An Anglican among Quakers

Last weekend I was attending a course at the Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre in Selly Oak, Birmingham. The course was called “Practicing Discernment”. It was aimed, it seemed to me, at helping those who are in the process of taking more leadership responsibilities in Quaker meetings to be able to co-operate with and 'manage' where necessary processes of corporate discernment in meetings.

There are many things a simple 44-hour conference gave me to reflect on as an Anglican. I came having met Quakers as individuals and having attending one meeting for worship many years ago. I had also read a few books on early Quaker history, again many years ago and picked up some bits and bobs of terminology from reading Richard Foster. The headings which follow are an attempt to capture some of the most apparently immediate areas that seemed to clamour for reflection.

Weight
'Weight' was the word one of the participants used in the first hour and in personal conversation over the evening meal to characterise their perception of my Anglican background: I was asked how I felt at carrying all the weight of (I took it) tradition and history. The contrast offered was with the lightness or freedom of the Quaker tradition. Part of my reaction, after a pause for thought, was to say that I thought that 'weight' was a loaded term and that it didn't feel to me like a burden, necessarily, but I offered the metaphor, instead, of mental geography: it is a place to live and provides landmarks to orientate myself. On further reflection, I wonder whether this is quite a fruitful metaphor that could head towards being a model: it could frame some of the Quaker tradition as being East Anglia or the Moors: less features but with big skies? Be interesting to know how Quakers might react to that.

A handful of times in the course of the weekend I was to rub up against perceptions of my traditions which both surprised and didn't surprise me. Surprise came from my own assumption that Quakers at such events would be less cumbered with preconceptions of such as myself, but I was unsurprised because, of course, everyone has such preconceptions and their own histories which often include reaction against the kinds of things my own tradition is taken to stand for or embody (and, ironically, is often seeking to distance itself from!) And of course I have them too: viewpoints which have emerged from a time of struggle and rethinking and which carry the weight of my own sense of relief or new-found freedom or even healing.
The dark side of that sense of resolution can often be a degree of hostility or a disrespectful desire to convert the other. That is not to say all desires to change others' minds is disrespectful, merely that it can be be carried out is more or less respectful ways. Naturally, therefore, things at the weekend were hardest for me was when there was that unresolved personal animus which came out is slightly combative terms. It was not always 'against' Anglicanism, sometimes it was degrees of anger and frustrations with Evangelicals and sometimes an assurance that Quakers were right about some things in a way that would have been problematic for them had things been the other way round. Again, nothing new in that: we all do it. It was interesting to find it here too.

Liturgy and Habitus
Some of the 'weight' of tradition that others might perceive, I think, would be about liturgy. The perception would be that Anglicans have it while Quakers don't; they just wait for inspiration (or inSpiration). This is of course a first-thought kind of view but in a context where there is little to force reflection, it is perhaps not surprising that a narrow, common, definition for 'liturgy' is held by many and the usual neglect thereby of the actual fact of liturgy in meetings is in evidence. Coming in as an outsider with a definition of liturgy as something like 'the means by which a group of people structure their common relationship with God and with each other in space and in time', I found liturgy. Sometimes I noticed it because I didn't know what others took for granted, sometimes I noticed it because I was looking for it knowing that human social behaviour has to be rule-governed or to evolve rules to govern it in order that we can operate corporately without everything grinding to a halt while we decide how to do the little and frequent things together each time.

So, elements of Quaker liturgy I noticed were: markers of starting the meeting, phrases used in sharing (“Friends”) even for some the tone of voice used for talking in a meeting was different. Body posture seemed to be related to the kind of chairs (probably a chicken or egg thing), there seemed to be normal expectations of what kind of contributions might be made, and there is a definite way that a meeting ends.

Sometimes the meeting would begin with a sentence or two simply announcing that we were beginning “worship”, sometimes informal actions would signal the start (the closing of a door). Often there would have been silence already but at this point it had a sense of deepening, somehow. People are seated, not standing or lying down or even moving about; that is part of the liturgy and it is driven largely be the tacit understanding of what is happening and how it should happen. It is understood that still sitting is the posture of waiting. If someone shares in a large meeting, they stand up. A smaller meeting doesn't seem to require this and it is probably a practical arrangement to do with audibility. It does seem that 'ministry' is expected to be verbal (though a variant on this is song) but not through other media or communicative strategies. This is fair enough, but it is worth noting that there are normal expectations which do become a liturgically significant habits. I had the impression that 'ministry' would normally be expected to offer comment rather than be a prayer addressing God directly.

To end someone reaches out to those around them to hold hands briefly and this spreads all around the group. I have been in a meeting where people shook hands all round to end. I assume that a recognised senior figure is normally expected to initiate this closing ceremony.
These things are part of a wider habitus, it seemed to me. One where people tended to listen more fully in conversations with less interrupting. In course sessions it also seemed that people were not at all phased ('fazed'?) by periods of silent reflection; they were comfortable with periods of quiet reflection.

con/sensus
I had previously picked up the common perception is that Quakers make decisions by aiming for a consensus. In fact, most that touched on this were clear that this was not what they we doing. The reason for my inserting a / into the word above is to lay barer something of what is actually being striven for in decision-making. I'm taking 'sensus' to be the 'sense' of a meeting while 'con' is 'with' or 'together'. This is more subtle than everyone agreeing which is the common understanding of consensus.

