Do monotheists have a monopoly over religion?

I feel the Religious Society of Friends would be misrepresented if the marriage declaration was altered along the lines suggested in the Friend of 10 February in order to accommodate non-theism, unless we wish to abandon our traditional view that marriage is a ‘religious commitment’ as set out in Quaker faith & practice (1.02, 23).

The declaration not only reflects the couple’s view of marriage but also the view of the Religious Society of Friends as a corporate body.

In my opinion the way in which we define commitments such as marriage and membership reflects how we see ourselves as a faith community. If we wish to remain a religious society, why would it be right for us to define either in non-religious terms? Richard Pashley, The Friend, March 2, 2023

Equating being “non-theist” with being “non-religious” is something of an error. Many non-theist have a deeply spiritual and reverential attitudes towards life and towards relationships. That is not lessened for them by the absence of a purported intangible. 

Many modern Pagans regard the earth itself as sacred and the life springing from it as its sacred out-flowing. They reverence the natural world. The sky god, the celestial god, the abstracted omnipresent but intangible god of judgement, trapped in the texts of ancient books, is not their god. Their focus of reverence is tangible: it is the woods and trees, the rivers and streams, and the abundant fecundity of life.

The Taoist reverence the flow of energy through everything. It is not the river that is sacred, but the flowing of the river. It is not the tree that is sacred, but its growing. It is not the leaf that is sacred but the falling of the leaf. It is not the bird that is sacred, but the flying and singing of the bird. It is not the person that is sacred, but the life that flows through them. When we are in accord with the flow, when we are in harmony with it, when we bend ourselves to it, then we are in spiritual alignment. There is no god, no operator behind the scenes pulling the strings, no eternal all seeing judge, just the flow that gives and keeps on giving, without judgement.

The great Tao flows everywhere. All things are born from it, yet it doesn't create them. It pours itself into its work, yet it makes no claim. It nourishes infinite worlds, yet it does not hold on to them. Since it is merged with all things and hidden in their hearts, it can be called humble. Since all things vanish into it and it alone endures, it can be called great. It isn't aware of its greatness; thus it is truly great.  Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching: translated by Stephen Mitchell.

Are we to say that the Pagan or the Taoist are not religious because they have no god? Equally, can we say that the non-theist is not religious, because, likewise, they have no god?

Late Roman Empire Christianity – the illegitimate child of Judaism grown into maturity, conformity and authority – inherited from its parent a conception of a celestial god – ineffable, omnipotent, omnipresent, a law giving mega-god – and passed that conception on to its breakaway children, reformed Protestant and non-conformist alike. That was the dominant conception of the god of Christianity in seventeenth century England. We should not be surprised to find that conception embedded in the words of seventeenth century Quakers. 

Their radical re-centring onto unmeditated experience and away from ritual may have returned those first Quakers to what they thought was a form of primitive Christianity, more akin the lived experience of Jesus and his disciples, but it also took them away from reliance on creed or doctrine. They conceived of Jesus as standing in the presence but with the word in his heart. They too wished to stand in such a presence harkening to the word in their heart; and they found that it was in stillness and silence that the seed of that word grew and gave forth. 

But the presence of what? To say that is to leave a vacuum that linguistically begs to be filled. Does it need to be filled? That sense of wonder, awe, reverence, sacredness and transcendence is a vehicle for spirituality, but does it necessarily have to carry you to the response "god"? Is that a convenient word that serves to fill a linguistic vacuum? An obedience to the subject <–> object structure of our language? Is such a response void filling in order to be rid of cognitive and linguistic discomfort? Should we not be examining that discomfort and learning from it? To avoid doing this is, if anything, lazy. 

Our language, it seems, requires an object, but, as the theologian Paul Tillich* points out, if "god' is an object, then he is only one more thing among a universe of things, and, as he is not immediately apparent or tangible, he can cease to have importance or relevance. Rather, Tillich felt that 'god' should stand for the very ground of being itself, or, as he sometimes put it, as being itself: god as sacredness, as reverence, as wonder, as awe, as the totality of being, as our greatest concern, not as one more object among a universe of objects.

In Tibetan Buddhism sometimes pupils are advised to practice 'god' devotion. Only when they have fully realised the practice and come to be devoted to the god, experiencing them as real, does the meditation master burst the bubble so that the pupils are shocked into realising that they have created an idol that is a projection of their own yearnings. Thus deconstructed, 'god' function as a doorway into deeper realisation. This is similar to the Zen advice, that "If you meet Buddha on the road, kill him". The devotion and reverence engendered by the practice of god-worship is thus transferred to all life, to being itself. 

Are we to say that such Buddhists are not religious because they have burst the bubble of god? Equally, can we say that the non-theist is not religious, because, likewise, they have no god? Because they are not prepared to worship an idol that is a projection of their own yearnings? That is to deny them devotional and reverential agency. That is to deny them profoundly religious experiences simply because they are not prepared to focus those feelings onto the inherited god of Christianity, a culturally manufactured idol.

I have no doubt that many non-theists are deeply religious, which is exactly why they are non-theist. To worship an mind-made idol – a projection – which they know to be mind-made, would be sacrilegious, blasphemous, and a manifest gross lack of integrity.

Carl Jung in his work as an explorer of the human mind – the psyche – identified what he called the 'god-archetype. A latent cluster of feeling, images, desires, yearnings, in his patients which troubled them unless attended to. It often found form by projection, taking the shape suggested by the patient's culture and history, becoming an object of devotion, of worship, of ritual and of veneration. Alternatively they might suppress it, becoming notably iconoclastic and atheistic; or inflate their experience, becoming identified with the archetype, either embodying it or by becoming its servant. He advised that only integration would aid what he called individuation – which we might think of as maturation – conditioning the psyche (spirit) into wisdom rather than knowledge, thus letting those complex feelings find expression in ways that helped build and enrich life. 

Participation mystique: inherited guilt & reparations

Reparations for slavery

(The Friend) 5 Jan 2023 | by Rebecca Hardy

Decision to make reparations for the transatlantic slave trade taken at Yearly Meeting in May.

