Does Jesus exclude?

In the last few months, I have become increasingly involved in diversity and inclusion work within the Quaker community. Although challenging and emotionally demanding, this work is bringing lots of really important questions to the fore. One cluster of questions that has emerged is: Is Christianity by its very nature exclusive? Is a universalist Quakerism (which emphasises the commonalities between all religious paths) inherently more inclusive than a distinctively Christian Quakerism? When Jesus says ‘I am the Way’, is that not an exclusive statement?

Over its long history, the Christian church (including the Quaker community) has certainly proved itself to be painfully and sinfully exclusive in many ways, but in response to whether the heart of the Christian message is exclusive, I think the answer is both ‘no’ and ‘yes’.

No, because Jesus’ good news is the way of radical inclusion, and the church does not have a monopoly on this way of life.

Jesus’ ministry is one of radical inclusion. Jesus spent a lot of time in intimate company with those on the margins – women, children, the disabled, the ritually unclean, foreigners, etc. His message was one of reversal – the first will be last and the last will be first (Mk 10:31). The people with the least power in society are those that God gives the most honoured place to at the table (Lk 14:12-13). Jesus includes all the people that the rich and powerful want to exclude.

‘Christianity is not a notion but a way’. These words from ‘Advices and Queries’ No.2 remind us that Christianity is not intellectually assenting to certain statements about Jesus. Christianity is about a way of life. When the writer of John’s gospel says that Jesus is ‘the Way, the Truth and the Life’ (Jn 14:6), he is not saying ‘and unless you believe x y and z you’ll burn forever’. He is saying that in Jesus we see what a truly human life looks like. A life obedient to the God who is Love, a life lived free of deception, even to the point of persecution and death, is a life fully lived. The Christian tradition says that we are empowered to live this Way now by the Spirit of Christ, and this Spirit is not confined by the boundaries of the church. Where ever people live in obedience to the promptings of Love and Truth, the Spirit of Christ is at work. The early Quaker Robert Barclay described these people as the ‘church invisible’. You can be a Christian without believing non-Christians are excluded from the Way that Jesus embodies.

Yes, because in order for there to be justice for the marginalised, certain behaviours and attitudes must be excluded.

The gospel is divisive. Creating an inclusive community isn’t easy. Jesus said ‘do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword’ (Matt 10:34). In the book of Revelation, Jesus is represented as having a sharp two-edged sword coming from his mouth (Rev 1:16). The message that Jesus brings, the life he lived, is one of peace and justice, but this is an incredibly divisive message. It threatens the power and privilege of those at the top of the pile. In order for every valley to be lifted up, every mountain and hill must be made low (Isa 40:4). In order for the lowly to be lifted up, the powerful must be brought down from their thrones (Lk 1:52). Jesus was executed by the Imperial powers for the trouble his ministry caused. The early Quakers suffered imprisonment and death for their message of spiritual equality. The message of radical inclusion, whether spoken in words or actions, is incredibly divisive. The powerful must learn to let go of their power, and many won’t let go without a fight.

There is no justice without judgment. The way of inclusivity is the way of humility, and to be truly humble we need to see ourselves as God sees us, as both a deeply loved part of God’s good creation, and as people infected by and colluding with a fractured and sinful world. To see rightly means to submit ourselves to God’s judgement, to the sword of Jesus’ mouth. In order for their to be justice for all, all must face the wrongs they’ve been party to and attempt to make things right. The ‘Day of Judgement’ is often thought of as something that happens after death, but there is a tradition within Christianity (which Quakers share) of the ‘Day of Judgement’ being an inward experience available to us now. When we are faced with the fire of God’s Love, illuminating our darkness and burning away our impurities, it is a painful experience: ‘But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire…’ (Mal 3:2). This is not about separating sheep from goats, arbitrarily consigning some to eternal conscious torment in Hell. This is about a process we all need to go through in order to shed our delusions and enter the Kingdom of God.

