| ||
|
Two writers in two countries, published 64 years apart....
Lamorna Ash.
Sometimes, as I sat in the outer ring of chairs during my silent Sundays at the Muswell Hill meeting [London; link added], I wished I could have seen Quakerism as it was in its beginning: an exuberant, fiercely heterodox expression of the Christian faith. [Don't Forget We're Here Forever: A New Generation's Search for Religion (2025), page 136.]
In line with the secularisation-theory sociologist Steve Bruce, Dandelion notes how liberal forms of British Christianity are contributing to their ‘own demise through diffuse belief systems, poor belief transmission and the lack of seriousness’, all of which discourages conversion. He includes Quakerism among this trend. And while Quakerism might function as a gateway drug to ‘religious seriousness’ for the 47 per cent who come from ‘no immediately prior religious affiliation’, it is often the features which first draw the non-religious to Quaker meetings—a laxity and neutrality in the place of dogma and formality—which then sends them off to other denominations, looking for services with a more robust structure, elders and leaders who might help teach them how to believe. [Page 128.]
The year reached its end, and I was still attending St Luke’s [West Holloway, London, link added] any Sunday my hangover did not intern me to bed. I learnt the order of ceremonies. Each time I felt something unlock within me as I admitted my guilt for whomever I had harmed that week alongside everyone else in the congregation, after which the associate priest, Rev. Martin Wroe, would say, ‘Whatever it is, whatever it was, whatever it will be, God forgives you. Forgive yourselves, forgive each other,’ and then offer us the sign of the Cross. Not every time, but most times, after taking communion I felt a further unlocking, even a coming together of the disparate parts of my life. [Page 280.]
Albert Fowler.
Members of the Society of Friends are increasingly disturbed by the comment that Quaker Meeting is a fine place for seeking, but one must go elsewhere if one’s object is finding. [Two Trends in Modern Quaker Thought: A Statement of Belief (1961), page 12.]
Much has been made of the argument that the universal variety of Quaker belief is the growing edge of the Society of Friends. Large numbers of convinced Friends have come in through this door. That the universal may also be the dying edge of the Society is seldom mentioned, but many would-be Friends turn away when they find the Christian ties of a Meeting no longer binding and the drift toward what John McCandless calls practical atheism running strong. Paul Lacey tells of people he has talked with who have found the Society of Friends a kind of incubator where they can develop just enough to realize that the real conditions of life and worship lie outside it. Many of these people, having looked to the Quaker Meeting as a source of inspiration and deepened faith, pass beyond it to find fuller meaning elsewhere. [Page 19.]
I first heard about Lamorna Ash in the pages of The Guardian. The opening teaser for Ash's edited excerpt in The Guardian, "Could I become a Christian in a year?", was irresistible:
After two friends unexpectedly converted, Lamorna Ash discovered a new generation of young people turning to faith. As she investigated the phenomenon, one of her first steps was to spend a week on a working retreat on Iona. And then something strange happened…
This intro is a bit misleading. In just about all of her fourteen chapters plus prologue, introduction, conclusion, and epilogue, strange things are happening every few pages, so the intriguing part of the teaser is not the "something strange" dot dot dot, but "a new generation of young people turning to faith." This is not your typical glib summary of contemporary church life in Britain. In any case, the excerpt sold me: I had to buy the book. And, most likely, so should you.
Ash makes me think about what a conversation between Francis Spufford and Flannery O'Connor might be like. Her survey of Christianity in the UK ranges from rigidity with a happy salesface, to bass-driven ecstasy, to personal histories of toxic power games, to encounters with mysticism ancient and modern, to utter serenity, and everything in between. Her 60 interviewees have variously been converted, disillusioned, reconverted, with all levels of investment in making—or not making—their personal experiences and confessions congruent with the institution they're in at the moment. She candidly reports how this research and writing project is affecting her own life, even as she awaits a diagnosis on her mother's symptoms that suggest dementia may be coming.
