Quakers

[Sobornost]

OK Sass - I’ll keep churning it out while my Mum’s in hospital adn I have the time - and you can catch up when you have the time. Just a quickie this time -

The early Quakers belief in the equality of all in the light had dangerous social implications – not least for them. They were living in an age of rigid social hierarchy with an enforced code of deference to social superiors. They challenged this with two ‘signs’ – refusing to pay ‘hat homage’, and refusing to address any of their neighbours with honorific titles so as not to flatter the vainglory of their social ‘superiors’ or demean their social ‘inferiors’ (although insider/outsider categories of ‘inferior’ and superior were actually redundant for Friends for they had been made a new people who did not conform to the Powers of this world)

Taking off your hat to your ‘superior’ was seen as not only polite but an action which showed that you knew your place. The refusal of Quakers to give hat homage often resulted in them being savagely beaten up or set upon by mobs. However, there is one charming story that emerges from this time and this sign. William Penn, the Quaker courtier and aristocrat, was once given an audience with King Charles II to plead for toleration of the Quakers. Charles was basically a tolerant and kindly man who was revolted by the bloodletting vengeance taken by Royalists at the Restoration to atone for the execution of his Father. (He was also a liberate who presided over a court mired in scandal – but there have been may figures in history - Thomas Toquemeda, John Calvin, Robespierre and Lenin for example -who have lead lives of moral rectitude but were also implicated in terrible brutality. I don’t condone libertinage, because it is so heartless and empty - but I think it wrong to judge a person merely by sexual sins of the flesh when there are far worse sins of carnality). Now Charles or ‘Old Rowley’ – as some affectionately call him – was a gentleman who had been brought up to put people at their ease. He was put in a bit of a dilemma because William Penn refused him hat homage – so with mock exasperation he said something like ‘alright you win’ and took his hat off to Penn with a flourish!

Refusing to address anyone as any terms other than ‘the’ and ‘thou’ was another revolutionary sign. In seventeenth century English the singular pronouns ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ were the familiar forms of address for a social equal. The plural pronoun ‘You’ was then also the polite form of address for a social superior. The exception here was that it was deemed perfectly proper to address God as ‘Thee’ and ‘Thou’ (as in the Authorised version of the Bible and The Book of Common Prayer) because God is Abba Father - God with us who has drawn close in his Son Jesus (it’s a bit of an irony that these days addressing God archaically as ‘Thee’ and ‘Thou’ has actually come to make God seem very remote indeed). Anyway - in the seventeenth century to address a social superior as ‘thou’ was seen as a tantamount to a revolutionary insult; indeed ‘thou’ was commonly used as the form of hectoring address in notes of challenge to duels. In

Shakespeare’s ‘Anthony and Cleopatra’ when Octavius Caesar sends a hectoring message to the defeated Queen of the Nile, Cleopatra declare to her handmaidens with horrified dignity– ‘He thous me girls, the thous me!’ and this is the point in the play of her final realisation that Octavius intends to humiliate her by leading her in Triumph through Rome as a captive. On Quaker lips ‘thou’ was never intended as an insult but rather as a mark of levelling respect to all as equal in the light – but the Powers were threatened by it as they were by Jesus’ breaking down of social distinctions by holding open table fellowship with the unclean and with sinners.

I read an article once by some young American Quakers who intended to restore the practice of addressing people with thee and thou – but I thought this to be a bit daft and rather posey because the distinction no longer is made in language so it’s just an empty form. However, Quakers are still reluctant to use honorific titles – including Mr and Mrs. A Quaker Mr John Smith would be plain John Smith. And the Queen for example would be plain Elizabeth Windsor’. Although gongs and titles are still taboo with older Quakers I note that the much loved actress Judy Dench –who is a Quaker – has recently accepted her title as Dame (ad I’m not going to knock her for this –Judy Dench with her strong, intelligent face and Quaker bob haircut reminds me of many Quaker women I have met).

There were other signs that the early Quakers gave as testimony shared with the wider Anabaptist tradition – the refusal to take oaths and the refusal to bear arms etc, and also two millennial signs given in their revolutionary days but discarded when they calmed down. I will deal with these later in a separate post. – if interest continues

All the best

Dick

[sass]

Awesome, awesome awesome, Dick! When you mentioned you were an “Angelical Quaker”, I was thinking this might be a sect within the many of Quakerism…No? I’m supposing you take from both traditions what you agree with? What do you like then about each?

[Sobornost]

Hi Sass - good to hear from you and I hope the hubby is better. Well I meant to say ‘Anglican Quaker’ - Church of England Quaker - someone of strong Quaker sympathies who is actually an Anglican (although I may well take out dual membership someday soon - this has been offered to me in the past very graciously, and the person who supported me when I first applied for membership of the Society of Friends blessed me when I first went on my travels and told me she knew I’d come back one day). I haven’t got a lot of time tonight and have a lot of other community education/visiting the Mum in hospital to do tomorrow (and thanks so much for your prayers). So I may not get back to you properly until Thursday - but I’m working on and hope I will be able to come up with something to speak to your condition out of my sense of several denominational conditions (as it were). Let’s keep this thread up and running for a month or so - I know I’ve loads more to tell you - about the early Friends and the Civil War, about the second inward looking period of Quakerism which had certain features of sectarianism, and about the splits in the movement in the late eighteenth/early nineteenth century. I will get round to this and provide all who wish to know with the relevant information on how to discern between different forms of contemporary Quakerism (Quakerism like all forms of Christianity is never perfect, but if you are thinking of enquiring with a view to attending a meeting its best that you find one that chimes with the leadings of the light within you).
I’ve looked more closely at the earlier posts and would just clarify a few point raised in these – (I’m not begin a smart-alec here. I just want to give you the full picture on a topic which everyone has been woolly about until now – and I’m so glad Sass has started this thread to enable me to inform you – ta Sass)

Regarding the Society of Jesus –read ‘the Jesuits’ - the Catholic order founded by Ignatius Loyola; once the shock troops of the Counter Reformation now a radical and humane catholic teaching order.

Regarding the Sectarian Shakers – yes Mother Anne came from England but the Shakers did not take root here. She emigrated to America - it’s not so easy to start a full blown cult in England because it’s too small a place – you need space to maintain a large secluded community of beautiful souls and there is plenty of space in America; and most of the Shakers were American, As I understand it there was a lot of millennial expectation at his time in England which was whipped up by utopian hopes about the French Revolution – and there was another English female ‘messiah’ at the time – not connected to the Quakers – named Joanna Southcott. She predicted that she would give birth to a divine child as the new age experienced its own birth pangs; but as the hopes for the French revolution dissolved in the bloodletting of the Terror, so Joanna Southcott proved to be a great disappointment. I also understand that the Shakers drew some of their dynamic from the millennial revolutionary energies released by Jonathan Edward’s Great Awakening’ – this was one of the movements that inspired the War of Independence. However the American constitution was more indebted to the writings of the Englishman Tom Paine. Tom had been brought up a Quaker although he was thrown out of the Society because he became a Deist – Deists did not believe in God as revealed in scripture (or in the inner light) but only in God as revealed in what was thought to be the rationality of creation – a popular idea in the Enlightenment that William Blake detested and prophesied against. This being so Tom Paine’s ‘Rights of Man’ still owes much too Quaker teaching about the equality of all in the light.

Regarding Oliver Cromwell - yes he did meet for an afternoon with George Fox once and they liked each other greatly and saw eye to eye. Cromwell’s religion is hard to pin down in denominational terms – but he respected anyone man who had ‘the heart of the matter’ in him and obviously thought George Fox had this. The Quakers were not badly persecuted during the Civil War – the real persecutions came later in Restoration where imprisonment and crippling fines were issued against them – and in Calvinist New England where they sometimes paid with their lives for their beliefs. However at the beginning of the Republic, when the Long Parliament and the Rump Parliament were dominated by middle class Calvinists, all of the Universalist sects – Diggers. Levellers and Quakers – had a hard time of it. The Calvinists who had agitated so hard for their own freedoms did not want to widen the franchise to working people and the lawyers among them did not want to accept reduced fees so that ordinary people could get fair representation at trials (these were demands of the Levellers)
The gentry among them did not want to give the common lands guaranteed by ancient charters back to the people to grow food on (these were demand of the Diggers/True Levellers). Also they brought in legislation to make disbelief in eternal damnation punishable first by fines and, if persisted in, by imprisonment (which cheesed all of the Universalists off). Cromwell and the Independents (that is the Congregationalists) sided with the radical Universalists and chucked out the Calvinists from parliament. And this is what Cromwell said as he dismissed them –

‘It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonored by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money.

Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess? Ye have no more religion than my horse; gold is your God; which of you have not barter’d your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth?

Ye sordid prostitutes have you not defil’d this sacred place, and turn’d the Lord’s temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked practices? Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation; you were deputed here by the people to get grievances redress’d, are yourselves gone! So! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors.
In the name of God, go!’

What a maginificent and stirring piece of rhetoric this is as the temple of government is cleansed by the People’s Oliver – but the millennium did not dawn; things got better for a bit but then they turned sour. And the Quakers of those times learnt the lesson that it is foolish to set too much hope by utopian dreams and settled for being leven in the dough. And Gerrard Winstanley leader of the Diggers and Free John Lilburne leader of the Levellers both died Quakers.

