Friends in the Next 100 Years

To answer my own query... (is one allowed to do that?)

I feel like what we're called to do is listen to God together. I wrote somewhere on my own blog when I was talking about George Fox's Journal that it seems like a lot of times Friends got together and sat in silence until they heard what they were supposed to do, then they went out and did it. Silence wasn't an end in itself or a nice difference from normal, busy life. It was a way to listen together that preceded action.

So I think we should listen together and figure out what we're called to, which I think would include being "the voice of liberal inclusive Christianity," as Forrest suggests, but that doesn't just mean talking to people about Jesus. That means as we hear what Jesus calls us to, we do it--including things that might get us into trouble, as they did the early Friends.

I think we're too comfortable with being liked as Friends, with having a history that others revere, so we don't want to do anything now that might ruin our reputation.

Some ideas:

• war tax resistance (in an organized fashion)
• doing good research so we can boycott companies who produce their goods unjustly, and buy from good companies (and being willing to go without if there are no good companies that produce certain things)
• alternative transportation (biking, walking, not using any form of transportation that leads to ecological problems or conflicts over resources)
• fighting racism/classism in America (because that's where I'm from) and egocentrism on the part of America
• proactively working for peace rather than just protesting wars and violence after it's begun

So how can we start working on these things? Which ones are we most drawn to as a community? What small steps can we take to start working on them? What things in the 21st century will show that we're Quakers like wearing gray in the 18th and 19th centuries, because we're standing for what we believe without compromise?

The Conversations:

What Are the Most Important Questions Facing the Society of Friends Today? What Are We Called to Do, as Friends, Over the Next 100 Years? What Does (or Should) "Christianity" Mean to Us as Friends? How Do We See "NonTheist Friends" Among Us? How Might We Best Form Communities of Service? High Expectations vs Self-Acceptance, for Other People and Ourselves. Please feel free to comment--And if you'd like to be a member here and add your own posts on questions like these, please email Forrest (at the address given in his profile}, including your email address and whatever we ought to know to help us decide that.

"No-Fault Living"

Can Love Be Truth? Okay, a Question

What Are Friends Called to Do?

To Be the Voice of Liberal Inclusive Christianity To Seek to Be Guided Together

The Basic Questions for Friends Today?

Cherice's Queries Forrest's Version

What Is Christianity?

Christianity Christology

Christology 101 (or why I'm not Unitarian)

I HAVE been exercised of late on the issue of Christology. By "Christology" I mean that set of questions such as Who was/is this Christ Jesus fellow anyway? or Is/was he really God incarnate? and What do we really mean by God Incarnate anyway? and Why does it matter? And what tense should we be talking about the guy (was/is)?

This isn't to say that I think there is one and only one TRUE answer to any of those questions or that where you stand on any of them should in any way mark you as a good Quake or a bad Quake or even as a good Christian or a bad Christian. But I think I might say there is a range of responses to those questions which we might say are more appropriate expressions of Quakerism and of Christianity than other possible responses. In other words I think our answers to such questions may actually be helpful in the formation of our communities and in the making of corporate (and even personal decisions. I think that may define me outside the "liberal" fold.

And here it gets REALLY technical. I think that this hypothetically appropriate range of responses needs to include the Theopaschite amendment to the Council of Chalcedon: Unus ex Trinitate passus est (meaning "One of the Trinity suffered in the flesh").

Gaak! What am I saying? I'm saying Jesus was a child of God in a way we are not. In traditional language, he was the only begotten son of God while we are God's kids by adoption.

And its important because? Because when they nailed him to a tree Jesus suffered and when that happened it was God suffering in Jesus because they are One. And God continues to suffer and be vulnerable.

The liberal Quakerism I know doesn't think this is important. In fact the notion this might be important is down right threatening to a whole mess of folks who without office or election or recording are pretty much setting the tone for what Quakerism is and is becoming. It is also pretty much irrelevant (ironically enough) to conservative Christians who if not in profession certainly in practice prefer the conquering Messiah returning on clouds of glory to the notion that God Almighty is vulnerable and suffers.

But for me certainly, the notion of a vulnerable and suffering God is at the centre of any hope that Christianity might be relevant in this world. More important than those gospel formulae about how we're saved by his sacrifice. And if Quakerism is to be relevant in this world, it needs either to embrace a Chacedonian kind of Christianity or it needs to jettison the whole Christian enterprise and find an entirely different way of engaging this world.