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I saw a TV show recently where one of the guests mentioned they were a Quaker (it was a military themed episode!) and it got me interested since I had no idea the Quakers had a significant presence any more. Reading round a bit more I was really strongly drawn to their ethos. I do a lot of volunteer work and am retraining into a different profession to be the change I want to see in an area of public life. However, I am strongly and integrally a non-theist, so don't feel like it'd be a good fit. However, I would love to know more about the Quakers, so... Goon Quakers! How did you become a Quaker? What do you think about the Quaker lifestyle? What was the coolest/most moving/funnest thing you experienced with the Quakers? Tell me about your experiences as a Quaker.
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Nov 24, 2015 11:36
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Growing up my best friend was a Quaker and I tagged along to some of the Sunday stuff with him. As far as religious gatherings I liked it more than most. A large part of it was sitting in a big room with everyone just sitting there in silence, and if you felt compelled, you could just stand up and speak whatever was on your mind. It was really chill and fun to hear people talk about random things. There might have been other things that happened too but that was the big one I remember.
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Nov 24, 2015 16:54
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Im not a quaker but I've interviewed several for a religious studies project. There definetly seemed to be non-theists there as well, at least in the liberal congregations.
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Nov 25, 2015 11:58
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Butch Banner posted:Im not a quaker but I've interviewed several for a religious studies project. There definetly seemed to be non-theists there as well, at least in the liberal congregations. Definitely true. I live in PA where there is a sizable Quaker community (they have meeting houses and private schools all over the place) and, while it ultimately is a Christian religion, many groups are very non-theist friendly. There's a lot of overlap between Universalists. I've had a few friends and coworkers who were Quaker, or went to Quaker/Friends schools, and I never got any kind of pushy or evangelical vibe from them. Mostly all were had very chill, friendly personalities. Of course, not every group/sect is like that. The Quaker religion doesn't have a lot of structure/hierarchy, and decision-making is often made via consensus, so there's a lot of variability. Bonus Fact: In PA you can still do self-marriages thanks to the Quaker influence. Something my wife and I took advantage of, no need to pay a licensed court representative to officiate something that should be your basic right anyway. 
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Nov 25, 2015 13:52
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Howdy folks, Quaker here - I’m an attender (will explain what that means in a bit) at Kingston Meeting in the UK, and have been for a few years. I can answer people’s questions, though a) I’m not an expert, very much a lay-person, and b) Quakerism is so non-centralised that there’s not really any overall doctrine that I can represent. As such, my take will be different from that of another Quaker from my own Meeting, let alone a Kenyan or Pennsylvanian Quaker. quote:Goon Quakers! How did you become a Quaker? What do you think about the Quaker lifestyle? My religious conversion was pretty weird - at some point between the ages of 10 and 11 I turned from a fairly hardcore new atheist type to a (theoretically) committed Christian, but I can’t remember what specifically turned me from one to the other. My family’s non-religious, though, and so actually attending a religious institution wasn’t exactly on the cards, so I spent the next 7-8 years massively over-intellectualising my new-found faith and getting interested in theology/what was the most ‘well-argued’ version of Christianity (I am, after all, a goon). I was absolutely insufferable, and not a very good Christian - I essentially constructed an ice-palace version of Christianity, a spiritually ‘cold’ and intellectualised version of religion that I consciously didn’t adhere to, but did have faith in. Over time, though, I did realise I was doing this, and tried to change it. I’d been learning bits of Greek and Hebrew to read the Old and New Testaments in the original (yes, insufferable), and I think it was this close reading of the text combined with a lack of exposure to any real church/denominational doctrine that really began to make me think seriously about what Jesus’ example/God’s commands and presence actually were. There’s a lot of really powerful spirituality in the Old Testament that’s not evident when you’re reading in translation, and when you’re reading the Greek in the NT, the fact that you keep coming back to the same vocabulary about αγάπη (compassion, unconditional love) (which is useful when you’re a feckless language student and want to avoid learning extra words) is really underscored whether it’s in Jesus’ own teachings, or Paul’s better bits about love, hope, and faith. As such, when I was 18, and going off to university, I was keen to involve myself in a religious community that I felt was most authentic to a Jesus who described the entirety of the law as equivalent to love for God foremost and love for one’s neighbours and enemies alike second, was radically pacifist and just, and made the ultimate sacrifice for us. I still think it’s a bit presumptuous of me to judge these different Christian churches on this basis, but it was really striking what the differences I saw were. With a couple of friends from my college, I ended up going to three different churches that represented the pretty extreme ‘poles’ of Christian worship and doctrine - a super high Church C. of E. joint (with the most freakin’ amazing church and vestments I’ve ever seen), a very evangelical church and its Alpha Course (guitars and drumkits on stage, conservative attitudes towards abortion and politics more generally, and, as I learned later, extensive speaking-in-tongues), and a Quaker Meeting. I don’t mean disrespect to the other two - there definitely seemed to be people who found that a form of worship in which they could come closest to God - but the Quakers seemed to be most authentic to the example I’d seen set in the Bible. They were radically egalitarian, compassionate and active, and if you judge a tree by its fruits (Luke 6 :p!), it seemed that they were producing a lot of very good fruit and very little bad. As a fairly mixed Christian and non-Christian meeting, it was also a very good introduction to the idea of Quakerism as a community that included Christians and non-Christians. I’m unfortunately not consistent about this, but when