From: wagner@cs.unc.edu (Michael Wagner)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.quaker
Subject: Re: Inner Light
Date: 12 Jan 1993 10:59:30 -0500
Organization: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
NNTP-Posting-Host: paganini.cs.unc.edu

A few reflection on Michael K. Valenza's post:

I haven't heard many objections to that fact that Quakerism is "open" 
to anything.  The objections that I have is when either when people go 
to meetings and never hear anything about Jesus Christ or Scripture, 
or when there's some assumption that being a Quaker means *not* reading 
Scripture, or learning from the records we have of the teaching of 
Jesus Christ.

>    ...  However, I would like to say that
>    it is precisely because Quakerism does not impose a dogmatic, orthodox
>    Christianity on its membership that I became a Friend.  Thus it is
>    precisely what they have objected to that I find most appealing about
>    Quakerism.

That was true for me for a long time, and I wouldn't discourage anyone
from coming from meeting because of that.  Then I started to re-read
Fox's Journal.  What I found is not precisely the "You believe what you
believe and I believe what I believe, and we'll leave each other alone."
I think any reading of Fox's Journal ends up leaving one with the direct
impression that Fox did not want dogma or orthodoxy to prevent the
individual's direct encounter with the Inward Christ.  I think that my
understanding of the Inner Light for many years as a kind of fuzzy
benign spirit of the Universe -- "May the Force be with you!" -- was
wrong.  But I think that Fox believed that we should encounter the
Inward Christ, which he definitely related to the historical
Christ.  Saying I don't want dogma to get in the way of doing something
is not the same as saying that I don't want you to do this thing.

I suspect that Fox would believe that no one should tell you what's in
the Bible or how to read that Bible, -- but that you still need to read 
the Bible.  While avoiding worshiping the Bible, Fox definitely read the
Bible, and quoted from it as an authority.

In response to this, I started reading the Bible a couple of years
ago.  I started with the Old Testament, I'm up to Jeremiah right now.
I still have big problem with divinely ordained genocide, and a lot
of the laments, which seem to follow a "These people have wronged
me, kill all of them and their children and let the dogs gnaw on their
bones" kind of a flavor.

I haven't found much immediately that reaches out to me from the
O.T.-- some surprised, like "My God, my God, why have you forsaken
me?"  is a quote from Psalms (I never knew that.)

One thing that has risen out of my reading of the O.T. is a notion
that if we are a covenant people, then maybe we have obligations
to each other beyond "You believe what you believe and I believe
what I believe, and we'll both be cool!" is wrong.  If we are a
covenant people, then maybe we have an obligation to struggle
with each other when we feel that each other is not tending to
the Inward Christ.  That conflicts with the white middle class
liberal intellectual movement that Quakerism has become (at least
in the last half of the century here in the States).  But I
don't think it conflicts with Fox, who was very willing to wrestle
with someone when he thought they were straying from the Inward
Christ.

The only other thing I have had a leading about from Bible, which
the Inner Light led me to share in Meeting for Worship is that
there were two commandments in the New Covenant:  The first was to
love God above all things, the second was to love our neighbor.
My experience with many Quaker meetings is that we tend to work
the heck out of the 2nd commandment of the New Covenant, and
ignore the 1st.

>    ... Because the
>    experience of revelation is available to all of us, and because it is a
>    continuing process, everything, including the Bible, can only be
>    interpreted in view of the same Light that influenced the formulation of
>    the normative traditions and writings.  Thus Fox, devout Christian that
>    he was, criticized the bibliolatry of his day.  

I agree completely, but I would emphasize that my reading of Fox 
seems to indicate that is important to understand the Bible.  Understand
it in the spirit of the Light that wrote it, but understand it.

>    ... I don't turn to Fox as a
>    final authority that I appeal to in order to settle disputes among
>    Quakers; that would be fundamentally wrong, and a violation of the
>    spirit of Quakerism.  

Clearly correct.  However, I think there's a big jump between citing
as final authority and seeking guidance from Quakers who have come
before us.  I find that I often turn to early Quakers for guidance
in spiritual matters-- more modern Quakers seem to be concerned with
the UN or Desert Storm or the environment.

>
>    Margaret Fell criticized the tendency of Quakerism to impose rules of
>    outward form.  

Did she write a journal?  Is it available?

>    ...  I don't say "thee" in my ordinary speech,
>    because there is no need to, and in fact Friends used such speech long
>    after the justification for it ceased.  

I know a Friend who does use "thee", and the use of this in ordinary
speech has a different effect than I thought.  When I'm with him,
my reaction is different than I would have expected it to be.  It's
a little hard to explain, and it drives my wife crazy (and lots of
other people), but I'm not sure that the justification for it has
ceased.  I understand the early justification, and that we don't
have the same kind of rules of usage that early Friends were objecting
to, but I'm surprised at how much I liked it.

>    ... Both
>    liberal unprogrammed Friends and conservative programmed Friends can

I would have have though this the opposite.  The North Carolina Yearly
Meeting (Conservative) are the hard core unprogrammed Quakers around
here.

>    ... By
>    analogy, the various strains of Buddhism in the world can pay homage to
>    the original religion of the Buddha, while differing among themselves on
>    many important points.

I actually read a little about Buddhism when I was in Thailand, and recoiled
from the intense dogma.  This is not to disagree with your analogy, but
I remember being very disappointed-- I guess that for some reason I thought
Eastern religions to be less dogmatic than Western religions-- just 
a hangover from the sixties, I guess.  I was searching spiritually,
and was disappointed with what I read.

>    Quakerism is a living faith, but it also is important to realize that it
>    is not an individualistic one.  Quakers form a community of people,
>    sharing in their experiences of divine revelation.  We attain value, we
>    attain reality checks, we attain spiritual nourishment from others in
>    the faith community, just as we provide those things for others.  It is
>    a mutual process of give and take, as we struggle with the process of
>    continuing revelation.  Turning to any single authority as the final
>    source would convert this process from being mutual to being unilateral.

I think that you're right, in general.  But I also see an awful lot of
turning to the Bible (looked at in the spirit of the Light that wrote
it) in Fox.  Most of his refutation of "priests" consist of a better
understanding of a piece of Scripture than theirs.

>    For those who are in agreement with modern unprogrammed Quakerism, I
>    support and respect their right to find a home that is comfortable for
>    them.  

I couldn't agree more.  However, in this "home" I hope and pray that
other Quakers struggle with me to find a closer bond to the Inward
Christ.  I don't think saying, "You're welcome here." implies, "All
religious beliefs are of equal weight here."  I don't know if you
believe that these two statements are equivalent, but I think
that many modern programmed Quakers *do* act as though they believed
this.

Mike Wagner
wagner@cs.unc.edu

-- 
.......................................................
michael paul wagner
wagner@hatteras.cs.unc.edu		ahlan wa sahlan
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Newsgroups: soc.religion.quaker