The Convocation Unscripted S1E3. Screenshot from source. Top: Robert Jones, Diana Butler Bass. Bottom: Kristin Du Mez, Jemar Tisby.
Last week, in part one, I was thinking about how to pray honestly when considering the "butcher's bench" of history and the persistence of sin—by which I mostly mean the ways we mistreat each other and Creation generally.
Concerning that persistence, I linked to Kristin Du Mez's blog post in which she mentioned Tolkien's "long defeat" as quoted by one of the ministers at her church in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She went on say how important it is, in our service on behalf of justice and truth, not to grow dependent on victorious outcomes.
Last week Du Mez published another post, "Peace where there is no peace," with what struck me as a case study for not depending on victorious outcomes—and the case was one which I immediately identified with. Here's a clue from the title of the podcast episode embedded in her post: "When Your Religion Cancels You."
(The podcast, The Convocation Unscripted, features conversations among three historians and one sociologist, all of whom "write about religion and its intersection with culture, history, and politics in America"—Diana Butler Bass, Kristin Du Mez, Robert P. Jones, and Jemar Tisby.)
Kristen Du Mez's denomination, the Christian Reformed Church, is tightening up its discipline regarding churches (and possibly faculty members of its associated educational institutions, such as Du Mez's Calvin University) who dissent from the church's "confessional" teachings on sexuality and marriage. For a brief and seemingly evenhanded summary of the situation, see this Religion News Service article.
Going back to Du Mez's newer post, written shortly before the Synod meeting described in the RNS article:
When your Religion Cancels You.
That was the topic selected for our second podcast episode over at The Convocation: Unscripted. Little did my fellow podcasters know, that’s a sensitive topic for me this week. As I write, my denomination is dictating the terms that will require my home church and many others to leave the denomination over a new interpretation of what is now deemed “confessional,” one that requires condemnation of same-sex relationships.
In terms of getting “cancelled,” my case isn’t like many others’ in that I’m staying with my congregation. We’re all leaving together, along with many other congregations in the US and Canada. Still, it’s a lot to process.
I shared just a bit here [in the podcast], and you can hear Robby, Jemar, and Diana talk about their own experiences leaving the faith communities they once called home. I’m guessing that many of you may find points of connection.
So, dear Friends ... when did "our religion" cancel us? Here's the blog post from 2017 that sums up the story from my personal point of view—our involuntary separation from a body of believers that I loved and appreciated, Northwest Yearly Meeting. One similarity to the process being experienced by the Christian Reformed Church and ours, is the length of time the process of enforcement is taking. In each case, it feels like an experience of the long defeat. Each time our little band of exiles meets, we do get a "some glimpse of final victory," but my heart aches for what might have been.
I'm going to stop here. I don't want to reduce the amount of time you might spend checking some of the links and videos above, particularly the Kristin Du Mez post.
Kent Hendricks: Observations on patterns of division and departure in the Christian Reformed Church. It makes for an interesting comparison with what we experienced in Northwest Yearly Meeting.
Still more sobering reading, this time on Russia and Ukraine. Both of the next two items are from the Meduza service:
First, Dmitry Kartsev interviews Jonathan Littell, author of the book An Inconvenient Place (with photographer Antoine d'Agata), reckoning with Nazi and Russian atrocities in Ukraine "from Babi Yar to Bucha." The book is available in French and Russian now, and an English-language edition is scheduled for publication in September.
Second, an interview (Russian original; machine-translated English) with Tatiana Kasatkina, wife of imprisoned human rights activist Oleg Orlov, former co-chair of the now-liquidated Memorial organization.
The Internet Archive (on which I depend constantly!) is forced to delete half a million books from its online library; 19,000 supporters write an open letter to publishers.
Yearly Meeting: a definition (from quakerinfo.org) Yearly Meeting refers to a larger body of Friends, consisting of monthly meetings in a general geographic area connected with the same branch of Friends. This body holds decision making sessions annually. The term "yearly meeting" may refer to the annual sessions, to the body of members, or to the organizational entity that serves the body of members. For most purposes, a yearly meeting is as high as Quaker organizational structure goes. Each of the 30+ yearly meetings in the U.S. has its own Faith and Practice, and there is no higher authority in the structure of the Religious Society of Friends, although yearly meetings network with each other through branch associations and other Friends organizations. [Also see wikipedia's definition.]
Eugene Friends Church and other Friends participating in the formation of Sierra-Cascades Yearly Meeting of Friends are considering some Big Questions. We were in Medford, Oregon, last Sunday, so we missed the Eugene Friends Church worship service in which people contributed their answers to the first question right during worship.
Here for easy reference are the two questions:
Why are we joining together instead of going our separate ways? What holds Sierra-Cascades Yearly Meeting together? (Examples: Common beliefs/theology? Relationships? Friends' testimonies? Other?)
How should we make decisions that affect the whole of SCYMF? (Examples: refer all decisions to the yearly meeting as a whole? Choose reps to make some or all decisions? Let a specified group make urgent decisions? Other?)
I love the idea of inviting responses to these questions during worship. It is a wonderful way of expressing the importance of covenant and community -- and of transparent process. Has anyone else done something similar?
Exercises like this are also a good opportunity to reconsider the whole concept of a "yearly meeting" in an era where its usefulness is no longer taken for granted.
A couple of years ago, Micah Bales asked, "Is it Time to Get Rid of Yearly Meetings? " (My response: "Yearly meetings, myth and reality.") Just last summer, I had another long discussion about these themes with some Friends with ties to both Northwest and North Pacific yearly meetings. One Friend pointed out two important trends:
First, yearly meetings may be evolving from a model based on geography and shared history, to a model based more on shared theology or ideology. This trend goes back nearly two centuries, if not longer.
Second, a crucial function of those wider bodies -- mutual accountability and particularly the role and preparation of elders -- is weakening in the old system and is being at least partially replaced by more informal processes and by new institutions such as the School of the Spirit.
