Is there a Quaker equivalent to a Dharma talk?

[u/sg647112c]

I feel like I may be missing something from my meeting - or perhaps my expectations were simply misaligned.

For some background, I was raised Roman Catholic, but became disillusioned with the Church in my early 20s, largely because of the disconnect between my personal beliefs and the Church’s teachings. I subsequently spent about a decade sitting with Zen Buddhists, off and on, and for the past several months I’ve been attending a local Quaker meeting.

One thing I very much appreciate about both Zen and Quaker worship is the meditative quality of sitting together in silence. That part feels very natural to me.

What I’m missing, however, is some sort of instruction or intentional “learning” component to my spiritual practice.

In the Zen community, our meditation practice included a Dharma talk, where a teacher would give a short talk on Zen teachings, concepts, or examples from their own experience. We also had dokusan, brief one-on-one meetings with a teacher where we could ask questions, discuss our practice, or explore something we were struggling with.

Is there anything analogous in the Quaker tradition?

I’ve learned quite a bit about Quakerism through my own reading and independent study, but I’m wondering where the communal or interpersonal teaching and spiritual formation happens. Are there discussion groups, adult religious education, opportunities to meet one-on-one with more experienced Friends, clearness committees, or something similar that I should be looking for?

I realize that unprogrammed worship is intentionally different from a more structured religious service, and I’m not necessarily looking for a Quaker version of a sermon. I’m more interested in how Friends deepen their understanding and practice together, rather than primarily through individual study.

Perhaps this is simply a matter of my particular meeting, rather than Quakerism generally. I’d be very interested to hear how this works in other meetings, and what more experienced Friends would recommend to someone in my position.

[u/martinkelley]

Well, unpopular opinion perhaps, but traditionally "some sort of instruction or intentional learning component" would have been Quaker ministry. Meetings had recognized ministers who steeped themselves in a specifically Quaker understanding of Christian theology and gave what were recognizable sermons, sometimes fairly long and extensive, full of BIble references and stories of Friends.

I used to pop around to different meetings and at the rise of worship I'd consider what I would have learned about Quakerism in the hour-or-so before. So many times the answer was "nothing." I'd hear about secondary interests and passions and testimonies—all great stuff, to be sure. But I wouldn't have gotten much in the way of beliefs behind any of it.

To be fair, this state of affairs is fine with a lot of Friends in the modern, Liberal tradition who see everyone's theology as equally valid. Indeed, some Friends are actively hostile to centering any specific concept of Quaker theology. But it does mean you might not get much in the way of recognized teaching. Or, as Macoafi points out, it will be segregated into a separate religious education sphere (and even then probably couched as history so as not to imply that it might be a model for corporate belief). This heterodoxy makes us welcoming grounds for seekers, perhaps, but I think it makes it harder for anyone who really wants to dive into what it means to be a Quaker.

My meeting has good ministry and a month of Sundays there would end up being being a pretty good, if disjointed, Quakerism 101 primer. Not everyone is Christian and not all of the ministries are specifically Quaker. But even those that aren't are deeply personal and spiritual and work to flesh out the whole and I think everyone feels welcomed and included. But it's hard to build a culture of good ministry, especially with long-established meetings that don't have a history of it and don't have a leadership willing to work on it.

[u/keithb → u/martinkelley]

Pink Dandelion proposes that liberal Friends don’t talk about beliefs, and emphasise “the silence” as a way to avoid doing so, because that means we don’t have to grapple with the fact that we have wide range of them.

It’s certainly much easier and safer to have ministry consist of silence and updates on progressive campaigning.

[u/martinkelley → u/keithb]

In the U.S. context, especially in the big four northeast yearly meetings, there's the legacy of trying to reunite everyone in the 1950s. Many towns had two Friends meetings and while the casus belli of the 1827 schisms were mostly forgotten, the meetings had very different cultures, especially around ministry and eldership. There were so few Quakers left in any given town that individual meetings had no option other than reuniting. One way they managed this was to make a fairly conscious pact to keep ministry non-controversial. If you read Howard Brinton's Friends for 300 Years, he says that the most important test for membership was whether you fit in. I appreciate the come-as-you-are welcome of that and it probably made sense at a time when Friends had a pretty good idea of the contours of their differing beliefs. But a few generations of consciously not using our worship hour for what OP calls "Dharma talk" creates its own problems.

Elsewhere in the U.S. you have the rise of college-town meetings with similar dynamics. Displaced members (mostly from the northeast yearly meetings) would go teach at small college towns and cities and start worship groups. They might be from different yearly meetings but had no interest in the old fights and put their energies into perfecting a kind of consciously neutral, process-based community that is skeptical of strong truth claims of any kind. There are dozens of unprogrammed Liberal meetings three blocks off of college campuses that date to the 1950s-1970s.

