Friends and the Seeker
By Irwin Abrams
Two of the most treasured concepts of our time are the method of scientific inquiry and the values and practices we understand as democratic. Both of these are most congenial to the spirit of the Society of Friends.
The method of scientific inquiry involves first of all an emphasis upon experience. Scientists take no answers for granted. They must experiment, test each hypothesis in the light of experience. Friends have had a similar emphasis. Friends have been unwilling to accept blindly creeds and formulae written down centuries ago. They have preferred to try to share the experiences which produced such insights as those recorded in the scriptures. They are fond of saying, "It is not true because Jesus said it; Jesus said it because it is true. "Friends have found that anyone can come upon the discoveries of Jesus and can test them every day. Friends have learned through actual practice that if one "loses one 's life "-gives of oneself -one may achieve that sense of integration and spiritual adventure which Jesus called everlasting life.
To the Friends, religion is above all a life to be lived, an experience to be shared. The outward expression and the inward experience are one. It is in worship together that Friends sense that overpowering oneness of humanity which so often sends them out to relieve suffering and to build right relationships among people. Quaker mysticism, the sense of the presence of God and the unity with God which one can feel in a Friends meeting for worship, is no withdrawal from life, but rather a springboard for action.
"Equal opportunity for all "would well describe the arrangements for worship. Friends gather together reverently in silent waiting and listening. Any worshiper may find that he or she is to be the instrument through which the group 's insight is to be expressed, bound by neither a prescribed program nor a traditional creedal vocabulary. Fresh experience of the highest that we know is free to find expression. In all its forms and practices Quakerism has been essentially democratic. From the beginning Friends refused to uncover their heads before kings or bend their knees before priests. They have put little stock in those external trappings which divide people, whether they be the vestments of rank or the pigmentation of the skin. The worth of the individual is to Friends no mere philosophical principle, but a conviction based upon the insights of worship and upon actual experience. "There is that of God in every one "is the way the earliest Friends formulated this experimental finding of the potential creativeness of every person. More recent generations of Friends have been able to practice and to test this truth anew amid the most trying circumstances in a world bowed by despair and suffering. The Quaker prescription for a meaningful life is till to "walk gladly over the earth answering that of God in everyone. "
In meeting for business the democratic emphasis is expressed in the custom of coming to decisions by "the sense of the meeting, "never by vote, since majority rule may do violence to the convictions of a minority. If there is "that of God in everyone, "then even a minority of one must be hearkened to, and Friends would rather be right than expedient.
In the Society of Friends at its best the seekers may find a form of religion that is consistent with the scientific approach. They may find a democracy of spirit and of action. They may find a society of persons who care deeply about their fellows and who have learned to find within themselves and from without themselves the strength to live creatively and joyfully. They may find the message of Jesus speaking afresh in the syllables of the twenty- first century.
Bulk copies of pamphlets in the "Friends And" series can be obtained from Quakerbooks.Org. Copyright © by Friends General Conference.
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