Quakers acted on their commitment to anti-racism this year with a historic decision to make reparations for the transatlantic slave trade. The agreement, made at Yearly Meeting in May, followed an earlier announcement to rename the William Penn room at Friends House after abolitionist Benjamin Lay. The new name was suggested by staff at the Quiet Company, which manages Friends House. BYM said that Penn ‘made important contributions to religious freedom, democracy and pacifism, and these will be remembered. But we cannot ignore the truth that he was also a slaveholder, profiting from enslaved people, like many other Quakers’.

Meanwhile, Friends across the country committed to work towards improving diversity. In August, Edwina Peart, BYM’s diversity and inclusion coordinator, said that the Quaker community has made ‘good progress’, but ‘we need to be brave and continue to engage with what are often difficult conversations’.

The year ended with December’s Meeting for Sufferings reiterating the Quaker Life request that Friends cease using the term ‘overseer’.

But why do we feel burdened by guilt over practices that ended about two hundred years ago?  Why do we feel this to be a stain on the name "Quaker"? Why we feel associated with the doings of people now long dead?

One personality test I encountered simply ask participants to list twenty things they are:

I am a …

This was suggested as a starting point to understanding the socially constructed side of identity. In addition to the roles you fill, many of the answers would map belonging, the bond you feel with the society that surrounds you, not just with your family or kinship group, but beyond. What is interesting is how many of those bonds which help define your self-identity in our modern context are with 'social objects': organisations, institutions, businesses, clubs, societies, corporations – objects which are even recognised in law as persons, entities, beings in their own right. They are shared fictions which exist in social contexts and have economic, legal and performative aspects which are their manifestations. They do not exist outside human behaviour.

What is even more surprising is how we can form emotional bonds with such social objects; the Society of Friends being one such. Other species do not do this. They may bond into herds, packs or flocks, and even recognises an out group: a pack that is a threat to your pack's hunting grounds, will cause your pack to unite to drive them off; but only humans form bonds with intangible entities, with social objects. There are no nations, sects, cults or clubs amongst other species. 

Nationality is one of the primary identities among modern humans, it even carries great legal weight and consequences. In earlier times who you owed allegiance and service to better defined you. Now patriotism is both expected and demanded towards such nebulous social objects as nations. A patriotism that may even require the sacrifice of your life, or that you kill others in its 'defence'. But what is the psychological mechanism that bonds you with such social objects?

Jung used the term participation mystique to describe those bonds. He adopted the term from Lucien Lévy-Bruhl (1857-1939), but adapted it for his own purposes, because it seemed so well to describe one of the driving forces of the human psyche: passionate involvement with what are abstract entities, social objects, such as "my country", "my faith", or even, "my football team". And, yes, there is passionate involvement: elation, misery, excitement, anticipation, longing, despair, humiliation, comfort, belonging, … all deeply and completely felt depending on the fortunes of the object of participation. Think of the jubilation or despair of a football supporter depending on whether 'their' team wins of looses, even if they have not witnessed the match. That is a relatively trivial example compared to the bonds formed with religions, political parties or nations.

It is no accident that many Catholics are so engaged by 'The Passion' as to offer themselves for crucifixion on Good Friday, or Shia Muslims self-flagellate in mourning for Husayn ibn Ali whilst preparing for Ashura. They are public demonstrations of the power of the participation mystique.

We derive much of our identity from relations with different communities and other social objects. For many modern people that is a patchwork of shifting associations. Historically there was far less fluidity. Your birth determined almost all of your social identities, as it still does to a large extent with people like the Amish and other Plain People. Now, elements of identity are almost a matter of consumer choice. There is a lot of elective identity in terms of association with subcultures (Gamers, Punks, Bikers, Goths, Vegans, … ) which can make association superficial and dispensable, but often leaves a yearning for something more embracing and identity confirming. A yearning that is a vulnerability that can be capitalised on by cults, or by inducing participation in online communities that bond via adherence to particular conspiracies or ideologies such as incel.

Jung noted the power of the participation mystique only too clearly at work in the rise of the Nazi movement with its abundance of conspiracy theories about the Jews. A search for meaning in life is also a search for identity. Identities much of which are necessarily derived from relationship with social objects. The collapse of social objects such as Imperial Germany leading to an identity crisis that was only resolved for many Germans by the rise of the Third Reich.

Such bonding leads not only to moments of pride, elation, excitement, delight and jubilation, but also to despair, shame, and guilt, depending on how the social object fairs.

One way of dealing with collective guilt was the Jewish practice of turning out a goat into the wilderness, burdened with all of the sins of the community – the scapegoat. It was a symbolic enactment ritualising communal guilt: we still prefer to outsource our burden of guilt than address its causes.

The mantel of both collective and inherited guilt appear to be part of the deal as soon as you associate with a social object. You get to share in its triumphs and tragedies, in its accolades and shames. You participate in not only its current doings, but in its past: the shadow of its misdeeds falls over you. Penance and atonement may be required in order to expiate the wrongs buried in its history.

I was informed recently that I should feel shame over the fact that some Quakers were slave owners, and that others even took part in the notorious triangular trade, shipping African slaves to the New World. Apparently, I inherit the guilt about their actions when I became a member of the Society of Friends. In fact I was told told that my guilt should be threefold: first, because I am a Quaker; second because I am white: and thirdly because I am British. It did not help when I mentioned that my family name was Friesian and originated in Lower Saxony in what is now Germany. That at least sowed doubt about my Britishness and its slave-trade guilt, but lay me open to inheriting guilt for the holocaust; and should I only shoulder inherited guilt to the degree that my genetic heritage is White European, and be excused to the extent that it may be East Asian? Or should that part be embroiled in another set of guilts?

I am aware that in the Judaism there is a recognition of the inheritability of guilt, a belief which was passed on into Christianity:

And the Lord passed by before him, and proclaimed, The Lord, The Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third and to the fourth generation. (Authorised King James Version, Exodus 34, 6-7)

However, with regard to transatlantic slavery we are now well beyond the fourth generation. Is there no statute of limitations for historic wrongs? 

