Testimony and scandal

Dear Friend:

The concern under which I write leads me to consider two words, testimony and scandal, and their connection with some trends among Friends these days.  Let it be clear from the outset that no testimony of any meeting will be pointed to as a scandal, yet there are aspects of our practice — and therefore our faith — that are disquieting enough.  An essential fact to meditate upon is that regardless of what we say, the way we act, the way we are, is “our testimony to the whole world.”  In that connection, what are we showing, and what can we show, about what we believe about the foundations of our activities?

Testimonies

In books of discipline, one comes across the word “testimony” most often  in the sections on “faith into works.”  For example, London Yearly Meeting’s Book of Christian Discipline lists in its index under “testimonies” things like “betting and gambling,” “integrity in business,” “hat honour,” “peace,” and so forth.  Some authors distinguish “major” and “minor” testimonies.  For example, when Friends in the XIX century were trying to identify causes and possible cures for the decline in the Society’s numbers and vigor, such figures as John Stephenson Rowntree, Anna Braithwaite, and Rufus Jones sought to redefine the essential meaning of “Friend” in such a way that old patterns of dress and speech could be abandoned, while fundamentals of worship and theology would be retained (though argued about).  To judge by our modern publications, major testimonies are things like peace, equality, simplicity, earth care; minor testimonies might include things like gambling or temperance, and the use of certain aspects of the old plain speech in meeting records and some other situations.

Casting a little wider, Friends might mention things like our method of marriage, or the meeting for business, or worship, as testimonies.  At one time, silent worship was grounds for persecution, and it was something we felt called upon to conduct openly, as a testimony to the whole world.  In the past century or so, our internal history has rendered this a more complicated stand to take, and now we can assert that the essence of true worship is that it be conducted under the influence of the Holy Spirit, or words to that effect.

But what is a testimony, anyway? After a moment’s reflection, one can do away with the idea that the testimonies are a suite of assertions or peculiarities that are to be adopted whole cloth upon entry into the society.  Always in the past, there was variation among Friends in the extent to which one was faithful on this or that point, and one of the signs of deepening commitment to the Quaker way was a gradual understanding of and unity with testimonies formerly unregarded.

A working definition might be that a testimony is a declaration by a worshipping congregation that a faithful response to God’s life moving in us requires that a certain thing be done or avoided (e.g. get to meeting on time, do not go to war), or that a certain standard be set up towards which we are bound to strive (e.g. a way of life free from superfluity, and simplified by faithfulness).  We are aware that these perceptions are to some extent time-bound, that we see imperfectly — yet after weighty reflection, we must declare that this is a part of the Truth God is teaching us.

This is rather different from a dogma.  It is experiential in the truest sense, since such declarations are not derived notionally, by intellectual activity, reasoning from earlier principles.  A new testimony may well follow logically from some other, and that logic may play a part in preparing the way for the new clarity, but it is really when first one, then another, then a whole meeting feels that there is a persistent call– only then do we testify that God has troubled our hearts and shown us the way towards a renewal of our peace. This, at least, is how I try to summarize for myself Friends’ practice these days.  Yet there is another way to define a testimony, and that is as anopportunity to understand more deeply the love of God as we can see and enact it.

And here recall 1Cor. 8: “Knowledge inflates, but love builds up.” You can know a thing, but it can be hollow if you do not have the inward substance to live it.  Then it is a claim with no evidence, a plant insufficiently rooted to withstand the heat of the day.

Scandal

It is no secret that “scandal” comes from a Greek word that meant  something that was part of a trap for an enemy, and then something that caused one to fall into such a trap — a stumbling block.  My concern in brief is that our current attitude towards our testimonies functions as a trap, a stumbling block, and that it constitutes such an inherent weakness in modern Quakerism that it prevents us from gathering as a people, and renders meaningless the assertion that “Christ has come to teach his people himself.”

This is not particularly evident with regard to the “traditional testimonies” that have been articulated in pretty much the same way for the past century or more. Each of us knows of these one by one, and embraces or struggles with it as our condition dictates– just as Friends have done for three hundred years. Our testimonies on simplicity, peace, and equality remain challenges, and our response to them is also clouded by our current attitudes, but they are mostly a part of our inheritance that we feel must be there, though we may wiggle and squirm.  It is rather when we come to make new testimonies that the scandal can come.

Quakers these days are quick folk with a query, an advice, a minute, or even a testimony.  Such pronouncements are a common result of any meeting for business, working party, or consultation. To some extent, this is a sign of healthy ferment, and often the way we feel most comfortable in “publishing truth” – but wait a minute.  What was that last phrase? Truth? Are we meant to take that seriously?

The scandal comes in the aftermath of such pronouncements, because very often the meeting believes it has achieved something by approving a wording, and that is the end of the matter, even after prolonged struggle.  A meeting can very quickly take a strong and principled position on so many matters that few can have any reality in the meeting’s life.  The process of reaching agreement has perhaps been trying, opening, moving, demanding, but now that we’ve done it, what’s the next item on the agenda?

So in the end, we have committed a “speech act,” but is that a testimony? How could we tell? What difference does it make to me if our meeting passes “your” minute, the one which you cared so much about?