All the best

Dick

[sass]

Looking forward to more when you get around to it. Thanks, Dick!

[Sobornost]

Hi Sass – I was just reading our personal post last night. Wow – you’ve had it tough old girl. It must be so hard standing alone for your UR beliefs and principles in your community as you have done (and if you’ve had people praying for you because of your ‘false’ UR beliefs , that you might see ‘the error of your ways’ – I’ve already reflected to Jael Sister (only half in jest) that in a pluralistic age when religious intolerance is currently frowned upon, being put on the prayer list is the only real act of religious violence within the law available to the ‘godly’ )

But with the half joke set aside – you really are having a tough time of it. The only thing that strikes me about your community is that because of the moderate level of loving tolerance that you have been treated with, I reckon a lot of people in your Church actually only have a notional belief in ECT – it’s not something they think about too deeply and certainly not something that they know ‘experimentally’; so there are grounds for optimism that you can live and thrive in love with your fellow Christians in your own community with a little support from your mates here.

I was absolutely horrified to hear that you’ve participated in other UR forums where you have been advised to leave your husband because you and he are ‘unevenly yoked’ through differing beliefs in eschatology. TO be unevenly yoked’ when Paul wrote this piece of pastoral advice was indeed a very dangerous arrangement to get into and he was right to advise against it. I see Paul as drawing a contrast here between the yoke of Christ – whose yoke is easy and burden is light – and the yoke of The Powers that oppress. If a Christina woman, for example, married a pagan Roman man at the time – even out of tender love – and the Roman man did not become a Christian she was in terrible danger. Under Roman law at the time the Pater Familias – Patriarchal Head of the Household was given terrible powers. A Roman father had the right to execute his children without punishment and he had the right to accept or reject children born to him by his wife (hence the high incidence of infanticide against female babies at this time), and although adultery was not punishable by death in Roman law until the third century, if a husband killed his wife I’m not sure the law would have been too fussed. These conditions just do not obtain any longer – so its absolute tosh to cite this saying as grounds for divorce over small - and possibly only ‘notional’ - differences in belief you have with a person who you have a loving relationship with and with whom you are making a home for your children that you both love dearly (obviously); and as ground for divorce in a society in which, unlike in Roman society, you are both equal in the eyes of the law. It’s better to have a good old laugh at this than get angry I reckon. This is a poor and silly Gospel!

It doesn’t surprise me that some UR sites have turned sectarian or even cultish – although it is sad (but the human story is always in part glorious and in part sad and foolish). I hope you can just put that nonsense behind yourself and I pray that you can. Universalism – in my view – should not be a notional badge of belief or wounded child club that cuts us off from the rest of the world. Rather it should result in the widening of our sympathies so that we become all embracing (one of the meaning s of teleos/perfect) as our Heavenly Father is all embracing. Funnily enough I’ve often been quite critical of the Tentmakers site when I’ve posted here for serving up a too simplistic ‘us and them’ history of Christian Universalism. I know Tentmakers ministries are a comfort to many and do really good work. But I shall continue to be respectfully critical of their treatment of history because it can promote a sectarian mentality – which I am just so completely opposed to. I think my assumed name ‘Sobornost’ is meant to denote the wide ecumenical and all embracing community of the universal Church in Easter Orthodoxy (at least according to the Russian Orthodox Christian Universalist Nicholas Berdyaev– so I’d better try and live up to my new name)

I guess a ‘sect’ is a movement that separates people from the mainstream. The Quakers in some senses were a sect – they separated from the national Church and in the eighteenth century when the first outpourings of Charisma had settled down and they had become more formalised they drew boundaries to distinguish themselves from their fellow human beings; they became a ‘peculiar people’ with distinctive modes of dress, speech etc – and for a hundred years or so actually adhered to an innovation that was not part of Fox’s religion, namely that Members of the Society of Friends were not allowed to marry out. Well, when they ‘opened up’ angina in the nineteenth century in their collaboration with the Evangelicals over abolitionism and other social causes the Society got into very deep water indeed over their pharisaic boundary marker. There was a serious exodus of members because of this rule and it had to be dropped (thanks be to God!). But as I’ve suggested before –even during their most sectarian period mainstream Quakers never cut themselves off from their wider mission to be first fruits/leaven in the dough to the rest of society

I guess a cult is a movement that actually cuts itself off completely from the rest of the ‘wicked’ World. The Shakers were such a movement. I call such people ‘beautiful souls’ (which isn’t original, and I thank Gillian Rose the Jewish Anglican philosopher for the insight) because they have a wounded child weepy quality about their faith. They are unable to see that they are part of the sins of the world so they separate from it and lick their wounds together awaiting liberation; and they cause misery by cutting out their ungodly families from their love). Now we all imperfect and prone to ‘miss the mark’/’sin’ just by being born (but this is not the same as suggesting we are totally depraved – we are not; we are made knit God’s image no matter how obscured this can become); so none of us are innocent in this way and I think we should not con ourselves. Interestingly from the Wikipedia page that Andrew cited, there seems to be evidence that the anti-cult movement in America –which in y view sometimes seems very authoritarian itself with its kidnappings and forced –deprogramming’ -– actually has its forerunner in the support network of families who lost members to the Shakers . The Shakers may have written some jolly songs but surely they wrong in causing this sort of unnecessary intimate grief.

The opposite of introverted cults are the revolutionary movements fired up by the energy of ‘Angry Angels (again not original – thank you Gillian Rose). These people are also wounded children but they want to remake the world according to their own ideas of perfection. They see all evil, all corruption as outside of themselves –as a sort of con trick played on them by a system that is out to cheat them of their birthright – and they rail , and rant, and refuse to compromise. Obviously they make good terrorist these days, and in the past made good authoritarian revolutionaries addicted to all forms of cleansing violence to perfect the world.

This sort of happened with Oliver Cromwell. In my view it’s a good job that he dismissed the Calvinist ‘Rump’ Parliament (and this always had an earthy and unflattering implication). And he lifted religious censorship backed by the Independents in the Army and repealed the oppressive measures brought in by the Calvinists. However, Cromwell basically went on to establish a military dictatorship – a benign one, but still a military dictatorship – with his millenarian ‘Bare Bones Parliament’ (named after a sitting MP in that Parliament –a certain ‘Praise the Lord Barebones - what a splendid Puritanical moniker!). Yes Cromwell did think that in the Barebones Parliament Christ had come to rule with his Saints and would soon return in bodily form (and he was horribly disappointed). I note that millenarianism then was not quite the same beast as it is today as in the ‘Left Behind’ series. For starters Cromwell believed, like today’s millenarians, that the Jews had a role to play in setting the clock ticking for Christ’s return. However, the belief then was that this would happen when Jewish communities were established in every country in the world rather than concentrated in the Holy Land; and for this reason Cromwell allowed the Jews to return to England from where they had been expelled three hundred years earlier. Also a belief in a final divine vengeance was not necessarily part of millennial hopes - many believed that during the birth pangs of the millennium a Spiritual Gospel , ‘The Everlasting Gospel’ was being slowly revealed and world be fully revealed for the salvation of all at the Final Judgement. Anyway, for a time freedom flourished, but some took this as an excuse for licence – for example the Ranters met in drunken and naked celebration of their antinomian religion while smoking raw tobacco to get high (they were sort of the hippies and yippees of the English Civil War); their irresponsible actions – a bit like those of the libertines in the Church of Corinth - lead to new measures of repression. Also Cromwell in the end back tracked on supporting the Leveller’s demands for universal suffrage – although they had fought bravely in his cause. And however tender Cromwell was towards the freedoms of his dear English people, when there was a rebellion in Ireland he and his Ironside soldiers went over there thinking themselves the scourge of God massacring the Catholics to the cry of ‘ The sword of the Lord and of Gideon’. Some of the Leveller regiments in the army refused to fight in Ireland - partly on principle but also partly because they hadn’t been paid – and their leaders were court-martialled and shot. The Levellers turned out in force wearing their distinctive green ribbons at the public funerals of these commanders. And then of course the dream of utopian liberty died with the Restoration (although seeds of non-utopian liberty had been planted that would take longer to mature in the dark ground)

Cromwell’s speech with which he dismissed the Rump is sometimes quoted in Editorial Leaders here in THE UK. Towards the close of the Tory Administration of Margaret Thatcher and John Major –which ended mired in Tory sleaze, ‘cash for questions’ corruption, arrogance from those who thought power had become an entitlement, and sectarian political infighting between pro and anti Europe factions, the Left Wing press thundered: ‘Ye are a fractious crew…in the name of God GO! –. The same happened at the end of the Labour Administrations of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown – two men who had for a time, when younger, given such hope of a new dawn. Again they ended mired in corruption over expenses scandal, toadying to the Murdoch press, vainglory over involvement in foreign wars and sectarian infighting between Blarites and Brownites. ‘Ye are a fractious crew. In the name of God Go! thundered the Right Wing press hits time. These thing tend to run in cycles – so there is little point in sacralising politics; we should remain grounded and pragmatic in a fallen world, and not expect too much of our politicians, and do what we can to hold abuses of power in check, in my opinion.

