Labelling myself
Submitted by Heather on October 17 1999 at 17:09:52
|
My father to a friend: "Do you belong to a religious community?" Friend: "Oh, I'm an Episcopalian." Pause. "Of course, I don't believe in God." * * * I have a more tender conscience than my father's friend. As some of you know (having received harried letters from me on the subject), I've been struggling for the past year with the question of how to label myself. What I've decided, after long reflection, is that the best label for me is, "Ummm . . ." Fortunately, a second choice is available to me these days. The Anglican Dean of Gloucester Cathedral, Kenneth Jennings, once said, "I think God has given me a liberal protestant head and a catholic heart, and I am immensely grateful for both." I'm not nearly as good at dividing my head and my heart, but Anglicanism has been (and remains) my native home, while Quakerism has become my adopted home. My husband asked me several weeks ago why I wanted to become a Quaker. I told him, "It's not that I want to become a Quaker; I discovered when I started reading about Quakerism that I am a Quaker." Those of you who know about the Religious Society of Friends will be aware that the denomination has firm beliefs about how to reach truth but has always opposed the use of creeds; as a result, Quakerism presently consists of Christians (ranging from evangelicals to liberals) as well as universalists (ranging from theists to religious humanists). Despite the type of conflicts one would expect in such a situation, the two groups overlap: the Christians are indebted to the early Quaker belief in the universal nature of the Inner Light, while the universalists are indebted to the early Quaker belief in the importance of full-hearted commitment to the life of sacrificial love that Jesus exemplified. That is one of the reasons I've decided to label myself a Quaker: so that I can explore the different paths to truth without feeling that I'm cutting myself off from my Christian heritage in doing so. On the one hand, I'm strongly drawn to the Christian understanding of evil, sacramentalism, etc. On the other hand, I'm drawn to the truth I see in other faiths, including humanism. This way, I hope, I'll be freer to do what I was doing in the years before I rejoined the Episcopal Church: to look for truth in all paths, including the Christianity from which I have learned so much. In The Crystal Cave, young Merlin is asked by Ambrosius whether he intends to attend one of the bloody meetings of the Druids. He replies: "My lord, when you are looking for . . . what I am looking for, you have to look in strange places. Men can never look at the sun, except downwards, at his reflection in things of the earth. If he is reflected in a dirty puddle, he is still the sun. There is nowhere I will not look, to find him." I feel the same. Heather A Christian-slanted description of Quakerism A universalist-slanted description of Quakerism |