True inclusion requires repentance. When we are shown our darkness, we have the opportunity to be brought to new life. We have the chance to turn around, to change direction, to repent. Change, even change for the better, always involves loss, the letting go of something. A truly inclusive community, paradoxically, cannot include everyone just as they are. Everyone needs to be open to change. Separation and division comes from rigidity, and unwillingness to leave things behind. A community cannot be truly inclusive of LGBT+ people, if those who dismiss and denigrate LGBT+ people are not required to let go of their prejudice. In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31), the rich man still expects Lazarus to serve him after death. The rich man cannot let got of his own power, and so is excluded from community with Lazarus. His refusal to change is the great chasm between them.[1]

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Lazarus and the rich man, taken by Nick Thompson.

In C. S. Lewis’s ‘The Great Divorce’, where he imagines the inhabitants of Hell taking a bus trip to Heaven, he writes that ‘You cannot take all luggage with you on all journeys; on one journey even your right hand and your right eye may be among the things you have to leave behind… A sum can be put right: but only by going back till you find the error and working it afresh from that point, never by simply going on.’[2] In this story, the travellers on the bus are free to stay in Heaven, but there are things they must first let go of, particularly their pride and their need to control others. The book of Revelation closes with a vision of the renewed community, the ‘New Jerusalem’, stating that: ‘Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they will have the right to the tree of life and may enter the city by the gates. Outside are the dogs and sorcerers and fornicators and murderers and idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood’ (Rev 22:14-15). This is a community from which some are excluded, but it is because they will not let go of evil. They self-exclude. The gates of the city are never shut (Rev. 21:25), so they are free to enter at anytime, but first they must lay down that which endangers the safety and wellbeing of the cities inhabitants.

A Christian approach to inclusion is one that does not separate mercy and judgement. A truly inclusive community is both compassionate and just. The Way of Jesus is one of radical inclusion – it is open to everyone – but no-one can follow that Way and remain the same, especially the people with the most to lose.

[1] I first came across this interpretation in William R. Herzog, Parables As Subversive Speech: Jesus as Pedagogue of the Oppressed (Louisville, Ky: Westminster John Knox Press, 1994).

[2] C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce: A Dream (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001), viii.

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Answering That of God in Everyone?

I recently helped organise and co-facilitate a British Quaker diversity and inclusion national gathering at the Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre. It was challenging and rewarding in equal measure, and I’ve put together some thoughts on the event for the Woodbrooke blog, which you can read here.

Thank you to my readers in 2018

Dear readers and followers of Jolly Quaker,

2018 has been a quieter year on the blog than I’d anticipated, and I haven’t produced the bumper crop of posts I’d hoped for, but in many ways this has been a good year for the blog behind the scenes. I’m still operating on the principle that when a blog post needs to be written, it’ll get written, rather than tying myself to monthly deadlines, and I’m very happy with my output. I’ve continued with my series on Advices and Queries, now having got up to number 12. I’ll definitely continue with this in 2019 – I find it a really enjoyable project.

My post ‘Words and Wounds: Reflections from Britain Yearly Meeting‘ has been the most widely read, and it felt like an important piece to write for myself personally. BYM in 2018 was a significant moment for me in understanding how to be a Quaker who works in a Quaker institution, and writing about it was part of that reconciling process. I’m at my best as a theologian and a teacher when I’m my most authentic self.

I attempted to start a new series of posts called ‘Threshings‘, which so far hasn’t gone any further than one post, but I still have plans for it. I want to ask questions about gnostic tendencies in contemporary Quakerism, and whether ‘A Course in Miracles’ is truly compatible with Quaker theology. I’ve already written a lot on these questions, but these feel like more challenging posts, and the right moment to publish them hasn’t arisen.

