These are some notes (greatly expanded notes!) written for some prepared ministry that I was invited to give on the topic of “Spirituality” at my local Meeting on World Quaker day 2024. Note that I’m in Membership of Britain YM and these notes reflect that context. A slightly abridged version appeared in the Friend on 8 November 2024

On Love

There’s a passage from Paul that you’ll have heard many times before:

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. — 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 NRSVue

Hold that thought.

The question is asked: do you have to believe the Bible is true to be a Quaker? Do you have to be a Christian to be a Quaker? Do you have to believe in God, the God of Abraham, to be a Quaker? And the short answer is no.

No…but with a large caveat that the vast majority of Quakers in the world (if not in Britain Yearly Meeting) do believe in God and are Christians and do believe that every word in the Bible is true. But do you have to, do I have to? No. Friends do not require anyone to believe anything before we give them full access to our spiritual practice. We don’t make them study a catechism, or pass through degrees of ritual initiation, before they may join us in our meetings. The signs outside our meetinghouses say ‘all are welcome’, and it should be true. 

The question follows: these people who don’t believe in God, what do they do in a Meeting for ‘Worship’, then? And sometimes the question follows: these people who don’t believe in God, what are they doing in a Meeting for Worship?

What do we do?

In c. 1700 William Penn identified what early Friends were doing as “primitive Christianity revived”, but how primitive? Every church claims to be doing it right. Catholic and Orthodox churches claim a continuous tradition back to the Apostles, and Reformed churches claim to have corrected the errors and misunderstandings which had slipped in over time, but early Friends claimed that the Apostolic church itself had returned, that the spirit, that is the Spirit, which animated the action we read about in the Gospels was active in the world again in a way that it had not for a long time.

How primitive were, are, Friends? More primitive than Biblical inerrancy, innovated in the 1800s. More primitive than the theatrical Mass innovated in fifteen hundreds, celebrated by a priest, watched by the people. More primitive than the Fourth Lateran Council of 1213, which innovated confession and attendance at a Eucharist annually, innovated the real presence through transubstantiation. More primitive than the Gregorian Reforms of the 1070s, which innovated a hard separation of the laity and the clergy, innovated that clergy be celibate, and innovated a central religious authority in Rome. More primitive than the First Council of Ephesus in 431 which innovated the veneration of Mary. More primitive than the First Council of Nicaea in 325, which began the process of innovating a single Christianity which imperial subjects might be expected to follow, innovated the church’s position as a collaborator in oppression; innovated Christianity as an aid to conquest, and not coincidentally innovated a creed to serve as a test, to see which side you were on.

The most primitive idea we have about the practices of followers of the Way of Jesus is in the uncontested Epistles of Paul, which are earlier than the Gospels. So, what were those practices?

Is it worship?

It’s one of those things well known to Bible scholars but not much discussed outside academia that the New Testament has very little to say about worship. In the time of Paul, in the Apostolic Age, worship was done by priests, sacrificing to a schedule, on an altar, in a temple devoted to a deity, atop a sacred mountain. That was worship, whether it was of the God of Abraham (and of Paul, and of Jesus) at the Temple in Jerusalem, or to the gods of Greece and Rome, or of Mesopotamia, where you might have to build a mountain to raise a temple upon. That was worship, and it is little mentioned by the earliest Christians.

The words used in the New Testament which seem to be about worship aren’t, really. There’s reference to homage done (by prostration) to Jesus in person, there’s doing service to God, there’s doing service to the community (at your own expense!), there’s being devout, and there’s doing religious practice, which is probably the closest but where it’s mentioned it’s not much seen as a good thing. But not much about worship as such.

Quaker Christianity is more primitive than the kind which introduced Classical models of worship, perhaps intended to make the new Imperial Christianity more familiar to Romans and Greeks: priests enacting sacrifices on behalf of the people, however symbolic or mystical, at an altar in a sacred temple, even if that were called a ‘Eucharistic’ ‘service’ in a ‘church’. There’s nothing to stop a Quaker from attending such worship services, of course. And many do and gain much by the practice. But maybe that’s not what our Quaker meetings are actually for. 