Jung had a lot to say about collective guilt. He noted how much we like projecting it onto others and how much we fear its being projected onto us; but also how much the victim archetype within each of us likes to assume the mantle of guilt, or to slink away in denial. Far more comforting to award yourself virtue points for donning the guilt, at least cosmetically: sackcloth and ashes on the catwalk of human esteem.

But then that also invites another way of processing the guilt: displacement. Carry out a public act of atonement aimed at expunging a past sin, rather than deal with the discomfort caused by current ills which are too overwhelming to be put right by simple and symbolic acts such as changing the name of a room, make a gesture of offering reparations or put up a blue plaque. All outward signs of penitence concerned with both self and public image, and with reputational damage limitation – but what is the real issue? Embedded and entrenched racism, disadvantage and inequality in the here and now! How do such penitential gestures address those?

You only have inherited or collective guilt in so far as you are trapped by the participation mystique: you are a willing participant in the guilt. What are you gaining from such participation? What are you contributing? How does it feed your self-esteem or identity? How does it build the future?

The Eternal Triangle: Rendel Harris, Irene Speller (Pickard) & Helen Sheerlock

When I started investigating Irene Pickard's archive and using it as a lens to see her life and times through, I did not expect to find a story of romance, of emotional entanglement, of trial and tribulation. I had not anticipated that her obvious fascination with Jung as being driven by her own emotional hurts, frustrations, confusions and struggles.

But then I should have guessed. Jung specialised in emotional confusion and distress as a root of mental suffering, but also as the seed bed of maturation, of developing emotional wisdom and integration, of wholeness – the process of individuation as he termed it. It seems that it is only when we are broken open that we are ready to grow. 

I knew that Irene had been Rendel Harris's secretary. What I did not anticipate was that their relationship had developed into something far more than a formal employer-employee relationship. 

Irene had preserved throughout her life what seems to be most of Rendel Harris's letters to her. Quite an achievement through seven moves, including a last minute escape from Geneva to prevent being trapped in Switzerland by the encircling Nazi forces, and a war time crossing of the Atlantic. The letters clearly meant a great deal to her. 

The letters started in 1911 with kindly but business like notes. Irene was regularly travelling out from Birmingham to Woodbrooke to collect work from Rendel Harris to be done at home. The letters got warmer over time, expressing increasing concern for her welfare, convenience and comfort. In 1914, following the death of his wife, Irene moved into Rendel Harris's home as his live-in secretary. By 1917 he was writing to her during his trip to the Middle East in much more affectionate terms:

So many things to talk over with thee. Inshallah, as we say here, which means 'and it please God' we shall be together again soon and walking side by side. I send my love with this.

Rendel Harris

By January 1921 he is opening a letter with:

Chère amie

An expression only normally used between lovers in that period, and continues:

Comme je me trouve desolé, comme un plat sans pain, ou un coupe sans thé, ou un bain sans savon!   (How very sorry I find myself, like a meal without bread, a cup without tea, or a bath without soap!) and ending:

Dear child, I miss thee as the days go by.

Surprisingly, by 1922 Irene was attending Woodbrooke as a full time student, financially supported by Rendel Harris, who writes understanding her need to be away "in the present state of things" and saying "what is broken can not be mended".  A somewhat strange arrangement for an employer who needed the services of a live-in secretary. He had deprive himself of her services, and was supporting her financially during the college terms. The letters from the period read as if there had been a major rupture in their relationship. 

Given the sources I had available whilst writing the book, I was perplexed as to what had caused the rupture – there was little further evidence in the letters beyond a clear change in tone, with Rendel Harris being very solicitous as to her well-being, asserting how much he missed her, and being somewhat placatory. Given the lack of other sources available to me I could only express my confusion as to exactly what had triggered the rupture. That something major had happened to change their relationship could be inferred from the letters, but nothing as to its nature. What I wrote in my text was:

There are question left by reading the letters – questions that can never be answered. One is left reading between the lines, and guessing at the subtext. Had she been Rendel Harris's mistress? Had the relationship been a surrogate father daughter relationship? Had their relationship developed into some kind of bungled love affair, the reaction to which was her needing to spend time away? Has he or she behaved inappropriately towards the other by the strict standards of the day? Was she tormented by a love that she knew could never be consummated? Had she declared herself to the good Doctor only to be rejected? Had he declared himself to her thus confusing their relationship? What is clear is that the relationship was deep and meaningful to them both. Irene's laudation of Rendel Harris in the Memories she wrote about him when she was in her eighties, some 57 years after leaving his household, speaks clearly of the adoration she felt.    (From the chapter Well Met at Woodbrooke)

After I had submitted this text to my publisher, a biography of James Rendel Harris was published that provided a the answer to the causes of the rupture: another young woman! 

Helen Travers Sherlock, two years Irene's junior, and apparently a brilliant scholar of Ancient Green and Latin, had entered Rendel Harris's life. She was very much of the same social standing as Rendel Harris, unlike Irene, who was only an employee. From 1917 she spent increasing amounts of time with Rendel Harris, becoming something of a protegee, and corresponding with him frequently in conjunction with her studies.

Alessandro Falcetta tells in his biography how Rendel Harris did not want his relationship with Helen to go public, even instructing her to destroy his letter to her as he did not want people to read them in the near future. Was Rendel Harris concerned that Irene, who handled his correspondence, might discover the increasingly intimate nature of the relationship? 

In April 1922 Rendel Harris and Helen were spotted walking together in London Zoo, something which was reported to Rendel Harris's brother, who, mistakenly assumed that Harris must have been there with Irene. It was not unusual to see the Irene and Harris together in social contexts, as is indicated by this photography of them side by side whilst on a holiday in Norway. 

