Report from Nontheistic Friends’ Workshop at FGC 1976

Friends General Conference, Ithaca, New York, June, 1976 There are non-theistic Friends. There are Friends who might be called agnostics, atheists, skeptics but who would, nevertheless, describe themselves as reverent seekers. The fifteen to twenty of us who joined this workshop did so out of the need to share ideas with others who are searching … Read more

Only Human

In the summer of 1991, at the Sea of Faith conference in Leicester, two intellectual bruisers debated religion and humanism. One was Nicolas Walter: anarchist, peace activist and passionate rationalist. The other was Don Cupitt: elegant, Cambridge, deanish and donnish. Their debate was not the familiar one which had raged for a century, between humanism and Christianity. What was at issue was not humanism but the kind of humanism which might speak to the condition of a postmodern world at the scruff-end of two Christian millennia.

Quakers and the Environment: Three Options

Quakers live in and are part of the environment. Since the early days they followed the conventional practice of separating their faith from the world around them. Later, with the growth of the environmental movement, a second option emerged, that of spiritualizing nature. Then, with the development of nontheism among Friends, naturalizing religion became an … Read more

Greetings from Woodbrooke, 2004

To Friends everywhere: Greetings from thirty-seven British and American Friends gathered at Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre on January 9th to 11th, 2004, for a workshop titled, “Beyond Universalism: The Experience and Understanding of Nontheism in Contemporary Quakerism.” During deep and fruitful sessions of worship and discussion we found a great variety in the paths that … Read more

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