The communities that Paul wrote to held meetings not on consecrated ground, in temple precincts on high mountains, but wherever was convenient. As we do, in emulation of them. They met as equals in spirit, not as priests and laity. As we do. They met when it felt right to meet, not according to a set calendar of feasts and festivals. As we do. Well, we find that Sunday morning suits us well these days, but midweek meetings used to be the usual thing, too. And we can meet at any time and any location. In the street outside an arms fair, perhaps.

What did they meet to do? They spoke to each other. They read scripture to each other. They shared their worries and their joys. Paul says

Pursue love and strive for the spiritual gifts and especially that you may prophesy. For those who speak in a tongue do not speak to other people but to God, for no one understands them, since they are speaking mysteries in the Spirit. But those who prophesy speak to other people for their upbuilding and encouragement and consolation. Those who speak in a tongue build up themselves, but those who prophesy build up the church. — ibid 14:1-4 emphasis added

Older English-language translations talk about “edification”, building up. Building up each other, encouraging each other, consoling each other, and also building up the church, which is the community.

Paul wants our prophetic speech to be intelligible, and also intelligent:

 …in church I would rather speak five words with my mind, in order to instruct others also, than ten thousand words in a tongue. — ibid v. 19 

Since those who meet do so as equals (although not all with the same gifts):

Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others weigh what is said. If someone sitting receives a revelation, let the first person be silent. For you can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and all be encouraged  — ibid vs. 29-31

Scriptures sometimes get jumbled up, and passages appear out of context, or even are added in error. For example, the nearby passage in 1 Corinthians about women not preaching seems to be an outraged scribe’s editorialising which later got incorporated into the body text in error. We reject the novelty of Biblical inerrancy, so that’s a thought we can think: the scriptures are wrong about women preaching. We also are equipped to not necessarily agree with Paul about how and why the process of collective prophetic speaking works. Although as it turns out, reading what he said without all those later innovations in mind can be surprising. Nevertheless, those of us who are not Christians, or not Theists, might read Paul as trying to make sense of his own transformative experience in terms which made sense to him, but we aren’t bound to understand ours in the same terms.

Deploying Love

Scriptures often get quoted out of context, too. The opening passage about the qualities of love, for example, 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 is often deployed at weddings and it’s good advice for that kind of meeting of two minds and hearts, but that’s not what Paul is talking about. From 1 Cor. 12:27 to 14:37 he is talking about right spiritual practice.

Paul says that prophecy without love is empty noise and even that great faith, faith that might remove a mountain, without love is nothing. Those properties of love that Paul lists appear after listing the variety of spiritual gifts that people may have, or not, and before the passage about the end of speaking and thinking and reasoning like a child. This is all about how we talk to each other in our meetings.

And so, some read the properties of love as guidance for meetings. In meetings, be patient with those who rise to speak, and those who do not. In meetings, be kind to those who speak even if they say things hard to hear. Do not envy those who speak if you do not. Do not insist on speaking. Do not keep count of who’s spoken and who has not. Do not (perhaps especially in meeting for worship for business!) expect to get your own way; love does not.

And what is the point of all this? To get better. To build each other up…in love. However it works, why ever it works, and Britain YM is content to be silent on this, it works. Our meetings are a sort of spiritual, emotional gymnasium where we help each other train in being patient and kind; being not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. In not insisting on our own way. In not being irritable, keeping no record of wrongs. Rejoicing in the truth.

The training we receive in our meetings helps us, and helps us to help each other, to bear, believe, hope, and endure.

So perhaps this is what is done in our meetings by those who don’t believe in God. And maybe it is what they are doing there, too. They, along with Christian Quakers and Jewish Quakers, Muslim Quakers and Hindu Quakers, with Buddhist, Taoist, Goddess-worshipping and several more kinds of Quaker I doubtless should have thought of, are doing: joining in a spiritual exercise the goal of which is mutual upbuilding, encouragement, consolation, and learning. Guided by love.

That’s our spiritual practice. All are welcome.