 

Now two young women were competing for Rendel Harris's regard and affection. An love triangle had been formed. Did Irene discover the evolving intimacy of the relationship between Rendel Harris and Sheerlock? Did she suffer a crisis? There is evidence of this in the letters. Did she feel betrayed? Was such a discovery the trigger for the apparent alienation and the apologetic tone of Rendel Harris's letters to her, and for his agreeing to her spending a time at Woodbrooke as a student at his expense? 

Rather than return to Rendel Harris home to resume her duties as his live-in secretary, Irene agreed to marry a certain Bertram Pickard, not without a lot of hesitation, and following Rendel Harris's refusal to fund a trip to America for her, which seems to have been the final trigger. 

In May 1923 Irene and Bertram were married. By August that year Rendel Harris had set up home with Helen Sherlock and her mother.

Falcetta points out the Rendel Harris seemed to have preferred asymmetric relationships. His wife had been eleven years older, and both Irene and Helen about forty years younger. 

Although Falcetta does not seemed to have realised the depth of relationship that had grown between Irene and her employer, he does, however, realise the depth of Rendel Harris's relationship with Helen Sheerlock. It is as if our researches have each revealed one side of a love triangle. He does note that some of Helen's letters to Rendel Harris were returned unopened. The thought does occur to me that perhaps Irene intercepted them and returned them? She would have had ample opportunity as Rendel Harris's personal secretary, and the motivation.

In The Way of all Women: Women's Mysteries Ancient and Modern, Esther Harding, one of Carl Jung's early disciples, talks of the hieros gamos (the holy or sacred marriage) which is often a woman's first love, the one which awakens her spiritually and intellectually. A love which is better not fully consummated because the love object should be elevated, idealised, a supreme model of all she values most highly. 

Irene's love for Rendel Harris certainly fitted that pattern, and the breaking of the love spell due to being supplanted in Rendel Harris's affections, with all the attendant pain of being the looser in a love triangle, led her not only into her marriage, but ultimately to the feet of Dr Jung.   

Windy Doctrines

Lately we were visited at our Sunday Meetings by a devout and recently born again "Christian" of a somewhat evangelical bent. During afterthoughts each week she attended, she felt commanded by God to read a passage of the bible "to bring us understanding and to remind us of the Christian roots of Quakerism", as she claimed in her ministry that followed. The passages were all from parts of the Old Testament and told of the wrath of God and certainty of his vengeance. She was very well versed, and claimed to have read Fox and "knew him to be among God's elect".

She has now moved on, God having commanded her to go elsewhere, his words having fallen on barren ground with us. We are clearly among those whose ears and hearts are closed up by our arrogance; yet, in her eyes, Quakers had once been among the truest of Christians. I gather from her homilies that the world is divided into the 'saved' – those that have heard the word – and the 'damned', who are deaf to their saving power.

On one occasion she said in a somewhat vexed way "I thought you were Christians!". Clearly, we are not what she understands by being "Christian". I did say to her that many, even in the early years of Quakerism, also thought we were not Christians.

The experience has left me pondering about the early Quakers. Was she right about the type of Christian she thought they were? I think it is possible to read Fox and the other early Quakers and to find among their words strands of evangelical thought; but then, there is also much that does not fit with that. 

This may be in part why North American Quakers split in two in the nineteenth century: those who followed an evangelical path, finding succour among the early Quaker's words, and those who did not, also finding succour among the early Quaker's words; both finding vindication where they chose. 

George Fox in his wanderings had plenty of opportunity to fall in with communities of an evangelical bent, such as the Baptists, or one or other of the many Anabaptist fellowships, amongst others. He did not. Instead he fell in with communities of Seekers. What he discovered amongst them was not so much evangelical as mystical: experience not to be captured by words.  

The Catholic mystics of the Middle Ages, spoke of 'syndereses' – the essence, ground, or centre of the soul that enters into communion with God; the spark or emanation of divinity in the soul – which seems to be as good a description of Christian mysticism as one is likely to get: the umbilicus within each person that connects us with the divine, which can be discovered during the deepest contemplative silence. 

Interestingly, Carl Jung suggested that there was such a point in the unconscious of all people, that he called the God archetype; a psychic umbilicus with the latent potential of awakening our spirituality. 

Fox told Friends to "walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in every one", pointing to the same nub, which he thought could be found in all: the Quaker omphalos.

In Don Cupitt's words, Fox "sought to bring spiritual power down from heaven and disperse it into human hearts"

Was it the discovery by Fox of mysticism amongst the Seekers that "answered to his condition"? An experience that takes you out of the clouds of words and beliefs – the "windy doctrines" which he had encountered "blowing people up and down" (or, as he wrote in his Journal about the doctrines of the preachers he encountered "by which they blew the people about, this way and the other way, from sect to sect.") Mysticism is about a relationship that is felt, experienced, known, but which is beyond words and beliefs. It is essentially inexpressible, but transformative. 

Now I came up in spirit, through the flaming sword, into the paradise of God. All things were new, and all the creation gave another smell unto me than before, beyond what words can utter. I knew nothing but pureness, innocence, and righteousness, being renewed up into the image of God by Christ Jesus; so that I came up to the state of Adam, which he was in before he fell. George Fox,1648 (see Qf&p 26.03)

Was this the "Christ Jesus" of the Evangelicals? A transcendent presence, to be magically connected with by fervent belief and devotion? An unseen but ever present and surrounding being who might "save" you? The risen Jesus Christ whose return to sit in judgement is to be anticipated? A magically embracing cloud? Or was this "Christ Jesus" as a template, and exemplar, sent by God to set the pattern for living? I think Fox is ambiguous, and can be read either way. However, mysticism bypasses belief and magical thinking, and suggests a template, a pattern, an example. A figure to be imitated, not worshipped. Was this ambivalence and avoidance of doctrine why the Quakers were so often accused of denying the trinity? Certainly, in The Sandy Foundations Shaken the trinity was explicitly denied by William Penn, whose preference it was to see Jesus Christ as a pattern sent as an exemplar.

