| The Canadian Friend
November-December 1997
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What Canst Thou Say?
Inspiration for this issue of The Canadian Friend came when I heard of the Quaker Women's Theology Conference (QWTC) being held in Oregon and attended by many women from Western Half-Yearly Meeting. I had read a Pendle Hill pamphlet called An Experiment in Faith: Quaker women transcending differences by Margery Post Abbott. She was deeply involved in the process which brings women from the programmed and unprogrammed Quaker traditions together and she was one of the organizers of the QWTC this year. I had also met an evangelical Friend at CYM in Sorrento last year who talked about the difficulties that Quakers from both traditions have with the language of the other. The conferences of Quaker women in the west help them to take some steps towards each other in their faith journeys. So I thought about diversity among Friends and, at first, of the differences between programmed and unprogrammed Friends. There is, in all different strains of Friends, a concentration on silent, expectant waiting, standing at the still centre - even among evangelical Friends who worship in churches led by pastors. As I thought more, I began to realize that there is much more to diversity than that. Friends come from different Quaker traditions but also from different cultural traditions, and many come as refugees from other Christian traditions. We count among our numbers Evangelicals, universalists, Wiccans, Jews, Buddhists. Yet in some ways we are not as diverse as we could be and perhaps we don't even want to be as Vanessa Julye, an African American Quaker, points out to us. In the worldwide family of Friends, the largest concentration of Friends (125,000) is in Africa and Latin America has 55,000. These are mainly pastoral Meetings and outnumber British and American Friends. With the pastoral Meetings in the United States as well, this makes unprogrammed Meetings a minority practice among Friends. Gatherings like the Friends World Committee for Consultation (on which there are a couple of reports in this issue) show that Quakers respect the diversity among us, enjoy worshipping together, and share commitments to our testimonies. More and more we realize that the Quaker message of respecting that of God in everyone is what the world needs to hear, as well as the testimony of simplicity that would enable the right sharing of resources. We can still unite with what Robert Barclay said in 1678: The church [is] no other thing but the society, gathering or company of such as God hath called out of the world and worldly spirit to walk in his light and life... Under this church ... are comprehended all, and as many, of whatsoever nation, kindred, tongue or people they be, though outwardly strangers and remote from those who profess Christ and Christianity in words and have the benefit of the Scriptures, as become obedient to the holy light and testimony of God in their hearts... There may be members therefore of this Catholic church both among heathens, Turks, Jews and all the several sorts of Christians, men and women of integrity and simplicity of heart, who ... are by the secret touches of this holy light in their souls enlivened and quickened, thereby secretly united to God, and there-through become true members of this Catholic church. QF&P 27.05 Three hundred or more years ago, Quakers were on a faith journey that could embrace a diversity of beliefs, be open to light from whatever source. This issue shows some of that diversity from many sources. We, as Quakers, have to embrace that diversity among us, and accept the different paths each of us takes in keeping to our testimonies, in order to let our lives speak to the world. AMZ |