What Can We Say?

Six Essentials of Quaker Faith

When someone asks us, “What do Quakers believe?” we can find ourselves fumbling for an answer. What can we say that is true to the depth of our tradition yet simple and short enough to serve in the situation? How can we give an answer that honors both the full breadth of our tradition and the significant diversity of Quaker faith and experience?

I was given some answers in 1991 at a consultation co-sponsored by Earlham School of Religion and Quaker Hill Conference Center in Richmond, Indiana. Friends from across the Quaker theological and geographical spectrum had gathered to consider these questions: What do we all hold in common as Quaker treasure? What are the essentials of Quaker faith and practice?

In two gathered meetings, I felt that Friends at that consultation were brought into unity around at least five basic tenets of Quaker faith. I feel that the answers I’m about to offer have come not from myself so much as from the Holy Spirit (though I’ve met Friends who also attended who vehemently disagree). To these five, I have added a sixth, which I believe follows naturally from both the work at the consultation and from Quaker tradition itself.

Here is a concise summary of these six essentials of Quaker faith, which are the foundation for some distinctive elements of our faith and practice.

1. The Light Within 

Now by “God,” I mean the Mystery Reality behind our religious experience, whatever that experience is and however we name it: the Light, the Light of Christ, “that of God” in everyone.

From our experience of the Light Within arise important Quaker distinctives: for example, a transformative, listening spirituality; universal grace; and openings, leadings, and callings to ministry—including vocal ministry.

2. The Gathered Meeting

Just as we can know the Divine directly as individuals, so too the community may be led directly and collectively by the Holy Spirit and gathered into unity and joy. The Quaker movement was born out of such a gathering in a second Pentecost when George Fox convinced a large number of Seekers on Firbank Fell in 1652, and the Spirit has been gathering us as a people of God ever since. This experience of gathering in the Spirit ushers us as a body into unity, energy, and a clarity of direction. It strengthens our faith in the work of the Spirit, our faith in each other, in the way of love, and in the way of Friends.

From our experience of this collective communion arise many Quaker distinctives, among them silent, waiting worship; corporate discernment; and business conducted under the leadership of the Holy Spirit. We hold a corporate listening spirituality practiced in several forms, such as worship sharing and clearness committees as well as the meeting’s discernment and support of ministry.

3. Continuing Revelation

God’s revelation did not cease with the writing of Scripture but continues for and in those who heed the Light. The Spirit has never ceased working to strengthen and comfort us, to guide us, to correct us, and to forgive us when we step off the path. It heals us and inspires us, both as individuals and as communities. It awakens love within us.

From our experience of continuing revelation arise some Quaker distinctives: openings, leadings, ministries (including vocal ministry, again), and new testimonies.

4. Letting Our Lives Speak

The Spirit calls us to live our outward lives as testimony to the Truth that has been awakened inwardly within us. We seek the Spirit’s presence, guidance, and grace in all moments, tasks, and situations. This principle finds expression in our approach to right living and in truths about right living that have become settled testimonies. And we see all of life as sacramental and as opportunities for baptism in the Spirit.

A number of Quaker distinctives besides the testimonies arise from this principle, including the faith and practice of Quaker ministry (again), Quaker missions, and evangelism.

5. Love

We are called to love as the first motion in our walking in the world. This love is something we do, not just feel; it is something we do, especially when we least feel like doing it and when we least “love” the other in the conventional sense. This includes treating our enemies as we should. 

But this love is more than just an obligation. Love also is the joy we find in each other when our faith and our labor together bear fruit, when God’s joy in us becomes complete. Love is also the key to being gathered in the Spirit; love is the gift bestowed by the gathering.

6. What Canst Thou Say?

Religious life for Friends is answering with personal integrity and with our lives the questions, “What canst thou say? . . . And what thou speakest, is it inwardly from God?” We base our religious lives on what we ourselves have experienced. We do not simply follow the experience and dictates of others, though we respect the testimony of Scripture and tradition. What can we say as the body of Christ, based on our collective experience?

Thus the distinctive value that Friends can offer to seekers is not just “beliefs” but real experience of the Divine: personal, individual experience within ourselves and collective experience in communities covered by the Spirit. 

So for us Friends, “What do you believe?” is not quite the wrong question; it’s just not the more important question. The more important question is, “What canst thou say?”

Thus the distinctive value that Friends can offer to seekers is not just “beliefs” but real experience of the Divine: personal, individual experience within ourselves and collective experience in communities covered by the Spirit. 

I think of these essentials as describing the house that the Spirit of the Christ has built for us. The first four of these essentials are the foundation for the superstructure of Quaker distinctives. Love is the mortar that holds it all together. And experience is the rock upon which the whole edifice stands.

But now, I offer a reality check. We aspire to these elements of faith, practice, and experience, but in reality, we fall short at times, as any community will do with respect to its ideals.

