Fretting About the Title for the new Book of Discipline

Some Friends seem to be concerned about what words are or aren’t in the proposed title for Britain Yearly Meeting’s draft revised Book of Discipline. It’s “Our Quaker Way.”

But how much are we wedded to the exact words in the titles of our books of discipline? How much do they signify?

• The first printed publication that we can recognise as such was called Extracts From the Minutes and Advices of the Yearly Meeting of Friends Held in London From its First Institution, of 1783. Looking at that from here: have we given up London?
• And then it became Rules and Discipline. What?! Had we given up minutes? Advice? Have we now given up rules?
• Then there were three volumes: Christian Doctrine/Practice/Government. What!? Had we given up rules and discipline? Have we now given up doctrine and government?
• Then came Christian Life, Faith and Thought. What!? All change.
• And then came Christian Faith and Practice in the Experience of the Society of Friends (note: no ‘Religious’ there – referring to us as the Religious Society of Friends seems to be a mid-nineteenth century innovation). What!? Had we given up life? Have we given up thought?

Some seem to think that the current Quaker Faith & Practice  gave up Christianity, based on the idea that it gave up on mentioning Christ, but I’ve counted how many times that person is mentioned in our books of discipline over time, and it peaks in the later nineteenth century. That and the epithet ‘Religious’ may be symptoms of the evangelical turn Friends took. But the ‘red book’ is not notably short of mentions of Christ in general, nor compared to other twentieth-century versions.

Here’s a handy list of words that once were in the title of British Friends’ Book of Discipline but aren’t now:

• Extracts
• Minutes
• Advices
• Rules
• Discipline
• Doctrine
• Government
• Life
• Thought

But I think we still have or do all those things in Britain YM.

A shorter version of this appeared as a letter in the 24 April edition of the Friend