We have gone, in our practice, from a position in which we do not want anyone to obey, sheep-like, a declaration with which she has no unity, to a position in which any strongly-felt assertion can be made by the meeting with little or no effect on me, if I don’t like it, or I happened not to be at the meeting. How can it be that the meeting was led by “the spirit of Truth,” and it make so little difference? No wonder that it is commonplace to speak of Friends as having “an identity crisis,” when we can take so casually an affirmation that the living God has led our people to a decision.

“Testimony inflation” and Gospel Order

When the term “gospel order” comes up, very often it is explained by a reference to Matthew 18:15ff, or some Quaker paraphrase of that; or by a reference to the meeting structure and attendant practices.  This can make it sound like a Quaker “Roberts’s Rules,” yet there is another way to take it:  Gospel order is the behavior of a people who seek to live in Gospel freedom, who seek to “have the mind of Christ,” and have sometimes succeeded in doing so.

When events in the world, in our community, or our private lives bring to our attention a place where healing and redemption are needed, one or more person in earnest prayer and consideration may feel that God is opening for us ways to move into that redeeming and healing, that though we feel a cross, we see a way to carry it.  As we accept this opening with thanks, and strive to put it into words and plans, if we stay close to our guide, “gospel order” will bring us into unity and the concern into action.

   The many Quaker processes we hear about and sometimes use were improvised at one time because Friends felt the need to incarnate a new sense of God’s guidance in concrete terms, both words and lives.

Who is the concern meant for? Who is to undertake it? What kinds of preparations are needed? How can we support it? Clearness committees, oversight committees, Elders, and much protocol came into play, but not emptily: These forms, or some new form to accomplish the same thing, must be at work before the sense of opening and calling can serve to build up the community in integrity, and move on to accomplish its ministry.

As an example:

A Friend gets a minute of support for some concern she has. Let us say our Friend has become convinced that it is inconsistent with the gospel of peace to eat red meat. At first, she decides to abstain from meat herself, and explains her grounds whenever asked. She studies deeply the politics and spirituality of vegetarianism, the ecological implications of meat production, and so forth.  So far, she is a member of the meeting who is being sensitive and responsive to her leadings.  Others may or may not be reached by her witness.

Suppose, however, that a committee of vegetarian Friends concludes that they want to actively urge others to adopt vegetarianism.  There are forums, pieces in the meeting newsletter, and finally a minute is brought before the Meeting, which may or may not unite with the concern.  The Friends with the concern feel either supported or saddened by the meeting’s response, perhaps corresponding with like-minded friends, or bringing the matter on to Yearly Meeting.   In such cases, the result of the concerns can tend to be focused on the public forums, the times when the Meeting makes some official statement. Yet if the matter is treated just as one of polity, it will be meaningless as a testimony.

If our community has been given the gift of a concern, if God has broken through in the life of a person or group, if a new portion of the Bread of Life has been given our meeting for its nourishment and further growth, then those who know it first should seek whether others have had the opportunity to share with them.  Posting a notice or having an open meeting is good, but not good enough. If the meeting has declared that a person’s concern to advocate vegetarianism is a real leading, then the concerned person and the meeting need to live with this declaration.  Can it be that the God who has lead God’s people  away from slave-owning, away from war, now is leading us away from meat-eating?

Once a minute is passed by my meeting, I should take it into my prayers, should seek for clarity about my conscientious position, in the same way that I may grapple with some hitherto mystifying passage in Paul. If, on the other hand, it is a concern I am carrying, I must seek whether it is now time to bring it close to people, to meet with them in their homes, to seek to share in prayer with them about this issue, and to accept in love their condition as they seek with me.

If God is asking us to step forward in this way along the path of life, what more important task in our meeting’s life do we have? And what a scandal if we miss the opportunity to find real unity, and to make a real testimony to ourselves, our children, and our world!  Our simplicity must include the time to  feel “Life springing up in any,” and inquire whether we have made adequate room in our lives for new possibilities.  If we stay close to the Root, our true concerns will be enacted rightly, and our words of support, counsel, or prophesy will be testimonies indeed.

It is in this continued soul-work within the body of Christ that the hollow that can be created by mere acknowledgment is filled slowly with spiritual perception, as the issues and the concern are worked by love, so that we hear and see together, and we are exercised in heart, soul, strength, and mind to see how our lived unity is enhanced, and our proclamation enriched, by a fresh understanding of what the Spirit is revealing to us about the nature of the Gospel life.

I would like to close by quoting a Friend’s description of how he saw his task as he undertook a concern for his Yearly Meeting’s spiritual condition, with the Yearly Meeting’s support.  Although the work included committee meetings, teaching, counselling, and other tasks, the trust that let the concern penetrate the meeting to the right extent comes beautifully through this report:

I was given the vision that my most important task was to draw near to the Light of Christ in each of our meetings and in every individual; and to ask others to share in awareness of this Light….I first visited members here and there, asking them to join me in a continuing work of prayer, recognizing this Light and praying for its growth in our midst, even while we were travelling or working.  For several years, then, I saw my most important task to be to allow myself to be drawn to individuals or groups, so that we might enter into awesome fellowship where two or three are gathered in His Name, and the Light grows…each meeting seemed like a cluster of light, and its members were points of light; and I was required to circulate among these points of light, so that our silent recognition of the light, our sharing on this level of consciousness, would allow this Light to grow.   (William P. Taber, The Eye of Faith, pg. 229-30)