I’m thinking again of what Maggie Fell (Margaret Fox) said in her loving letter to Friends of 1700. It’s worth citing and pondering again -

*Let us beware of this, of separating or looking upon ourselves to be more holy than in deed and truth we are; for what are we but what we have received from God, and God is all sufficient to bring in thousands in the same Spirit and Light, to lead and to guide them, as he doth us…

We are now coming together into that which Christ cried ‘Woe’ against; minding altogether outward things, neglecting the inward work of Almighty God in our hearts. [It appears to be happening that] we can [now] only frame [that is ‘behave’] according to outward prescriptions and orders, and deny eating and drinking with our neighbours, in so much that poor Friends is [so]mangled in their minds, that they know not what to do. For one Friend says one way, and another Friend another. But Christ Jesus saith that we must take no thought what we shall eat, or what we shall drink, or what we shall put on, but bids us consider the lilies how they grow, in more royalty than Solomon. But contrary to this [that is contrary to what Christ says] we must look at no colours, nor make anything that is changeable colours as the hills are, nor sell them, nor wear them; but we must be all in one dress and colour. This is a poor silly Gospel. It is more fit for us, to be covered with God’s Eternal Spirit, and clothed with his Eternal Light, which leads us and guides us into Righteousness. Now I have set before you life and death, and desires you to choose lie, and God and Truth…’*

This is completely non-sectarian. Maggie did not expect everyone to become Quakers - her only concern was that the Light/the Seed should flourish in all. Maggie was originally married to Judge Fell a member of the establishment who protected the Quakers in their first time of trial. Many found refuge at their home in Swarthmore Hall. When Judge Fell died Maggie married George Fox and I think she almost certainly had a civilising affect on the old rude boy. All movements tend to sacralise their founders and some Quakers do sacralise the memory of George Fox. But I think this is a mistake –and I’m sure George Fox would not have wanted this. It strikes me that Maggie was just as much a prophet of the Light as George and that she used her more gentle spirit to make him gentler. There is some real wit in her letter. ‘Mangled in their minds’ and ‘Poor and silly Gospel’ are wonderful phrases. I understand that wit became a bit of a taboo when the Quakers became a ‘peculiar people’, at least for a time – and I’m sure Maggie would have seen the irony. And I’m sure she needed a wonderful sense of humour to be married to George –as I’ve said, he must have been a difficult man.

And look again at the final paragraph of the Introduction to my old copy of Christian Faith and Practice

‘But then in honesty we should have had to reveal also the extent of our failure; the light dimmed in narrow hearts and creeds, the baptism m of grace lost in torpor, the corrosion of arrogance and self satisfaction – for we have known these too. May the light prevail over the darkness; may those who are here speak for all the children of the Light, to the needs of other times as well as their own’

It’s as if the spirit of Maggie Fell is speaking again to us. Note that the reference here is to all ’The children of the light’ and not just to the children of the Society of Friends. This is instructive because all of us are included (and I’m sure this was the intention).

I’ve written something on another thread about the words of the risen Christ to Peter – hewn he asks three times ‘Do you love me?’ as a parallel to Peter’s threefold betrayal. Jesus plays on words using two different forms of ‘love’. Now I’m not a scholar of New Testament Greek – I’m actually pretty naff at languages – and what I’d said was hearsay from a real scholar half remembered. Sonia pointed out to me that the sequence is different than I remembered – so here is the genuine sequence. The first time Jesus actually asks Peter ‘Do you agape me’ – that is do you love me unconditionally with a love of the sort that you can even share with strangers and enemies; while the next two times Jesus asks ‘’Do you phileo me’ – that’s is ‘do you love me with a friends love of delight’. Our friends delight us in some way – the tone of voice, a way of laughing, shared interests or life experiences, special kindness and sympathy etc. I guess that if Peter does represent humanity – the Rock on which Christ builds his Church – and Christ will one day be All and in All – we have to start with agape, and then we will progress through eternity to intimate friendship with ALL in Christ. Sectarianism is the opposite of agape – and sectarian ‘phileo’ may seen intense and pure but is actually just narcissism (‘If you only love those who love. you what merit is there in this – even the pagans do as much’)

I hope some of this spoke to your condition old fruit. And by the way no need to praise me too much or you’ll be in danger of doing hat homage to old Sobornost which would never do 

I take my hat off to you and wish you joy and hope -

Dick

P.S. I always leave my typos in because they can be a source of much merriment!

[sass]

Hi Sass – I was just reading our personal post last night. Wow – you’ve had it tough old girl. It must be so hard standing alone for your UR beliefs and principles in your community as you have done (and if you’ve had people praying for you because of your ‘false’ UR beliefs , that you might see ‘the error of your ways’ – I’ve already reflected to Jael Sister (only half in jest) that in a pluralistic age when religious intolerance is currently frowned upon, being put on the prayer list is the only real act of religious violence within the law available to the ‘godly’ )

But with the half joke set aside – you really are having a tough time of it. The only thing that strikes me about your community is that because of the moderate level of loving tolerance that you have been treated with, I reckon a lot of people in your Church actually only have a notional belief in ECT – it’s not something they think about too deeply and certainly not something that they know ‘experimentally’; so there are grounds for optimism that you can live and thrive in love with your fellow Christians in your own community with a little support from your mates here.

Sometimes it’s hard, and I do feel sorry for myself! But, it’s made me strong. And, as I’ve said, needling me in just the right place. My ego would love to be a well-thought-of Christian woman. And, I am, but not TRUSTED entirely! Like, “Oh, she’s a nice lady, but I wouldn’t leave my kids with her!”

And right, my church IS a good place and I think you are right that they just don’t think about it deeply. If they do, they have excuses. My friend says that God will “make it so we won’t know about our loved ones in Hell”. GOD IS GOING TO DECEIVE US IN HEAVEN! Can you IMAGINE such a thing?!

I was absolutely horrified to hear that you’ve participated in other UR forums where you have been advised to leave your husband because you and he are ‘unevenly yoked’ through differing beliefs in eschatology.

I was horrified too! Just goes to show that one can leave the notion of ECT, but it still lives in you. As for Tentmaker, yeah that was one of my first stops on the UR ride. Just like when I became “born again” and walked into a Protestant church for the first time, thinking I’d “arrived”, only to find out it was just the beginning, so is Tentmaker for the UR explorer. But, they have their place!

I’m thinking again of what Maggie Fell (Margaret Fox) said in her loving letter to Friends of 1700. It’s worth citing and pondering again -

Let us beware of this, of separating or looking upon ourselves to be more holy than in deed and truth we are; for what are we but what we have received from God, and God is all sufficient to bring in thousands in the same Spirit and Light, to lead and to guide them, as he doth us…

This is always a HUGE danger. We tend to mistake our “knowledge” for holiness!

I hope some of this spoke to your condition old fruit. And by the way no need to praise me too much or you’ll be in danger of doing hat homage to old Sobornost which would never do 

Hahaha! Ok, I wouldn’t want to swell your head up with compliments so you can’t get it off to tip it to me!

Seriously though, you’ve been a blessing brother!

[Sobornost]

Dear Sass - you are a brave woman (and a witty one too - Maggie Fell would be proud of you for the ‘swollen head’ quip:-) and I love it as well!!!). all of your friends here will have to put your church on our prayer list as a modest measure of counter terrorism in your support . AD I do apologise I didn’t mean to imply that I was shocked at you for visiting certain UR sites – I only meant to say that I am saddened but not surprised at the advice they gave you (and it was ‘Good advice from Satan’s kingdom’ in my view – to quote William Blake again)

The idea that God will hide the suffering of our love ones from us when he sends them to hell - well that’s an innovation in the ECT tradition!!! What an ingenious and very unbiblical idea. And if you can believe that you might as well believe in UR or at least consider annihilationism as an option. I reckon here must be at least one person and many more who secretly shares your views in your congregation. I really do. And they probably feel very uneasy – hence all the unlovely tosh about not leaving their kids with you!

Love can accommodate differences and unity in diversity – but it makes for a difficult and challenging time. And this site is wonderful in accommodating unity within diversity – all respect to Jason and to Alex, Drew, Sherman and Sonia (in alphabetical order rather than any order of preference) and any other moderators that I don’t know of. They do a fantastic job! I’ve seen other sites and this is so much better. And they tolerate an old windbag like me with good grace for good measure.

It’s easier by far to have an imposed unity – but ‘One Law for the Ox and the lion is Oppression’ as Blake again said. That’s the thing about congregations predicated upon unity in faith – and all congregations are thus predicated to a greater and lesser extent - the unity is often a false one imposed from without. For example, in some fundamentalist churches certainty is the unifying focus -so you get a lot of people with unexpressed doubts, and sometimes huge doubts, that turn sour inside them. In other fundamentalist churches and some Catholic churches sexual rectitude is the unifying focus; so you get people living secret lives like the Jimmy Swaggarts and the Jim Baakers of this world. In some Quaker meeting where Peace is the unifying focus you’ll get people who stifle discussion of differences (which can mean that the strongest impose their views , no matter how gently, and that you will get some people who are actually rather angry and aggressive deluding themselves about how gentle and peaceful they are. I’m sure every church and every denomination can be looked at in this way –it’s all about the parable of the speck and the log in the eye really.

