r/Quakers • u/BelleOnABike • 7d ago
Can you be a Quaker without believing in the Divine?
Hello all! I've been intrigued by Quakerism for a few years now and have just started doing a more in-depth exploration of the nature of Quaker beliefs and would like some insight into whether my beliefs about the universe could align with Quakerism.
It's my understanding that no two Quakers have the same ideas about God and the Divine, but it seems that most do believe in a 'higher power' of some variety. For me, I do not believe in a deity, or that there is anything beyond the natural world. As such, to me, our human drive to do right by each other comes partially from instincts to protect the herd, and also feelings of empathy which lead us to go out of our comfort zones to look after other people (those feelings are things we can have because of our intelligence, sentience and theory of mind). Kindness and pacifism are things that are extremely important to me, and I see them as more than just a convoluted result of 'selfish genes', but I do see them as natural phenomena, not springing from the Divine. God to me is a metaphor for our human capacity for love.
I do not begrudge others believing in the Divine, and have no problem working with people who do, so long as we hold similar values.
Would Quakerism suit me, or is a belief in something 'greater than ourselves' in a divine sense needed?
I hope this makes sense and thank you for reading!
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u/Adventurous_Tough_97 6d ago edited 6d ago
I am a birthright Episcopalian who became a ‘convinced’ Friend in my late 40s. I believe in God but spend little time trying describe the being of God. As a member of the Religious Society of Friends, I struggle to accept people who reject the fundamental attribute of Quakerism; that there is ‘that of God’ in each of us. Sharing values is fine and many non-theists are better Quakers in living their lives in the manner of Friends than even birthright Quakers.
Worship is perhaps another thing, however. As we still ourselves in ‘expectant waiting’ we open ourselves to the direct connection of the Divine. Anything else seems, at least to me, to be meditation. As we worship in silence we use discernment before speaking out in vocal ministry. This discernment helps us to separate our own leadings to speak out from our own experience rather than delivering a message on behalf of God.
I welcome all to worship ‘in the manner of friends’ next to me, hoping that they will become ‘convinced’. However, I must admit that requiring that others believe in God or they aren’t real Quakers is simply my ego getting in the way.
‘But I have called you Friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have shared with you’
- John 15:15
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u/mweymar 6d ago
I am curious: What ego investment would you have in requiring me to believe in God if I am to be considered a real Quaker?...
Of course, I recognize that this might feel like a personal question and is none of my business, but I'll offer it anyway in case you can make use of it -- and "If the shoe doesn't fit, throw it away!"
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u/Adventurous_Tough_97 6d ago
Not sure what you mean by ego investment , my point was that it was my egotistical need to tell another person how to be a real Quaker by believing in God.
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u/Tinawebmom Quaker (Progressive) 6d ago
I simply believe we all have light within us.
Keep spreading your light to drive out the darkness.
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u/JoanOfSilence 6d ago
You can absolutely be a Friend without believing in the divine. But also, believing in the divine doesn't necessarily mean what you might think when it comes to Friends. I see a lot in your question concerning a divide between the natural and supernatural and the concept of a higher power. I would say that these distinctions are not terribly meaningful to me as a Quaker.
We are called to look for that of God in everyone. I don't need a dogmatic understanding of the nature of God as an external higher power to do that. We wait in silent worship for guidance from within or through the vocal ministry of others in our meeting. Does that require anything higher than the light that already within us? We treat the scripture as "words of God", but, as Fox would point out, not even scripture itself claims that it is the "Word of God". It is not inerrant and it is not complete.
The specificity of creed and dogma is less important to me as a Quaker than the experience of the divine in myself, others, and the world around me and how we are guided by that experience. For instance, I don't think that a science-based understanding of nature makes it any less divine. Nor do I think its divinity is enhanced by a story about a bearded man in the sky making it in 7 literal days. The divine in nature is apparent from observing nature. It's not about something outside or higher, it's about something within. It's about letting your eyes see and your ears hear.
Overall, I think you would likely be at home in a Quaker meeting, particularly a Liberal one organized through the Friends General Conference. And I do not think your beliefs are as at odds with many Friend's understanding of the divine as you might think.
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u/particularlyPlain Quaker (Wilburite) 6d ago
Overall I acknowledge we have our differences. Those aren't particularly important to address at this very moment. But I do take an issue with utilizing Fox's understanding of scripture here, it is not true to his words.
I'm concerned with the invoking of Fox's words there. And it seems to be an incomplete understanding of early Quaker doctrine. Fox avoided giving the title "The Word of God" to the scriptures because we know that the Word is a person, which scripture tells us is Christ Jesus, Fox was in full agreement with this.
Fox did not refer to scripture as broken or incomplete, but instead as a trustworthy account of God's workings with his people and an accurate fortelling of the inward appearance of Christ within all people. Scripture was assigned subordinate to the Spirit because of the understanding that it is not the Word Himself. This does not mean that scripture and the notions of scripture about Christ or other religious claims are unnecessary. George Fox still held to Christian orthodoxy and saw it as inseparable from the Quaker faith.
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u/bigsamosachaat 6d ago
Even the nontheists I know (myself included) believe in that spark of the divine within us all, I have a hard time seeing what one would get out of worship that they couldn’t out of meditation if they don’t believe ministry is driven by that of God within us, whether or not you believe in God as a real figure or deity. Sharing Quaker values does not necessarily make one a Quaker imo, but I’d interrogate what about Friends calls to you aside from shared values. Keep talking to Friends as well!