I don't want to pour cold water on any sorts of experimentation that might help renew Friends discipleship and provide love and accountability for local Quaker meetings and churches. But I still love the old concentric model that I described in the "myth and reality" post. Maybe one reason it seems less attractive is because we've just taken it for granted rather than deliberately investing our enthusiasm and commitment.
In some cases, maybe we've over-bureaucratized yearly meetings and routinized business rather than expecting our gatherings to serve as the forum where we ask each other whether Truth is prospering in each of our local settings, and how we need to coordinate with each other to meet the needs in places where our testimonies are being challenged. As we consider a world full of spiritual, social, and economic bondage, are we too busy maintaining our systems to consider these challenges creatively? Can we make room for new partnerships between the old yearly meeting-as-forum and new initiatives? Two generations ago, such partnerships included the New Call to Peacemaking and Right Sharing of World Resources. What are today's experiments in partnership?
I have heard of a couple of yearly meetings that have experimented with a radically simplified agenda -- if only for one annual session. How did it go? I was present for one such experiment, a carefully planned session of Iowa Yearly Meeting FUM at which most routine business was set aside to consider whether to remain in Friends United Meeting. This example was a response to a specific crisis, but maybe at another time and place, the sheer urgency of focusing on the needs of people who have never heard of us would be "crisis" enough.
The Iowa example brings up another huge problem: local Friends have come to associate "yearly meeting" (the annual gathering as well as the ongoing structure) with conflict and church politics. I've heard this complaint in many places. We might be too busy arguing instead of figuring out together how to build our prophetic and healing presence in the world. We desperately need to restore the ability to extract value from conflicts and diversity instead of hiding or suppressing them.
We also need to learn how to deal with those among us who actually (perhaps subconsciously) love conflict and are too fond of being partisan heroes.
I'm not ready to give up on the yearly meeting as an institution worth preserving and re-energizing. The simplicity of the concentric structure has a huge advantage, as long as its processes are prayer-driven and transparent. A yearly meeting serves as a clear and constant and public access point into the web of relationships that is the Quaker family beyond the local church.
Ideological and programmatic associations may come and go; they may focus on specific initiatives; often, they may be the long shadows of gifted individuals. In the meantime, the yearly meeting can keep plodding along, not seeking to out-dazzle its partners, but cherishing relationships, channeling resources, and providing mutual accountability for those initiatives, and always asking, does Truth prosper?
My responses to the "big questions" are based on my love for this traditional concentric organization of the Friends church. The church is nothing more or less than the people who have -- now and throughout history -- gathered around Jesus, learning what it means to live with him at the center, and helping each other to live that way, including its ethical consequences. This learning and mutual support, and our desire to make this kind of community accessible to others who would be blessed as we have been, are the elements that connect us. No matter how far beyond the local church we go on the organizational chart, God remains at the center.
When we make decisions that affect the individuals, and (in the next level of connection) our member churches and meetings, those decisions ought to be made by people we can trust and hold accountable, and to whom we've granted authority to hold us accountable for our commitments. We choose these people based on the spiritual gifts we see in them, and on our experience of their trustworthiness, not on their social status. I like the way Eugene Friends are instructed concerning decision-making at meetings for business: everyone may attend and contribute, but the presiding clerk looks to members and active attenders in discerning when a decision has been reached.
Our leaders and representatives can make decisions on our behalf when necessary, but basic decisions on faith and practice should, sooner or later, be ratified by all committed participants in the meeting or yearly meeting. And the default question remains, "What does God want to say and do through us?"
Street-naming as political theatre: In Washington, DC, local politicians are considering renaming a section of Wisconsin Avenue -- the section in front of the Russian embassy -- Boris Nemtsov Plaza in honor of the assassinated opposition leader. The desire to embarrass is blatant and (to my mind) just plain stupid. However, instead of making its predictable objections, the Russian foreign ministry could have neutralized all that scheming by simply deciding to treat the whole thing positively: "Thank you for honoring our former cabinet member and vice premier, tragically cut down in his prime!"
Russia and America have spent the last 100 years as mirrors held up to one another, revealing in excruciating detail both the loftiness of our ambitions and our frequent failures to live up to them. Indeed, our almost ubiquitous failures to live up to them. Russia and America – and perhaps the west more broadly – have constructed their contemporary selves with clear and abiding reference to one another: the American way was American because it was the rejection of the Soviet way, and vice versa.
Sierra-Cascades Yearly Meeting of Friends approves its name.
When I arrived in the Pacific Northwest in 2000, I found myself in an extraordinary community of Quakers: Northwest Yearly Meeting of Friends Church. It seemed to be a marvelous association of churches: it was a humanely and intelligently evangelical Christian community with a warm, generous culture and a deep commitment to Quaker discipleship.
No doubt my joy at finding this beautiful community, after seven years of leadership in the (then) polarized atmosphere of Friends United Meeting, lulled me into a false sense of security. Of course, Northwest Yearly Meeting had its own ancient fissures and unhealed traumas. Its decision in 1926 to leave Friends United Meeting (at the time it was Oregon Yearly Meeting leaving the Five Years Meeting of Friends) was surrounded by conflict, echoes of which I could still detect in my first visit to Oregon eighty years later. Other tensions were newer. However, my own experiences over my seventeen years' connection with Northwest Yearly Meeting have mostly confirmed my first positive impressions.
If I had my way, the community would have been preserved and I would be continuing to serve it with uncomplicated devotion. But unity was not preserved. Reedwood Friends Church, where I'm a member (along with my dual membership in Moscow Meeting, Russia) is already no longer a member of the yearly meeting, and Eugene Friends Church, where I worship most Sundays, is on its way out.