The rejection of any form of formal worship, rites or rituals which, according to Fox, "stood in forms without power", so that Quaker "fellowship might be in the holy spirit" was done to enable direct and immediate communion with the divine, accessed from within (syndereses): a communal mystical pathway to be had in the practice of the shared stillness and silence of Meeting. A silence from which rose the words of spontaneous ministry, as well as the inspiration to live rightfully.

According to some, to be Jewish is to obey the laws of Moses; to be diligent and observant. It is about how you live, not so much about what you believe. It is of the here and now in its practices. Was that what the early Quakers were attempting to be like? Living in the truth, observing the new law as taught in the Gospels? 

A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.  John 13.34 & 35 (King James version)

Some of the early Quakers seemed to think they could live in the here and now in the same state as Adam before the fall:

So a man or woman may come to Adam's state that he was in before he fell, which was without sin. Against such the judgment of God does not go forth, but they have peace with God, and fellowship in what is pure, before sin and transgression were. (Stephen Crisp (1628–1692), The Missing Cross to Purity.)

In some ways, Quakerism is nearer to Judaism than it is to Evangelicalism: it is about obedient and observant living in the here and now, building the kingdom of God(liness) day by day in how you live, not being caught up in the "windy doctrines" about some second coming and day of judgement, or about being 'saved'. It is more about doing than believing. 

Early Quakers differ so much from so many other Christians by not being obviously lapsarian, that the professor of Theology, Donald Nesti, who researched Quakerism from a Catholic perspective, thinks they are an entirely separate branch of Christianity, neither belonging to the Catholic tradition, nor to the Protestant tradition, both of which rely on lapsarian theologies, or notions of original sin; an alienation from God and the possibility of redemption. Early Quakers did not seem to think they were alienated because there was "that of God" within which could guide their lives in the here and now, so that they might live in the state of Adam before the fall: their God was immanent and his kingdom forged by rightful living. 

Certainly, although a modern not an early Quaker, the Swiss Quaker Pierre Ceresole expressed the practical here and now nature of Quakerism better than many I have read, rejecting the worship of Jesus Christ, seeing that as idolatry: 

The name of Jesus Christ has come to mean more than his work, it has become your idol. You are simply worshipping a name. The best justification for atheism is: to be in rebellion against the worship of words. I suggest that the time has come to give up using his name, which has divided us, and to return to his work, which will untie us. (p.20, For Peace and Truth from the Note-Books of Pierre Ceresole, 1954)

Having cut themselves off from the anchoring provided by the teachings, creeds, beliefs and doctrines of, not only the established Church, but also the other numerous varieties of denominations that had sprouted like fresh grass during the Civil War and the Interregnum, the early Quakers were left beating their own path, often in a zigzag way as they evolved: sometimes lurching towards evangelicalism, sometimes away. They knew truth experimentally. They also knew it to be beyond words. They tried to make their lives a testimony in action by right living, by doing things in Gospel order.

Tumbling into war: 1914 and all that

Remember the butterfly flapping its wings in a jungle clearing? The unpredictability of chaos where overwhelmingly the turbulence caused by the flapping of the wings is damped out and the air settles back into being calm, except when one flap sets up a vortex that grows into a hurricane? That was the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand and his wife. The political stabilisers of the age – the doves among the diplomats, politicians and civil servants – should have damped out the shock waves. They didn't. They tried to, but they didn't: the hawks within the administrations eventually dominated and millions died. 

Revisiting 1914 for a short chapter needed because of the epoch changing nature of the First World War within the Quaker microverse as much as in broader society, I was struck by how vulnerable societies are to the effects of decisions made by tiny numbers of people in powerful positions. According to William Jannen (1996: The Lions of July. The prelude to War, 1914) fewer than 100 individuals across the entire continent of Europe, all confined within tiny, highly privileged and selective governing elites, were involved in the decision making processes that led to war. Barely anyone outside those circles was referenced at all, let alone consulted. A finding born out by other scholars:

Within the respective state executives, the changeability of power relations also meant that those entrusted with formulating policy did so under considerable domestic pressure, not so much from the press or public opinion or industrial or financial lobbies, as from adversaries within their own elites and governments. And this, too, heightened the sense of urgency besetting decision makes in the summer of 1914.    (Christopher Clark, 2013: The Sleepwalkers. How Europe went to war in 1914)

Perhaps one of the more disturbing things I discovered during my background reading, was the deal done between the British and German High Commands via Swiss intermediaries. As the war progressed Britain became short of optics for range-finding, and Germany became short of rubber for the tyres needed on its troop transports. Both shortages were impeding the 'pursuit' of the war. An exchange via Switzerland was organised so that the shortages were made good and the war could proceed. (See Adam Hochschild, 2011: To End All Wars. How the First World War Divided Britain.) Perhaps I am alone in finding this shocking, but it does speak to me of the detachment of the those who both started and ran the war from those embroiled in its guts.

Such was the enormity of the scale of death and destruction unleashed that attributing responsibility for starting and continuing the war has been an issue ever since. The blame had to be placed somewhere, but it was too toxic to be anywhere near: blame is best projected onto others. In the immediate aftermath it was on Germany and its militarism: the goose-stepping 'Hun'.

This justified the punishment of Germany inflicted by the Treaty of Versailles. Germany had to be reduced so that it could never again be a threat. There was no point in blaming The Austro-Hungarian Empire or the Ottoman Empire, nor for that matter the Russian Empire – they no longer existed, all destroyed by the war. It would have been far too painful to admit that either the governments of Britain or France had any part to play. Given the enormous sacrifice and suffering admitting such culpability would have made those in power seem perfidious in the extreme. Political donkeys may have been leading the lions, but no-one was about to say so.  

As time and distance from the mutual carnage increased the focus shifted to blaming the miliary, the war plans of Germany especially. The fact that the German secret war plans to attack France via Belgium failed because of the secret Anglo-French war plans for the rapid deployment of British Forces into Northern France was conveniently forgotten. Guilt still had to point firmly at Germany.

Now it is more popular to see it as a massive failure of government, particularly of diplomacy: a war by accident. The perception is that wars are created by governments, but fought and suffered by peoples; wars are indeed that "continuation of policy by other means" which Carl von Clausewitz suggested they were; and in 1914 there was massive amounts of hubris among the governing elites about how easily those policies would be realised.

