Alternative Christianity

Pendle Hill Pamphlets

by John Punshon

Certainly the Quaker religion arises from our immediate and present experience, and we rightly consider it one of the most important parts of our testimony that only religion on this basis can be the genuine article. Nevertheless, we cannot stop at this point, for it is the place where certain problems arise. If we are to be a community, if we are to bear a collective witness, we have to give form and structure to experience, we have to be rational about religion. We have to go as far as we can to meet the challenge of Robert Burns’s couplet about seeing ourselves as others see us. We are loyal to hidden values, and our statements are often based on unspoken assumptions. The secret hand of history tugs at strings which operate many of our practices, habits, and forms of expression. We must go beyond the raw material of personal experience to see ourselves in a wider setting.

So how do we see the Abbey of Quakerism? Is it a negative response, a rejection of unwelcome and misunderstood aspects of other Christians’ beliefs, or have Friends produced something positive, worthy to be ranked with Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and Classical Protestantism as an independent but equally valid interpretation of the mind of Christ and the message of the New Testament?

Paperback

First published December 2, 2013

Reviews

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every so often in the Pendle Hill series, at least up to the point of #245, someone writes a pamphlet presenting a more scholarly or systemic approach to explaining Quakerism as a faith, differentiating it from the more dominant sects or branches. Each has presented novel perspectives or insights for a seeker’s consideration, including this one.

"[Quakerism] arises from our immediate and present experience, and we rightly consider it one of the most important parts of our testimony that only religion on this basis can be the genuine article." but that isn't enough. It isn't an individual journey. "We have to go as far as we can to meet the challenge of Robert Burn's couplet about seeing ourselves as others see us. We are loyal to hidden values, and our statements are often based on unspoken assumptions. ...We must go beyond the raw material of personal experience to see ourselves in a wider setting." (p. 3)

“Our discipline of silent waiting brings us under the authority of God directly without the need of any human intermediary. The Quaker tradition is the path into which Friends there fore have been led by the Light, and the beliefs it has led them to espouse. The have always emphasized that there are not items of individual enlightenment but collective insights in which the whole Society has been led.” (p, 5)

“This tradition is the authority of Quakerism.”