In the same manner as above, it seems clear to me that in America, some liberal Episcopalian churches and liberal Roman Catholic movements can lose their discernment when enthusiastically embracing other stuff just because the fundamentalists don’t like it (when the fundamentalists are sometimes right for the wrong reasons). They seem to do hits because of the rancour in which the culture wars between liberal and fundamentalists are fought in the USA. So because their focus of unity is on being non-authoritarian they can actually embrace authoritarian movements unawares. I’ve spoken in two posts on this thread about positive thinking/human potential movements because I think they provide an instructive contrast with what real Quakerism is certainly not about but with which it could be superficially confused.

There are some really authoritarian ‘New Thought’ corporate movement s out there in the big wide world. Their methods of teaching are incredibly authoritarian – breaking people down through humiliation to build them up again with new ways of perceiving. They also try to stifle questioning and public scrutiny by a variety of stratagems – presentational and legal. And although they are various – they all persuade their punters to do hard sell evangelism for their courses on the grounds that if everyone does their specific course world peace will arrive and the words problems will be fixed. I understand the reason why most of them don’t fall out with each other acrimoniously about the obvious question of, ‘Which is the right course for me if I want world peace since all courses say that it is vitally important that I do just their specific version?’ is that they all derive from another earlier course and there would be copy write issues if any one of them started claiming precedence in any formal way. The thing about these courses is that some people derive huge benefits from them – as with the original mind cure movement – but some people get very badly damaged by them indeed. So you’d think a liberal Christian would look at them askance; they seem pretty much like carbon copies of fundamentalism to me). However, very sadly there are genuine (not forged) endorsements by American liberal Episcopalians and liberal Catholics for these courses circulating on the internet. There is one from a quite famous Catholic monk, now dead, who was also a major exponent of the practices of Christian mysticism HE signed his ringing endorsement of one of these course to his fellow Christians with ‘Yours in Christ’ (as the other two Christian endorsements I’ve seen also do). Now, it all depends on the context, but I feel very queasy about, ‘Yours in Christ’ as a valediction here; it seems to be suggesting that what is being said is somehow’ endorsed by Christ in his fullness. Yours in the seed Christ’ - would be more humble and more appropriate– because it admits the possibility of error.

Finally I was thinking today about something I wrote in my previous post. I mentioned that my sponsor when I joined the Society of Friends said that I’d be back one day (when I went on my travels). I remember her very fondly – she’s no longer with us on earth. Her name was Grace and she was tough as old boots at the same time as being hugely compassionate. She also had the charming/annoying habit – depending on taste – of turning her hearing aid off if she was fed up with listening to what you were telling her (I don’t think it was just to me – but if it was I can sympathise). She is one of my saints – in a down to earth sense – but she couldn’t predict the future. I think I got carried away with emotion at the point when I wrote about our goodbye (although I did see her a few times after this). Perhaps what she could see was that deep down I was at one with Quaker essentials and these would not leave me. And perhaps in writing on this thread about the Quakers I am returning in spirit to the Friends; it feels really good and I thank you so much for being the catalyst for this Sass – I really mean this. However, I am an Anglican now – and it is eminently possible to be true to the tradition of the Anabaptist Spirituals within contemporary Anglicanism; especially if you are part of the liberal Catholic/ Christian Socialist tradition within the Church – which is where I would place myself). Before saying anything further about the Quakers I’ll do a little love letter to the dear old Church of England next – and all should become clear.
You are a blessing to me and to others on this site with your courage

Dick

[sass]

Hi Dick. I’d be extremely interested in your take on New Thought and Christian Mysticism. It is particularly the Quaker “doctrine” (for lack of a better word) of “inner light” that piqued my interest in the Quakers in the first place. I am not an academic but I know enough Bible to know that it can be made to say almost anything. After years of study and frustration, I’ve decided that in order to definitively know anything, it must be REVEALED. Thus, Christian mysticism holds special interest for me. UR wasn’t an intellectual conclusion I arrived at…It was revealed, I never knew it existed and then, suddenly, I KNEW. You’ve mentioned Blake. I’m only slightly familiar but have run across his name in my readings of Christian mysticism, which aren’t comprehensive, but I know my way around enough. Any authoritarian position on mysticism seems like an oxymoron to me, I agree with you there. Anyway, I’d be interested in your take and still interested about Anglicanism. Sass.

[Sobornost]

HI Sass –
Don’t get too put off by me knowing a lot of stuff. It’s been my job to know a lot of stuff in some ways. But also I too had quite a painful and arduous journey myself from ECT to UR which I’ve written about on other threads. Let me know if you’d like to have those links – you might find a read of the four key posts instructive. But a lot of what I write does still come from the heart in an egg headed sort of way – and is rooted in stuff that I know and have known ‘experimentally’. One of the things I’m trying to do here is encourage people like yourself to know that you are not inventing a new religion with your UR beliefs – on the contrary you have friends and lovers of God who speak to you across the ages who have lived beautiful and courageous lives and have left a fine legacy, and some of whom died for theory faith with courage and without resentment.

But I’m talking about several issues with you here – and with anyone else who is listening – because I can see that your situation is complex and I’m trying to give you some resources to deal with that complexity with discernment. I’m also trying to address issues that have arisen on other threads where Quakerism has been spoken about in good faith but in an uninformed way as a species of pantheism. So I will try and address some of the issues of discernment a little deeper now.

(Sorry ito one and all if I ever seem like a thundering old bore or - worse still - a smarty pants. I’m just tyring to put stuff on site for people to refer to so that they don’t have to go out and buy loads of books. Enough paranoia for one day!)

New Thought and Quakerism

At some point I could summarise the compelling argument given in ’Smile or Die’ in a little more detail. The author argues that New Thought was a reaction to Calvinism; however because it impetus was purely reactive it managed to reinvent Calvinism in a different form. (Is anyone interested??). For the moment suffice to say that -
New thought posits that there is only Love Light and Health and everything else in an illusion. We can train our minds to tap into this ever present nurturing well of Love Light and Health through positive thinking which enables us to ‘name it and claim it’ and live ‘truly exceptional’ lives

Original Quakerism posited that there is indeed a seed of light within everyone and within the whole of creation – but this light is mostly still only in potential form. Darkness is also a very real thing within each of us and within society. It only has a penultimate reality because one day it will be fully overcome by the light – but we cannot wish, meditate or affirm away its reality in the fallen world in which we live.

New thought posits that we are in a sense responsible for creating our own reality. What we get in life and what we get out of life happens because of the way we look at life (which is partially true but not completely true by any means). So negative people have negative lives - and it’s their own fault. The most ridiculous example of this mindset I’ve ever heard was when a Health and Wealth Gospel Jesus Freak opined – ‘Poverty man – that’s a satanic trip. People who are poor just don’t know how to pray properly!) Now I’ve seen lots of stuff – not from the Health and Wealth poor silly Gospel brigade – but from the hard nuts in the human Potential movements which argues that it is not their intention at all to blame victims – they want everyone to do their wonderful course so that everyone will be empowered. Obviously during the course all ‘victim thinking’ is humiliated out of you – no matter who great or how small the basis of this is in your actual experience – but this builds you up into being a new positive person and one without resentment who can complete with their past and move on. But this is utopian thinking - in fact these courses set up an ‘us and them’ division by rejecting some as un-coachable – and perhaps in other ways we will see some day that these secretive organisations have created plenty of other victims

Original Quakerism like primitive Christianity posited that we are all born into a world where relationships between people are distorted not only by individual failings but also by the Powers in our social strictures, institutions, law etc. The Powers are the forces of oppression and injustice that will always crop up in some form – although we should not write them off but rather try to tame them and direct them to good purposes. We need to challenge the Powers and speak Truth to them rather than blaming the victims of Power for their. And while Quakerism has always been on the side of the victims it has never been susceptible to the owned child victim mindset that New Thought claims to be an antidote to but just is not in my view.

New Thought can be strongly authoritarian – some of the Human Potential courses use very abusive techniques. Some of these are inspired by American aggrieve sales training programmes while some are supposedly inspired by the antics of Japanese Zen Masters. They claim that this is justified because the techniques work! Well it would appear that some people come out of these courses far more positive – but research in the UK suggest that these appear to be people who already have strong egos but also have high levels of emotional dissonance in their lives. However there have also been a number of well documented cases of suicide and psychosis connected with these courses. Also – do the end ever justify the means? I don’t think so – people that do the authoritarian human potential courses may be more positive but it is often reported that they becomes far less empathetic (as such they seem to model themselves on the tactics of their trainers); and they can make very difficult friends to anyone but their insider network who ‘love and affirm them’ (although some people are more affected than others)

Original Quakerism – in spite of its charismatic founder – was non –authoritarian. The Quakers met as complete equals and welcomed attenders. This is not saying that Quaker meetings have never been forums for abuse of power - in the sense of some lording it over others – but the basic form is very sound and open in providing checks and balances to keep these at a minimum in my view.