As unclear as the causes of the war may be, what is clear, however, is that 1914 was the shock that seemed to changed everything:

When we look back on the time before 1914, we seem to be living in a different age. Things are happening today of which we hardly dreamed before the war. We were even beginning to regard war between civilised nations as a fable, for surely such an absurdity would become less and less possible in our rational, internationally organised world.      C G Jung, 1936: Wotan

There had been those who had sensed an underlying mood among populations that was receptive to war, no matter how much the state-change from peace may have shocked:

It is difficult for generations that have come to maturity since 1914 to realise fully the impact of horror and betrayal which the war made upon people's minds. A few here and there, it is true, had seen it coming, had realized that, as Rufus Jones wrote "Beneath all overt acts and decisions the immense subconscious forces, charged with emotions, have been slowly pushing towards this event."     Elizabeth Grey Vinning, 1958: Friend of Life, a biography of Rufus M Jones

But there were also Quaker voices that realised what the impact of war was on civilian populations and were not afraid to say so:

What is a truth of war: that the old die before their time; the sick die for lack care and sustenance when there was no need; the vulnerable die for the scantness of resources; children fail to survive and those that do, do not thrive; babies die for the lack of their half starved mother's milk; mothers fail to carry to full term, their babies undersize and struggling if they do not die; miscarriages abound;  women die more often from childbirths because they are not strong enough; populations are half starved and have no resistance to diseases; homes, if not destroyed, lack warmth in winter; clothes become scarce and are often too poor to offer protection against the weather. This is the lot of the civilian population. Whatever horrors the soldier faces, he is often better fed, better clothed and even better sheltered.      (Mea culpa! I have lost where this quote comes from, which is why I did not include it in the book. I would be grateful if anyone could identify what the source is.)

Then there were Quakers who pledged to have nothing to do with it, such as Henry Hodgkin, one of the founders of the Fellowship of Reconciliation. A very difficult stance in the face of the first total war where opting out – especially after the introduction of conscription – was simply not tolerated. To refuse to join the military, or to support them, was cast as deeply unpatriotic; and, after 1916, as not only unpatriotic  but unlawful and criminal as well. For some the idea that the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount were suspended for the duration of the war was simply not tenable, no matter what the personal consequences. 

Quakerism, which might have seemed faintly peculiar and eccentric in 1913, was by 1916, with the state-change of war, seen as subversive and dangerous and worthy of attention by Special Branch. 

Quakers were once more showing themselves to be members of a counter culture, resisting the dominant trends of the time, even at the risk of social ostracism or penal sanctions. According to M E Hirst (1923), only one third of the male members of the Society of military age volunteered or were conscripted. 

However, it was the women of the Society who, not being shackled by the expectations of military service in the way men were, led the way in living out the peace testimony by providing relief work, even among those now counted as 'enemies' – a remarkable story in its own right, as I was to discover. That is where my researches took me next.

Warp and Weft: an anthological approach to history

Adjective. anthological (not generally comparable, comparative more anthological, superlative most anthological): of or pertaining to anthology; consisting of extracts from different authors. (Wiktionary)

Writing a history based on an archive presents the question to the author of how best to tell the story of how and why the archive was created, how to showcase its contents, and how to convey its significance to the reader. 

History, unlike chronology, is never a passive activity: there is always a dialogue between the past and the present. In this case a dialogue with five threads: the social-theological*, the Jungian, the developing praxis of peace-work, the biographical, and the historial context in which the archive was created, particularly its political climate.

The social-theological thread (or sociotheological, as I have seen it termed) approaches people's lives through recognising the pervasiveness of their religion or spirituality to the whole of life: for many people it shapes their weltanschauung. Their faith is not simply an epiphenomena, or a private foible, but is fundamental. It involves "the recognition that politics has a religious side and religion can be an inherent part of public and political life" as Mona Kanwal Sheikh says in her Sociotheology: The Significance of Religious Worldviews (2015). This it certainly was in the case of the subjects of my study: Quakerism is often said to be a way of life, not a fixed set of beliefs. My subject's life experiences shaped their theology, and the evolutions in theology, from nineteenth century liberalism through Barth, Buber, Bonhoeffer, Tillich and Robinson to the non-realism of Don Cupitt, helped inform the inspiration and motivation they derived from their spiritual practice and experience.

The Jungian thread twines in with the social-theological thread; from my subject's first encounters with Jung's ideas, through their meeting with him at his home in Zürich, to their disseminating his ideas among the Quaker communities on both sides of the Atlantic. Echoes of their encounter with Jung still persist among Quaker communities today.

The thread of peace-work, starts with how and why Bertram and Irene Pickard were in Geneva and why they remained there for the majority of their working lives, and tells how they created a template for peace-work that is still used; a template that embodied both the social-theology of their Quakerism and their deepened understanding of the dynamics of humanity as illuminated by Jung's analytical-psychology. 

The biographical is of necessity part of account as Irene's achieve was principally created by the five key members of the Quaker-Jungian group which formed in Geneva in 1934. The group formed with the aim of exploring Jung's ideas in depth in order to understand their relevance, both to personal lives, and to the then current and fast deterioration political situation in Europe, with the hope that Jung's methods might aid in redressing the seemingly remorseless drift into another catastrophic pan-European war.

The historial context and its political climate are the background to the other four threads, a background that at times erupted into being a foreground, impacting massively on the lives of all of my subjects. 

How we see and understand an era of the past is very much subject to our current milieu, its fashions, and needs. How we see the past is far from set in stone, unlike its chronology. Viewing the sweep of twentieth century European history from the perspective of my subjects creates a very different vision compared to what might be called the 'standard received version' – the version taught in schools and subscribed to by much of the popular media. It certainly involved my re-assessing much of what I had taken as fixed truths about the twentieth century, revealing those truths to be more honoured by repetition than grounded in fact.

