Hello, MartinI have never responded to a comment o...

2007-09-23T14:10:00.000-07:00

Hello, Martin

I have never responded to a comment on any of my blogs before, mostly becuase I want to avoid contentiousness.

But I wanted to assure you that I am not indicting you personally--I have respect for your work among Friends.

I just don't agree with you that any measure of authoritarianism could have held Friends together and, as I said, that it was the spirit of authoritarianism--the necessity to control the beliefs and behavior or others--that led to the divisions.

I do not share your view that Friends in the 19th Century were struggling in great faith to hold on to unity and love, although some certainly were. I have read too much history--including too many letters and primary documents attendant to the divisons--to believe that Friends were living in the power of the Spirit when they held onto clerk's tables by force, jumped through windows, locked one another out of buildings, screamed to drown one another out during meetings of various sorts, and circulated snide, sarcastic and untrue charicatures of one another and of one another's beliefs. This, and more, happened. More than once. In more than once place. As Casey Stengel said, "You can look it up."

I think we need to look it up and to keep it before us as we work with one another, or deal with one another, or even talk about one another--whether that "one another" is inside our own domain of our fractured Society or in another domain or completely outside of it.

And while I think that most Friends would at least affirm the need to communicate and understand one another, across the divides in the Society, I do not believe that unity is on the agenda of very many Friends--outside of the separate unities within the various domains into which we are divided.

Maybe I'm wrong about the current situation.

But I don't think I am wrong about "then." The schisms were not just unfortunate situations in which Friends were overwhelmed by forces beyond their control. Friends were not in control of themselves--chose not control themselves--and the lack of that fruit of spirit had devastating reprecussions.

One of these: that which you find so enriching (and it is) in traveling among the varous domains of Friends can only be found by traveling into "alien" territory. How much better might it be for that to be available to all us in that domain (a single domain) in which we lived?

Hi Timothy,You take my quote out of context, which...

2007-09-23T10:27:00.000-07:00

Hi Timothy,
You take my quote out of context, which doesn't seem quite fair. I was looking at the separations from a more sociological perspective. As you know I'm doing more than my share to help promote communication and understanding among the distant family members of the Friends tradition, as well as share ourselves with the world. I hope and pray that this work is motivated by love.

I trust that nineteenth century Friends were struggling in deep faith to hold onto unity and love but found they had come into some irreconcilable opinions on the role and nature of the church in a quickly-changing society. Transportation, communication, education, the industrial revolution, etc., were all coming together to make it impossible to live out seventeenth century culture in the nineteenth: what pieces of Quaker faith were essential and which were open to adaptation?

In some places, notably Britain, a forced unity meant only one answer became acceptable and the whole yearly meeting followed a path more or less together. I find that these Friends now find it harder to adapt again as the world changes because of the lack of diversity--they have a smaller "gene pool" of Quaker resources to draw on. In America a liberal Friend like me can take a roadtrip to Barnesville or read the latest Lloyd Lee Wilson book or pop over to an Evangelical yearly meeting session or see what's cooking in Friends United Meeting. My post was talking about Ohio Friends in particular and Conservative Friends in general and I do find it helpful that they've maintained a communal knowledge of some of the older Quaker practices that the rest of the rest of us have dropped. I am grateful that they can share this knowledge and understanding and doubt they could have if they hadn't separated those many years ago.

Comments on One Quaker Take: Staying Together

Hello, MartinI have never responded to a comment o...

Hi Timothy,You take my quote out of context, which...