Wednesday 5 August 2009

Quakers and lesbian/gay "marriage"

Over the last few days, I have been giving some thought to the reports that the Quakers were to allow gay marriages. This is reported on the BBC News website here, though if you visit the Religion and Ethics area of the BBC website - here - you will find that the news report's account of Quaker beliefs in general is not very accurate. So far as I can tell, the account of Quaker beliefs at the Religion and Ethics site is accurate - I have no great expertise in Quaker beliefs, but everything at this site accords with the little that I do know about them. The Times report is here.

The Quaker system is very attractive at first glance, and its emphasis on the presence of God "within" each and every person sounds very similar to Catholic teaching on grace as the presence of the Holy Spirit in the soul.

And the flaws in Quaker belief start at exactly that point. Sustained to its logical conclusion, this emphasis will want to say that God is present "within" even as a person comits the most evil of acts. From the point of view of reasoning, it is difficult to recognise in Quaker belief any place for sin and evil - the presence of which in the world is apparent without the need for execptional study. If it is not pursued to this conclusion, it needs to admit that each person has something of God within them, and also something that is of evil (cf the second page on the BBC Ethics and Religon site); and, from the point of view of Quaker-ism as a system of faith, there arises a need for discerning what it is that is of God and what it is that is of evil. There seems to be no rational way of making this discernment, as it rests within the choice of the individual in responding to "the light within", and therefore remains profoundly subjective. Expressed in terms of Catholic teaching, Quaker-ism does not give a proper, objective place to the doctrine of original sin.

This consideration is closely linked to the next flaw which begins to appear at this point. The human person is of his and her nature a being endowed with reason, and a being who is of his and her nature, communal. Communication between persons is based on this rational and social nature of the person. Consequently, we should expect that God's revelation of himself to human persons will also take part in this rational and communal character of the human person. In other words, revelation will be external and public in its character, and it will be given to a community. This is, of course, what we see in Judaism - God reveals himself and dwells among his chosen people - and in Christianity - where the presence of Jesus in the world is continued in the visible body of his Church. Quaker belief is fundamentally irrational, and reduces God's revelation of himself to a personal subjectivism. The silence of the Quaker meeting is perhaps symbolic of the isolated individualism of the Quaker view of revelation.

The subjective nature of Quaker belief about how God speaks to men and women therefore gives rise to both its major strength and, at the same time, to its greatest weakness. It places a very high value on the human person, and expects an identical high regard to be given by every person to every other person. This is the basis for their stand for non-violence and pacifism, a rather wonderful symbol of which is the Friends Ambulance Unit. It also issues in their strong sense of conscience, which could be seen to be a parallel to John Henry Newman's teaching about conscience as the prompting of God in the soul (though Newman's teaching would have an objective content in relation to the teaching of the Church that would not be there in the Quaker understanding). It has a relevance to, for example, how we might regard the person who is seriously ill. The weakness arises because no one Quaker can really communicate to another Quaker, or to someone outside their religion, anything of objective validity about the revelation of God. One can talk about God as love, and about his presence "within" and about the value that must be given to each and every person, but none of this has any objective content, any external or public form that can be communicated to another so as to demand their obedience. A Quaker is not able to teach their belief to another, or to argue for it by reason. In the modern world, it is therefore quite unviable as a system of religous belief capable of synthesis with a modern, scientific understanding of the world. [Note to myself: I must read up about Michael Faraday's religious beliefs in relation to his science.]

All of which is about my wanting to suggest that, slick and easy as the decision of Quakers to allow gay people to marry may appear, it has no rational basis that other religious denominations can want to follow. It is nothing more than a kind of "collective subjectivity", lacking any really objective attempt to study male-female difference. It reflects the weakness of a purely subjective view of revelation - that, when it does emerge into the public domain without objective structures of belief, it is just as likely to approve what is of evil as it is to approve what is of "the light". In a certain, and very real sense, it can't tell the difference.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

zero says
Thanks for the links-I have been looking for a book on their beliefs without success. I was surprised that some Quakers do and some don't believe in an "afterlife "as they are a Christian denomination and that would go without saying.
As for their acceptance of same sex unions ,it seems they don't pass judgement on this or anything else! but in the newspaper article the other day said about marriage"it was God's work and we are only witnesses".The article did state that a Quaker registrar did not have to perform the civil ceremony if they opposed it.