Pantheism

I’ve seen Jason mention Pantheism in connection with Quakerism – and he’s absolutely right to express grounds for concern in terms of a movement in America that calls itself the ‘Progressive no-theistic Friends’. I think they are very similar to the Unitarian Universalists – looking at their website I see that they consider one of the pantheistic Ranters as their forerunner rather than the saints of mainstream Quakerism (which does not surprise me – but is daft because Fox actually preached against the Ranters, as did all the key figures of early Quakerism). I must write some stuff on pantheism at some point – it means a number of different things to different people (and at least two forms of it could well be compatible with Christian orthodoxy). However, in its un-nuanced form it means that everything that is divine, and human beings just as they are, are divine and only have to wake up and realise this to be free. Pantheism can sometimes be just a rather harmless and potty creed for New Age eccentrics - many of whom just want to get away from notions of a patriarchal and vengeful god. However, it does have far more sinister potential in its ‘strong form. I’m thinking of the Japanese Rinzai sect of Zen Buddhism that have been accepted so uncritically by many in the West who are interested in mysticism. The trouble is that many of hate Zen masters who were so popular with the hippies adn influential on the 1960’s counterculture etc - including the seemingly gentle D.T. Suzuki - have actually been unmasked recently as being unrepentant Japanese Imperialist Fascists. There is a prophetic movement within Buddhism at the moment that is trying to come to terms with this and to sort the wheat from the chaff – and I find this very encouraging (they’ve had a hard time getting themselves heard with many other Buddhist who prefer to stay in denial). There are many varieties of Zen – and in its Vietnamese and Korean forms it is a gentle religion in which adherents stick strictly to the Buddha’s eightfold path of spiritual and moral transformation while practising the distinctive Zen forms of silent meditation and puzzling over riddles that lead the puzzler to a point where they accept that life is paradoxical. However the Japanese variant of Zen teaches that everything is perfect just as it is and we simply need to wake up to this truth by engaging in various mediation activities. And this was the code of the much romanticised Samurai. If everything is perfect this can mean that the social order that exists has to be perfect - for everything comes from nature and the social order is an expression of divine nature -and that the emperor is perfect and that we lose our egocentric strivings and find peace by submitting to the emperor. IF everything is perfect and all is one – and life and death are one - it can mean that we no longer draw moral distinctions between life and death and can come to regard the greatest act of compassion as taking another person’s life in a state of detachment and ritual purity. If everything is perfect it can mean that our attitude to people that mar the perfection and oneness of life is that they need to be annihilated. Anyway the critical Buddhist movement – God speed them – are facing up to the fact that the slaughter of between twelve and twenty four million people (especially in Chinese Manchuria) during World War 2 was not simply a result of Sate Shinto. Rather the impetus behind the killing machine was the pantheistic Zen of the Japanese Rinzai sect. So when we think Pantheism we should ponder the meaning of this terrible sign in history –especially if any of us ever read the books of the ‘genuine fake’ Alan Watts with his irresponsible advocacy of strong pantheism. But I will unpack this further a cat later date.

William Blake

Will Blake – he’s London’s cockney mystic. I like quoting bit and bobs of him because he has the earthy quality of a working man speaking about his God. There is always more to his sayings and poems than meets the eye. For example – ‘One law for the ox and lion is oppression’. That could be taken to refer to different classes of believers – some of them a bit feeble, others fine free spirits; but I don’t think that was Blake’s intention. Both and ox and a lion are strong beasts – but one wears a yolk of oppression while the other roams free as royalty in the wild. Blake’s not talking about individuals here – he’s talking, as he often does, about states of mind and heart within every individual. I will do a post on Will Blake later in the conversation – if the interest is still there. Suffice to say at the moment that I believe he is part and parcel of the same tradition of radical Universalism as the Quakers – and is loved by many Quakers in the UK. He was writing at a time when authoritarian and oppressive trends within Christianity were very strong as were the seemingly opposing trends of rationalistic Deism (but Blake saw the two as being linked); and he was very isolated in standing alone against these - spending all of his life in poverty and much of it in neglect. He is often accused of being heterodox – and some of his Prophetic Books are very rambling in their spiritual allegory and easy to get lost in.
I think there is such a lot of nonsense talked about Blake by the new Ager and neo-Gnostic fraternities. Blake was not a Gnostic elitist –he was massively compassionate in his love for the poor and his hatred of injustice -with all of his cockney heart. His prophetic books may seem a bit heterodox but I once read a book arguing that by the end of his life – although he was still very isolated from the mainstream - his final vision of Chirst was very much akin to the Christian Universalism of Nicholas Berdyaev.

One of the things I love about Blake is his take on the doctrine of the Inner Light. During the ‘Enlightenment’ in some quarters this light had become identified with the light of reason - the ability to deliberate between fakes and true and between good and bad manly on the grounds of consequences. Against this view Blake prophesied that –
‘The Imagination is the Divine Body of Jesus our Saviour’
This is poetic language. But it seems to me that what he was driving at is that the light in us has to also be about imagination illumined by God – imagination enables us to slowly develop through time and eternity a loving universal empathy with all (and Blake thought that imagination also incorporated the body, the intellect and the emotions in one whole human being in likeness of the image of God)

Christian Mysticism

For me Christian mysticism is a blanket term describing any type of Christianity that stresses some form of authority for lived experience as opposed to exclusive stress no outward forms and forensic logic. That’s quite a wild field. Some people think on mysticism as a sort of exclusive club for people who are subject to strange visions, special revelations and transports of ecstasy. Many of the visions of potty old Jean Lead of the Universalist sect the Philadelphians are of this nature – they seem harmless but a bit over wrought and not particularly edifying; but I think it is to misunderstand the true riches of the best in the Christian mystical tradition to suggest that it is al like this.

In the overwrought’ connection, I’m thinking of the fourteenth century gentlewoman (that is a woman of some independent wealth) named Margery Kempe. She was on her travels at a time when the Black Death, famine and insurrection raged in England. And she dedicated herself to special revelations in which she had visions of herself participating at Christ’s nativity taking control of everything – as came naturally to Margery – folding the napkins and putting the water on for to boil in her very beetling fuss body style. She also went from Church to Church breaking into fits of uncontrollable bawling when she saw a crucifix, because of it bringing to her mind the death of her Lord.
Dear old Margery once went to see Julian of Norwich. Julian as we know was a very different kettle of fish. She was enclosed from the world but still very much in contact with the concerns of ordinary people who came to her for advice as she addressed them through her open window from her anchoress cell by Norwich Cathedral. Julian had a near death experience when a young woman – as the fine essay in ‘All Shall Be Well’ relates. She pondered her visions/shewings for the rest of her life and in maturity wrote a series of meditations about these in the light of what she had learnt. But Julian was so very down to earth. For example, there a passage in her ‘Shewings of Divine Love – often edited out in nineteenth and early twentieth century editions – where she praises God for a good healthy bowel movements stating that - ‘Just as food is shut up as in a purse and when time comes the purse opens full marvellously – so it is God that does this and meet us in our humblest needs). Let’s see this quotation in its context – Julian is gently affirming the goodness of the body in a time of black death and just plain endemic poor health – her affirmation is truly incarnational. Also Julian speaks movingly of God as being like a loving mother who feels pain as she lets her children learn how to walk and watches them stumble – which she has to do or they would never learn. There are a lot of female images for God in the ‘Shewings’ but these are all very grounded and gentle – rather than sickly or sentimental. They remind of a Biblical text that first suggested Universalism to me in the outer Word when the inner Word was already leading me this way. I speak of the text from the end of Revelations which says that God will wipe all tears away – and that’s a very comforting image of a Mum caring for her children.

All the best

Dick

P.S I think I’ll have a break this weekend but do get back to e if you want the links for what I’ve written about my own story on this site.

[sass]

Hi Dick. Yes please the links you mentioned would be useful. Don’t worry about coming off like a “smartypants”. I would never ask a smartypants their opinion on anything! Seriously though, this stuff is like air to me. Having a real, experiential, reciprocal, dynamic relationship with God is ALL that matters to me and reading about Him and others experiences with Him is my most favorite thing in the world. Well, I do really love the beach too. When it comes to mysticism, I am familiar more with the old school Catholic saints then the Buddhist and Hindu’s. It is interesting to me that St. John of the Cross, Meister Eckhart, Bernadette Roberts, The Cloud of Unknowing etc., are widely read by Buddhists! Anyway, looking forward to your next post. Sass.

[Sobornost]

Hi Sass -

Wow you’ve read some of the heavy duty boys and girls (the only one I’ve not heard of is Bernadette Roberts - who she? Would you recommend I read some of her stuff?). Yes I gather that the Cloud of Unknowing and Meister Eckhart are seen as a bridging ground in dialogues between Christians and Buddhists. I have read that there are some similarities between the way some Buddhists talk about the ultimate as Nothing and Eckhart and the author of the Cloud talk of God as ‘No-thing’ - that is that God is not a thing in comparison and in rivalry to other things in the created world but actually transcends them; and although we can make analogies between God and our human world, in the end God is beyond thought - ‘BY love is God is gotten and holden, by thought alone never’ as the Cloud says. Even when Jesus tells us to think of God as ‘Abba’ he does this by also telling us to call no man on earth Father – so that we know that whatever goodness and love is possible from an earthly Father, Good is much much more than this – beyond our wildest imaginings his love for us.
Unfortunately one person who wrote about Zen and Eckhart was D.T, Suzuki th e unrepentant Japanese Fascist - so I think we always need to be cautious (as we do when talking to Christians say in the so called Christian Identity movement who appear to be speaking the same language as us but are in fact worshipping a false god.

