Too Matey with God?

Why making friends with God may not be the best idea

Being too friendly with God may not be the best idea, suggested Ben Pink Dandelion at our Ellen French lecture to 70 Friends and friends at Middlesbrough Friends' Meeting House on February 12. 2004

Developing a thought from Doug Gwynne, that "Friendship is the most subversive form of relating" he explored the concept of friendship. He described it as a free relationship, unlike the confines of a parent/child or marriage relationship, it has no constraints and so is potentially revolutionary and subversive.

He referred to the claims made by George Fox and other early Friends, to a deep sense of intimacy and friendship with God. The transformation of the convincement experience among those early Friends was of God breaking into the life of the individual giving them

a profound sense of intimacy with God;

then God shows them who they really are. This leads in turn to

repentance, rebirth, community, and witness.

He quoted at length from Francis Howgill, (1618-1699) of Westmorland, - the full text is in Quaker Faith and Practice 19.08 - to illustrate something of the early Quaker experience. They felt this profound sense of intimacy with God, that the Lord was near at hand. They were not operating out of their own purely human strength, but God's strength, which came to them as a new spiritual awakening, that gave them a new spiritual relationship with everything around them. People were transformed by this experience.

Those early Quakers were by no means an ecumenical movement: they saw themselves as the true church, a return to the early experience of the apostle. They had an incredible sense of certainty and mission, and a sense that they were no longer occupied with sin, for they were set free from sin, and taken into perfection. They were bluntly critical of other people who took a different view, from the Pope to the priests supported by tithes - "hirelings".

This sense of certainty and mission which such experiences gave them, led to a worship method based on intimacy. These were people no longer waiting for the second coming of Christ, because they experienced Christ in this intimate way in every aspect of their lives. However, modern Quakers have kept the worship method but no longer have the vivid sense of the second coming, or the experience of the trascendent God.

Quakerism today as we experience it in Britain and in some other parts of the world, he suggested, is largely a twentieth century invention: a liberal tradition that has grown out of an evangelical one. The majority of Quakers world-wide are evangelical Quakers, who give a lot of authority to scripture. Indeed one third of all Quakers today live in Kenya, and are of the evangelical tradition.

In the liberal Quaker tradition, there are four main elements:

• experience is primary;
• our faith needs to be relevant to the age;
• we should be always open to new light from whatever source it may come;
• the revelation is continuing. This continuing revelation - progressivism - is underpinned by the conviction that the new revelation will always have greater authority than the old revelation.

Without a secondary scriptural authority, he said liberal Quakerism has the possibility to be continually on the move. He referred to a query put to Rufus Jones - "Do you have to be a Christian to be a Quaker?" and in the liberal tradition the answer is "No".

He then reminded us that liberal theological thinking is not just a Quaker characteristic. He took us on a brief tour of influential liberal theologians of the twentieth century.

Paul Tillich - who in 1949 published "Shaking the Foundations" in which he explored the concept of depth instead of height in describing our experience of God, whilst also pointing out that nothing can be appropriate for the image of God, for language can never match reality.

John Robinson in 1963 published "Honest to God" , challenging Christians to rethink their ideas of God. He explored the concept of a God within us, not a God out there. He said most people had already ceased to believe in the literal transcendent God.

David Jenkins in the 1990s challenged the concept of God as all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving. From his own research Ben has found that across a wide spectrum of Christian allegiance people's priorities in their sense of who God is and how God functions, put the order of priority as first loving, secondly knowing, and thirdly powerful.

Don Cupitt, again in the 1990s, in a television series entitled "Sea of Faith" argued that there isn't a God. God is a human invention, important but not real.

Anthony Freeman, an Anglican priest ejected from his living for heresy, argues for a Christianity without God, a Christian humanism.

John Spong speaks of God as "the inescapable depth of all that there is", enabling worshippers to become all that they can become, to their fullest development. He dismisses the idea of God as an almighty "Mr. Fix It".

Ben suggested many people had felt able to stay in churches because of such thinking.

Alex Wildwood in his Swarthmoor Lecture "A Faith to Call our Own" echoed some of John Spong's thinking, but in his lecture (not in his book) he spoke of the possible impending death of his young daughter, which brought him to pray. He looked for a source of strength, support and power beyond his own.

Ben asked us all, "What happens if the sense of self becomes the focus of faith? " Previous generations of Quakers looked to the "inward light", something that came to them from outside themselves. The modern liberal tradition looks to the "inner light" - something that is found within us, it is there already, waiting to be discovered. He pointed to the tussle between "Self-awarness" and "God-awareness", and spoke of his own experience of God two years after he became a Member of the Society of Friends.

He said, "My concern is that when God is so human, like a relationship of human intimacy, we get into difficulties when there is no possibility of help beyond ourselves. Where is the external power to come from to help us? Liberal Quakerism has the potential to do away with everything to do with the transendence of God, which is not wise." This then led to a very thoughtful discussion, shared by many people in the packed Meeting House.

The Ellen French Lecture

Ellen French was a Member of Middlesbrough Quaker Meeting for many years until her death in the 1970s. She was an educationalist, and the annual Lecture was inaugurated to remember her work. There have been a number of eminent Quakers who have given these lectures in the past. This event revived a tradition of Quakers with something worth saying being heard by a cross section of the general public, as well as Quakers.

Ben Pink Dandelion Ph.D

He is a lecturer in theology in the University of Birmingham, and has developed the Post Graduate Courses in Quaker Theology at Woodbrooke. He first studied philosophy, before specialising in the sociology of Quaker theology - how theology has shaped the Quaker movement, and how Quakers have shaped theology.

He is the author or editor of a number of books including "The Historical Dictionary of the Friends" "The Creation of Quaker Theology" "God the Trickster"

Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre

The Centre which is now 100 years old, supports a permanent teaching team, a library of world significance, and a full-time administration, catering and domestic staff to run a 68-bedroom residential centre all year round. It has over 70 Associate Tutors who run a yearly programme of short courses which draw more than 2000 people each year from Britain and the world at large. They have launched a Centenary Appeal to put their work on a firmer financial basis. A retiring collection for the Woodbrooke Centenary Appeal after Ben's lecture, amounted to £115. Woodbrooke will be grateful to receive further donations towards their Centenary Appeal - cheque's made payable to "Woodbrooke" and sent to Woodbrooke Centenary Appeal, Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre, 1046 Bristol Road, Selly Oak, Birmingham. B29 6LJ.

This precis of the lecture is by Michael Wright, who alone is responsible for any errors or omissions.