Jim M. said...

I appreciate your interest in Quaker theology. One of the principle guides is Robert Barclay's Apology For The True Christian Divinity. It's written in response to Calvinism in the 17th Century, so might be a bit hard going, but I think worth it. There's a copy at
http://www.qhpress.org/books/apology.html

Joe said...

Jim M:

Thank you for your comment and the link, which I am happy to post.

I will do my best to browse the Apology in the next few days.

I hope that you feel I have been accurate in my account of Quaker beliefs, though I recognise that you may not agree with my critique.

Richard Ogden said...

If you want to understand e.g. the Quaker basis of marriage, you'd be better to look at Quaker Faith & Practice (our Book of Christian Discipline), or read the minute of Britain Yearly Meeting, rather than the BBC, which is OK but a bit superficial.

Our decision on gay marriages arose from our understanding of marriage. Here's a bit from Qfp:

"For the right joining in marriage is the work of the Lord only, and not the priests or magistrates for it is God's ordinance and not man's and therefore Friends cannot consent that they should join them together: for we marry none -- it is the Lord's work, and we are but witnesses." George Fox, founder of the Quakers, 1669.

I'm not sure why, on that basis, you would call our decision "collective subjectivity".

Anonymous said...

Zero says
Joe you can tell me about the "Apology" when you find out more.
For anyone who is interested, I very much enjoyed a biography about Elizabeth Fry who did so much for prison reform.She was a "devout" Quaker-If that is the term used!The book is called "Betsy The dramatic biography of prison reformer Elizabeth Fry " by Jean Hatton. She was a compassionate, inspiring woman. Why not give it a try?

Jim M. said...

Joe
the reason I sent the link to Barclay is that I'm not well versed in theology, and so think it's better to refer you to Fox and Barclay. They spent a lot more time on that sort of discussion in the 17th Century.
I don't know if my views would be echoed by other Quakers, but I tend to find such discussion sterile. Friends tend more to focus on action.
There is a problem sometimes in agreeing on what is the best action, but we resolve that in collective assembly by listening for the Word. It's an interesting process where sometimes after a long period of muddling along, the Truth will become apparent, and will convince everyone in the assembly, regardless of their previous views. There was a good description of the process in the Guardian by Rosemary Hartill: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/aug/03/quaker-gay-marriage in connection with the marriage issue.
Jim

Joe said...

Richard:

Thank you for your comment, which I am pleased to receive and post.

1. I wonder whether George Fox, writing when he did, would have envisaged "gay marriages" as being part of what he intended by the word "marriage", or whether he would have understood it exclusively as referring to a man-woman relationship?

2. I have had a first read of some of the chapters of Qfp and, on marriage, it seems to show a problem I suspect is inherent to the Quaker system: it calls for a testimony to the life-long commitment of marriage (cf the Christian inheritance of Quaker life), but then allows re-marriage (Chapter 16); and, in the chapter on close relationships, it ultimately sees homosexual activity in exactly the same way as heterosexual activity, and does not relate sexual expression of love to marriage in either case - if at the level of the personal subject it is what is experienced, then there is in the end no objective measure of judgement to say otherwise (Chapter 22). Despite expressions of safeguards (with regard to effects on the community and in relation to children), it is ultimately quite subjective and, in the literal meaning of the term not the pejorative, permissive.

3. Given Chapter 22 of Qfp, Quaker acceptance of gay/lesbian marriage is quite logical, and does not represent a change in the Quaker position.

I think Qfp and Robert Barclay's Apology do give a greater depth to Quaker belief than the BBC site - point taken there. Barclay gives a feel for the origin of Quaker belief from Christian faith (eg in its referring to Scripture); but both demonstrate the subjective appropriation and diversification of that belief, which still shows through the efforts at some kind of systematisation and objectification (eg of the provisions with regard to marriage).

Joe said...

Just to separately say that I am appreciative of the comments and links recieved from Quaker visitors, and welcome the opportunity they have offered to learn more about Quaker beliefs and practices.

Farflung said...

I gather this blog has been looking at Quakers and the recent gay marriage decision. First the "Quaker" decision is in fact only with regard to Britain Yearly Meeting and not Quakers worldwide.
As a British Quaker I have been involved in considering the decision but feel it is an error and not "the Will of God" - which will only reveal itself over time.