The challenge for me as the facilitator was to create a process that would allow participants to reflect on why certain Quaker terms, concepts, or practices left a bad taste in their mouth and then move them towards considering those same things in a new light. In turn, that led to a short conversation about our spiritual development as Friends and how many of us are moving from being a “spiritual refugee”—running from a religious tradition—to being a “spiritual citizen”—consciously moving into, adopting, and integrating a new faith tradition for ourselves.
I’ve mostly ignored Brit Hume’s comment this week but this is an interesting take:
In practice, the admirable principle that nobody should be persecuted for their beliefs often blurs into the more illiberal idea that nobody should ever publicly criticize another religion. Or champion one’s own faith as an alternative. Or say anything whatsoever about religion, outside the privacy of church, synagogue or home.
If you treat your faith like a hothouse flower, too vulnerable to survive in the crass world of public disputation, then you ensure that nobody will take it seriously. The idea that religion is too mysterious, too complicated or too personal to be debated on cable television just ensures that it never gets debated at all.
This doesn’t mean that we need to welcome real bigotry into our public discourse. But what Hume said wasn’t bigoted: Indeed, his claim about the difference between Buddhism and Christianity was perfectly defensible. Christians believe in a personal God who forgives sins. Buddhists, as a rule, do not. And it’s at least plausible that Tiger Woods might welcome the possibility that there’s Someone out there capable of forgiving him, even if Elin Nordegren and his corporate sponsors never do.
Or maybe not. For many people — Woods perhaps included — the fact that Buddhism promotes an ethical life without recourse to Christian concepts like the Fall of Man, divine judgment and damnation is precisely what makes it so appealing. The knee-jerk outrage that greeted Hume’s remarks buried intelligent responses from Buddhists, who made arguments along these lines — explaining their faith, contrasting it with Christianity, and describing how a lost soul like Woods might use Buddhist concepts to climb from darkness into light.
I think that so often, we refrain from speaking to children about faith in fear of impacting the decisions they must make for themselves. I believe that this all too common silence comes from a place of good intentions, but I want to challenge it. In order for the faith of our children to be alive and vibrant, they must discover it themselves. But as adults, we have some maps that we can share with our children. We can tell them of our adventures, and our failures in faith without forcing them to take the same road.
“Emerging Quaker” Diane asked me to spread word about an interesting study on faith and organization. I’m crazy busy but it looks interesting and I’d like to hear what people think of this:
Would you be willing to put up a link to a new Lilly study on faith and organizations that includes Quakers in the study? It’s a large study exploring how Friends and other faith groups interact with the organizations they sponsor—schools, retirement facilities, charities, etc.
This study is especially pertinent, I think, to groups such as emerging churches and denominations distinctly interested in missional aspects of faith expression. Studies like this, I believe can help organizations do social justice better—and that’s all to the good.
What if we, wildly, radically, impossibly, behaved as if —“as if”—isn’t that what faith is?— the whole story were true and not pick out the parts that allow us superiority? The extraordinary move is to recognize that the seeming impossible might be real because that is to recognize that the world and the universe as we know them might be more miraculous—and multidimensional and sacred and wild— than they seem.
The NYTimes asked some religious pundits about Governor Mark Sanford’s repeated allusions to God and self-comparisons to King David. Some samples:
Chuck Colson:
When God created humans, His first act was to join the first man and woman as one flesh. Marriage is therefore a pre-political institution, the first of three institutions specifically ordained by God. It is therefore a sacred covenant between man, woman and God. Having read the governor’s latest statements about several prior dalliances (enough confessing already, please) I think he needs to go home, and get his own house in order before he can do much for the state of South Carolina.
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach:
The paradox of American evangelicals is that they are Christian on the one hand and political conservatives on the other with utterly opposing views of redemption. Christians believe that no one is blameless and all must therefore ride the coattails of a perfect being into heaven. But conservatives espouse the gospel of personal accountability. The state cannot save them. Man must earn his bread by the sweat of his brow and not by welfare alone.
Steven Waldman (Beliefnet):
The problem with this is that Jesus never suggested that being cleansed of spiritual sin meant you were exempted from temporal punishment. A murderer who accepts Christ might still get to heaven, but he doesn’t get sprung from Leavenworth.
Colleen Carroll Campbell (whose book Julie & I reviewed a few years ago)
A politician who publicly champions traditional values while failing to faithfully live his own marriage vows may be a moral weakling, and he certainly loses a good deal of credibility on those issues when he fails to live his professed values in his private life. But his personal failings do not automatically discredit the causes for which he was fighting or serve as irrefutable proof that he never believed in those causes in the first place.
The author is a young Mennonite from Pennsylvania who grew up in the rich cultural traditions but who recently spent a year among U.K. Anabaptists who are a more convinced, less culturally-embedded crowd. This is her reflections on the two approaches and what they mean to each other.
Quote: My time in the UK made me more aware of the ways in which our Mennonite traditions have become empty and have failed to helpfully communicate a Jesus-centred Anabaptist faith. I also became very conscious of the fact that our particular cultural traditions are just that – particular and cultural. The Pennsylvania Mennonite way of being Anabaptist is not the only way of being Anabaptist, and to assume so would be to tragically limit a movement that has the ability to move across and beyond culture and tradition.
The anecdotal evidence collected by the Association of Theological Schools, which covers 250 graduate institutions in the United States and Canada, has found job listings for ministerial positions down by about one-third at major seminaries serving both evangelical and mainstream Protestant denominations. The Jewish newspaper The Forward reported last month that Jewish seminaries accustomed to placing nearly all their newly minted rabbis were finding jobs this year for only about half.
The test of Quakerism does not come only on Sundays. The test of Quakerism is not even or not only what you believe. The test of Quakerism lies in keeping that faith and trust all week long.