She is not simply reporting on what Christianity looks like to some of her Generation Z contemporaries. She's also wrestling with Christianity's own primitive and sometimes compelling strangeness, and its multifaceted persistence. She thinks about the difference between the Nicene theologians wrestling so deeply with the nature of Christ, and those Christian thinkers of our own era who can't get beyond sex. And she wonders out loud about her own path. Should she remain an outside observer, or should she be open to crossing the line into conversion territory; and is she being influenced by what we, the readers, might think?
Lamorna Ash's paternal grandmother "was the last true Christian in our family. She went to an Anglican church every Sunday of her life, except for the few years she attended a Quaker meeting in Muswell Hill." For part of time of Ash's writing project, when she wasn't on one of her many research visits elsewhere, she attended that same meeting, which led to some very interesting comments about British Friends. I couldn't help remembering some of Albert Fowler's words from his 1961 pamphlet on Two Trends in Modern Quaker Thought, quoted above.
I don't want to press the parallels between Ash and Fowler too hard, because I know that many British Friends are already aware of contemporary liberal Quakerism's weaknesses as well as its strengths (and the same goes for Friends in the USA), and I personally know that some of them would certainly not fit into the "laxity and neutrality" description. Also, I'm not sure those early Friends were "fiercely heterodox" exactly, since Fox and others were arguing for a more faithfully biblical Christianity. "Fiercely nonconformist," maybe. Even so, I am grateful for the frank assessment from this clear-eyed young commentator who has seen Christian alternatives many Quakers would either not know about or perhaps shrink from with horror.
Lamorna Ash has a lot of credibility with me simply based on the homework she's done. (I'm sure she'd have a more fun way of putting it.) You already know she references Ben Pink Dandelion, who has, she suggests, "the best name in academia." She also knows one of my favorite contemporary British books on Christianity, Francis Spufford's Unapologetic. (My comments on his book are here.) Her other sources include Harold Bloom, Julian of Norwich, Gillian Rose, George Fox, Rosemary Moore, Thomas R. Kelly, Karl Rahner, William James, David Bebbington, Tanya Luhrmann, Krista Tippett and Eugene Peterson in conversation, Pope Francis, and two Augustines.
Yesterday's MAGA scandal of the day (or at least in the top five): According to the Washington Post, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security wants to be sure that no federal disaster relief money would go to agencies or nonprofit organizations that help undocumented immigrants.
Also among the top five: Chaos at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Mark Russ and Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre team up for a six-session online course: Whose Friends are we? Mark explains on his blog: "Emerging from my PhD research on Quaker theology and Whiteness, I’ve developed an online course for Woodbrooke reflecting on what it might mean for Quakers to be friends of God, Christ and each other in the 21st century." Mondays, October 13 to November 17. More details here.
Discipline and Punish: Kristin Du Mez assesses James Dobson's legacy.
Cherice Bock explains the background of the chapter she wrote with Catalina Morales Bahena for the new book Hungry for Hope: Letters to the Church from Young Adults, due to be published today. Their chapter is entitled, “Reclaiming ‘Enough’: Away from Scarcity Toward True Abundance.” For more on the book, visit hungryforhopebook.com.
Abolitionism and compromise, a Jay family/Indiana Yearly Meeting case study. (Thanks to Martin Kelley for the link.)
John Kinney at Spokane Friends, speaking on contemplative prayer: "If we don't get this right..."
Flaco Jiménez and Raul Malo, "Seguro Que Hell Yes," a video we sometimes used in class in Russia for its specific glimpses of USA culture. (And it's a song I can always recall to kill earworms.)
A clip from Flaco's memorial service. From puroconjunto210's caption on YouTube: "Flaco Jiménez, conjunto legend passed away July 31, 2025. A memorial service was held in San Antonio at the Carver Community center. Artists included Santiago Garza, David Lee Garza, Dwayne Verheyden, Max Baca, and Josh Baca all played their hearts out celebrating his Life!"
No comments:
Post a Comment