Have just posted something at Politics under the Occupy Wall Street thread relevant to our discussion. Check it out if you wish - I hope it makes you giggle.

All the best

Dick

[sass]

Hi Dick. Bernadette Roberts is actually a contemporary mystic. Once a cloistered nun, she is noted to have experienced all the known mystical phases (Purgative, Illuminative and Unitative) and beyond to a complete dropping away of any experience of “self”, to be distinguished from the dropping of ego experienced in the Unitative State but often confused. I ran into her name on a website that rated so called gurus and spiritual teachers. She is one who passed the muster. The website wasn’t a Christian website either. The author warned that it may be hard to get through the “Christian language” she speaks, but none-the-less she is probably one of the most genuinely “awakened” persons living. WELL! I had to buy a couple book to see this for myself! I bought 2 just recently and am only on page 30 so far, so I can’t tell you anything about recommending her works yet. Here’s a quote:

“I see Christ first and foremost as a mystic who had the continuous vision of God and whose mission it was to share it; give it to others. Few people see it this way; instead they have exploited Christ’s good works to justify their own busy lives, lives without interior vision and therefore lives without Christ.”

I WOULD recommend Evelyn Underhill’s “Mysticism- The Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness”, if you haven’t already, it’s an essential. Even your aforementioned Margery Kempe and William Blake appear. It’s a who’s who and a what’s what about Christian mystics and the mystical life and states.

I’ll check out the “Occupy” thread too. Take care brother!

[Sobornost]

Evelyn Underhill and bits and bobs

Actually Sass I’ve not read Evelyn Underhill n any depth – but I know that she was one who bore witness to a balance of Cristina faith centred nit h teaching of Chits as the Logos in t prologue to St John’s Gospel. And I know that she wrote about the universal testimony of the mystics of all religions. It would be good to hear more abbot her, if you can do a post (because I really do not have any of her books, and I’m not just saying that). The little bits and bobs I know of her is that she was an Anglican (as I am) and also a member of the Anglican Pacifist Fellowship (which I am not although I am a sympathiser rather than a dogmatic fellow traveller); one of her pieces of advice to aspiring Christian mystics was that they should stop reading the right wing war mongering press (I don’t completely agree with her on this – I’m read The UK right wing Daily Mail paper from time to time – because in want to try and appreciate the views of other people who participate in the same democracy as I do – but I understand where Evelyn was coming from). I know that her spiritual director was actually the Catholic modernist and mystic – Baron von Hugel)

One thing I would say about Evelyn and other early twentieth century writers on mystical religion –mysticism had been rediscovered by them after a period of eclipse and I think they sometimes in their enthusiasm they had a rather romantic picture of the mystical traditions - but i’m not knocking them;I’m just suggesting that we need to undersatnd them according the measure ofLight we have in this present age.

One work that I do know quite well from the same time is Aldous Huxley‘s ‘The Perennial Philosophy’ which contains quite a lot of quotations from the early Friends and shed load of stuff from the Anglican Universalist William Law who was loved by the Quakers in their Quietist period (indeed Huxley had been tuned into/turned onto William Law by a Quaker cousin of his). So I speak of Huxley rather than Evelyn – but I reckon they were similar spirits. My point is that these writers of the mystical revival are splendid and instructive. However, they seem to quote the mystics as if they were all singing from the same hymn sheet and all had access to an unbroken vision or at least an unbroken tradition of pure unmediated Truth. (Old muggins here is not so certain that this gnosis is possible for any of us humans; in these middle times we apprehend the light as seed not the light as the fullness of his glory – this we can only glimpse fleetingly in the present middle times. The revelation of the fullness of the Light is for the escahaton.

Blake made a wonderful and pertinent observation in this connection. He said that if we would do good or love someone we have to do good in ‘minute particulars’ and love in ‘minute particulars’. To love in the abstract is, according to Blake, the strategy of a ‘scoundrel’. And I reckon for example that we need to love old Margery Kempe in her minute particulars if we are to learn from her. Yes she was a beetling fuss body of a woman – but still loveable for all of her hysterical bawling at the foot of several crosses which did little good to her neighbours. Also I think we need to see her visions in proper context. She was human like you and I – they didn’t come in blinding flashes beamed into her consciousness by a divine laser beam. I’ll bet my life on it – and eat my hat if I’m wrong (never mind taking it off) – that her vision of the nativity referred to last time took place at a service of the Christmas Liturgy. Although she was literate herself –as was Julian of Norwich – she still operated in the context of a pre-literate liturgical and symbolic Christianity. Participating n the Christmas Liturgy gave her the opportunity to identify imaginatively with the nativity story ad hits produced her vision. And it’s a charming vision which reveals her very human egotism in a way that certainly makes me want to giggle, not at her but with her (because I am also an imperfect person much prone to egotism. We know that Margery sought out Julian of Norwich for advice – but we have no recode of the full conversation between them (it was private).However, I wish I’d been a fly on the wall when the more mature and far more grounded Mother Julian gently lead Margery to the judgement of the light within her. ‘Sin is Behovely; But All Shall Be Well’

Hindu Vedanta and Christian Mysticism

Another small error (in my view) that some of the exponents of the ‘Perennial Philosophy’ of mysticism in the early twentieth century were prone to was to see Hindu Vedanta as the highest form of religion to which all other traditions should aspire - more of a weakness in Huxley than in Evelyn Underhill I should think). 'Vedanta’ is the tradition of scholarly and contemplative mediation upon the ‘Vedas’ – the four scriptures that all Hindus consider as revelation). There had been some charismatic Hindu missionaries to the West in the Late ninetieth century – Swami Vivekananda, Sri Ramakrishna etc who had greatly impressed souls hungry for a more spiritual religion. Good for them but for starters, their representation of the Hindu tradition at its highest and most mystical was partial and partisan. Yes there is an influential school known as Advaiyta (non-dual) Vedanta that posits that behind the world of appearances and of multiplicity there is actually only one divine, eternal, changeless, and impersonal being – and the goal of spiritual liberation for us to wake up and realise our identity with the godhead (‘tat tvam asi’ – thou art that). I think this is best described as ‘monism’ rather than as ‘pantheism’ - this does not suggest that all is divine but rather that behind the appearance/illusion of All there is the Reality of one Divinity).

However the most influential scholarly mystical school of Hinduism – ‘Vishistiadvaiyta (difference within no-duality Vedanta) teaches something a lot closer to Christian mysticism; namely that there is a seed of God within all - but we are never identical to the fullness of God (whom they conceive of as being personal and loving) as such and our liberation comes through drawing into ever closer personal communion with God. This school could be labelled as a type of pan –en – theism – different from pantheism in that it teaches that God is in all rather than identifying God as All.

And ‘panentheism ‘seems a perfectly orthodox way of speaking about the tradition of the Christian mystics – although I’d make one proviso here; in my view we can best think about the God that is imminent in all as the ‘seed of light’ and not the fullness of light. I say this not because I am a killjoy who wants to prevent people from accessing their full human potential – but rather because I am speaking ‘experimentally’ (‘What canst thou say?) in trying to be realistic about human nature and giving proper honour to God in transcendence too.

There is one final school of Vedanta – Dvayita (dualist) Vedanta – which posits an absolute difference between human beings and God, and the need for divine grace to save us, and the possibility of eternal separation from God for some; but this is a minority school and was probably influenced by the Christian missions to India originally.

Zen Buddhism and Christian Mysticism

Yes I’m all for proper and respectful dialogue between Christians and people of good will for other faiths. I have read books where Zen Buddhism rather than Vedanta is held up as the essence of all religions - this was a view in vogue after World War 2 (and I’ve stated my profound reservations about this notion in my previous post). I know Erich Fromm – the Marxist Humanist, Zen Buddhist, Freudian psychoanalyst (that’s a bit of a mouthful, isn’t it?) wrote some really compassionate and intelligent books about how human beings could create a more just and more humane society. He was a fine man but he got it a bit wrong, in my view About Marxism and about Christian mysticism and Zen. IN his ‘To Have or To Be’ – a classic of Humanist protest against impersonal; capitalism – he quotes Meister Eckhart-

I* say God is Nothing. I do not say that God is something very slight – I say that God is No-thing. Therefore I pray God to rid me of god.*

Fromm sees Eckhart as talking pure Zen here but without having the cultural props to speak it with clarity. I think Fromm was very wrong. As I’ve said – the idea of God as ‘No-thing’ in Eckhart concerns idolatry. Of course we need to think about God in terms of our own experience – because we are human – but we must always be careful to understand that God actually transcends our ordinary experience; God is more just, more loving, and friendlier than anything can imagine from our limited human experience. And I note that Eckhart implies this very point by saying that ‘I do not say [suggest] that God is something very slight’. ‘Praying God to rid me of god’ is not, in my view, Eckhart’s prayer for help because he wants to stop being dependent on notions of a personal God (how can you ask an impersonal god for help?); rather it is his prayer that he should not be tempted to get in a muddle by identifying God with limited human conceptions of what ‘personal’ means’.