pressed, I’ll probably describe myself as a Quaker Christian or Christian who attends Quaker meeting rather than a simple Quaker - I guess that I still see it as one of the most authentic realisations of Jesus’ teachings that’s readily available and organised on a large scale in the UK. That said, I think that my experience is probably more in line with yours than a lot of ‘born Quakers’ - whether it was spiritual rumination and angst over ancient Greek or a thirst for more justice in the world around you and seeing Quaker doctrines of peace/equality/simplicity/truth as a good realisation of that, we both feel it was a good fit. Regarding non-theist Quakers - I was going to launch into a whole spiel about Quakerism in the UK vs. Quakerism in the US and elsewhere, and programmed (pastors, more Anglican/protestant style) vs. liberal vs. unprogrammed (no priests, silent worship, more open) stuff, but I did a quick check of your post history and see you’re a UKMT regular, which makes it much easier for me - basically, there are a ton of Quakers in Britain Yearly Meeting (the overarching Quaker org. in the UK) who don’t describe themselves as Christian, and a bunch of those who’ll self-identify as non-theists - Quakers don’t have a creed, and so I wouldn’t worry about that making you a bad fit. Seeing as I’m a Christian who sees the Religious Society of Friends as a ‘best fit’ for my understanding of Jesus’ teachings, I suspect I may not be the best person to talk Quaker philosophy (do we have any better Quaker Goons who feel the spirit moving them to effort-post in this thread?), but here’s my overall take: There’s a bunch of interpretations of the original quote by George Fox about ‘answering that of God in every one’, but no matter whether or not Friends get it from there, Quakers usually believe that to some extent, there is something within each person - an ‘inner light’, ‘that of God’, a spirit that responds specifically the promptings of the Holy Spirit, whatever - that makes people uniquely valuable. I suppose that if you’re a committed non-theist (I don’t know what your particular theological take is), you might find that tricky, but there’s definitely echoes of that concept in humanist concepts of ‘inalienable humanity’ - the idea that there’s some special personhood in each and everyone regardless of who they are - I think that’s how the most non-theist non-spiritual Quakers I’ve met conceptualise it. The ‘human’ bit that makes everyone have ‘human rights’, if you see what I mean. If you google “non-theist friends”, you’ll find a ton of stuff about Quakers who don’t have a formal (or any) notion of the divine - I don’t know what the good, convincing, or authentic stuff is, but I can ask around my Meeting tomorrow to see if anyone has any guidance/ideas. Quaker Faith and Practice (http://qfp.quaker.org.uk - pro-click zone for learning about Quaker thought, especially in the UK) is singularly unhelpful as a credal statement, but is rather a collection of attempts to express Truth by Quakers and Quaker meetings across Quakerism’s history. If you look through, you’ll see some people who conceptualise their reachings for the Truth in explicitly theistic, Christian terms, but then there’ll be others who see Jesus as a pretty cool dude who’s example that we should follow towards some sort of God-principle, and then there are others who talk about how their walk in the North York Moors on a rainy day conferred some sort of spiritual message to them. So I think that, as long as you’re relatively on board with the non-theist content of Jesus’ general message, you should be fine. I’ve had some fascinating discussions with radical (small f) friends whose left-wing beliefs I share about the necessity and place of political violence, of the Fanon-esque type - not exactly in line with Quaker/Christian beliefs in pacifism - but even then they’ve been to meeting one or two times and got something from it, so I think that the potential benefit and welcoming community of Quakers can be quite wide. Quaker meetings in the UK usually have a few copies of the Bible out during meeting, alongside copies of Quaker Faith and Practice and Advices and Queries (a small booklet of guidance and challenges based on QFP; not very God-y, iirc), but there’s no expectation to place your hand on heart and swear on the Bible, so if you’re comfortable with that, that should be fine. Finally, there’s the Quaker testimonies - as close to a shared set of beliefs as we have. The four main testimonies - peace, simplicity, truth (though I think that’s ‘integrity’ now), and equality - as well as the less well-established/older ones - stewardship (of the Earth), community, and my personal weird and obscure favourite, the testimony against times and seasons (basically the idea that you shouldn’t have holy days to mark specific things you find meaningful; if it is meaningful, you should live and honour it every day of your life) - all have pretty strong religious origins in Quaker and Christian theology, but you can certainly understand them in a secular context too. Sharing the testimonies with other Quakers will put you pretty much in line with other Quakers’ ethos, and I would be dismayed if any Meeting here in the UK made you unwelcome because you limited yourself to them. Finally - on a cynical note - though Quakers may punch above their weight in numbers and have good ‘brand recognition’ (ugh), there are only 359,000 adult Members (and a bunch more attenders worldwide), and about 30-35,000 members and attenders in the UK). Most of them are, to be blunt, fairly old (Quaker conversions tend to happen later in life), and there is an unseemly amount of enthusiasm for younger people coming to Meeting. As such, on a purely practical level, I don’t think many meetings would be ‘picky’ about new arrivals, even if those meetings weren’t theologically and philosophically inclined to welcome them in. quote:What was the coolest/most moving/funnest thing you experienced with the Quakers? Tell me about your experiences as a Quaker. quote:Quaker meetings; the big (usually poorly heated) room; standing up and speaking whatever’s on your mind quote:Liberal/Conservative/conservative/evangelical (‘C’/‘c’ makes a world of difference!) congregations/meetings quote:Quakers in PA; Quakerism as a ‘Christian religion’ vs. universalism; structure, hierarchy, and Quaker decision-making processes These are all really interesting points, and I'm sorry that I've worn out the post-making part of my brain for this morning; can I get to these in a bit (alternatively, if anyone else wants to jump in, go ahead; no hierarchies, remember  )? They're really interesting questions, and though I'm very much giving one Friend's point of view (an irregularly observant, Christian-in-Quaker-clothing's perspective), it's really helpful for me personally to express and put the answers into writing too!
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Nov 28, 2015 10:41
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