Coming Out from Under Our Bushel

Becoming Publishers of Truth Again

The word “revival” derives from a Latin word that literally means “to live again.” The Religious Society of Friends is certainly not dead today, but it is hard to argue that there was not far greater life and power in the original Quaker movement than exists in any of our branches today.

The Publishers of Truth or Children of the Light, as Friends first called themselves, developed communal forms of worship, decision making, and testing of each others’ leadings that were revolutionary in their direct reliance on the Inward Teacher and Guide at the heart of creation. Their willingness to follow God’s guidance wherever it took them as a movement led early Quakers to preach truth and to practice ways of living that were in sharp contrast to the wars, patriarchy, class and economic injustice, and religious persecution of their day.

I often find myself longing for the powerful faith of an Elizabeth Hooten (who mentored George Fox in his youth), a Mary Fisher (who walked across Balkan battlefields to have a spiritual conversation with the sultan), a teenage Edward Burrough (whose preaching earned him the name “Son of Thunder”), a James Nayler (who left his farm to harvest souls), or a Mary Dyer (muzzled to keep her from preaching or singing as she was led to the gallows). The great challenges of our world today call for just such prophetic voices. Where will those voices come from: inside or outside the Society of Friends?

The first Friends felt a deep persistent call to share what they had discovered—and were living out together—with non-Friends around them. For 200 years or so, Quaker ministers, both women and men who were traveling under concern, did not preach only to the Quakers they were visiting; they often held public meetings for curious non-Friends in the area and offered Spirit-guided ministry at these meetings.

Even if we firmly believe that the Beloved draws people to Truth along many paths, Quakerism’s unique beliefs and practices could be of enormous value to many who have never heard of them. Many might find our Quaker beliefs and practices of enormous benefit to their spiritual journey and to their capacity to respond to the fear, confusion, and despair of our own time.

Too many modern Friends seem to act as if our Quaker beliefs and practices are of relevance only to a select few that are drawn to them. From our aversion to forcing our beliefs and practices on others, we have become highly skilled at hiding our corporate light under a bushel. If we believe God can provide the words and prayers that we speak during worship in our meetinghouses, would God not also provide us words by the Holy Spirit to speak to non-Friends in settings quite different from the worship in our meetings?

The great challenges facing our world today—war, patriarchy, religious intolerance, economic and racial injustice, and horrifying wounding of our precious earth—all cry out for the kind of faith-rooted prophetic witness that early Friends brought to their own time and place. Could not the life and power lived out daily by early Friends shake the ground “for ten miles round” (as George Fox said) in our world today?

Left: Quaker martyr Mary Dyer was hung in Boston Commons in 1660 after the Massachusetts Bay Colony banned Quakers from the colony. Howard Pyle, MaryDyer Being Led to The Scaffold, ca. 1905. 30.5″ x 21.5″, oil on canvas. Image from the Newport Historical Society on commons.wikimedia.org. Right: James Nayler was charged with blasphemy in 1656 after reenacting Christ’s entry into Jerusalem. Unknown artist, 1656. 3.62″ x 5.25″, etching.

Loss of the Whole Cloth of Quakerism

Bill Taber, a recorded minister of Ohio Yearly Meeting, taught courses on Quakerism and the prophets at Pendle Hill study center in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, for 13 years. Bill believed that great schisms among Friends in the nineteenth century did terrible damage to Quakerism, as each branch lost key pieces of Quakerism’s unique vision of humanity’s relationship with God and our ways of following God’s lead as a faith community. As I understood it, Bill felt that Pastoral Friends had lost much of Friends’ unique understanding of Christ and direct reliance on the Inward Voice of God; that Conservative Friends had become too attached to forms and cut off from the world today; and that Liberal Friends had often become cut off from our Chrisian and biblical roots, and in some cases also lost an experiential relationship with the Living God at the heart of our social witness, worship, and other communal practices.

I can speak best of my own experience of this fracturing of the Quaker vision. I was raised in the 1950s in a large meeting in a college town, one of many new Liberal Friends meetings that sprang up in the United States in the middle of the twentieth century. The meeting was a warm community of families that believed in many good things about peace and equality. When I began to experience deeply gathered worship, powerful Spirit-led vocal ministry and Spirit-guided meetings for business as a young adult, however, I felt like I had been cheated and fed a watered-down version of Quakerism in my childhood meeting.

Many Liberal Friends then and now assume that the biblical, Christian, and theist language and theology of earlyl Friends are the same as forms of Christianity that they rejected before coming to Friends or find deeply troubling when they encounter it now. (This is only likely to become more challenging with the rise of Christian nationalism today.)

In 2013 protesters Ken Ward and Jay O’Hara used a lobster boat to blockade a 40,000-ton shipment of Appalachian coal for six hours. Photos from QuakerSpeak.com.

The Revival Has Begun

I long for powerful Quaker gospel ministers to spring up among us: the kind that shook England and her American colonies in the seventeenth century. I believe, however, that a quiet but deep revival has already been taking place among Friends over the past half century. There are many signs of God at work among us, which have taken many different forms, often beneath the radar. Deepening awareness and experiential practice of God-led Quakerism has sprung up in many places across all branches of Friends.

In my travels and experience with Quakers today, I encounter Friends who are going deeper, learning more about the radical faith roots of our faith community, and are willing and able to hear others’ voices and experiences with “listening in tongues” (learning to translate others’ words about the Holy into language that speaks to their own condition). I believe this under-the-radar Quaker revival will continue to deepen and grow in many ways and many places. However, to my mind a great and lasting Quaker revival will require us to do the following:

1. Come together as listeners and followers to the Living Teacher at the heart of all
2. Recognize that there is ultimate Truth that springs from God/Spirit and is inconsistent with the lies, greed, violence, and fear that are at the core of the world (empire) around us
3. Recognize spiritual authority that springs from the power of God and is utterly different from an empire’s form of authority, which is based on power over others
4. Enter into covenantal relationships with each other, letting us see each others’ wounds and blindspots, willing to be lovingly accountable to each other in our search for faithfulness, and ready to ask for and receive loving assistance from others as a gift rather than judgment
5. Break out of the walls we have built around ourselves as Friends to become Publishers of Truth once again

As we seek today’s truths as Friends, what do we see? What do we hear?

Friends from the very beginning have carried wounds from the domination-based systems of this world that caused great harm in the name of truth. What will help us move forward together as a community to own our broken places, help each other to right past wrongs, and do better together? I pray that we allow God to lead us into a deepening revival of our faith community that includes acknowledging our broken places and cultural blindspots. Can we take responsibility for the harms we have done and continue to do to others, working on ourselves and the parts we may have played in such harm? Can we find ways to support each other with compassion and love as we move forward?

Over 50 people worship outside the gates of a coal plant in Bow, N.H., at the end of a 2017 climate pilgrimage that had begun in Dover, N.H. Following worship, a smaller group set up an encampment to block the train tracks to the plant. Photos courtesy of the author.

A Prayer for Quaker Revival

Psalm 132 is about the covenant that God made with David and the Hebrew people—because of the hardships David faced for his faithfulness and because he would not sleep until he found a dwelling or resting place for God. I have re-imaged this psalm as the covenant that God made with early Friends—and that God will keep with us forever, if we keep to that covenant relationship with God and are faithful to what God is calling us into as a faith community.

May it be so.