More Spiritual Than God?

A Case for Sacraments in Quaker Practice

One of the biggest challenges to Quaker outreach (aside from oatmeal associations and our phobia of evangelism) is the challenge of explaining our faith and practice in a clear and concise way. Our “elevator speech” often requires a many-floored skyscraper or a very slow elevator. It’s the beauty and burden of a non-creedal tradition.

Yet with all of our theological diversity and ethical complexity, there are some things we are clear about: sometimes even fundamentalist about. Most of us are pretty clear on our opposition to war, for example. The contents of the SPICES acronym (simplicity, peace, integrity, community, equality/equity, and stewardship/sustainability) are uniting for many of us, though there seems to be a loyal opposition developing around them, as well.

One statement I still hear without equivocation relates to the historic Christian ordinances or sacraments: “Quakers do not baptize and we do not do communion.” Sometimes we explain that we embrace these as “spiritual realities.” I’m not sure we know what we mean by this, but occasionally we refer to communion or baptism “in the manner of Friends.” A Friend in my congregation labels our potlucks “Quaker communion” and gleefully states that our communion is much tastier and more filling than the one celebrated by other denominations.

Maybe it’s my experience across the Quaker spectrum or maybe it’s a gentle contrarian streak, but I have become something of a thorn in the side of sacramental fundamentalism among Friends. During a course about the teachings of Friends at my college, part of the holiness Quaker tradition, my professor confidently stated that “Quakers do not baptize,” and I couldn’t help but raise my hand to share: “I was baptized in a Friends church.”

With a gasp of horror, he interrogated: “With water?!”

I fought the urge to say, “No, with Dr Pepper. What do you think?” But I knew what he meant. I appreciate a good gospel quote, and Quakers have long loved to quote from John the Baptist, who contrasted his water baptism with the greater Spirit-baptism of Jesus (Matt. 3:11). What we do with the rest of the story when Jesus himself went into the waters of baptism is another discussion.

Nevertheless, I grew up among Evangelical Friends in Ohio. On March 25, 2001, at the age of 13, I was baptized by my Quaker pastor in a baptistery at the local Nazarene church. Did I see any doves or hear voices like Jesus? No. Did I become saved in the sight of God? No. But I felt the embracing, transforming love of God wash over my senses through the baptismal waters. And I received the smiles, applause, and hugs of my spiritual community as I made a public commitment to faith. The simple baptismal certificate hangs in my office as a token of my spiritual journey.

My wedding was a holy Quaker mess as well. We gathered in a simple Quaker meetinghouse, made the traditional Quaker marriage promises, and invited those gathered to sign the Quaker wedding certificate. But we also messed it all up with a communion ceremony. My wife and I wanted our first act as a married couple to be an act of worship and service. So we read a poem, said a prayer, and welcomed everyone present to come forward and have a little fresh bread and store-bought grape juice to represent (or “communicate” or “mediate”) the “bread of life” and the “cup of salvation.” It felt right and real, and I loved offering the little feast to kiddos, agnostics, ministers, ex-evangelicals, fundamentalists—and, yes, many Quakers. In the background, a few friends of ours sang a song called “Your Grace Finds Me” by Matt Redman.

The beauty of traditional Quaker sacramentology is that we recognize the reality of that background song: grace finds us. We are all involved in what Rufus Jones called the “double search.” As we are seeking God, God is seeking us. As we search for the Light, the Light searches us. And God, or the Light, uses any means necessary (or anything consistent with the nature of Love) to reach us. So grace finds us. And we find ourselves in the midst of a sacramental universe.

We find grace, and are found by grace, in innumerable ways inside this sacramental universe: not only through bread, wine, and water but also through good novels, human touch, sunsets, well-timed words of encouragement or prophetic challenge, mountains, oceans, music, and on and on—world without end. We feel the truth of the Quaker axiom that the sacraments are not two or seven, but seventy times seven.