There is a growing interest in eldership and ministry in the U.S. We have older networks like the New Foundation Fellowship and School of the Spirit and newer ones like Public Friends and Friends Incubator. It's encouraging, IMO.

[u/Informal_Lynx2751 → u/martinkelley]

A Friend who comes from the Evangelical traditions once pointed something out to me that anecdotally seems true: when the Orthodox meetings merged with the Hicksite many if not most lost their orthodoxy completely and many, like mine, are as diverse and nominally Christian as any. That being said, Christians are as welcome as any even tho sometimes friends forget themselves and express their biases publicly against said expressions.

[u/macoafi]

My meeting has Adult Religious Education after potluck (which follows meeting for worship) on the first Sunday of each month.

There are also Quaker retreat centers that host courses and workshops, such as Pendle Hill in Pennsylvania and Swarthmoor Hall in England.

[u/RimwallBird]

In addition to the many excellent suggestions that have already been made —

There is a long tradition of what I have heard called “teaching ministry” in the unprogrammed branches of Quakerism. (It is called “teaching ministry” to distinguish it from prophetic ministry and the ministry of prayer.)

In the earliest days of our movement, teaching ministry was institutionalized in what were called “threshing sessions” — meetings explicitly designed for curious non-Quakers, in which well-known Quaker names would preach for hours, laying out the essential understandings of Quakerism, and challenging the unspoken assumptions of the audience. The name “threshing sessions” comes from the way wheat was traditionally threshed in the days before mechanization: unhulled wheat would be scattered on the floor, and the threshers would beat at it with flails to break the chaff loose and let the wind blow the chaff away. Some of the sermons from these sessions were taken down in shorthand by members of the audience, and afterward collected and published; two of those collections are still in print today. The sermons were not short, because they had a lot of ground to cover, but overall they were comparable to Dharma talks. The members of the audience could talk freely amongst themselves about what they had heard, so it wasn’t just a rigid lecture format.

Also, from the beginning, the preaching of Quaker missionaries worldwide has often been comparable to Dharma talks. The bulk of most published Quaker journals, prior to the late nineteenth century, consists of records of such preaching done by the author. Such missionary preaching would include, for you liberal Friends, the lectures given by Rufus Jones to Quaker audiences; they were certainly quite different in content from what was taught in previous generations, but they were not much different in intent! Again, the audience could talk amongst themselves about what they had heard; it wasn’t just a matter of listen, get up, and go home.

In modern times, some Friends in the unprogrammed branches of our Society have tried to revive some of this, under the rubric of “traveling ministers” or some similar name. I would caution, though, that not every traveling Quaker minister turns out to be competent in teaching the Quaker faith and practice. Just as with Zen, there are ongoing problems with quality control.

Particular in the Conservative branch of unprogrammed Quakerism, the idea of meeting with the teacher for one-on-one instruction seems a bit strange, since we have just one, Jesus Christ, who is master (or teacher) in our assemblies. But it is quite possible to bring one’s questions to Christ in prayer, and find the answers given in worship or in daily experience. And our more traditional meetings still have elders who know our practices well and are prepared to help newcomers trying to understand. You could go to the clerk of your meeting’s committee of ministers and elders (or whatever that committee may have been named) and ask if there is someone who can act in such a capacity.

[u/macoafi → u/RimwallBird]

WOW, the meaning of "threshing sessions" has changed drastically! (At least around here, I hear it as meaning "there's an item of business that needs some going-over, but we are explicitly not going to ask for a decision to be made today.")

Having been part of Baltimore YM's traveling ministry program, I'd add that that's only one of the possible tasks for modern traveling ministers. BYM's program started after the discovery of a fault line in Friends United Meeting, with the intention of building bridges across yearly meetings with very different cultures.

[u/martinkelley → u/macoafi]

I've assumed the term threshing session was also a reference to the parable of the sower found in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. I have to find it again and take a picture but back in the middle of the last century the religious ed committee of either FGC or PYM used a beautiful Fritz Eichenberg engraving of that parable as their logo/colophon. (The FGC and PYM religious ed programs were so overlapping in personnel back then as to almost be the same entity, which is why I can't remember which used that particular image.)

And macoafi, that is so incredibly Liberal Friends to use a seriously Christian paradigm but then redefine it in such a secular way that everyone's forgotten where it comes from. There is so much "gospel order" buried just a half-inch under "Quaker process" topsoil sometimes.

[u/RimwallBird → u/martinkelley]

u/martinkelley and u/macoafi, I appreciate both your comments! Yes, I agree that the usage has changed considerably among modern liberal unprogrammed Friends.

I don’t see evidence that there is actually any threshing in play, either in the Parable of the Sower, or in the parable that follows it in Matthew, the Parable of the Tares. We are told of the seed being sown, of its fates in different places, of its being harvested, and of the disposal of the tares, but that is it. Threshing comes next, after the tares have been disposed of and the harvested wheat brought into an enclosure. It separates the wheat from the straw.