I described the rupture from my point of view last February in this post. Toward the end, I tried to express a "silver lining" for the separated churches:
Churches that are already clear that their local practices cannot remain in alignment with the Yearly Meeting's Faith and Practice have now been invited to form their own new yearly meeting with help from a NWYM transition team ... and compile their own Faith and Practice. I dearly hope that, first, the churches that are unable to align with current NWYM Faith and Practice will in fact have the dedication and energy to form this new body in collaboration with that NWYM transition team. Second, I hope this new body is as committed to biblical authority and Quaker discipleship as NWYM wishes to be. The task of compiling a new Faith and Practice is a wonderful chance to restate core Friends insights for a jaded world. Third, I hope that this new yearly meeting will lavish love and care on its mother yearly meeting, rejecting resentment and cynicism in favor of an enduring hope for reconciliation.
Some of these wishes are already coming true. Not having had anything to do with these developments, having been in Russia most of the time since last summer, I can't provide on-the-spot reporting or take any personal credit, but what I've seen from a distance is encouraging.
The new yearly meeting that is emerging from these developments named itself Sierra-Cascades Yearly Meeting of Friends. The formal membership structure and entry process are still being defined, and it's by no means clear that all churches or individual Friends who might find themselves outside Northwest Yearly Meeting will become part of this new yearly meeting, or even when they might make that decision. This uncertainty has not kept the new yearly meeting from working toward clarity on its identity and discipline
Some of this progress is evident on its Web site, scymfriends.org. On a more journalistic level, there's background information on quakernews.com. After the founding sessions at George Fox University last summer, there was a general meeting last month at Eugene Friends Church in Oregon, and another is scheduled for February 2018. In the meantime, I've joined a task group that is working on recording and licensing policies to propose to Sierra-Cascades Friends.
Another piece of this work: at our last Eugene Friends Church monthly meeting, we were all invited to submit our thoughts on the following questions as a contribution toward the yearly meeting's development.
SCYMF "BIG ISSUES" -- SOME QUERIES
Why are we joining together instead of going our separate ways? What holds Sierra-Cascades Yearly Meeting together? (Examples: Common beliefs/theology? Relationships? Friends' testimonies? Other?)
How should we make decisions that affect the whole of SCYMF? (Examples: refer all decisions to the yearly meeting as a whole? Choose reps to make some or all decisions? Let a specified group make urgent decisions? Other?)
My fondest wish -- that Northwest Yearly Meeting would remain united -- did not come true. It was tempting to grieve that rupture indefinitely ... and, to be honest, the grief is not going away soon. However, it is a wonderful comfort to realize that nothing so far is blocking my existing friendships and actual collaborations with Friends in Northwest Yearly Meeting, and I plan to hold on to every relationship I possibly can. In the meantime, I look at developments in Sierra-Cascades Yearly Meeting of Friends with the attitude that Shane Claiborne expressed in his book, The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical.
... [W]e decided to stop complaining about the church we saw, and we set our hearts on becoming the church we dreamed of.
Psalms are crucial to understanding Christian practices of prayer because they are full of images, rich with detail about the relationship between the speaker and the persons, animals, and objects around her, including, of course, God. God is named, praised, and thanked, worshiped, feared, and railed against, not without images, but through and in them
For most of the last month, Judy and I have been on vacation -- first in Ottawa, Ontario, then in Raymond, Maine. We have spent many hours with relatives and friends who have shared our time here, and with books (and Judy has been painting and repairing windows, too).
We have spent hours walking to Raymond village and along nearby roads, and visiting the cemetery. But I confess that one of my favorite pursuits has been simply to stare at the lake, watching the ducks and loons play.
Elsewhere in the world, we are aware of the winds and rains -- and the political storms as well -- but we have been faithful to our friends' and supporters' strong advice to rest. Thank you!
Next week I might be checking in here a day or two late. We expect to arrive back in Elektrostal late on Thursday evening.
Reedwood Friends Church, Portland, Oregon -- our church -- has been a strong supporter of Northwest Yearly Meeting of Friends Church, contributing money and countless volunteers over the years. In a few hours, Reedwood will no longer be part of the yearly meeting.
The only public announcement I'm aware of is the following terse memo, which church members received nearly two weeks ago:
NWYM Board of Elders action.
On August 19, 2017 the NWYM Board of Elders approved a minute discontinuing Reedwood Friend Church's association with NWYM effective September 1, 2017, as authorized by NWYM Faith and Practice page 33: "In situations in which a ministry point or local church continues to deteriorate, remains ineffective or out of unity with NWYM Faith and Practice, the BoE, acting for the Yearly Meeting, may discontinue the church or the association of the church with Northwest Yearly Meeting." With this decision, the supervisory work of the Care Committee has ended.
Pastoral Changes
Effective September 1, 2017, Jade Souza and Martha Wood will complete their ministry at RFC. They both will receive severance packages covering the last four months of 2017. We commend them both for their care and concern for those attending RFC.
Phil McLain, Clerk
NWYM Board of Elders Local church Care Committee for Reedwood Friends Church
We have heard numerous (and clashing) private interpretations of the rifts within Reedwood and between the church and the yearly meeting, but no public explanation. As far as I can tell, this action involving Reedwood Friends has little or nothing to do with the upcoming departures of other Friends churches from the yearly meeting and the formation of Sierra-Cascades Yearly Meeting of Friends.
My Reedwood office (2001)
The Newberg Graphic, in a Web story dated today, counts Reedwood Friends as a part of the new yearly meeting, but I have not heard any word from Reedwood itself that this decision to join Sierra-Cascades has been made or even discussed.
After many years as a denominational bureaucrat, I suppose that nothing surprises me anymore when it comes to church fights, but I can't help wonder how anyone believes these fights and splits are consistent with the central question that every church governing body should be asking: "What does GOD want to say and do in the world through us?"
Friday update: We received a Reedwood community e-mail about an hour ago. I'm including the relevant text, without comment, below, just before the blues dessert.