Moreover, I have no doubt that some Friends will disagree with the choices I feel I received in that consultation, and will perhaps cite things that I’ve not included. While we may not have experienced all of these elements ourselves, we take them on faith anyway—or we do not. We lay out our beliefs as a community, and then we each follow our own Guide as best we can as individuals. We know many of these beliefs have been confirmed in the experience of other Friends and their meetings throughout our history, though they may not all speak to us personally right now. Whatever we may believe individually, we still do have something we can say collectively.

Many Friends might ask, where is Jesus Christ in your list? Where is any mention of sin or salvation, or any explicitly theistic understanding of the Divine? My presentation of Quaker essentials has been fairly Liberal in its sensibilities and vocabulary. It’s an answer that offers what perhaps only some Quakers believe. I’ve tried to rewrite these six principles as I imagine a more Christ-centered Friend might, but I found that I could not do so from the integrity of my own experience.

For the difference here goes deeper than just the choice of vocabulary or of “belief,” more broadly understood. It’s a difference in experience and in the very character of religious life. Christ-centered Friends conduct their religious lives as a relationship. There is a “who” at the center of religious life—Jesus, the Christ—not a “what,” not some vaguely defined Spirit. Whereas, for many Liberal Friends, experience is the central thing, for which “the Spirit” is a placeholder. So how can we agree on the essentials of our faith if we base them on differing experiences?

Belief, tradition, and our experience are in a dynamic dialogue with each other. What we think and how we think about our spiritual experience help to shape and support our experience, just as our experiences help to shape our thinking. It’s a feedback relationship: faith and experience in fruitful engagement with each other in real time. We call this “continuing revelation.”

The writings of the Bible and of early Friends, and of Friends since, are attempts by writers to faithfully share their experience and work out its potential for them and for their community, because the Holy Spirit has hold of their minds and tongues. They are trying with their writings to answer their peers’ questions and challenges, their children’s questions, their own questions.

So I think that it still comes down to experience. Have you been called to discipleship by Jesus Christ? Then that’s the central Mystery Reality of your religious life. If so, you do your best to understand what that experience means for you. We Quakers have a rich tradition that can help you develop that understanding and share it with others.

But if your experience is otherwise—if, like me, you’ve not had such a call to Jesus’s discipleship—then what is your experience? What is the central Mystery Reality of your religious life? And what in our tradition helps you understand it and share it with others with clarity and confidence? 

Each Quaker community seeks its own truth in corporate discernment under the guidance of a Spirit of Love and Truth, however it experiences and names that Spirit. Hopefully our answers do arise and are confirmed in covered meetings for worship with a concern for the Truth.

And for this we are in good hands. We are in the hands of the Spirit that anointed Jesus at his baptism. We are in the hands of the Spirit that anointed his disciples at the Pentecost; that anointed the Seekers on Firbank Fell; that anoints us as individuals when we rise to speak in meeting; and that anoints us as gathered bodies in covered meetings for worship—in theory, at least.

I call this Spirit the “spirit of the christ, little c,” the spirit of God’s anointing. The Greek word christos means “anointed.” To folks in his hometown synagogue, Jesus proclaimed himself anointed—“christ-ed”—by God’s Spirit, according to Luke 4:18: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me [he has christ-ed me] to bring good news to the poor,” he declared (New Revised Standard Version), quoting Isaiah 61:1.

I believe that we share, both personally and collectively, Jesus’s experience of anointing in the Spirit, however we name it. As Jesus pointed to God’s Spirit as having anointed him in that passage in Luke, we can also feel anointed in our hearts and in our gathered meetings. Something extraordinary and beautiful is going on there. There is a presence in our midst when we are gathered. Some trans-personal, transcendental something is bringing us into unity and joy. But in my experience so far, it isn’t necessarily wearing a name tag.

Is the presence Jesus Christ, as he promised in Matthew 18:20 (from which we get the term “gathered meeting”): “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (King James Version)? Or is it the Spirit that he pointed to in his own experience? Or are they now the same Spirit? The full nature of this anointing Spirit remains a holy Mystery, at least to me, real though it is.

Many would say that it doesn’t matter what you call it. Why bother to give it a name? My answer is that it might help. Having a center, having a focus, could foster our gathering in the Spirit. I find that it anchors my faith and my practice. It provides me with a center of gravity. So I call it the spirit of the christ, the spirit of God’s anointing, following Jesus’s example. I give myself a focus that honors that mystery, its reality, and our tradition all at once.

The Source behind our beliefs may be a Mystery, and we may give it different names, but it is real! We know it is real because we have experienced it ourselves.

We “believe” because we have experienced direct personal and direct collective communion with a real and transformative Mystery. We share that experience with Jesus and his disciples, with George Fox and early Friends, and with Friends and meetings through the centuries and across the world.

We bring that experience and the faith it generates into our personal spiritual lives and to our meetings for worship, into our service to the Spirit, and to our walking in the world. And we all share enough of the essentials of this faith to call ourselves “Friends.”

I believe that the clearer we are about these essentials, the deeper will be our fellowship in the Spirit, the more often we will be covered by that Spirit, and the more effective we will be in our care for each other and in our witness to the world. Our message is this: the Source behind our beliefs may be a Mystery, and we may give it different names, but it is real! We know it is real because we have experienced it ourselves.