This year has also seen me reading more theology blogs, and a particular favourite of mine is The PostBarthian. It was this blog that introduced me to German theologian Jürgen Moltmann, inspiring me to begin reading Moltmann’s series of ‘systematic contributions’. It was this in turn that led me to my dissertation topic for my MA in systematic and philosophical theology, which I will complete in 2019. It’s this dissertation that’s the main reason for the scarcity of blog posts. All my reading, writing and thinking has been happening elsewhere. For my dissertation I’m asking: ‘What, according to George Fox, is the Quaker hope? Is that hope good enough in a time of disastrous climate change?’ Moltmann is known as a theologian of hope, and I’ll be bringing Moltmann into dialogue with Fox. I’m finding it all very exciting!

So I hope that throughout 2019 I can share the fruits of my studies with you through the blog, and continue to offer reflections that are relevant and useful for the contemporary Quaker community. Even if I had no readers I’d still write, but having readers makes it so much more enjoyable. Thank you for taking the time to read and respond to my posts. Thank you for following and engaging with me on Twitter. I really appreciate it! I wish you all a new year fortified with faith, hope and love.

Advice and Query 12: Building a living temple together

This is a series of short, c.500-word posts looking at the underlying theology of the Advices and Queries – forty-two pithy statements that collectively capture the British Quaker faith.

When you are preoccupied and distracted in meeting let wayward and disturbing thoughts give way quietly to your awareness of God’s presence among us and in the world. Receive the vocal ministry of others in a tender and creative spirit. Reach for the meaning deep within it, recognising that even if it is not God’s word for you, it may be so for others. Remember that we all share responsibility for the meeting for worship whether our ministry is in silence or through the spoken word.

What we seek in meeting is presence, not absence. Fullness not emptiness. In entering worship we don’t seek a negation of the self. Or if we do seek an emptiness, it’s only in order to be filled – filled with the awareness of God’s presence. We seek to be full-filled, to have our horizon expanded beyond all that which preoccupies and distracts. God is both imminent – closer to us than our own breathing – and transcendent – above and beyond the individual and the human. God is among us and God is in the world. God does not want to blot us out, but for us to be fully ourselves – dwelling in God and God dwelling in us. We seek fulness, wholeness and the healing of our fragmented lives.

With this talk of healing and wholeness, some may ask what the difference is between Quaker worship and group therapy. Perhaps there is some overlap, but there are some important differences.

A meeting for worship is a public event. Anyone can come. So anything that is spoken in a meeting for worship is public testimony, not private confession. There is no sense in which things shared in meeting for worship can be treated as automatically confidential. There should be no taboo on discussing the content of vocal ministry after worship has finished. What we share in meeting for worship does not belong solely to us. It does not even belong solely to the group present. If what we speak is truly ministry, then it is God’s word – it is a revelation of God. And God is not a private thing.

Being frail and broken people, we may not always minister as we should. We may speak when we should be silent, and we may be silent when we should speak. We might use the opportunity to speak in meeting in many selfish ways. But God’s word uttered through us in worship is never just for us alone, never just for our own healing. So we need each other to test the spirits. Did what we say come from the Holy Spirit, or from a spirit of pride? The worshipping community must wrestle with and digest the vocal ministry of its members, and not see it as untouchable expressions of individual truth.

Of course, this wrestling should be done in a tender and creative spirit. We must lift each other up, not push each other down. In our our meetings for worship for business, we are exhorted to conduct our decision making in the spirit of worship. Conversely, we should also conduct our worship in the spirit of communal truth seeking. Spoken ministry is part of our collective search for Truth. We are not casting our own individual pebbles into a pond. The stones sink and remain untouched at the bottom, a collection of fragments. This image is too static and individualistic. We need an image that has some sort of direction or goal, an image where there is a guiding Truth to be sought.