One of the books I've been reading on my vacation has been A Song of Ascents: A Spiritual Autobiography by E. Stanley Jones. I've mentioned reading his book The Christ of the Indian Road, early in my time among Friends, and re-reading it more recently, but this is my first time with A Song of Ascents. I am glad Jerry Baker (recently retired pastor of Netarts Friends Church) recommended it to me, and I would like to pass along this recommendation.
As Jones describes his ministry among India's intellectuals, and the things he learned about revolution, nonviolence, racial and class prejudices, so much in this book remains relevant and useful fifty years after it was completed. His love of Christ is infectious, firmly setting secondary controversies in their place.
Just to remind me that the debates between "conservatives" and "liberals" among Christians are nothing new, E. Stanley Jones at age 83 seems to delight in reporting how, all through his lifetime, his fans and critics could not find the correct categories to classify him. Was he a "modernist" or was he "fundamental"? One conservative journal decided to have it both ways: Jones had a "fundamental heart" and a "modern mind."
He got into one particular controversy at the time of Gandhi's assassination:
When Mahatma Gandhi was martyred, some Christians of South India asked me whether he had gone to heaven. My reply: "I am glad I don't have to decide the destiny of men. I am not the judge of all the earth. It is my business to preach the gospel and leave judgment to God. He is wise enough and good enough for that responsibility -- I'm not. All I can say is that if Mahatma Gandhi didn't go to heaven, then heaven would be poorer without him, as it will be poorer without you." The newspapers came out the next day saying, "Stanley Jones said that heaven would be a poor place without Gandhi." Next version I heard: "Heaven would be a miserable place without Gandhi." Next: "Heaven would be hell without Gandhi." And last: "Heaven would be no heaven without Gandhi." I have heard no further versions. It had reached bottom -- no heaven!
Isn't it fascinating how people can twist a quotation to create, in effect, a false witness. Gandhi's example might be a great occasion to decide, once and for all, to verify quotations and contexts when people come to us with gleeful reports about someone else's heresies.
Christopher Douglas responds to Kurt Anderson: "Conservative white Christians, in other words, had had one foot in a parallel information ecosystem for a long time." (Kurt Anderson's original article in The Atlantic.)
Reedwood Friends (Quaker) Independent Church A red letter day for RFC.
September 1, 2017 Reedwood’s Independence Day
Today begins a new chapter in the Reedwood Friends Church history. We begin a journey of faith and faithfulness to God as we seek to follow the direction we are called to take.
As the Northwest Yearly Meeting (NWYM) began the process of dividing, there were three options offered to all NWYM churches; continue with NWYM, join the new yearly meeting or become independent. On August 13, 2017, at a meeting open to all, a decision was made to go independent. *The letter below is what was sent to NWYM announcing our decision.
Having chosen independence we acknowledge that we will have much work to do to meet the expectations of our new independence. At another meeting on August 27, 2013 there was a start. Officers, Elders, Stewards and Nominating committee were approved with September 1, 2017 being the startup date. Additional decisions were made to update account management.
As we continue the transition to being our own meeting independent from any yearly meeting connection I welcome all who are willing to serve. I am hoping we can be a better presence in the community surrounding our church. As we reach out to those around the church building may we better understand our commission to share the good news in very tangible ways. Are there those in our neighborhood that need our help? How? Are there those in our own community that could use our help? How? Are there those that can make our building and property more welcoming? Please make yourselves known.
I appreciate everyone that considers RFC their church home whether attending every service or somewhere around the world. I covet your prayers and ideas as we move into new territory.
There will be many things to consider as we move forward.
My God bless you as we work together in this new venture.
Lloyd Pruitt, Presiding Clerk
*Reedwood Friends Church (letter cited above)
2901 SE Steele St.
Portland, OR 97202
August 15, 2017
Retha McCutchen, Interim Superintendent, Northwest Yearly Meeting
Phil McLain, Interim Clerk of Elders and LCCC Clerk, Northwest Yearly Meeting
Dear Retha and Phil,
As I informed you at the LCCC meeting on August 8, the Reedwood Friends Church, an Oregon nonprofit corporation (“Reedwood”) held a membership meeting at Reedwood on Sunday, August 13, 2017 at 1:00pm. Forty members of Reedwood were present, and the attached agenda was followed. After prayer, the members of Reedwood were invited to discuss the three options that have been presented to the churches of the NWYM by the NWYM Transition Committee: (1) remain a part of the NMYM, (2) join the new yearly meeting, or (3) elect to become independent. All Members and guests were invited to participate in the discussion, and all views were respected and heard.
In the discussion, many members spoke to having concern about the human sexuality language in the current NWYM Faith and Practice. Some felt the new yearly meeting, Sierra-Cascades Yearly Meeting, is still too new to consider joining. After much discussion, the issue was presented to the members for a decision. The members determined that there was overwhelming desire to become independent from any yearly meeting. The final count was thirty (30) favoring independence, four (4) favoring staying with NWYM and four (4) members not indicating a preference. (Two individuals left before the vote was taken).
Reedwood Friends Church will now begin the process of independence, and we respectfully request the NYYM’s assistance and cooperation in this endeavor. Reedwood members will be meeting again August 27, 2017 at 1:00pm. Between now and then my prayer is that we can work with you to begin the transition in a way that is honoring to Christ and the members of Reedwood.
If you would like to make a report at the August 27 meeting we are open to this, provided you are respectful of the wishes expressed by the members of Reedwood. We know the LCCC has put a lot of work in trying to help us and we appreciate the attempts. Our hope is that both you and we have learned something as participants in this attempt. It is our desire that we go in the knowledge that you have given us much to consider and we further hope that your experience with us has helped you and the NWYM Elders as you work with other churches.
