James Riemermann by James Riemermann The following is a talk given by James Riemermann at the inaugural conference of the Nontheist Friends Network, Birmingham, UK, March 2012. Scroll to the bottom of the page for a recording of the talk, in three parts on Youtube. I’m not a Quaker scholar, or really any other kind of scholar. … Read more
(I presented this at an adult education session at Twin Cities Friends Meeting in November 2003. A Friend recently suggested it might spur some conversations around alternative ways of seeing and experiencing what Quakers call the “inward light.” In particular, I think the idea of the inward light as something pure, which can be experienced … Read more
To seek to live in the light is essentially a value, a principle of living, rather than a belief. We need no theology, nor even a particular conception of “the light” as a distinct quality, in order to seek to live by it. Perhaps it would help me to clarify my point, if I described my own quirky, incomplete, and mostly psychological sense of where “the light” comes from
…I don’t mean that everyone should engage in or care about this kind of intellectual wrestling, and I certainly don’t mean that our worship should become intellectual debate or performance–yuck. But the widespread fear of and distaste for intellect, as if the search for understanding could possibly be a bad thing, does not serve us well…
My friend Nat Case, from my own Twin Cities Friends Meeting, has a blog I hadn’t paid much attention to until a month or two ago. I don’t know how much of my inattention is because I hadn’t noticed how smartly provocative his writing is, and how much is because, as a cartographer, he’s been writing less for a mapmaking audience lately, and more for Quakers and other people who question the meaning of religion. People like me.
This post expands on a brief comment I made on his post Fragments of a Religion That Never Existed, where Nat writes in part:
“What I’m interested in here is the idea of scripture not defined by its innate qualities (e.g. dictated by God), but by its functional qualities. What does scripture do? I find scripture-as-community-glue interesting, but my sympathies lie with scriptures-taken-to-heart. I do have a series of books, passages from books, poems, some formal religious texts, ballads, and films that form what I believe is similar to the sort of scripture-taken-to-heart that orthodox folk might have. Except I do not have a community that draws from the same set of texts.”
A Friend on the nontheist Friends e-mail discussion list at some point challenged us to seriously study early Quaker history, and not just dip into it, “to develop our knowledge of and insights into the origins and development of the tradition or movement we have committed to.” Good advice, no question. And yet I felt … Read more
1. Circle 1 = God
2. Circle 2 = the natural world
3. Circle 1 minus Circle 2 = the supernatural world
A Friend on the nontheist Friends email list asked what the basis for membership might be, or more specifically, what a basis might be for turning someone down for membership. The question was not specifically about belief/disbelief in God, so I did not particularly address that. I suppose, by not addressing such belief/disbelief, I am … Read more
Both within and outside the informal association of Friends who call themselves nontheists, there is little common understanding of what the word nontheist means. There is also little common understanding of related words such as atheist, agnostic, humanist, and materialist, but believers and unbelievers alike have at least a sense of what they mean by … Read more
If I am to speak of God at all, even metaphorically, I find I must speak of two gods. This may be the reason I tend not to speak of God. Both gods speak to me as metaphors, but I have difficulty calling them by the same name. It is not the world that my … Read more