All ministry, vocal or otherwise, is service for others. Whatever gifts we possess are to be used for the building up of our neighbour and the community of faith. Perhaps the paradoxical image of the living temple might work – in offering vocal ministry we hope to contribute to the shared project of building a living temple where God dwells. Quakerism is a shared religious project – a project that we’re all responsible for – and our vocal ministry should help others to feel the presence of the immanent and transcendent God among us and in the world.

geograph-3787963-by-Jonathan-Billinger

Do Quakers have souls? (Threshings #1)

This is the first in a short series of theological ‘threshings’. In the Quaker tradition, threshing is a lively process of getting to the heart of an issue, separating the wheat from the chaff. When a theological problem bugs me, I want to thresh it out! I may not come up with an answer, but hopefully I’ll bring out some important points. If the word ‘theology’ puts you off, think of theology as a tool that should improve the way we talk about our religious and spiritual experience. It’s not about giving definitive answers, it’s about speaking with integrity in an informed and inspiring way.

Do Quakers have souls? You may think the answer is ‘obviously yes’, or you may think this question is akin to ‘how many angels can dance on the head of a pin’. I hope to show that this question isn’t merely abstract speculation, but actually impacts on how we live our lives.

The problem with being two things (dualism)

I have become increasingly interested in what it means to ‘have a soul’. I think many people take it as read that the religious understanding of what it means to be a human is that we are a body inhabited with a soul or spirit – an invisible thing that is the real ‘self’. However, two things have gotten me thinking that this could be quite a problematic belief.

The first involves my experience as a gay person. Attending an evangelical church, I once asked for prayer concerning my sexuality. I had the opportunity to travel to a country where homosexuality was prohibited, requiring me to go back in the closet. I wasn’t sure I was able to do this. One of the people praying over me said words to the effect that my true identity in Christ wasn’t located in my sexuality. There was a sense that somehow the ‘real’ me could be separated from the ‘gay’ me. Afterwards, I thought ‘that was a really ‘straight man’ thing to pray!’ In my experience, I can’t make that separation. My original coming-out at 17 was accompanied by an intense spiritual coming-out. I was only able to embrace a relationship with God once I was honest about who I was. So for me, I can’t separate ‘gay’ me from ‘real’ me; and what would it mean to be gay without a body?

The second involves my on-going exploration of what it means to be white. I have increasingly come to realise that being a white body has impacted on my experience of the world. Like being gay, I can’t imagine what it would be like to be something other than a white body. However, in conversations with some white Quakers, one of the barriers to recognising the impact of whiteness on our experience is the belief that our true self is located in an invisible soul, that our most real self is purely spiritual: ‘I am not my body, therefore I am not effected by colour, and I don’t see colour. We are all truly colourless.’ For a white person, one of the effects of white privilege is never having to realise you’re white. Might a belief in the true self being an invisible, disembodied soul be tied up with this?

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Original source: Budge, E. A. Wallace. “The Nile: Notes for Travellers in Egypt.” (Harrison and Sons, London: 1902). p. 161.

A Christian argument for being one thing (physicalism)

In my reading on the subject, I came across a book by Nancy Murphy[1] that provides an excellent overview of the topic from a Christian point of view.

Murphy presents four possible views of what it is to be a human (and I reckon you’d find Quakers in all four camps):

  1. physicalism – we have only one ‘part’, the body.
  2. dualism – we are made up of two parts: body-soul, or body-mind.
  3. trichotomism – we are made up of three parts: body, soul and spirit
  4. monism (or idealism) – that we are only truly mind or spirit.

Which view does the Bible take? Interestingly, Murphy says that ‘the Bible has no clear teaching’ concerning the composition of a human person.[2] This has allowed for a variety of opinions throughout Christian history. However, it’s now widely agreed that in the Hebrew Bible there is no body-soul dualism. The New Testament is not so clear, but certainly Paul’s distinction between spirit and flesh should not be interpreted as a distinction between body and soul: ‘Paul is concerned with two ways of living: one in conformity with the Spirit of God, and the other in conformity to the old aeon before Christ.’[3]