Those five themes – the sociotheological, the Jungian, the praxis of peace-work, the biographical, and the political and historical context – are the warp threads. The weft is provided by the archive and related texts. 

What the archive presented me with was an abundance of materials, much of it in the words of my subjects, or in the words of those who influenced them. Arranging those words into a narrative pattern was the authorial task – the weft woven across the warp of the five narrative threads.

The task of marshalling the disparate documents and texts of the archive into some sort of coherent order, and then selecting from them quotations which would advance the five narratives involved a great deal of editorial selection. A task that very much supported Alun Munslow's contention that:

My analysis of the historian as an author is predicated on the ontological assumption that history has the status of a narratological act. (Alun Munslow: The Historian as Author: 2020 – http://culturahistorica.org/)

The process certainly involved the development of discourse as story by creating a story space – or a number of them to frame different threads and texts – and considerable focalisation on what would advance the five narrative threads.  

Writing about an archive such as Irene's involves curating the content and then setting the selected 'exhibits' into an interpretative context; but it also involved much more, because Irene, Elined, P W and Marjory Martin disseminated Jungian ideas across the Quaker communities on both sides of the Atlantic, helping to initiate and sustain a lasting interest in the relevance of Jung to Quaker (and wider) spirituality. Tracing that influence involved searching for Jungian inspired articles in Quaker publications – especially in the Inward Light and the The Seeker – and selecting passages to incorporate into and advance the narrative. It turned out to be a trail of articles that largely petered out by the turn of the millennium.

My choice in writing about the archive was as far as possible to let the archive and related materials speak for themselves, hence the anthological approach. Each quotation being like a stepping stone in advancing the narratives. At times it felt like being a barrister, calling witness to the stand in order for them to testify in their own words, only interrupting them in order to highlight one point or another. 

In a way writing about an archive such as Irene's could be compared to being a jeweller: the gemstones are the selected quotations from the primary sources – the archive, the works referred to in the archive or, in the latter part of the book, the Jungian related published texts written by Quakers – the setting is the narrative and analysis that surrounds them and sets them off.

Far better to let my subjects and their influencers speak for themselves – a case of show not tell – than to try to re-express what they have said so clearly in their own words. It is a method that works well for the subject matter: a blend of psychology, theology, philosophy, politics, peace-work and history.

By far the biggest influencer whose thoughts are reflected in the archive was, of course, Carl Gustav Jung, but he was not the only influencer. T S Elliot, Kierkegaard, Isaac Penington, Chuang Tzu, Thomas Merton, Jeremiah (he of the Old Testament), Evelyn Underhill, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Lewis Mumford, H G Baynes, Thomas Traherne, Esther Harding, Meister Eckhart, Jakob Böhme, Julian and Aldous Huxley, and many others found a place. An eclectic mix of spiritual explorers, mystics, analysts and commentators, both ancient and modern.

In selecting what to quote, or refer to, in the narrative I applied a hierarchy. The documents of the archive had priority of focus. These are unique texts in which the authors were processing what they learned from Jung and the other influencers. The texts form a unique record of how a Quaker community was impacted by the intellectual climate and events of their times. Irene's library of books came next, as these clearly were crucial in informing the text of many of her archive's documents. Then both other texts that had been referred to in the archive – the influencer's texts – but also the other Quaker produced texts that were influenced by Jung's thoughts – the influenced texts. Finally, the texts of commentors on Jung. 

That hierarchy governed the focalisation – the allocation of attention –  in the book and profoundly shaped the story space, the narrative. The first seven chapters deal with developments in British Quakerism, the shattering of the world in 1914, how Irene and Bertram Pickard met, and the evolutions in Quaker peace-work which took them to Geneva; twenty-three chapters are directly based on the contents of the archive; the final six trace the impact of Jung on the wider Quaker world and issues arising from that.

If a film were made of a stone dropped into a pond and the ripples spreading out until they die away, that would be a good image of the historical impact of Jung on the Quakers. The dropping of the stone was the discovery of Jung by that small group of Quakers in Geneva. The spreading out and dying away of the ripples, in so far as we have a record, are the texts that resulted. Texts that were produced in the Quaker community all the way from 1934 to the end of the twentieth century, and on until now. There may not be much reference made to Jung in Quaker circles today, but there has been a lasting shift in Quaker understanding of what spirituality is because of the interaction; unlike dropping a stone into water, everything has not returned to how it was before – the Quaker waters themselves are different because of the influence of Jung. 

*Social Theology - The systematic study of and preoccupation with issues of human welfare from the perspective of divine revelation, a term that includes natural revelation in its widest Reformed sense.

A Reasonable Faith: Francis Frith, William Pollard & William Turner

 

 

When faced with the challenge of writing about Irene Pickard's archive – at first sight a seemingly disparate collection of Jungian and Quaker related items assembled over her lifetime – deciding where to start was always going to be a headache. If the papers in her collection were regarded like Christmas cards hung from a line, then the narrative would be the line, holding them together in some sort of order, giving them relationship one to another. The narrative would need to be fixed at both ends – an introduction and a conclusion. The introduction would be the context which the story grew out of, and the conclusion would be where it fixes itself into the reader's lives. That is the point of history, it provides sustenance for reader by relating to them – it is not simply entertainment – it is part of that function of history as dialogue between the past and the present.

The anchoring of the narrative in Quaker history means, given that the Society of Friends is not well known by non-Quakers, introducing it origins, but briefly enough for Quakers to skim over: a very short synopsis of its early history and its peculiarities would suffice, it is hoped; and, yes, Quakers are a very peculiar lot. 

Next comes setting the scene for the entry of the protagonists – the first length of line. That is where A Reasonable Faith (1884) comes in, or to give it its full title A Reasonable Faith, short religious essays for the times by three "Friends". It was a landmark book that altered the direction of Quakerism in Britain, but considered potentially so heretical and shocking to the Quaker community that the authors dared not give their names: they were speaking the unspeakable! Although there was also a strong element of Quaker modesty that forbade them from seeking fame: it was the message that mattered, not who told it. Being "Friends" with a capital "F" was enough to establish their credentials. Being Friends meant that the truth spoke through them rather than simply their telling the truth; just as in Meeting when a Friend is compelled to rise and give ministry, the compulsion and the message is not their volition, they are simply the vehicle, or so it is held.  

