i wrote this as a response to earlier posts, but realized it was lengthy. I rarely weigh in on these forums but I felt led to tonight. My family history is Quaker on both sides. I am a recorded Quaker pastor, as was my father, and grandfather. There are several points Id like to make. First is, I too believe that early Quakers were hyper-Christians. They were not shy about giving their opinions within their meetings or in the outside world. I believe their goal was not only in offering opinions, but to live as the First Century Christians did. They saw a need and then set about offering solutions. They began schools, improved prisons, freed women to have a voice , set one price rather than bartering, and generally set about making their world and our world better. Thirdly, Quakers were avid readers and students of scripture. They didnt follow it to the letter of the law any more than any of us do. For example, Quakers were pacifists . Any student of scripture knows that there are ample descriptions of war and a warrior God contained within them. I mentioned Quakers gave women the freedom to be ministers. This was a novel idea. Many faith traditions to this very day (some of them Quaker) use scripture as a reason to deny that same voice. An other example is slavery. Quakers believed that slavery was wrong, that it was wrong to treat people as property. We know many faith traditions used scripture to justify the practice. Today it is relatively easy to proof-text any point we want to make using scripture as our weapon. Personally, I believe we miss the voice of God breathing life into the words when we use it as a battering ram. My final point is this: Quakerism began to die out when we began to read people out of meetings. We have so much to offer the world, but we waste our energy on in-fighting and saying one of the other of us has the corner on the market of true Quakerism. In my opinion, true Quakers want to share the love of Jesus with the world. We want to share our truth by living lives that transform all we encounter. We want to live our faith ratheri than battering others with it. If we dont figure out how to live lives displaying the transforming love of Christ we could find ourselves a dead true faith.
Posted on: Mon, 05 Jan 2015 04:25:45 +0000
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