Murphy argues that ‘dualist anthropology all too easily leads to disparagement of the body and all that goes along with being embodied.’[4] When we separate soul from body the material world (including the body) becomes less important. Murphy also suggests that ‘the change from a dualist to a physicalist anthropology… calls for serious reconsideration of traditional understandings of Christian spirituality. From Augustine to the present we have had a conception of the self that distinguishes the inner life from the outer, and spirituality has been associated largely with the inner.’[5] I find this fascinating from a Quaker perspective. British liberal Quakers are very comfortable with speaking of the ‘inward’ and the ‘outward’. Our rejection of ‘outward forms’ could be seen as a rejection of the material world, saying that the spiritual is somehow more real than the physical. Yet we’re also a community who say we want climate and racial justice, things very much concerned with the physical and the embodied. With our idolising of theological diversity combined with our reluctance to actually discuss this diversity, such a confusion is not surprising!

Murphy concludes by suggesting that ‘one could be a body-soul dualist while avoiding an excessively inward-looking spirituality. In fact, some of the greatest writers on inwardness did so… So the strongest point I can make here is to claim… that physicalism – along with an eschatological hope for resurrection of the body – leads more naturally to a concern for the physical world and its transformation than does dualism.’[6] Murphy believes that physicalism – the view we are one thing, a spirited body – is much less problematic than dualism. She also offers something that is probably alien to most British Quakers – the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the body. This is the belief that at the end of time, all will be raised from the dead to face judgement. This teaching says that when we die, our disembodied souls don’t go to heaven to live on a cloud. Rather, we await God’s justice and a new life as a resurrected body. I don’t think British Quakers will be quick to revisit and take up this doctrine, which makes me wonder what a contemporary and well thought out Quaker understanding of the human person would look like.

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from William Blake’s illustrations to Robert Blair’s The Grave , object 9 The Soul Hovering over the Body

Some thoughts from Thomas Aquinas

On the subject of the soul, I’ve been quite taken with the thinking of Thomas Aquinas,[7] the medieval theologian. He has two things to say that British Quakers might find attractive.

First, he said that the soul is not something we have, it’s something we are. If you have something, you can give it away and still be you. If you are something, then you can’t be separated from it. Well, he said that the soul could be separated from the body after death, but it wouldn’t be up to much. How would it see without eyes? How would it think without a brain? For Aquinas, the soul without a body is a rather useless thing.

Secondly, he said that everything that lives is a soul. Everything that is animate has a soul (‘soul’ in Latin is anima). He said that there are three aspects to the human soul. There’s the vegetative aspect (that respires, takes in nutrients, grows etc.) that we share with tomatoes, oaks, lichen and dahlias. There’s the animal aspect that we share with badgers, bees and whales, and there’s the rational aspect that belongs to humans. This view of the soul brings us into relationship with all living things – it’s not just the preserve of humans!

Keep on threshing…

So I agree with Murphy that body-soul dualism is problematic. It limits our ability to understand the way being a body shapes our experience of the world, and can create a disdain for the physical that is at odds with a pursuit of material wellbeing for all things. I think that physicalism – the understanding that we are one, indivisible thing – helps to address this problem. I’m also increasingly into the resurrection of the body, but I know I’m out on a limb with that one as far as British Quakers are concerned! There are lots of questions still to think about – how is physicalism compatible with Quaker spirituality and the inward/outward distinction we often make? What about the experience of those who live with chronic pain whose relationship with the body is a tremendously difficult one? What about the experience of the elderly who sense a growing disconnect from the body? Constructing a modern Quaker anthropology is too big a job for this blog post, and I look forward to reading a future book about it! Hopefully this post has raised some interesting questions. I’m very interested to know what you think about it – what do you think you’re made up of? How do your beliefs about the body/soul/spirit effect how you live? so please comment below!

[1] Nancey C. Murphy, Bodies and Souls, or Spirited Bodies?, Current Issues in Theology (Cambridge, UK ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

[2] Murphy, 4.

[3] Murphy, 22.

[4] Murphy, 27.

[5] Murphy, 30.

[6] Murphy, 35.

[7] Denys Turner, ‘The Human Person’, in The Cambridge Companion to The               Summa Theologiae, ed. Philip McCosker and Denys Turner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 168–80.

