Quaker and Naturalist Too, by Os Cresson, foreword by David Boulton, published in 2014 by Morning Walk Press, Iowa City IA. This book is available now at QuakerBooks in Philadelphia (online at www.quakerbooks.org ) for $15.95, and it will soon be carried by the Quaker Centre Bookshop in London (online at https://www.quaker.org.uk/shop ). The author’s income from book sales goes to … Read more
Contents: Introduction Review #1: Patrick Nugent’s homework assignments Introduction: For a general introduction, see the document on this website with reviews from the 1960s. There is also a list of publications on Quaker nontheism on this website. It does not include letters, editorials, book reviews or internet blog postings (an exception was made for two … Read more
Contents: Introduction Review #1: Claire Walker and the Questing Quakers Review #2: Larry Miller’s review of Honest to God Review #3: Toward a Quaker view of theology Review #4: Dan Seeger and nontheist conscientious objection Review #5: Carol Murphy Review #6: Bradford Smith Review #7: Joseph Havens Review #8: Scott Crom Introduction: Learning about the … Read more
Doctrinally open membership is becoming more accepted by Friends. What is this method of arriving at membership decisions? How does it affect other areas of Quaker life and what does this imply for the future of the Religious Society of Friends? The Method Consider a typical Friends meeting. Members gather in silent worship. They cooperate … 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
MINUTE of the workshop on “Quaker Identity and the Heart of our Faith” at the FGC Gathering, Blacksburg VA, July 2009 28 Friends (26 from USA and one each from Britain and Canada) have participated in this workshop. We have met together on six successive mornings from June 28 to July 3 2009 to tackle … Read more
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.”
In 1996, Bowen Alpern, Glenn Mallison and I designed and presented a workshop called “Nontheism Among Friends” at the Friends General Conference Gathering. Since then, various people have led the workshop and offshoots from it. I have led seven so far. This year, I was particularly aware of some ways the culture of the Religious … 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
From Quaker Theology, #8 Spring-Summer 2003