From: redingtn@athena.mit.edu (Norman H Redington)
Subject: re: quakerism, Christianity, etc
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Distribution: na
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 17:34:03 GMT

Unitarian Quakers, Jewish Quakers, Wiccan Quakers,
Quaker Atheists...and oh, to be fair, I myself, an
Orthodox Christian Quaker!  The question is beginning
to seem pertinent: just what is a Quaker? Does it
have to do with an adherence to certain external
forms of worship/meditation (I can hear George Fox
rumbling: "steepleless houses, which they call
Meetings")? Does it have to do with non-violence,
with consensual decision making?

This "inner light" everyone claims to experience
in meeting: what is it exactly? Christ? The 
Great Mother? The human spirit? Conscience? Is
your inner light really connected to my inner
light? Someone posted here that it is "the shard
of the divine" in each of us. Is God fragmented, then?

I do not consider myself a Christian fanatic; I
have a deep love for the Jewish and the Buddhist 
traditions particularly. Nevertheless it disturbs
me deeply that a "consensus" seems to be emerging
that all ways are equal, all lights the same. It
is not communion to sit in silence "communing"
with some abstract light the very name of which
Friends cannot agree on. Not only is it not
communion with God, it is not communion with 
each other.

Christianity has always taught the doctrine of
the Inner Uncreated Light which enlightens every
person. This Light, the "Glory" of God, is the
source of all that is good, true, and beautiful
in every culture and tradition; all that is good,
true, and beautiful in turn points back to the
Source of Light.  This is why the early Church
honored Virgil and Socrates as pre-Christian saints.
This is what Isaac Pennington meant when he spoke
of there being "many ways". This is why the 17th
century woman Friend who preached to the Grand Turk
could guilelessly answer the Muslim clergy trying
to entrap her by saying "I do not know your Prophet,
but if his words are true, obey them."

But while there are many ways, there is only one
Way, Jesus the Light of the World. Every heresy,
if I may use that unpopular word, has been an attempt
to deny that the Light is also a person, one Jesus.
This is not a minor, optional point. Pontius Pilate
sitting in judgement on Christ remarked "What is 
truth?" An Orthodox priest once commented that the
question is tragic; he should have asked "Who is
Truth?" Truth is not an abstraction, truth is not a
concept, truth is a person, and that person is Light,
and the Light was made flesh.

What a terrible thing it is that the sins of Christians
have alienated so many of you from knowing this 
person who is Truth, the Friend who founded and named
this Society! Jesus is the Inner Light; except for
Jesus there is only darkness. Jesus does not want
people to become steeplehouse "Christians" but he
wants them to awaken to the Light and become themselves,
true persons as he is a person. This double 
thought - that the Light is a person and in our midst -
was so overwhelming to the early Friends that it trans-
formed their entire way of living: they became Quakers,
those who quake with amazement at the reality of the Living
God. Can one be a Quaker and never quake?

Norman

Newsgroups: soc.religion.quaker