We can find threshing referenced in Matthew 3:12 / Luke 3:17, where John the Baptist refers to it. The Baptist reminds us that the chaff, or straw, will be burned; he seems to mean by the chaff, the unrepentant. In another use of the metaphor, George Fox used to talk about light, chaffy people: the chaff in that context was their talk, but I suspect Fox also had the Baptist’s words in mind.

[u/martinkelley → u/RimwallBird]

Thanks for the clarification. I am a city kid so take any agricultural metaphors I might make with appropriate skepticism.

[u/martinkelley → u/martinkelley]

Oh wait, I have old pamphlets around. FGC. I'm only seeing it small. I've seen it much larger. https://imgur.com/a/dq6qh4d

Update: to be precise, I should say it's Fritz Eichenberg-style. I can't find it referenced anywhere and there's no attribution.

[u/infinite-long-stocki]

Many Meetings here in Ireland run 'Worship Sharing' where we discuss passages from the Bible or Quaker quotes/writings. Many Elders in Meetings are also more than happy to chat and I've had amazing theological discussions with Friends over tea and coffee after Meeting, although you do end up staying later than everyone else! Generally we end up discussing what was given in Ministry that morning and go on from there potentially to other topics. It's very relaxed and informal which suits me personally as I love a chat and a two-way conversation.

If you're a young Friend then attending young Friend's events can be a nice way to learn from people your age, and meet people with a similar understanding as you.

[u/BackgroundConfident7]

I had hoped for something similar at my small, liberal unprogrammed meeting, but no one seems interested.

I go to talks, programs, and worship at Pendle Hill frequently because it scratches that itch. I’m lucky to live close to it, but they have online programs for those who don’t.

But perhaps my favorite resource that I’ve found is the Ohio Yearly Meeting (conservative) YouTube page (@ohioyearlymeeting2155). It has hundreds of hours of talks, courses, and Bible studies available. I love listening to Buddhist dharma talks and these videos are very similar.

[u/Frigidspinner]

In our city there is a "Quaker 101" class, where over a 6 week period an elder explains different aspects of the quaker approach - I attended it and it was brilliant! I assumed it was part of a widespread program

[u/macoafi → u/Frigidspinner]

Oh, my meeting's Quakerism 101 class has been uploaded to YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHQpv36Kr_U&list=PLuu-xsfwzdUxRSw1OscJXSxMM8gyFa_ol

[u/martinkelley → u/macoafi]

I didn't need to check the timestamp to guess that was Covid-era. Michael Levi would be a great Q101 teacher I bet! I've led my own version of Q101 classes a few times, though in meetings with a large percentage of very experienced Friends, which made it kind of funny.

[u/macoafi → u/martinkelley]

It is, but we posted our adult religious ed on Facebook Live years before covid as well. I just never migrated the videos. 

[u/Timely_Apricot3929 → u/Frigidspinner]

Here are all the readings for Quakerism 101 from my Meeting :)

[u/Scarbuck42]

3 Quakers eating bagels and drinking coffee while chatting after meeting is our equivalent

[u/martinkelley → u/Scarbuck42]

Never underestimate sitting around, eating some food, and talking. It's usually a key ingredient in successful meetings!

[u/dgistkwosoo]

Yeah, "Dharma talk" is a sermon, and "dokusan" is very like catechism study. Western buddhism finds it useful to adopt some of the practices of Christianity and Judaism, and if that speaks to people, so much the better.

The Society of Friends (and at this point a number of Friends will jump in and inform me as if I didn't know that the majority of Quakers are pastoral) values spirit-led ministry, hearing and listening to spirit in the moment as led. Preparing ahead defeats that intention, although one can argue that one was led while preparing the ministry.

[u/someshta]

You might be interested (if your meeting has them) in a Spiritual Formation group or a Reading and Discussion group. There are other structures like that attached to meetings which might meet some of this need. And I'll second the suggestion of Pendle Hill--they're wonderful, and the time I spent there for a retreat this year was lovely.

[u/Rare-Personality1874]

Some meetings will have worship sharing, or run something like Becoming Friends. Ask Elders and they will normally point you in the right direction.

[u/Informal_Lynx2751]

Friend, you touch on a need I’ve perceived at my own meeting. We need more time to talk about our spirituality with each other beyond Quaker Foundations courses or Bible and book studies.

[u/keithb]

Traditionally, Meetings would appoint Friends to serve as “Elders”, to have a particular care for the spiritual development of a Meeting. Some Meetings still do, although they may call the role something else. What does your Meeting have?