I cherish this expansive Quaker sacramentology. It has enriched and expanded my spirituality in many ways. Where I differ from many Friends, however, is when we shift from a teaching that affirms the power of bread, wine, water, and many other elements to mediate grace toward a constricted definition where everything else besides those traditional rituals can be means of grace. I had a seminary professor (a Lutheran pastor) who got so frustrated by this hardlined Quaker restriction that he exclaimed: “Quakers believe everything is sacred except bread and wine!”

Maybe my professor’s exclamation was less than generous, but it matches my experience. I see Friends who have no problem seeking the Divine through an impressive list of ecumenical practices. Some attend Jewish seder meals and Wiccan rituals in the forest, walk the labyrinth, practice tarot card readings, utilize New Age crystals, incorporate Indigenous smudging with sage, and experiment with Catholic chanting and Buddhist singing bowls. But somehow they are absolutely against participation in the historic Christian rituals. I’m not opposed to these other rituals, and have benefited from many of them, but forbidding or dismissing time-tested Christian practices feels misaligned to me.

Are we trying to be “more spiritual than God”? God has no problem inviting us into relationship through ordinary physical things. If our spiritual ancestors received the bread of life through literal bread or drank deeply of the Divine through literal juice or wine, who are we to say this is an inferior spirituality? 

There is an expression of our sacramentology that is even more troublesome, however. Quakerism is a deeply inward and spiritual path. At our best, we remain whole as our simplicity allows us to see grace in the ordinary and we work out our faith through concrete social action. But in other moments, we lift up the spiritual at the expense of the material. Any need for ritual, religious structure, or physical expression is viewed as part of an inferior faith. We end up flirting with a kind of Gnosticism and quietism.

Not long ago, I came upon a quote from the Christian writer C.S. Lewis that spoke to my condition in a way that invites me into a more liberated and embodied faith. He wrote:

There is no good trying to be more spiritual than God. God never meant [the human being] to be a purely spiritual creature. That is why [God] uses material things like bread and wine to put new life into us. We may think this rather rude and unspiritual. God does not: [God] invented eating. [God] likes matter. [God] invented it.

I wonder: are we trying to be “more spiritual than God”? God has no problem inviting us into relationship through ordinary physical things like bread, juice, and water. If our spiritual ancestors received the bread of life through literal bread or drank deeply of the Divine through literal juice or wine, who are we to say this is an inferior spirituality? This strikes me as spiritually stifling and maybe a little bit like “chronological snobbery” (to borrow another phrase from Lewis).

To be clear, I’m not proposing we start instituting traditional Christian sacraments in every meeting and church. I still believe in the beauty of a Quaker potluck and the spiritual communion of shared silence. I still believe in seeking the cleansing, empowering baptism of the Holy Spirit over any imposed initiation rite. But we don’t have to try to be more spiritual than God. Even if we have no need for certain rituals, we don’t need to forbid them for others.

In the small meeting I co-pastor with my wife, a teenager asked if she might be baptized. We plan on having a clearness committee with her about it, but our pastoral impulse is one of Friendly sacramental liberty. Our instinct is to say: “Of course!”

So I propose a new sacramental liberty among Friends. I don’t have a comprehensive plan for how to practice this sacramental liberty in the diverse world of Friends. But I will pose a question that has been bouncing around in my soul for quite some time.

I keep thinking about the story of the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8:26–40. The Spirit brings together two unlikely friends as the Ethiopian eunuch invites the apostle Phillip into his chariot. Together, they dialogue about the Suffering Servant character from the prophet Isaiah. At some point, the eunuch seems to find himself in the story: a man who bore the marks of marginalization in his own body, but his suffering was transformed into healing. And he wants to join the movement of this spiritual figure.

As they journey together, they pass a body of water. And the eunuch seizes the sacramental moment with a simple but profound question: “Look, here is water. What is stopping me from being baptized?”

Indeed, what was stopping him? What’s to stop our teenage Friend? What’s to stop anyone who needs a ritual of belonging, community, and new life from getting under the water and feeling washed and welcomed in grace?