Helen Gould, New South Wales Regional Meeting.
Jane Mace is a former adult literacy educator, and a Quaker who has experienced the clerking of Meetings for worship for business – from both sides of the clerk’s table.
Mace commends to us the view that non-theists are furthering our traditional Quaker commitment to Truth in their/our efforts to find new language for inner experience. So whether you are theist or not, if you are committed to our way of worshipful decision-making then consider reading this useful little book. It rests on the premise that Quaker decision-making assumes a commitment to guidance which is larger, deeper, and greater than we ourselves can generate.
The book addresses Quaker practices in the UK. It consists of 6 interrelated essays: the first, “God, Worship and Time”, explores what we mean by “divine guidance”, and how to make fruitful the tension between the need for worship and the need for efficiency.
The second, “Discipline and Upholding” is about the corporate disciplines of waiting and listening and of upholding the worshipping group and the clerk(s).
The third chapter is called “Unity and discernment”.
She writes, “If we observe the corporate disciplines, and the clerks read the sense of the meeting and capture the essence of discernment in writing, then the worshippers experience the meeting as gathered”. …”There to seek not unanimity or majority votes but “unity”, participants… are asked to accept a discipline… (this develops) the capacity to accept a decision that they may have neither expected nor wanted, but trust to be the best one for the meeting at the time.” (p28).
Mace draws on a wonderful corpus of literature on Quaker decision-making, and particularly on Quaker Faith & Practice (the “Red book”). Her vignettes include business practices at both the Yearly Meeting and local meeting levels, and also threshing meetings. There is a fascinating account of the long, careful process of discernment around whether to respond to the Israel-Palestine conflict by “BDS” “Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions”.
The fourth chapter is on Clerks and Clerking; the fifth is called “Reading and Writing” and is about the literacy practices of business meetings. She writes, “The Quaker style of writing in our minutes (uses) active, personal and present-tense forms” and she shows the connection between these practices and our testimonies. Her final chapter is on opportunities for informal learning and renewal.
This book is full of good things. And in the course of her study, she experienced the “gradual revelation” “that the primary purpose of Quaker business meetings is not to make decisions or written records, but to seek (and sometimes find) a divine presence in the way these are made.” Amen.
| In Quaker Meetings | In other Meetings | |
| Those present are seeking | God’s will, unity | Unanimous/ majority decision or consensus |
| By means of | Consideration and discernment | Debate, discussion |
| Guided by | The “presence in the midst”, the Spirit, moments of attentive silence. | Opinion, evidence, rational argument |
Just like the title ‘God’ means differing things to different people, it occurs to me that ‘non-theist’ means the same. If I hold that a god is a focus of worship – then I could say that an alcoholic thinks (or doesn’t) that alcohol is of ultimate worth in his life. This is how religious language works. In days past, it might have been said that the alcoholic worships Venus, the goddess of wine. Indeed, there’s no reason necessarily why someone mightn’t have their own personal pantheon of gods. In addition, there’s the point that whatever might be mentally asserted, how one lives might point to the gods in our lives. In the Abrahamic faiths there’s an assertion that the only thing of ultimate worth is some form of ultimate principle or being which in some nature is ineffable. However, I think the language works fine (to me, maybe not to others) if one doesn’t limit gods to those which are somehow transcendent. The ancient pantheons of the Greeks and the Romans didn’t.
Today, some people assert that ‘you make your own meaning’, which isn’t uncommon. However, with religious language, it’s surely the case that however someone lives, their behaviour will give some indication to their values – and their gods.
So, to me, a ‘non-theist’ means someone who intellectually is asserting that they live their life without being in relation to anything identifiable of worth. I’ve yet to meet such a person though.
Perhaps ‘non-theist’ is being used as a counter to ‘theist’, where ‘theist’ means a relation to a god in the Christian conception. Yet, again, many people – once they talk about their perception for some sort of ultimate “spirit” – their sense is often – so it seems to me – in common with much of what many Christians would identify as their god. It’s just that they rather choose not to approach the spirit in a Christian manner.
So what is a ‘non-theist’ ? It’s a wide term, but rather than be a lack of identity with a god, it seems to me that it’s a lack of identity with a particular language system. Buddhists too have their gods – isn’t emptyness being sought (and emptyness isn’t ‘nothing’) ? However, Buddhists don’t use the Abrahamic religious language approach. Perhaps a ‘non-theist’ in a Quaker setting is someone rejecting a particular concept of what they perceive to be a god that others worship – typically a Christian conception of God that is asserted by evangelicals. Sometimes anyway. Of course, language is fluid and the real meanings are found in the difference and in the relationships between people in some sense too.
Just some food for thought.