Let me look at Jesus’ word about God as Father again in a little more detail:

Jesus addressed God as ‘Abba’ and taught us to do likewise. ‘Abba’ is just a pattern of sound – it is what it signifies that is important. It signifies relationship at its most personal and most intimate –for ‘Abba’ was a child’s address to its ‘Dada’ (and actually it is so intimate that Dada and Mamma are contained in the same term).

Jesus told us to ‘Call no man on earth Father. For you have one Father and he is in Heaven and all men are brothers’. I know this saying is sometimes used by sectarian Protestants in anti –Catholic polemics regarding proper ways of addressing priests. But this 'ner ner ne ner ner 'type of point scoring misses the point entirely - in my view; calling no man on earth Father is like ‘Praying God to rid me of god’. What were earthly father like at this time? Well they operated within a strong patriarchal family unit with its sense of insider group honour, its tendency toward the violence of family feuding and honour killings etc. What are earthly fathers like today? Well it depends on the individual and the cultural and/or sub cultural context – but they are never perfect and all embracing like God. And we have to transcend the limited human model of fatherhood – based on our own differing experiences of our human fathers – to arrive eat nay understanding of God as Father, God is our Father in the sense that all are brothers and sisters – God is not for sect or party.

Jesus told us that if ‘you who are evil know how to give your children what is good for them, how much more will you heavenly Father give you good things’. I can’t read New Testament Greek so I am unsure of the force of the word ‘evil’ here. But I do know that it cannot refer to human depravity because we who are ‘evil’ still know how to give our children good things – we still have the seed of light in us which is a pointer to the fullness of light in God who wants to give the fullness of good things to us.

Again we must ‘pray for God to rid us of god’. We have a lesson from our Protestant history here. Martin Luther was a great prophet of religious liberty and a true hero; but he ended up like a Sampson shorn by his own mistaken millennial hopes. When these turned sour he turned his anger on the Peasants and the Jews and the Catholics with terrible and tragic consequences. Luther once wrote the following

This is the height of faith; to believe that God who condemns so many and saves so few is merciful; that He is just who at this own pleasure, has made us necessarily doomed to damnation, so that He seems to delight in the torture of the wretched and be more deserving of hate than love. IF by any reason I could conceive how God, who shows so much anger and harshness, could be merciful and just there would be no need of faith

The early Luther had loved the writings of Eckhart and the Theologica Germanica – it is a part of all of our tragedy as fellow Protestants that he could never quite bring himself to pray God to rid him of god in my view.

The Wikipedia Article on the Quakers

I’ve just looked at the Wikipedia article of the Quakers – and it’s very good in parts but needs working on. I note -

In 1650, George Fox, was brought before magistrates Gervase Bennet and Nathaniel Barton on a charge of blasphemy. According to Fox’s autobiography, it was Bennet “who was the first that called us Quakers, because I bade them tremble at the word of the Lord”,[9] It is thought that Fox was referring to Isaiah 66:2[10] or Ezra 9:4[11]. Therefore, the name Quaker was began as a way of ridiculing Fox’s admonition, but has now became widely accepted, even being used by some Quakers themselves.[12]

This confirms what Andrew said in an earler post and is well sourced ni the foontoes to the article.

I also note the following -

Quakers were officially persecuted in England under the Quaker Act (1662) and the Conventicle Act 1664. This was relaxed after the Declaration of Indulgence (1687-1688) and stopped under the Act of Toleration 1689.
Some Quakers escaped to America. Some also experienced persecution there (e.g., the Boston martyrs were hanged in Massachusetts Bay colony), but they were tolerated in Rhode Island (with 36 of the governors for the first 100 years being Quakers), West Jersey and Pennsylvania (which was set up by affluent Quaker William Penn in 1682 as a state run under Quaker principles). Quakerism spread across the eastern seaboard. Penn signed a peace treaty with Tammany, leader of the Delaware tribe,[13] and other treaties between Quakers and native Americans followed. Penn’s Treaty was never violated.[14]

This confirms some of the things I’ve been saying in my posts. To continue -

Despite the survival of strong patriarchal elements, Friends believed in the spiritual equality of women, who were allowed to take a far more active role than had ordinarily existed before the emergence of radical civil war sects.[15] However after the Restoration of 1660, Quakers became unwilling to defend women when they adopted tactics such as disrupting services. Women’s meetings were organized to involve women in modest, feminine pursuits, and Quaker men excluded them from church public concerns with which they had some powers and responsibilities, such as allocating poor relief and in ensuring that Quaker marriages could not be attacked as immoral. Women were treated as severely as men by the authorities.[15]

This is interesting – the Quakers became patriarchal in response to persecution – yes it makes sense and sheds even more light on Maggie Fell’s brave matriarchal stand against Friends who had become mangled in their minds. (I think the egalitarianism of the early Friends can be traced sociologically to the fact that they came largely from land working stock. And in farming communities’ men and women had to share the tasks of working in the e fields - so egalitarianism was no great issue 0 it just grew out of experience. I also sense that one of the reasons why Quakers for a time became more patriarchal was because they moved up the social scale. Despite the intolerance they were subjected to for their beliefs, they earned respect for their honesty and therefore many became successful business people and merchants. A rather unkind Royalist song from the time comments on this –

The Quaker who before
Did rant and did roar
Full thrifty has become

With respectability, middle class mores crept in – and the middle classes at his time were strongly in favour of separate spheres for men and women (because middle class women were confined to the home rather than equal partners labouring in the fields with their men folk).

To continue with the Wiki article –

During the 18th century, Quakers entered the quietist phase: more inward looking and less active in converting others. Marrying outside the Society became outlawed. Numbers of Friends dwindled, eg dropping to 19,800 in England and Wales by 1800 [8] (0.21% of population[8]), and 13,859 by 1860.[8] (0.07% of population[8]). The formal name “Religious Society of Friends”, dates from the 18th century and is still in use. The term Religious Society of Friends, harks back to the “Friends of the Truth”.

Again this confirms what I thought. However there is one part of the article that in believe is mistaken – and leads me to suspect that it has been largely written by an American Evangelical Friend who does not fully understand the tradition for the earl Friends. This is what the part that in find controversial says -

Early Quakers felt that salvation was possible only through Christ, and therefore did not tolerate other religions…Early Friends attempted to convert Muslims to Christianity, for example Fox’s open letter, To the Turk[79] in which he encourages all to turn to Christ as the only path to salvation. Mary Fisher attempted to convert the Muslim Mehmed IV (the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire) in 1658.

I haven’t read George Fox’s letter to the Turk. Can this idea of religious intolerance be squared with the legacy of the man who bade us to be ‘Valiant for Truth’ but ‘walk cheerfully over the world answering that of God in everyone’? Well in need to get round to reading the letter – the Wiki article only cites as its source for this a book entitled ‘How the Quakers invented America’ (which sounds a bit over the top as a title) For the moment I will assume that Fox’s 'Open Letter to the Turk’ comes from the millennial period of Quakerism during Cromwell’s Republic when the saints ruled in Parilamanet. Now Fox at this time also enquired at one point as to why the English army – God’s Army – had not yet sacked and taken Rome. (I saw a heated exchange over this well attested detail in a lecture given by the Marxist historian Christopher Hill on the Quakers and the English Revolution. Heel was by them a sagely old man, and another equally old and sagely Quaker got up and went into verbal fisticuffs with Hill about his contention that Fox was not always a pacifist; the exchange did little credit to either party in my view. Unlike Luther Fox was flexible enough to chug track when the millennium foaled to come.

Mary Fisher mentioned in connection with Quaker intolerance in the Wiki article was a young woman of little learning from Yorkshire who obeyed the leadings of the Light within her to go speak to the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. He received her with great courtesy and she was not harmed (and this led some Quakers to reflect that the Turks treated them better than their fellow Christians). Mary went before the Sultan to answer the light in him. He asked her what she thought of the Prophet Mohamed at some point in the interview. She replied that she knew nothing of Mohamed but if had spoken anything from the Light he had spoken true as far as she was concerned; and the Sultan replied that she had spoken well and truthfully.

Robert Barclay the early Quaker egg head and apologist had this to say about the form of Quakerism as a sign of the true Catholic Church –

‘… of which Church we freely acknowledge there can be no salvation: because under this church…are comprehended all, and as many, of whatsoever nation, kindred, tongue, or people they be, though outwardly strangers, and remote from those who profess Christ and Christianity in words, and have the benefit of the Scriptures, as become obedient to the holy light, and testimony of God in their hearts… There may be members therefore of this Catholic church both amongst heathens, Turks, Jews, and all the several sorts of Christians, men and women of integrity and simplicity of heart, who… are by the secret touches of this holy light in their souls enlivened and quickened, thereby secretly united to God, and therefore become true members of this Catholic church
(Robert Barclay 1678)

As Blake wrote -

And all must love the human form
NI heathen Turk or Jew
For where mercy, love and pity dwell
There God is dwelling too

(William Blake – The Divine Image from Songs of Innocence)

The Quaker ballad and hymn writer Sydney Cater took up this theme in his ‘Ballad of George Fox’ -
There’s a light that is shining in the heart of a man
There’s a light that’s been shining since the world first began
There’s a light that is shining in the Turk and the Jew
There’s a light that is shining Friend in me and in you

Old leather breeches, shaggy, shaggy locks
Old leather breeches, shaggy, shaggy locks
With your old leather breeches, and your shaggy, shaggy locks
You are pulling down the pillars of the world George Fox

May the seed Christ reign (indulge me one last time!)