Advice and Query 11: The tightrope of hope

This is a series of short, c.500-word posts looking at the underlying theology of the Advices and Queries – forty-two pithy statements that collectively capture the British Quaker faith.

Be honest with yourself. What unpalatable truths might you be evading? When you recognise your shortcomings, do not let that discourage you. In worship together we can find the assurance of God’s love and the strength to go on with renewed courage.

The week that President Trump arrived in the UK, I sat in worship with a deep sadness in my heart, weighed down by the moral cowardice of our leaders. I felt so angry, and so powerless. As I offered these feelings to God, I felt my focus shift from the President to myself. It felt like I was being asked ‘what have you done in response to the evil you are witnessing?’, and I was unable to give an answer. I felt convicted of apathy, of not involving myself in politics at a local level. I can’t remember the last time I wrote to my MP. Was I entitled to feel so passionately angry about things that were happening at the top, if I wasn’t willing to engage at the grassroots level?

Awakening from denial

This is one of the primary functions of meeting for worship, this is when worship is truly apocalyptic – the Light reveals, it shows us our true condition, which includes the bits we’d rather remain covered up. God will not allow us to live in denial and delusion, and as long as we turn to the Light, the Light will show us how things really are, however unpalatable they may be. This advice also speaks of our ‘shortcomings’. The New Testament uses the word hamartia, which means ‘missing the mark’, and is traditionally translated as ‘sin’. The Light shows us our sin, the way we fall short as individuals, as families, as communities and as nations. I used to believe thinking of myself as a sinner involved seeing myself as a disgusting worm, but I’ve now come to see that acknowledging my sinfulness should not result in self-hatred. Such self-disgust would show me to be captive to pride, invested in the illusion of my own moral perfection. Being a sinner is nothing special, and it doesn’t take erase our intrinsic goodness as God’s good creation. We should be able to speak openly about our sin. Our meetings need to be ‘bullshit free zone’ where we can be honest about who we are. As long as we hold on to a need to be morally pure, as long as we are ashamed to be imperfect, we will hold ourselves back from the Light. Being honest means having the humility to open the closet door, allowing the Light to illuminate all that we wish were hidden about our lives.

Rescue from despair

I said God will not allow us to live in denial. Neither will God leave us to despair! The Light not only reveals our sin, it renews our courage to persevere. When we let go of reliance on our own strength, we can be filled with the strength of God. When we give up the need to be ‘good people’, we can rest in the love of the Creator whose creation is fundamentally good. Out of the heart that trusts in God shall flow rivers of living, spiritual water (John 7:38), refreshing and rejuvenating. We may be able to find this spring alone, but the work is much easier when we undertake it together in a worshipping community.

The narrow way of hope

In the committed life of faith we walk the ledge between the chasms of denial and despair. This walk of vigilant hope is a difficult, wearying place to be, and requires a regular return to the Source to be reminded of God’s love, and renewed with God’s strength. This is a way of tension, the tension of a tightrope: Jesus said ‘my yoke is easy and my burden is light’, and also said ‘if you would follow me you must take up your cross’. The life of faith is both as simple, and as demanding, as turning to the Light within, facing what it has to show you, and following it wherever it leads.

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Sourced from Wikimedia Commons; Author: Wiros from Barcelona, Spain

The more power, wealth and privilege we have, the harder our hearts will become, and the harder it is to let in the Light, so we shouldn’t expect change from the hard-hearted leaders of the nations any time soon. We need to show them how it’s done. In a world where those in power call evil good and good evil, put darkness for light and light for darkness, and who are wise in their own sight, we are called to walk the narrow way of humility and hope, of serpentine-wisdom and dove-like innocence, because with God’s help we can do the work that needs doing.

Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you. Discipline yourselves, keep alert. Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour. Resist him, steadfast in your faith, for you know that your brothers and sisters in all the world are undergoing the same kinds of suffering. [1 Peter 5:7-9]