This is our official notice that Reedwood is withdrawing from the Northwest Yearly Meeting. Reedwood predates the NWYM and has always been an independent Oregon nonprofit corporation with an independent 501(c)(3) tax-exempt designation. We look forward to working with you as we transition into our new independence and exit from the NWYM. We ask for your prayers in this process.
Very truly yours,
Lloyd Pruitt, President, Reedwood Friends Church
Spring in Moscow. (At the Tretyakov Gallery, a special exhibition of the paintings of Zinaida Serebryakova.)
The Blasphemous Posture of Looking Down
How much of my life have I actually spent in hours of conversations about who is in and who is out of God's kingdom? Conversations where I was articulate, even compassionate, even honest. But now I see that all academic conversations, all theoretically discussions, are in their own way untruthful, no matter how honest you try to be. Even when you are well armed with Bible verses, commentaries, and research papers, how truthful can any conversation be when you are sitting at the head of the table? That was the life I had before I experienced profound brokenness, suffering, and shame -- the life lived from the shallows and not from the depths.
[Jonathan Martin, How to Survive a Shipwreck: Help Is on the Way and Love Is Already Here]
It's a little hard to describe Jonathan Martin's book -- 215 pages of often inspiring, occasionally repetitive meditations on what it's like for a rock-star Pentecostal preacher to hit rock bottom, be forced to leave home and marriage, and learn to accept a new status: a recipient of grace rather than its celebrity distributor.
His waves of ocean and shipwreck metaphors deliver many vivid insights. The one that struck me yesterday, toward the end of my reading of How to Survive a Shipwreck, was this: ... how truthful can any conversation be when you are sitting at the head of the table?
To me there's a direct tie-in with the 17th-century Quaker rebellion against the religious authorities. On Monday, I was sitting with Natasha Zhuravenkova at Friends House Moscow, holding a copy of Margaret Fell's testimony "Concerning her Late Husband GEORGE FOX" (using the text in the book Hidden in Plain Sight: Quaker Women's Writings 1650-1700). Natasha sat at the computer, with her Russian translation on the screen. Margaret's testimony described the beatings and imprisonments that George Fox endured, and also listed her own imprisonments: four years at one stretch, and later another full year.
Both George and Margaret had been condemned to be "out of the King's protection" for refusing oaths of allegiance and religious supremacy to the king. In one legal appeal mentioned by Margaret, even habeas corpus was ruled as unavailing in the face of this condemnation, known as praemunire. But, according to Margaret's testimony, her original crime was not refusing the oaths, but allowing her home to be used as a meeting place for dissenters and dissenting congregations, namely Quakers.
So, the founding generation of Friends collided directly with the collusion between church authorities and government authorities (in other words, the people who were then "at the head of the table") to repress free expression of Christian faith. The texts, vocabulary, rites, and structures of those claiming to represent the Gospel had been scandalously re-purposed for bondage. It's no wonder that Margaret Fell responded as she did, the first time she heard Fox's case against the religion industry:
And so he went on, and said, "That Christ was the Light of the world, and lighteth every man that cometh into the world; and that by this light they might be gathered to God," &c. I stood up in my pew, and wondered at his doctrine, for I had never heard such before. And then he went on, and opened the scriptures, and said, "The scriptures were the prophets' words, and Christ's and the apostles' words, and what, as they spoke, they enjoyed and possessed, and had it from the Lord": and said, "Then what had any to do with the scriptures, but as they came to the Spirit that gave them forth? You will say, 'Christ saith this, and the apostles say this;' but what canst thou say? Art thou a child of the Light, and hast thou walked in the Light, and what thou speakest, is it inwardly from God?" &c. This opened me so, that it cut me to the heart; and then I saw clearly we were all wrong. So I sat down in my pew again, and cried bitterly: and I cried in my spirit to the Lord, "We are all thieves; we are all thieves; we have taken the scriptures in words, and know nothing of them in ourselves."
"We are all thieves" -- here is a confession that everyone who is in a position of power and privilege in the Christian world should consider. How do we thieves earn the right to tell someone else that we have it right and they have it wrong?
Yes, we will sometimes have it right, and they will sometimes have it wrong. And we should care about right and wrong at least as much as those confident 17th-century bosses did. But before we prioritize our theories about the threat to biblical authority, let's consider the danger our stern theories pose to the real-life reputation of the Gospel for tender believers and seekers. Before declaring someone "out of the Friends' protection," maybe we should first sit back down in our pews and cry bitterly. Let's do all this considering and grieving and kissing each others' tears in full view of a cynical and skeptical world, a world that knows too much about those in authority who assume (in Martin's words) "the blasphemous posture of looking down."
Application:
Maybe there was some bitter crying among those in Northwest Yearly Meeting who decided that their interpretation of Scripture entitled them to define others out of fellowship. Mostly I heard impatience.
If we write in ways that play off our presumed audience’s assumptions, what are the implications of that scholarly voice? For one, we expect the reader to perceive the incongruity between what the speaker says and means. This might be easy if we know the speaker, but it’s more difficult, perhaps even unfairly so, if we don’t. Second, and more important, this type of ironic voice could be used to smuggle in normative assumptions about the validity of our subjects’ actions, ideas, and interpretations. This type of smuggling is quite common in the study of religion, and I think it’s a problem.
A scene from Northwest Yearly Meeting's 2013 sessions: Paul Bock (left) and Steve Fawver, and an exit sign.
If you are not a Quaker, this post may not make any sense at all. It's my personal, partial, imperfect attempt to comprehend how the scourge of disunity kicked up all over the Christian world by issues relating to same sex relationships, finally disrupted even the mellowest, most affectionate body of evangelical believers I've ever known, Northwest Yearly Meeting of Friends. I didn't want to believe this day would come. If anyone could demonstrate the power of love to overcome today's worldwide trends toward division, I thought we might just pull it off. And, in the long run, we still might be able to do it, but now it will be much harder....