Dick

[Sobornost]

Hi Sass – just a brief word. I have my own eccentric take on Christina mysticism – and that’s mainly comes from begin acquainted with a few so called practitioners who thought they had reached some sort of unitive state and turned into big time ego trippers; you’ve not yet met any of these tricky customers I would think – so I was just trying to communicate some of the pitfalls to you and give a balanced take on the tradition.

But I hope that my too my long – as ever – last post left in you in good heart and in good courage. The post was well meant – and I also have a wider audience in mind when I do posts apart from the person I am specifically speaking to. And I reckon a lot of people who read threads here are probably bewildered by the very idea of religious dialogue and need some sort of guidelines and reassurance – so I tried to give these by going into detail about the ‘grey scale’ spectrum issues.

Of course you must not feel pressured into doing a post on the great Evelyn Underhill. I’m a real pest in suggesting this; and you are not the first I’ve done this to unthinkingly. When I taught undergraduates I had to mark so many essays each month and summarise complex arguments on scripts that it comes as second nature to me. But it’s no great talent unless the reader finds it useful.

I’ll do a post on the dear old Church of England next – and look forward to hearing from you again soon – and from anyone else who is reading this thread (it’s a shame that we haven’t heard from Andrew for a bit – I don’t think he realises how grateful I am that he asked searching questions to focus my research).

All the best sister

Dick

[sass]

Hi. Not at all, you are exactly right when you say some so-called mystics are just tripping on themselves. However, this can only happen if we think WE did something…Which is in conflict to the whole practice! Anyway…Underhill. I don’t know how qualified I am to do anything comprehensive on her. I’ve read the book I mentioned, considered her masterpiece and a few essays. From what I gather, she herself was not a mystic! She was wicked smart but in the end, her intellect got in the way of her experience…She just couldn’t get past her need to “understand”. I fear this for myself. Anyway, she approached the subject of mysticism in a more biographical way, explaining the processes through the eyes and words of the mystic but not her own. Anyway, I do have more to say, just don’t have time this weekend. I just got home from road race (5K) and I’m off the do a show with my band…I’m a busy gal!

[Sobornost]

I’ve been thinking on a few things sister Sass -

I think of Mother Julian. She had a close shave with death when young and had a near death experience that she recollected and pondered for the rest of her life. However, I’ve not found anything much about unitative states and ego loss in her writings. Her focus is extraverted and consonant with her vocation as a spiritual director to all types of Christians – from the simple peasant to the Margery Kempe’s of this world. Her concern is to understand how the sin and suffering that afflict us all fit into the scheme of God’s redemptive love – and all of the time her focus is on all of her fellow Christians and widens to encompass a truly Catholic vision of ‘All’ beyond the boundaries of doctrine. And it is out of this concern for All that her convincement that ‘All Shall Be Well’ is grounded. She was wondrous smart too – the first woman of letters in the English Language –which took confidence and genuine creativity (she created her own distinctive and earthy language to speak about and reflect on her experiences with). And thinking of Julian makes me reflect that any ‘mysticism’ has to be rooted in a concern for our neighbours – and in a rich and compassionate concern which has to be centred in some development of empathic understanding: as the Christian Humanist motto states – ‘I am a human being, and therefore nothing human is alien to me’.

I think also of ‘the labourer in the fields and the housewife sweeping her room, the faithful tradesmen who have left few memorials’. My view is that a mystic is not a special sort of person – but rather every person is a special sort of mystic. Any of the many vocations in life - spiritual and workday - has its traps and pitfalls. Yes the intellect can be mask of the ego – but so can the emotions, an undisciplined imagination, or just plain ambition in any of its forms (including the ambition to let God be all and self be nothing). We are an odd mix we humans; playing a game of hide and seek with our egos. And this is why I love the Christian Humanist traditions of the service of Dame Folly. The Christina Humanist scholars always saw little short and snub nosed Socrates as a prefiguration in ancient culture of the holy folly spoken of by St Paul. Socrates said, ‘the unexamined life is not worth living’ (which someone on this site takes as their motto). He also is reported to have said ‘The more I know, the more I know I don’t know’ – and it is only for this reason that Socrates was reputed wise. And finally he lived a life informed by the question posed in the Oracle of Delphi – ‘Know Thyself’. I those days these words suggested something like ‘Know the limits of your knowledge, and the limits of your understanding’. So we have reason to be merry at our own folly and can be secure in knowing that we are loved in spite of our innate daftness (if we chose to be).

As for old Sobornost – I’ve had a week of quite a lot of anxiety and waiting around; and it has helped to distract myself by doing some writing. I was invited to do so, so I’ve tried my best. There have been a number of misconceptions about the Quakers to clear up – people posting at the beginning of this thread only had very partial information, and I’ve tried my best to answer the questions that have been posed. I’ve also had to attempt to make distinctions between Quakerism and different forms of Pantheism because this issue has cropped up on other threads here and I think it is even a source of confusion for some non-evangelical movement within Quakerism today although the Evangelical Friends seem to have their own set of confusions because they too find it difficult to stand apart from their own particular story)

I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I will keep focused now and finish this thread with some other posts – so that there is some comprehensive information on the Quakers here at EU (because there have been a number of enquiries). I will do a header for each post saying what it is about – so interested people can skip the ones that they think may not speak to them. I’ll keep on track until I’ve finished – which should not take more than a week and a half. Then as my final post I will say why I am actually an Anglican. And this will lead me back to the work I need to complete over at Ecclesiology about Universalism and the Church of England.

We have a cunning plan? Glad to hear you are in a band – music is noe of the very good thigns in life – and you’ve clearly got a rich life outside of the sometimes unsympathetic Church community (of which I am very glad – so enjoy!!!).

All the best

Dick

[Username1]

Hi Dick

Since I was partly responsible for hauling you out of your temporary quietus to give us the benefit of some of your knowledge of Quakerism, I hope you and Sass will forgive me for sticking my oar in.

I haven’t read every word on this thread (I’m good at speed-reading, but not *that *good ), but there is some very interesting and enlightening stuff here. But I was particularly struck by this comment of yours:

One of the things I’m trying to do here is encourage people like yourself to know that you are not inventing a new religion with your UR beliefs – on the contrary you have friends and lovers of God who speak to you across the ages who have lived beautiful and courageous lives and have left a fine legacy, and some of whom died for theory faith with courage and without resentment.

Beatifully put, Dick. And if you don’t mind the shameless sycophancy, may I just say that I for one very much appreciate what I’ve learnt from you, on UR and other themes. Please keep up the good work.

And many very happy returns of the day, old chap. 197 eh? You must have led a very healthy life!

Take care

Johnny

PS William Blake and mysticism. A subject I would certainly like to explore further soon.

[corpselight]

Hi Dick

Since I was partly responsible for hauling you out of your temporary quietus to give us the benefit of some of your knowledge of Quakerism, I hope you and Sass will forgive me for sticking my oar in.

I haven’t read every word on this thread (I’m good at speed-reading, but not *that *good ), but there is some very interesting and enlightening stuff here. But I was particularly struck by this comment of yours:

One of the things I’m trying to do here is encourage people like yourself to know that you are not inventing a new religion with your UR beliefs – on the contrary you have friends and lovers of God who speak to you across the ages who have lived beautiful and courageous lives and have left a fine legacy, and some of whom died for theory faith with courage and without resentment.

Beatifully put, Dick. And if you don’t mind the shameless sycophancy, may I just say that I for one very much appreciate what I’ve learnt from you, on UR and other themes. Please keep up the good work.

And many very happy returns of the day, old chap. 197 eh? You must have led a very healthy life!

Take care

Johnny

PS William Blake and mysticism. A subject I would certainly like to explore further soon.

i can only echo this sentiment. Dick, you are a treasure!
but you said to me it was only 92? my guess of 25 was a bit off then…
as i’ve seen it put recently, i hope you enjoy your next spin round the sun!
it’s so freeing to know that we have brothers and sisters who came before us, a great cloud of witnesses, whose legacy was love, quietly given in the background, the subversive work of God’s Spirit working both with and against our tendencies, pruning us and raising us up as a species into the Kingdom over which He will rule with joy.

[sass]

That sounds great Dick, please do continue posting on the Quakers until you feel you’ve done the subject justice…I’ll be reading! I could go in a million directions concerning mysticism, but maybe it would be better to keep true as much as possible to the purpose of the thread as stated. Then, maybe we can go on about mysticism on it’s own thread. Anyway, the music. Actually there is a radio station in Wales called “Mountain FM”, that we (In2theSon) get airplay on. Being in the States and knowing we’re being hear overthere just tickles me!

@Johnny. No problem brother, jump in anytime. I enjoy reading your posts, I like the way you handle yourself!

[Sobornost]

Bless you Sass - and I’ve ordered a copy of Margery Kempe just to make sure I’ve got everything right about the old girl.

All the best

Dick