faith. It's what works that cooks.