For a long time Meetings would also “record” that certain Friends had a gift for spoken ministry and expect those Friends to minister well—to be able to deliver something very like a sermon. And Meetings maybe supported recorded ministers in travelling to other Meetings to do that. Some still do.

Are you attending a “liberal” unprogrammed Meeting? It’s become common in such meetings to deny that any one Friend might have anything to learn from or teach to any other Friend. A sort of atomised egalitarian congregationalism where each Friend is a congregation of one, doing their meditation in the same room as some others. Many liberal meetings have taken the fundamental Quaker position that we all have direct access to the divine to mean that we each only have our own direct access to the divine. A huge missed opportunity for growing together: let all be done for edification, Paul said. But that supposes that anyone needs building up.

There are Quaker education programmes through bodies such as Woodbrooke in the UK and Pendle Hill in the USA. Have you looked at those?

[u/sg647112c → u/keithb]

I’m attending an unprogrammed Meeting. I know we have clerks and people who take responsibility for various community projects, but I suspect I don’t yet have a full grasp of how the Meeting is organized.

I really do appreciate the Quaker idea that everyone has an equal place in the Light, without the need for a pastor or other spiritual authority. At the same time, I’ve found that this has left me with a somewhat limited sense of shared learning and communal spiritual development.

I realize those thoughts may seem somewhat contradictory - and perhaps that tension is part of what I’m trying to understand about Quakerism.

[u/keithb → u/sg647112c]

Your Meeting is almost certainly aligned with a Yearly Meeting and that YM will have a “Book of Discipline” (it might not be called exactly that) which describes what structures and roles a Meeting should have. Although that congregational thinking has weakened the idea of a YM with a discipline that Meetings and Friends are expected to follow.

Your Meeting could be unprogrammed and theologically Conservative, or unprogrammed but theologically liberal. It sounds liberal so far.

I was raised Roman Catholic, too.

Bear in mind that every Friend is a minister, with the authority and responsibilities of a minister. We don’t have a separate clergy, we are all clergy. We don’t get that way by passing through a graded series of ceremonial magic initiations (such as “deacon”, “priest”, “bishop”) granting us greater spiritual authority. But that does not mean that we all have equal spiritual insight or strength.

We don’t need the magisterium of the church to teach us, because “Christ has come to teach his people himself”, but that doesn’t mean that we’re all equally good students or that we can’t or mustn’t help each other learn.

There’s not really a contradiction in what you’re looking for. I think it makes perfect sense. It’s just that a lot of liberal meetings have turned away in recent decades from the idea that Friends come to Meeting to learn, and some to teach.

[u/Adventurous_Tough_97]

You almost lost me suggesting that worship is not unlike meditation. We worship in “expectant waiting “. In silence we listen to our heart, trusting that if the divine wants to communicate or not. If yes, we discern if the message is just for us or to be shared with the meeting. If it is just for us we remain silent. If to be shared we listen for the simplest way to communicate without embellishments. Vocal ministry should always be brief, to allow others to listen and learn. Meditation is centering and emptying of the ego. Worship is waiting on the divine.

[u/lampsbemany]

What an interesting question - I've learned a lot from Buddhist teachings, and I hadn't thought in that way about what we in Quakers are missing.

I think there is a reluctance in Quakers to set up anything that seems like a lecture or even a teaching - which might suggest that one person has 'more wisdom' or spiritual depth than another, a kind of hierarchy which we avoid. Elders might minister, and organise and facilitate Meetings for Learning, but generally not 'lead' them. Such meetings are usually arranged to encourage equal participation by all - 'all of us are ministers'.

Woodbrooke has lots of great offerings, often along the same lines but with introductory speakers at least. But that's not the same as having guidance with others in your own meeting.

Liberal Quakers in the uk are advised to hold regular 'spiritual reviews,' ' when Friends would probably be asked what they need - maybe have a chat with elders, if you have them.

[u/Adventurous_Tough_97]

Quakerism is all about God existing in every person. It is about testimonies, not creeds.
Our testimonies help us in our daily life. Equality, Honesty, Peace, and Simplicity. It isn’t sitting in silence for an hour and then having coffee.

[u/Timely_Apricot3929]

My Meeting has forums put on by Adult Religious Education before meeting for worship every week (except for monthly business meeting) and at the start of meeting for worship a query is read.

I assumed this was the same everywhere for unprogrammed meetings??

[u/Impossible-Pace-6904 → u/Timely_Apricot3929]

Every meeting is different. Some meetings aren't big enough to have people to volunteer for education committees.

[u/Fun-Chemist-3139]

You shouldn't underestimate the written word. Reading and writing is communal and interpersonal. We are very few in number and spread out. The person saying the thing you need to hear may well not be in your meeting, or even on your continent.

Since the beginning Friends have been writing letters, pamphlets, books, and producing newsletters and journals. To me it is a very important way of communicating with others.