The acceptance of A Reasonable Faith by the rising generation of Quakers changed the Society from one which, because of the Evangelical emphasis on salvation by faith, on devotion to Jesus, on loving Jesus, would have almost automatically rejected the likes of Jung and any suggestion of a psychological approach to understanding religion, into being a community that was receptive. Many Quakers, after the publication of A Reasonable Faith, might not have agreed with the contentions coming out of the new discipline of psychology, but at least they were becoming accepting of the need to accommodate their faith to the findings of the sciences – to reflect on the truths that the sciences might contain for them; especially those of evolution, of the vast age of the earth and of the extent of the universe. To use Bergson's terms, Quakerism had once more become a dynamic faith not a static one: it was open to transformation. 

Although in the book I did not write at length about A Reasonable Faith in that scene setting second chapter – Re-visioning Quakerism: Jones, Harris and Rowntree – and referred to it little thereafter, discovering it and its relevance to the narrative occupied research time far greater in extent than its use might suggest, and produced, as I prefer to do, a set of notes. My method has always been to read a source and make notes on it containing my own interpretation and reflections seeded with quotes, especially those which would seem to contain key points, and which would advance the narrative. Far better to let authors speak for themselves, than paraphrasing – a case of show not tell.

Here they are some of my reflections, quotes and notes from reading the book:

p.7: A Reasonable Faith

And finally, every article of Religious faith must be in harmony with sound reason and common sense; otherwise it becomes mere Superstition. The teaching of True Religion must never contradict the best exercise of the intellectual faculty, however much they may transcend, or supplement, its intuitions.

p.10

We hold, therefore, that no theory of Religion can possibly be satisfactory, which is not broad enough in its range, from the elementary simplicity to reasonable completeness, to comprehend all real God-seeking and truth – and goodness loving of all mankind – savage and civilised, learned and ignorant, child and man.

p.22: re a notion of God = loving father.

Such evidently is the Christian teaching as regards God. How, then, has it happened that one of the most influential schools of though in the Christian Church [the Evangelical] has, during the last three centuries, so far distorted and misrepresented a beautiful and tender religious faith like this, as to sanction and uphold all the horrors of predestination and the injustice of substitutional punishment? We thankfully believe, however, that these doctrines are now rapidly loosing their hold upon the minds of thoughtful Christian people, though not until they have wrought untold mischief and misery in the world.

The paradigm being suggested as the fundamental core of Christianity is that of the Loving Father, a paradigm that has evolved through a process of progressive revelation. The parable of the Prodigal Son is taken as exemplifying this: p.24:

. . . There is the long suffering love that rebellion and disobedience cannot destroy; the changeless love that cannot forget the absent; the deep hopeful love that does not despair of the reprobate; the active unslumbering love that is bent on winning back the beloved, though deluded, wanderer.

p.104: of the Bible as a source:

It is also of the utmost importance to bare in mind, that the Bible is an account of a progressive development, an adaptation of religious truth to the slowly growing capacity of the human race. The unfolding of wisdom and moral righteousness of God was given only as men were able to appreciate and apply it.

And thus of the hermeneutic understanding of what is written that results.*

The text of A Reasonable Faith is both humanistic, post-enlightenment, and focussed on an understanding of the paradigm of a Loving Father rather than on the Suffering Christ, or upon a Salvationist understanding. Christ is an aspect of the Loving Father, who has in Christ provided a paradigm of perfection. It is thus worldly [concerned with the ethics of living] and is about following in the footsteps as per the paradigm; not about alienation from the Divine Love – as so much of the Calvinistic tradition was – nor in over emphasis on the crucified Christ. It puts the God of love back at the top of the tree.

The text is a critique of the dominant Evangelical theology and practice of its times.

It seems to suggest that integrity is needed not to read into scripture what is not fully and clearly there. The honesty to know that the scriptures are the product of human hands, both in creation and in transmission, and so are not the infallible word of God.

It feels as if the writers are reaching back to the more God-centered, gradualist and circumspect vision of early Quakers – groping in the mist and slowly revealing rather than knowing. They appear to be recommending less certainty of doctrine, more openness to revelations cautiously explored.

They also seem to be recommending the primacy of God not Jesus in their faith. Jesus for them is seen as the manifestation of his will, not as the sacrificial atonement. God is not seen as a dark force fixated on punishment for sin, but as a loving father who came to earth to act as a guide. The Evangelical focus on salvation, resurrection, substitutionary punishment is set aside as not being as honest an interpretation of the bible as claimed. There is a refocussing on the life and teaching and not on the death and resurrection.

The writers seem to be challenging the almost unquestioning acceptance of a superstructure of doctrine, and also questioning the felicity of such acceptance; of whether it would deliver the deepening of faith and understanding that the stance of “what canst thou say” would seem to require? Should Quakers be simply climbing aboard the “ready-made” version of Christianity promulgated by the Evangelicals, and accept the “knowing” implied, or should they have greater humility of faith? Acknowledging that the seed needs careful cultivation and a slow growth into individual fullness, where perhaps that fullness may take different forms in different lives and in different times.

I have a feeling that they were growing wary of the 'we are saved' aspect of Evangelicalism as focussing on the individual salvation in an afterlife and thus focusing on the self, rather than taking on board the teaching of the scriptures as a guide to living more selflessly and discarding thought of afterlife rewards.

Did they feel Evangelism was dishonest? 

* Hermeneutics: the critical dialogue between the reader and the text resulting in evolving interpretations. An informed reader reads the text differently to a naive reader, filtering it with and relating it to their experience. There is not a single, therefore correct, interpretation; it will speak differently to different people's condition. The authors are also concerned with the changes over time in understanding consistent with human progress. There is concern with some readers projecting onto the text the interpretation they want to see, but which the text may not bear.