"Grace to you," we sang, "God's great grace to you." Nate Macy was playing and leading his song as we opened the last business meeting of Northwest Yearly Meeting's 2012 sessions. We would not have been able to sing, "Perfect closure to you, perfect closure to you," because the thorny issues (specifically, same-sex relationships) were not resolved. But we had opened and faced the conversations graciously. We had absorbed the pain of some and the impatience of others -- and a variety of other strong emotions -- without buckling as a community.
Once again, we were unable to find closure on this subject, but, once again, love and courtesy prevailed. We have much work to do, because our courteous community continues to include people for whom any weakening of the yearly meeting's traditional stance represents a breaking of biblical covenant, while others find any formulation, whether addressing "sexual perversion" or "distortions of sexual intimacy," painful beyond words.
As I listened to these dear Friends today, in my head I could fill in the "other side's" response to each one of the arguments or testimonies that were expressed. However, given our yearly meeting's deep bonds of love, our increasing experience with the use of "listening groups" ahead of difficult questions, our trustworthy clerks and elders, and the discipline suggested by the Youth Yearly Meeting, I believe we can expect the Holy Spirit to break through where today we don't yet see a way.
Everyone spoke tenderly and respectfully. Nobody charged that the differences in the yearly meeting rose to the level of being unequally yoked. I felt once again that the center held, and that its voice was very strong.
The 2015 sessions passed relatively uneventfully (and I was too sick to write much, anyway!). But just after the close of the sessions, the yearly meeting elders announced their decision (PDF format) to release West Hills Friends Church from membership over that church's dissent from the Yearly Meeting's book of Faith and Practice on same sex relationships. Nancy Thomas provided wonderful insight into the elders' deliberations and some of the related pain.
West Hills' non-compliance is symptomatic of a faultline that runs through many churches and even families, a faultline that itself threatens the future of Northwest Yearly Meeting but hasn't been given adequate attention or even definition. Is sexual identity and behavior the main issue, or is it our understanding of biblical authority and the authority of Yearly Meeting structures and documents? All of the above? And, most importantly to me, why didn't our process seem trustworthy enough to earn the patience required to tackle these underlying strains?
... And at the January 2017 meeting of the Yearly Meeting's representative body, the center stopped holding, and we buckled as a community. Representatives were given no choice but to acknowledge the decision reached by the Yearly Meeting's Administrative Council earlier that month -- that, in effect, it was better to require an orderly withdrawal from the Yearly Meeting by dissenting churches than to endure a disorderly disintegration "... one, two, or four churches at a time...."
Mixed feelings:
On the one hand, I persist in my diagnosis that this whole abrupt resolution was a colossal failure, resulting from a lack of the trust that would be needed to tackle the "underlying strains" I talked about last year.
I specifically mean that we were unwilling as a yearly meeting to examine what biblical authority means to us, and why it means different things to different Friends. In my more jaundiced moments, I felt that it was more important to some influential Friends to maintain a stance as heroes of biblical authority than to grant grace to those who cherish the Bible equally but come to different conclusions on controversial issues. I cannot find any other reason to rush the process along other than the threats of such Friends to pull their churches out of the Yearly Meeting if the day of reckoning were to be postponed any longer. So: to avoid losing those angry churches, dissenters were seen as expendable.
(Friday PS: In my less jaundiced moments, I admit that I can see myself doing much the same thing -- maintaining a heroic stance over concerns I personally prioritize, such as evangelism, peace, equality.)
Credit where credit is due: I do not fault our Yearly Meeting's leaders for recognizing the crisis and making a decision that seemed, after prayer and wide consultation, to represent the best stewardship of the Yearly Meeting's identity and energy. If an immediate decision had to be made (and this was, I believe, the tacit understanding behind last summer's end-of-session deferral of the ultimate decision to the most recent midyear gatherings), then to require churches to declare their attitude to Faith and Practice was as reasonable a basis as any. Each church is free to make that declaration, whatever (as the restructure decision says) their internal disagreements might be.
OK, all that is on the one hand. Is there, on the other hand, a silver lining in all this? Yes. Local churches can now do, or continue doing, the work of deeper discernment of the "underlying strains" that the Yearly Meeting gave up on. In fact, local churches can follow one of a number of paths:
Churches that have substantial unity over the current Yearly Meeting definitions of sexual ethics can simply minute that they will continue to "align their practices with current NWYM Faith and Practice." Presumably, this state of affairs can continue for them as long as their internal understanding and the Yearly Meeting's understanding remain in alignment. I hope those churches will continue to pray and study, and continue to grow in their discernment. Nothing guarantees that their alignment with NWYM will last forever, or that dissidents within those congregations won't simply leave (either finding another fellowship or joining the growing ranks of disillusioned ex-evangelicals), but, for now it's all good.
Churches that have a wider range of views on sexual ethics, or on biblical authority and interpretation, can pragmatically decide to keep their practices in alignment with Northwest Yearly Meeting while their internal conversations continue. In a sense, they can take the internal contradictions that NWYM finally decided were intolerable for the larger body, and continue to endure those contradictions within the local body for the sake of the bonds of Northwest Yearly Meeting unity. There is a huge cost to this pragmatic approach: Friends who are members of sexual minorities would probably bear the painful brunt of the incongruity.
Churches that are already clear that their local practices cannot remain in alignment with the Yearly Meeting's Faith and Practice have now been invited to form their own new yearly meeting with help from a NWYM transition team (listed here) and compile their own Faith and Practice. I dearly hope that, first, the churches that are unable to align with current NWYM Faith and Practice will in fact have the dedication and energy to form this new body in collaboration with that NWYM transition team. Second, I hope this new body is as committed to biblical authority and Quaker discipleship as NWYM wishes to be. The task of compiling a new Faith and Practice is a wonderful chance to restate core Friends insights for a jaded world. Third, I hope that this new yearly meeting will lavish love and care on its mother yearly meeting, rejecting resentment and cynicism in favor of an enduring hope for reconciliation.
