James Dunstone asks: should there be unity?
'Hermeneutics' refers to how we read the Bible, our methodology for interpretation. In his opening address to the 2019 SOF Annual Conference, Ernie Rea (formerly Head of Broadcasting at the BBC) spoke on how a literal interpretation of scripture had been used to justify acts of horrific sectarian violence in Northern Ireland.
I would like to reflect on different ways of reading and using the Bible, with particular reference to the Quakers (Religious Society of Friends), of whom I am a member.
The differences in Quaker approaches to the Bible are diachronic (they have changed over time) and synchronic (there are different ways in which Quakers interpret the Bible today).
Quaker differences today Worldwide, Quakerism is growing. In 1940 there were 157,800 Friends worldwide, in 2000 there were 338,000. Most Friends are Evangelical and their number is rising, particularly in Africa where 46% of all Friends now live. Evangelical Friends tend towards a literal interpretation of scripture, their churches usually have a pastor and the worship is programmed and involves singing.
The numbers of liberal Quakers (practising nonprogrammed, predominantly silent worship) is declining. They tend to live in the United Kingdom and United States and may be non-theists (I am not the only Quaker who accepts SOF Network’s understanding of religion as a very valuable but very human creation). These Quakers tend towards an allegorical reading of scripture if they read it at all: many consider large parts of the Bible to be of limited relevance to life today. Some Quakers are hostile to the Bible and the tenets of Christian doctrine. In my own meeting we carried out an exercise in which Friends were asked to say whether certain ideas or concepts were ‘very helpful’, ‘helpful’, ‘neutral’, ‘unhelpful’ or ‘very unhelpful’ to worship.
Some Friends indicated that they found ‘Jesus Christ’ and ‘Salvation’ to be ‘very unhelpful’.
I found this response distressing and wondered what this meant for unity amongst Quakers.
How did we get here? 1. The Seventeenth Century: Early Quaker Hermeneutics Quakerism originated during the English Civil War (1642-1651) when 3.8% of the population of England were killed and a much larger number permanently maimed or traumatised (by comparison, World War One killed 2.6% of the population). George Fox (1624-1691) learnt radical religious ideas from visiting army camps with his Baptist uncle.
The first Quakers read the Bible and were adept at using it to support their experience of God, but it was secondary in authority to one's own experience. After receiving one revelation, Fox said: 'This I saw in the pure openings of the light, without the help of any man, neither did I then know where to find it in the Scriptures, though afterwards, searching the Scriptures, I found it'. Fox's first imprisonment took place after he contradicted a minister who said that the sure word of prophecy by which all opinions should be tested (2 Peter 1:19-21) was the Bible.
Fox said it was the Holy Spirit, which should try all opinions.
As Quakerism grew, it became important to be able to determine whether someone’s experience was from the Holy Spirit or not. This was done by concurrence from a group of Friends who were led by the Holy Spirit, not by testing the experience against scripture (although we might expect that Friends did refer to scripture when they offered their opposition or concurrence).
Quakers felt able to disregard the Bible when it did not support their beliefs. An aspect of this hermeneutic was that the early Quakers believed that the Second Coming was at hand and that this made parts of scripture redundant. For example, 1 Corinthians 11:26: ‘For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.’ If the Lord had already come there was no reason to eat the bread and drink the wine. 2. The Eighteenth to Nineteenth Centuries, the Enlightenment (Age of Reason): Liberal and Evangelical Quakers The word liberal in Liberal Christianity originally denoted a willingness to interpret scripture according to modern philosophical, historical and scientific perspectives (reason). It was relatively easy for would-be Quaker Liberals to equate the leadings of these perspectives with the leadings of the Holy Spirit: ‘So far as our Christian sects today are evolving into liberality, they are simply reverting in essence to the position which Fox and the early Quakers so long assumed.’ (A Quaker Approach to the Bible by Henry Joel Cadbury, 1953).
Other Quakers allied themselves with that other important response to the Enlightenment:
Evangelicals accepted that reason was important and asserted that everything in the Bible was consistent with reason. If the Bible appeared unreasonable that was because its reason could only be grasped by a mind that was led by the Holy Spirit. This fitted with the view of the first Quakers that those who interpreted scripture without walking in the Light were ‘stealing’ scripture. 3. 1913-1976: Modernism Whereas during the Enlightenment, many people expanded their understanding of how the universe worked, during the first two thirds of the twentieth century people actually took steps to conquer and control the universe, the climax coming with the first lunar landing in 1969.
Those astronauts splashed back down to Earth exactly fifty years ago. If the Enlightenment had posed a challenge to hermeneutics and the value of scripture, then Modernism came to pose a challenge to religious experience, including to Quaker ‘convincement’. For Freud and many other psychologists, our religious experiences could tell us things about ourselves (things that, with medication, we could manage) but not about God. 4. 1977 to today: Postmodernism.
If modernism refers to knowledge leading to conquest and control, postmodernism is a realisation that so much is unfathomable. The Apollo astronauts looked back on Earth and spoke in awe of its beauty; the Voyager probes (launched in 1977) took a photograph of a pale blue dot, a speck in a vastness of space. Probes continue to visit places that humans will never visit, conquer or control.
Postmodernism exacerbated the split between liberals and evangelicals that took place during the Enlightenment. Evangelicals note that we will never fully understand the universe and that the knowledge we do have is subject to revision – so, if we really want truth we should turn back to the Bible. Liberal Christians and non-theists claim that post-modernism means that it will never be possible for us to distil a single, literal meaning for any object and that to try and do so for texts that have originated in a very different time and place to ourselves is ‘very unhelpful’. 5. Today onwards. Should there be unity?
And so, we sit in silence in the situation outlined at the start of this article whereby people in the same Quaker meeting have oppositional views on the value of scripture as well as basic Christian concepts and doctrines.
Karen Armstrong (The Case For God, 2010) has written of the futility of trying to speak about God using rational parameters, she says that God is experienced in our rituals and cannot be defined by doctrine. Her arguments suggest that if a non-theist, a Liberal and an Evangelical Quaker sit together in silence (I would view this as a ritual) they are united in worship and that is what is important: orthopraxy not orthodoxy.
Following on from Armstrong, we might say that it does not matter if Quakers reading or listening to scripture interpret it in different ways because the scripture itself has provided a kind of unity.
I like to think of myself as a liberal in politics and religion but that does not mean I should not be resolute. I am a member of the SOF Network because I think its message is important: religious ideas are important for this life, concepts such as Jesus Christ and Salvation should not be purged but interpreted through our worship; scripture should not be read literally as the Word of a supernatural God but neither should it be dismissed – it should be a feature of our questing imagination and our enabling dreams. This is a minority view that risks being stifled on one side by those who read the Bible literally and on another by those who literally hate religion. We need to speak up.
James Dunstone's attempts to interpret scripture can be found at whathebiblecouldhavesaid.com This article is based on a presentation given to a forum at the SOF Conference on 25th July 2019.