I am starting this blog to explore my Quaker spirituality and the state of Quakers today. Quakerism is the only religion I know from the inside out. My mother grew up a Southern Baptist and became a convinced Friend via exposure to Quakerism during college. When I was born she belonged to Lincoln, NE Monthly Meeting. As I understand it, Lincoln Meeting was at that time unaffiliated having developed around people brought to Lincoln either because of the University of Nebraska or other work with the state government. Perhaps there were also some people who had made their way there from Friends Churches in the region, all that was above my toddler mind. In any case, between Lincoln Meeting's lack of affiliation at the time I was born --around the time I was four it became part of Iowa Conservative Yearly Meeting-- and my father being a professed atheist I was not registered as a Birthright Quaker. Nonetheless I attended meeting into my adolescence before I declared myself an atheist, but with the reinstatement of draft registration in the late 1970s and an increasing appreciation of the value of gathering with Friends I became active again in my late teens, and have attended meetings whenever possible ever since. As a graduate student I transferred my membership from Croton Valley Meeting in the New York Yearly meeting, which became our home meeting after we left Nebraska in 1968 to Ann Arbor Monthly Meeting, and since 2000 I have been a member of Flushing Monthly Meeting in New York City.
Theologically, I see myself as rooted more in the Hicksite tradition. That said, historically Croton Valley was on the Orthodox side of the schism, and it nurtured me as a Quaker. I consider Jim Wood an important mentor, and I remember the guidance I received from Kenneth Morgan, Louisa Bauer, and others. I am glad I did not know the schism and that we worshiped together. Some of the best ministry I have heard has been Christo-centric, and I am happy to consider myself a Christian, though Quaker that I am, I see no special magic in the Nicene creed, and I have serious doubts believing in the Jesus's virgin birth is essential to Christianity, though I realize many others, including many Quakers disagree. At the same time, I don't feel distant from those who call themselves non-theistic Quakers. To me, God is just a word intended to capture our relationship to the world and all that is in it, and if one feels comfortable with that all-embracing concept or not is a personal matter. Indeed, one of the things that inspired me was watching Alan Lightman's "Searching: Our Quest for Meaning in the Age of Science" because it struck me that precisely because Quakers have found a way to get beyond doctrine and focus on living, we ought to be well positioned as a medium for people looking for spiritual fellowship in this age of science, and yet we are not attracting new members. As a community across the world we are shrinking, and paradoxically where we are growing in East Africa--particularly Kenya-- and Bolivia, Quakers tend to be the most conventionally Christian in their beliefs. My hope is to use this Blog to discuss this, and to explore among other things whether a revival of Quaker conviction that created a thriving community of "peculiar people" is possible without returning to conventional Christo-centrism. I also want to explore dilemmas faced by Quaker communities that are shrinking in number. As a trained historian, though not of Quakerism, I hope to that framework to think about what made the spread of Quakerism possible, and what we can and can't do to recover that vision.
Beyond those bigger questions, I also hope to use this Blog to explore my own spiritual growth. As I will talk more about in coming posts, I am in a moment of transition, and I intend to use Quakerism as a guide in my changing life that will I hope lead to a transformation of my understanding of myself. Perhaps this will lead to an ongoing blog, but I am starting by giving myself permission ahead of time to stop blogging should I find that I have said what I need to say.
No comments:
Post a Comment