Today is Defenders of the Fatherland Day ... umm, more like Men's Day: an interesting article on how Russia's military has more symbolic power than actual political power. Same article in Russian.
What I really want to write about is asceticism, both within Russian Orthodoxy and in Russian Orthodox stereotypes of those joyless Protestants! But I'm too undisciplined to write about discipline tonight--or maybe it's just too much cold medication. Maybe next week.
Instead I've decided to steal a leaf from my end-of-year post two years ago, and try to chase a few scattered threads from my blog posts during this year that is about to make a full escape into the past.
As we considered our friends' arguments that God is within and that churches are essentially crutches for weak people with inadequate internal guidance, we realized there was another missing dimension in our friends' experience: multi-generational churches. It's just assumed that you grow up secular; to choose a church is to fill a need (and meet others filling that need), and if you don't have that need, you don't make that choice. It follows that churches are filled with people who are otherwise inadequate. (Of course that's not entirely false!--but not in the way they mean.) They don't take into account what is normal in much of the world: churches whose cultures have been formed by generations of people born and growing up inside the church, whose ability to function autonomously was helped, not hindered by that church upbringing. Yes, I personally made a choice to leave atheism and join a church, but, thank God, the church was already there to receive me, and its core community was built over generations. For many people here, those sorts of generational ties, even within the Orthodox stream, were cut during the decades of official atheism. Of course I knew this history intellectually, but these conversations helped me to understand at a deeper level why the phenomenon of church community is so hard to explain.
Transparency and transformation should be a wonderful purification from elitism: there is no basis to claim superiority when we're standing before God without the filthy rags of prestige or privilege or even years of committee service! But caution caution! our sheer exuberance in this discovery should not become yet another elitism. I almost titled this post "Quaker machismo" (as an echo of "evangelical machismo" part 1 and part 2) but decided not to risk the gender overtones. Still, what I said about the athleticism that seemed to be coming into fashion among evangelicals still seems important to say. Most of us will never become superstars of transforming faith, dazzling others with our ability to be on fire with the Gospel. I want to be yoked with those who are also quiet, modest, uncertain, struggling. Some of us might be almost ready for transformation, but still dealing with addictions or social entanglements. Others are much farther on the path than I am, but their spiritual gifts or temperaments are simply far more private; for now they haven't yet found the way to beckon us alongside. (Oh, please try!) They too are Friends.
I want to be in fellowship with people who think I'm wrong, and who I believe are wrong. I cannot stand the suffocating feeling that I get among those who prefer mutual admiration of their advanced political views. I also want to keep a lively curiosity about why some persistently choose paths that seem inconsistent with our shared faith or even their own interests. What are they seeing that I'm not? And what connections are they not making between faith and practice that I could, through love and persistence, encourage them to consider? Being wrong is not the same as being evil--in their case, and in mine.
Part of the criticism of Pussy Riot is the offense they caused to the feelings of believers. I think that within the international Body of Christ it is legitimate to ask, humbly, what exactly it means to offend and be offended. We are not responsible for the actions of Pussy Riot, or, for example, an artist who seemingly mocks the crucifixion ... or draws a cartoon of Mohammed. But we are responsible for our reactions; we are not helpless victims. Is being offended a genuine concern for the reputation of the Gospel, or a cheap path to righteous victimhood? Are there mature Christian leaders that are able to ask this question tenderly among their outraged parishioners, inviting them to listen to the actual content of the offenders' messages, or at least to consider their immortal souls? Does the temptation to throw the book at offenders actually represent the mind of Christ? These questions are particularly acute for the church when it is in a position of power--because power corrupts even the church, rendering it more or less incapable of treating critics fairly.
The peace testimony--a life lived in obedience to the Prince of Peace and in defiance of the massive historical reliance of peoples and nations everywhere on violence--is to me a confirming sign of the reality of the Gospel. We don't practice nonviolence just because we're nice people or clever people, nor do we practice it because we don't believe evil should be confronted. I'm passionate about upholding this testimony because it is evidence that we've put our trust in the promises of God and the power of the Holy Spirit. We have not become Christians to make our lives convenient for the principalities and powers of this world, but to keep company with Jesus and with all those who believe what he says. I have no use for a cerebral, miracle-free faith, but the daily walk of peace is actually a daily miracle.
When we enter the household of faith, we may or may not face new physical dangers. We certainly get no guarantee that the dangers faced by every creature on the planet will no longer apply to us, and, furthermore, we may find out that our attempts to live an ethical discipleship attract hostile attention. But we face these dangers in solidarity with the Body of Christ. I'm serious. Literally every congregation I've ever belonged to has made my life better, even as their teachings have seriously screwed up any chance I had of a conventionally successful career path.
"Grace to you," we sang, "God's great grace to you." Nate Macy was playing and leading his song as we opened the last business meeting of Northwest Yearly Meeting's 2012 sessions. We would not have been able to sing, "Perfect closure to you, perfect closure to you," because the thorny issues (specifically, same-sex relationships) were not resolved. But we had opened and faced the conversations graciously. We had absorbed the pain of some and the impatience of others--and a variety of other strong emotions--without buckling as a community.
...I don't think Pussy Riot, or Madonna, or Western liberals, are anywhere near the danger to Christian civilization that graceless authoritarians within the church are. What made me angry about the whole spectacle is the church missing a huge opportunity for global evangelism, by choosing to whine and pout about offense instead of recognizing a golden teachable moment--expressing humor and forgiveness and the joy of the Lord in full view of a skeptical, cynical world. OK, I'm not a Russian, but I am a member of the Body of Christ, and I get to have my little say about what redemption looks like. Promoting a persecution complex that will end up costing three young women their freedom and safety is not acceptable.
