Ask four Quakers, "What is Quakerism?" and you will get five or six answers--and only two of those will not contradict themselves.

 

People who call themselves Quakers (or, more formally, members of the Religious Society of Friends) may look like evangelical Christians, Buddhists, Wiccans, New Agers, or secular humanist atheists. 

 

What holds them together?  What do they have in common?  Nothing.  No thing.  Each of these diverse individuals, or collections of them, find it is important to claim the identity of "Quaker," but there is a not a common denominator that gives the name any kind of actual definition.

 

Some Quakers who attend "meetings" believe that it's about making up your own religion that everyone else has to tolerate and there are some monthly meetings where that's what cooks.  Gay marriage and abortion rights.

 

Other Quakers who attend "churches,"  are hard to distinguish from evangelical Christians, and where it is very much about adhering to a certain beliefs.  Homosexuality is an abomination unto the Lord and abortion is murder.

But not all meetings are so free form, and not all churches are so rigid. 

There is a long history that one can read that will show how--although not necessarily why--the Religious Society of Friends developed from a fairly unified and cohesive place (far, far, far to the "left") on the spectrum of the English Reformation of the 1600's into the "constellation of confusion" that it is today.  I don't want to get into that.

I am only saying this so that anyone reading this will understand that they may well meet a Quaker who will burn with white hot anger if they are characterized by what I write.  If one meets someone who says s/he is a Quaker, and if one says, "Oh, you are a Quaker!  I know something about that, because I read Timothy's Blog," one may find that the person addressed will not share one single belief of mine.

Quakers are very label oriented people.  In fact, when Quakers unknown to one another meet (or write in a newsgroup) a process ensues designed to allow each to pigeon hole the other into categories that mean wildly different things to different people who function within those categories and to Quakers who do not.  It can be kind of interesting to participate in one of these sessions and very interesting, if one is familiar with what is going on, to witness one.

My purpose is not to teach anyone about the branches of Quakerism or to show why mine is correct, best or valid. 

My purpose is to explain mine.  It's as much to explain it to myself as to anyone else.  But I also think that there are a great many people in this world whose spiritual orientation is very much like mine, people who are actually Quakers (of one particular stripe) and who do not even know that this is what they are.

 

 

6:57:33 PM