Irregardless of what we call it, listening to, learning, and living the truth are the central activities to the Quaker tradition of truth. These practices of the truth what we see in God’s own acts: when God speaks, God speaks truth, when God acts (as we see in the life of Jesus), God acts truthfully, and when we build communities based on the Holy Spirit these communities become learning communities of truth.
Good stuff from Anthony Manousos:
Perhaps the most important innovation in this work is its systematization of the Quaker social “testimonies.” Until the publication of Guide to Quaker Practice, there was no consensus about what Friends’ social testimonies were. Howard surveyed this jumble of advices and distilled them into four distinct and memorable social testimonies—simplicity, peace, community, equality—and one personal testimony (integrity). Howard’s formulation of the five Quaker testimonies has become so commonplace in Quaker religious education that it is often referred to by the acronym SPICE. Few Friends realize that Howard “discovered” or “reinvented” the testimonies in 1943.
I’ve always had a soft spot for the hodgepodge of testimonies in the old Books of Discipline, and reading Thomas Clarkson’s outsider account of circa 1800 helped me understand their use better. They were more practical & experienced-based that the SPICE list. Their underlying pattern was the way they addressed actual problems that had arisen in the Society of Friends. I’ve called them the “collective wisdom wiki” of Friends.
And my response in the comments:
As an old philosophy major I love the elegance of SPICE but I think the lack of specific testimonies has hurt our ability to identify and name issues when they come up at meeting. The modern world still has temptations that divide us from God, hurt our ability to empathize with our neighbors and divide our faith community but how do we talk with one another about these practices?
A new post over on my Quakerranter.org site:
It’s true that any form of spiritual discipline can get twisted into look-at-me heroism or lets-talk-anything-but-God group conformity. The answer isn’t to give up testimonies or to hold onto them even tighter, but instead to constantly remind ourselves about their purpose: to learn how to live as an attentive people of God.
Good visit from Cookie Caldwell this morning. He’s the Friend who runs Philadelphia-area Quaker’s high school programs. He’s been doing this for a lot of years and he has a wonderfully discursive style that easily goes off track into funny story and revealing anecdotes. Fortunately my wife Julie interrupted and got us back on track.
I’m going to come out to a program in August to talk to the high schoolers about the testimonies. Cookie had been assigned this topic and wanted to do something different than the ever-popular SPICE run-through, where five very broad categories of Quaker practices are tackled one after the other. Cookie Googled around and found my video, Quaker Testimonies as a Collective Wisdom Wiki (below).
I only have two 90-minute segments in August. Cookie told me how he’s long thought it would be good to have short videos for Quaker religious education. Ten minute videos combined with questions for the class to ponder. Most Sunday morning Quaker education program are about forty-five minutes and the leaders of the First Day Programs (as we Friends often call them) are looking for fresh material. So some of this might work itself out as a test of something like this.
Some Days / Thinking about Quaker outreach approaches
Looking at some of my various Quaker sites and thinking about how to kick-start some more outreach with younger seekers. Quakerquaker.org, my most prominent community site, actually gets around half the visitors of my quakerranter.org blog and has an audience that skews quite a bit older.
Quakerquaker.org: 509 weekly people, median age: 50+ (quantcast.com/quakerquaker.org)
Quakerranter.org: 962 weekly people, media age 18-34 (quantcast.com/quakerranter.org)
“Quaker Outreach: Am I Crazy Here” (bit.ly/13xOjG) explains why I think our outreach efforts should be focused on the 18-35 year old demographic and be largely web based. “The Not So Young Quakers” (bit.ly/2SG82) is more recent update. “Quaker Testimonies as Our Collective Wisdom Wiki” (bit.ly/pfN3a) is a video from last November that someone recently thought might a useful approach for younger Friends. If all this isn’t enought the quakerranter.org/outreach category is bursting with posts.
For those confused about my multiplicity of sites, quakerranter.org is the oldest blog of mine still in existence (I’ve sold nonviolence.org). It had kid pictures, kid pictures and a “links blog” of interesting Quaker things I had found on the net that day. The links blog evolved into quakerquaker.org, the random “life stream” blog function is being handled by quackquack.org (a tumblr.com powered site).
