24th
Divergent Friends community and a fully catholic communion
The 2010 Young Adult Friends Gathering in Wichita, about which I’ve written with concern here before, is happening this weekend. In short, I find the rules problematic, and the apparent disdain for critical public dialog is unworthy of Friends— but there’s no reason to rehash those matters in detail here.
On the other hand, I am very supportive of cross-branch interchange and fellowship undertaken in a spirit of authentic welcome. Some of my Friends have expressed anxiety and distrust over the premise of the YAF gathering: Is it even possible for Friends of different branches to come together in a community based on honesty, respect, and caring? What basis can there possibly be for reconciliation, or even fellowship?
The term for a fully-inclusive community is catholic, in the sense of “universal” and “all-embracing”. A catholic church is a body united in fellowship with authentic welcome for all its members. Building a catholic church begins with establishing ties and routinely fostering communion. There are numerous biblical models for catholic communion, and it is a quality of the prophetic faith that is central to my experience of Christian revelation in the context of Quaker practice. At its best, the Quaker movement is a uniquely catholic church, one that gathers Friends from the entire gamut of religious or irreligious experience and binds them together into a prophetic, torah-seeking community with a distinct vocation and ministry.
It should go without saying that I deem liberal Friends as an explicit trustee of this catholic inheritance. In my view, liberal Friends are at the very frontier of the faith, providing scope for fully-inclusive communion that grafts even the most divergent Friends into the covenant we inherit from the seed of Abraham.
Unfortunately, Quaker history is rife with the very opposite of catholic communion: excommunication, disownment, shunning, and schism; again and again, Friends have shown themselves unworthy of their calling. In light of that history, it takes a lot of courage to go beyond anxiety and mistrust to meet with Friends across the lines that presently divide us, even as we are haunted by those who see no basis for fellowship. After all, who has gone there before?
The book of discipline for Baltimore Yearly Meeting contains an artifact of one such experience: the consolidation of the Orthodox and Hicksite Yearly Meetings into one fellowship in 1968. Like the Wichita conference, BYM’s reunion was apparently championed by young Friends. The following 1964 “Statement on Spiritual Unity” describes the basis for fostering a more catholic communion among them:
Our two Yearly Meetings have a wide, rich, and diverse heritage, chiefly from historic Christianity interpreted by Quakerism. We not only tolerate diversity, we encourage and cherish it. In every local Meeting we struggle, usually patiently, with the problems that arise from our divergent convictions; and we usually find ourselves richer for our differences. In most if not all of the Monthly Meetings within the two Yearly Meetings will be found, successfully co-existing, persons as far apart in religious vocabulary and practice as there are anywhere in the Yearly Meetings. Yet these Friends worship together every Sunday, and share nourishment for their spiritual life. Such association is beneficial and even necessary.
Friends in our two Yearly Meetings are clear on certain principles which are so basic and essential that we tend to take them for granted and forget that they are essential and probably the only essentials. We all are clear that religion is a matter of inward, immediate experience. We all acknowledge the guidance of the Inner Light—the Christ Within—God’s direct, continuing revelation. All our insights are subject to testing by the insight of the group, by history and tradition, and by the Bible and the whole literature of religion. All the Meetings for Worship of our Monthly Meetings aspire to openness to God’s communication directly with every person. Worship is primarily on the basis of expectant waiting upon the Spirit, a communion with God in which mediators or symbols are not necessary. We are all clear that faith is directly expressed in our daily living. We all seek to move toward goals of human welfare, equality, and peace.
We have a profound, often-tested, durable respect for each individual’s affirmation of his own religious experience, which must be judged not only by his words but also by his life. From the stimulus of dissimilarity, new insights often arise. Each Friend must, as always, work out for himself his own understanding of religion; and each Monthly Meeting must, as always, fit its practice to its own situation and the needs of its members.
I find it particularly notable that this statement affirms the role of mutual respect while also acknowledging the vitalizing effect of struggle “with problems that arise from our divergent convictions”. It reminds me of another episode of reconciliation from our prophetic heritage: the account of Jacob and Esau from Genesis 32, through which Jacob’s identity is transformed into “Israel”— Godwrestler —“for you have striven with God and with humans”. Mutual respect and struggle are essential for a catholic communion of divergent Friends.
The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the revealed things belong to us and to our children forever, to observe all the words of this revelation.
— Deuteronomy 29:29 (NRSV†)
The catholic communion of divergent Friends is part of the revelation that belongs to us and to our children forever. Young adult Friends have a particular legacy of fostering this revelation— the reunion of Baltimore Yearly Meeting is one example that I find both relevant and inspiring. It can be a thankless and haunted ministry, as the Wichita planning committee can probably attest. But in order to foster a catholic spirit of authentic welcome, history recommends that we take seriously the constructive roles of mutual respect and patient struggle.
† The Hebrew word torah is rendered here as “law”; torah “is usually translated as ‘instruction’, but it may also be translated ‘law’, ‘guidance’, ‘teaching’, or ‘revelation’. Quaker ‘leadings’ are ‘torah’.” —from “The Servant Church”, Pendle Hill Pamphlet 328, by Ricardo Elford and Jim Corbett.