The business meeting, if I've understood correctly, aims to produce a set of minutes which reflect the sense of the meeting on a matter or the mind of those present. In other words, a minute clerk is aiming to express what people can unify around. This may be a consensus, but in some cases it may be that some people 'stand-aside' from the mind that the others are coming to. In this case, it seems, that they are prepared to recognise that their reservations or objections are not sufficiently weighty to delay the others. On the other hand, it is understood that they are seeking unity and so efforts are made both to understand objections and to move forward with them or from them. Part of the inner or personal discipline that is presupposed is that people are willing and able to learn to be open and to recognise and put aside personal hobby-horses or prejudices. So the aim is not adversarial persuasion but rather finding common ground, understanding contraries, seeking creative or third way options, seeking the good and discerning what needs to be challenged or put aside. It seems to me that it would work best if there is a fundamental attitude not of 'win-lose' but of learning together and of fundamental respect within a framework of basic trust in the good faith and intentions of the other party.

'Worship'
I found it amusing to me to note how an invitation to worship results in a very different reaction to many of those I work among. Many in college when someone suggests we worship, will reach for the song-sheet or the musical instruments and expect to be involved in mainly vocal praise of God. Quakers seem to mean by 'worship' a time of corporate silence into which one might 'minister'. I think that the silence is meant to involve self-offering to God or the Spirit (however those terms may be understood) which may result in a leading to minister. 'Ministering' seems to be about feeling moved to give a word (or potentially some other offering) into the meeting which the participant judges may be from God.

Now I'm not saying one or the other of these understandings of 'worship' is right and the other wrong. I think that both are inadequate if taken to be the whole or main meaning of 'worship'. I would suggest that both could do with the other at least from time to time, at least for those who are Christian Quakers (for I discovered that Quakers may not identify as Christian but still be Quaker): it would be good to see Charismatics taking more time to wait on God and to think about how to do that together. On the other hand it would be good to encourage Friends to consider the value of corporate praise and indeed the possibility that the Spirit may indeed be involved in the loving relating that is God and catch us up into that so that we may become 'lost in wonder, love and praise' and that perhaps corporate, vocal God-centred activity may be an important part of co-operating with the Spirit in drawing us into a deeper experience God's love. On the other hand the practical assumption in much Charismatic worship that being caught up in the emotion of corporate sung (usually) worship somehow substitutes for waiting on God and making sure that we enter into a personal experience of God (rather than merely the spirit of the gathering).

I suppose that Quakers were the Charismatics/Pentecostals of their day. I'm guessing that at some point in their history the ideal that 'ministry' into a meeting is led by God, raised the bar with regard to participation in such a way that it strongly discouraged participation. I think that the corrective to this would be a recognition that worship is not only about God speaking (or communicating) with us but also us expressing ourselves to God. This latter seems to be the main thing missing from Quaker worship -or perhaps it is that it is done only or mainly in silence, but as such loses the positive encouragements and help that synchronised corporate behaviour can offer. Again I'd be interested to know further Quaker perspectives on this -and not just Quaker.
Connections

During the weekend's learning about corporate discernment I made a number of connections with my prior learning and experience. It turned out that much of Quaker practice is not so different from things found elsewhere as I had perhaps naively suspected at the outset. I guess because we are human we do all end up having to learn and re-learn how to balance the various potential and habitual 'channels' of God's revelation with our own, or perhaps sometimes against our own, voices, desires, formation and drives. We have to discern when God is speaking immanently or when transcendently. For this reason I think I noticed how the processes suggested during the course of the weekend were about noting our own filters and yardsticks and becoming aware of them so that they could be tools to be weighed according to their fittingness to aid discernment in that moment and for that 'leading' or situation. This meant that I was aware, from time to time of strong connections with things that are often part of spiritual direction, life coaching, even counselling. Also the 'standard' evangelical things about guidance were in evidence: testing by scripture and reason, listening by scripture (though there is an expanded concept and canon of scripture for some Quakers).

For me an important connection was made as I realised that in many ways the pastoral cycle was a form of discernment. Admittedly it is framed as learning from experience and so the discernment has a retrospective dimension of making sense of something that has happened, though it is explicitly also doing so in a process that aims at planning for further engagement. That focus laid aside, it seemed to me that the stages of exploration and (theological) reflection were particularly pertinent to what we might term 'prospective' discernment; in fact form the heart of it. We need to be able, in many cases, to understand well what is going on; to be able to attend to the salient facts or dimensions of what has been and is taking place and then to be able to connect that with what we know of God in scripture, reflection, accumulated wisdom and systematic thought.

I'm currently writing out further thoughts about discernment and the pastoral cycle. I'll see where I get to with that, maybe a further post, maybe not.