A few years ago I quoted Stan Thornburg on the movement to protest Madonna's performance that included a mock-crucifixion on U.S. television. His words seem applicable today:
With tens of thousands of innocent (let me emphasize innocent) civilians being slaughtered in Iraq, tens of thousands of innocent people being raped, displaced, murdered in Darfur, unimaginable suffering in the Middle East, TV Evangelists ripping millions out of the hands of seniors citizens, all kinds of suffering supposedly in the name of Christ and what do I get all upset about...MADONNA?! A pagan who mocks Christ for a living? What else would we expect from her? Where is the outrage because CHRISTIANS ARE MOCKING CHRIST?
I can almost hear C.S. Lewis. When Christians are not Christ-like, there's not much need for Satan to spin external conspiracies.
In a post I wrote about six years ago, I wondered a little about the function of Christian books. After all, apparently it was possible for many generations of believers to be Christian without ever having read such worthies as Teresa of Avila or Thomas Kelly. What lesson do I now draw from the fact that, for centuries, Christian leaders have used Paul in the service of their own priorities rather than to shape a life of freedom and equality in Christ? Evidently the Bible has no magical power to require the most life-giving interpretations or prevent its own misuse. Maybe this is one way to state the lesson for Christian leaders in drawing upon biblical authority: beware of any institutional agenda we bring to biblical interpretation. Let the Bible express and serve the promises of God, not the political priorities of humans.
We Quakers do not proselytize. We are not trying to sell our spiritual community at the expense of another's: our responsibility is strictly limited to informing people about our faith and experience, and making the doorway accessible to those who want to test and see whether what we say is true. Furthermore, as a teacher, I believe that I have the responsibility to (as Douglas Steere put it) "confirm the deepest thing in another," and if that deepest thing is his or her Orthodox faith, I will do nothing to weaken it. If anything, I'd seek to make it stronger!
Keeping that doorway open, however, remains crucial!! Without the refreshment--and the scrutiny--of new people, we run the danger of stagnation, of becoming a chaplaincy for a small self-absorbed group. There's a question that some Quakers seem to pose whenever we suggest putting more energy into evangelism: "If we get new people, how do we know they are really Friends?" I love the way Jane Boring Dunlap of Wilmington Friends Meeting in Ohio responded to that question in a discussion: "Why do we assume that new people would be dumber than we are?"
Adrenaline and anger are both addictive. They're both deceptive, fooling us into thinking we're stronger and more righteous than we are. Worse, they obscure the larger context, the secret that the principalities and powers hope we don't notice: often we and our apparent enemies are actually on the same side of the Lamb's War. In Micah's example--predatory real estate investors--those investors are caught in a false reality, playing out cruel parts in a rigged game that will ultimately poison their souls. If we confine our understanding of the evil to these individual players, demonizing them with satisfying invective and objectifying them just as they objectify vulnerable owners and tenants, we're also trapped. We need to confront those predators with a brick wall of reality, through solidarity with those in danger, through demonstrations, lawsuits, and other tactics, but the rigged system is the greater enemy.
God is in every school and can never be removed. Every believing pupil and student, supported by every believing family, has many ways to be faithful witnesses to the reality of God. Believers serve on probably every school board in the country. Voluntary school-church partnerships abound, and not just in the Bible Belt, but even in "secular" Portland, Oregon. But the psychological weight of the school must not be used to trespass the boundaries of students' consciences, neither with some specific locally dominant creed nor with a homogenized civil religion that would never be admitted into any church.
This past Sunday, the Quaker community here in Russia lost one of its true elders, Galina Orlova. Her health had been weak but apparently stable and her death came as a shock to all of us. We're gathering materials to pay tribute to her; more soon.
Northwest Yearly Meeting's resources for January, Peace Month 2013.
"Grace to you," we sang, "God's great grace to you." Nate Macy was playing and leading his song as we opened the last business meeting of Northwest Yearly Meeting's 2012 sessions. We would not have been able to sing, "Perfect closure to you, perfect closure to you," because the thorny issues (specifically, same-sex relationships) were not resolved. But we had opened and faced the conversations graciously. We had absorbed the pain of some and the impatience of others--and a variety of other strong emotions--without buckling as a community.
The Yearly Meeting's epistle to the worldwide Quaker family pointed to both the grace and the incompleteness: (from the draft presented at the business meeting)
The specific step being taken by our Yearly Meeting's elders is working on the language of Faith and Practice on sexuality, expressing the Yearly Meeting's teachings with more grace without committing to change their substance. In the meantime, the reports from the twenty-four listening groups that met during business sessions, and the queries and suggestions that group members during and after the third (final) meetings of the listening groups, will be combined and studied. Our elders have earned our trust over years of thoughtful service; I know they will carry out this task graciously.
One thing that was not talked about adequately on the floor of business is the generation gap that exists in the evangelical community--not necessarily in doctrine or biblical authority, but in the style and priorities of discipleship. Maybe that gap will be bridged more adequately next year.
Becky Ankeny
The discussions on sexuality might be the most interesting (the hottest?) issue that seemed to be before us this year. But the most urgent and valuable ministry that I heard during the sessions was Becky Ankeny's teachings on prayer over four meetings for worship--one each evening from Sunday through Wednesday. Becky spoke plainly and directly to the Quaker community--particularly the American Quaker community--concerning the forces that compromise our worship to the world, and the biblical models of prayer that are God's provision for us in that struggle. Her live presentations were leavened with humorous and affectionate asides to the audiences, but the written versions convey her points well. As of today, these two sermons appear on her blog: "King Jesus Prays for Us" and "We're Marching to Zion."
"God, Guns, and Guts." "During 30 years of teaching in three different Christian universities and after many more years of being part of “Christian culture” in America–why have I never once seen a poster aimed at boys and young men about suicide and violence?"
