Forum, November 2024

Too good to be forgotten

This needed to be said (“Resisting the Fake News about Jesus” by Christopher E. Stern, FJ Oct.). For me it started with my mother saying that my best guide in life would be that “still, small voice within me,” and my experience has not proved her wrong. It was later in life that I was led to make the connection between it and Jesus, when hearing his words in John’s Gospel—“For this I came, to be witness to the truth; all who are of the truth hear my voice”—in the aria in the St John Passion by Johann Sebastian Bach, where it rings out sharply in the tenor voice. I was more recently struck by a book by Marcus Borg and another whose name I’ve forgotten, who pointed out that in one of Paul’s letters the phrase “our faith in Jesus Christ” is a mistranslation, as the Greek grammar construction would best be rendered as “the faith of Jesus Christ,” which drastically alters the whole picture.

Ellen Pye
Calgary, Alberta

Thank you, Chris, for this thoughtful article. Yes, the “fake news” about Jesus needs to be resisted in every generation of Friends. His good news—that Spirit is available to guide us and connect us to the Life—is too good to be forgotten.

George Schaefer
Glenside, Pa.

What kind of people are we?

Good Quaker queries, in my opinion, are ones that are not definitively answerable (“What Kind of Quaker Am I?” by Micah MacColl Nicholson, FJ Oct.). They require us to “live in the question,” as someone in our Friends meeting put it during her clearness committee for membership. Nicholson’s title query fits squarely in this category, and in doing so, recognizes that we are each a part of the continuing revelation that is the world we live in—and the continuing revelation of who we are. I would only suggest that it may not matter what kind of Quaker Nicholson is but what kind of person. The insight, questioning, and search for where Spirit is leading reflect a Quaker spirit no matter what explicit identification she ends up having with Quakers.

Shel Gross
Madison, Wis.

So well stated from a non-Quaker who very much admires what the Quakers are doing these days!

Joseph Mayer
Burnsville, Minn.

Online: Micah MacColl Nicholson discusses their article in a video interview at Friendsjournal.org/micah-maccoll-nicholson.

Just how peculiar do we need to be?

Thank you for Andy Stanton-Henry’s “More Spiritual than God? (FJ Oct.). I was raised Catholic, but in my 30s I joined a Friends meeting. After a time, I was drawn to a Tibetan Buddhist tradition for several years. Like Catholicism, Tibetan Buddhism often makes use of sacrament and ritual to communicate wisdom and the truth of reality. Though ritual can often turn some people off to spirituality, I encourage these folks to contemplate how sacrament and ritual can be a gateway to universal sacredness, rather than an obstacle to it—just as can be the case with music, art, or poetry. I have recently returned to Friends, but I retain a willingness to occasionally step into a Catholic church so that I might physically incorporate into my body the sacrament of that Spirit that gives me life.

Manuel
Davis, Calif.

I really appreciated this article. I understand why early Friends rejected the physical sacraments of bread and wine, but I agree with the Lutheran who wondered why Friends see everything sacramental except bread and wine. We talk of that of God within, but there is that of God between; we also see Spirit incarnate in the physical world. Sometimes I do not experience the inwardness of the Divine, and I need to remember that the inner and the outer form one reality. I do not see baptism and communion as necessary for salvation. Rather, I find that communion with bread and wine may be a reminder now and again that the physical is part of the spiritual life—and vice versa. It is the experience of communion that is more important for me than the how of it.

Harvey Gillman
Rye, UK

I read this article with great interest. Actually read it a few times. I’m trying to be open to what it says, but I have to say I find some of it offensive. The biggest “offender” wasn’t the author, but by his seminary professor who said, “Quakers believe everything is sacred except bread and wine!” I hope the prof was trying to be funny, but it isn’t. It’s not that Quakers don’t find bread and wine sacred, it’s just that we don’t find the elements any more sacred than the next thing. I have been a Quaker all my life, except for many years when I left active Quakerism and joined the United Church of Christ (UCC), eventually being ordained there. I presided at communion every month and performed many baptisms. I still respect and admire the tradition. Indeed, my life partner is Roman Catholic, and I attend mass with her now and then. I love and respect the ritual and tradition. But I left the UCC and returned to my Quaker roots in part because I recognized the sacraments don’t make sense to me. I know they are moving for many, but I came to the conclusion they are not in my spiritual DNA.

Fox founded the Quakers with a few bedrock notions. One of them is that no person is closer to God than anyone else and no thing is more sacred than another. In my opinion and experience of being a lifelong Friend, to say that an ordained person can offer a prayer, and with a wave of a hand, make bread and juice (or wine) or baptismal water the sacred bearers of Christ, refutes the basic tenets of being Quaker. I’m frankly concerned. I see many examples of watering down the uniqueness of our faith community and beliefs, and I worry that adding sacraments to worship takes away a lot of what makes a “peculiar” set-apart people.

Geoffrey Knowlton
Hyannis, Mass.

Wrestling with past mistakes

Thomas Gates’s comments about “George Fox and Slavery” (Viewpoint, FJ Oct.) were a welcome response to the earlier article “George Fox Is a Racist” (FJ June-July.). Gates presents two pieces of advice for evaluating historical figures that are worth repeating. First, “We should be wary of the bias of presentism, of interpreting the past by the ethical standards of the present—lest we be judged by future generations for things to which we are currently unaware.” (A present-day reminder of Jesus’s advice, “Judge not lest ye be judged.”) And second, we should “take inspiration from [their] genuine accomplishments—while learning from [their] mistakes.” This advice is as applicable to William Penn, who many Friends seem to have abandoned, just as much as it is to Fox.

John Andrew Gallery
Philadelphia, Pa.

Our Quaker prayer lives

I find Patricia McBee’s review of Jennifer Kavanagh’s Do Quakers Pray? (FJ Sept.) to be incredibly profound. I am deeply moved by the oneness where one can express their own relationship with God. Speaking as a Zen practitioner, I find it comforting to practice meditation and yet allow space before me and the Oneness as I experience the connection within and touch the divine presence. This article was deeply right and personal. I appreciate it!

David Cortes
Gettysburg, Pa.

I sometimes pray for guidance, calmness, or clarity of thought. This has not always been so. People often pray for things to be given to them or for problems to be solved. I do not pray at a specific time or in a specific way, and it works for me. Does anyone hear my prayer? I doubt it, but God is not a “someone.” In my agnostic way, we never know with absolute certainty. The Quaker Way suits me just fine.

William (Bill) Ewing
Colorado Springs, Colo.

People are often turned off by spirituality. In some way this is understandable, but their fear can harden into skepticism and ridicule. The still, small power of prayer when we acknowledge the inner power within all is not pushy.

Eve F. Gutwirth
Philadelphia, Pa. vicinity

The mysticism of Rufus Jones

I thoroughly enjoyed Tom Cameron’s review of Helen Holt’s Rufus Jones and the Presence of God (FJ Oct.). I’m very interested in Quaker mysticism. One aspect of it that I’m particularly interested in is that, according to Hugh Rock in a 2016 article in Quaker Studies, Rufus Jones was hostile to the unitive type of mystical experience that has been the primary subject of research on mystical experience in psychology and neuroscience. Jones wrote that the idea that mysticism is a “form of communion with God in which . . . the human personality is dissolved, submerged, and engulfed in the infinite one-ness of Divinity [is] a metaphysical theory voicing itself, not an experience.”

Rock wrote that Jones finds this type of mystical experience completely out of touch with reality and with his age, and “does all that he can to uproot and destroy it.” Is there anything about this particular aspect of Jones’s take on mysticism in the book?

Don McCormick
Grass Valley, Calif.