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u/Obvious_Flounder5234 1d ago
Do you mean that what happens in MfW is some sort of communication between individuals' divine sparks? And that there is nothing outwith us? I hope these don't sound like foolish questions. I'm actually trying to understand my own viewpoint at the moment, as well as others'.
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u/rikomatic 6d ago
Depend on your individual meeting, but in my experience, yes!
Even in many conservative Quaker meetings, folks will likely be quite tolerant and welcoming of folks who don't hold to a specific believe in God.
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u/Impossible-Pace-6904 6d ago
Are there conservative meetings with a significant number of non-Christian members/attenders?
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u/rikomatic 6d ago
I personally have felt very welcome as a light-centered Quaker at Berkeley Friends Church in Berkeley, California. https://www.berkeleyfriendschurch.org/
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u/particularlyPlain Quaker (Wilburite) 6d ago
This seems to me to be a misunderstanding of conservative.
There are four groups of Quakers who go by the name
Liberals (unprogrammed, pluralism, atheism, Christian heterodoxy) under FGC
Conservatives (unprogrammed, solidly Christian) Iowa yearly meeting conservative, north Carolina yearly meeting conservative, and Ohio yearly meeting conservative. Ohio comes from the Wilburite tradition and has retained more of the conservative beliefs than the others.
Evangelicals (programmed, Christian, FUM is more like the mainline protestant churches, evangelical friends church is more like the low church evangelicals)
Holiness friends in central yearly meeting, stems from the holiness tradition. Programmed meetings.
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u/rikomatic 6d ago
Apologies. I'm not very well versed in the various Quaker organizations and networks. I appreciate the eldering.
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u/RimwallBird Friend 6d ago
Berkeley Friends Church is affiliated with Friends United Meeting, not with any Conservative Friends body. The co-pastors there, Micah and Faith, do hold some sort of affiliate relationship with Ohio Yearly Meeting, a Conservative Friends body, but they do so as individuals — and the very fact that they draw paychecks for being pastors is a bit of a challenge to reconcile with our Conservative testimony against “hireling priests”.
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u/Impossible-Pace-6904 6d ago
I didn't know that there were any conservative meetings in California. Interesting that they would call it a church. Are you sure it is conservative? Looks like they are part of Pacific Yearly Meeting.
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u/RimwallBird Friend 6d ago
There used to be a Conservative Friends meeting in Pasadena, California, affiliated with Iowa (Conservative). It laid itself down (disbanded) a few decades back, after Iowa appointed a yearly meeting clerk who said he was not a member of the meeting and didn’t accept Christ as his personal savior. (This was rather a scandal in the whole Conservative community at that time.) At present, no, there is no Conservative Friends meeting in California — more’s the pity!
Berkeley Friends Church calls itself a church because it is set up as one. It has pastors, sermons, hymns, offering plates, etc. And it is affiliated with the Friends United Meeting (that is, the Gurneyite) community, not the Conservative (Wilburite) community. So far as I know, it has no formal relationship with Pacific Yearly Meeting, which is the region’s Friends General Conference-affiliated body. There is an entirely separate Berkeley Friends Meeting, which is affiliated with Pacific YM.
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u/Justalice1232 1d ago
That’s the key tho, it’s easier for me if it’s a non specific believe of God than no belief all together but that’s my opinion. That being said I believe we should be around every soul to help bring God to them.
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u/Only_Questions_25 6d ago
have no problem working with people who do, so long as we hold similar values.
For myself, I have realized I have a lot to gain spiritually from working with people who have different or opposing values. That is one of the challenges we are called to overcome as a consequence of listening to the Inward Light.
A Quaker meeting composed of individuals with aligned values risks becoming nothing more than a political action committee with potluck privileges.
The fear of cognitive dissonance is what engenders hate in our hearts and causes us to be alienated from ourselves, others and God.
Mainstream Christianity is focused on salvation through belief because that's the way Paul framed the religion. That historical context has created a bias in our discourse surrounding faith toward what people believe, what are the right beliefs, etc.
Quakerism is a shared spiritual practice by people who have different and sometimes opposing views. Letting go of this obsession with right belief and the human tendency to over identify with our own tribe is part of the personal transformation we are asked to commit to,
“For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? … And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others?” -- Matthew 5:46–47
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u/keithb Quaker 5d ago edited 5d ago
This Friend largely speaks my mind. Especially…
“For myself, I have realized I have a lot to gain spiritually from working with people who have different or opposing values. […]
A Quaker meeting composed [only] of individuals with aligned values risks becoming nothing more than a political action committee with potluck privileges.”
Yes, such a meeting would. Many liberal meetings seem to be very far down that road already.
Which is a missed opportunity in several ways. We get the rough edges and sharp corners rubbed off our wild notions by being tumbled along with others in the collective discernment of our meetings. But if everyone already agrees on everything before they come, we lose that.
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u/chesterburnet111 6d ago
It seems pretty pointless. If you don't believe in God then why bother. I don't believe in ghosts so I don't join paranormal groups. why would I?
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u/particularlyPlain Quaker (Wilburite) 7d ago
Absolutely anyone is welcome to worship with Friends. That being said, secular humanism (which sounds like what is being described by thee) is a new innovation in the Society of Friends. I'm sure that someone will post resources for more information regarding non-theist Friends.
This is fine, but do understand that Friends gather to encounter God. We wait to be taught by God and directly spoken to where most needful within ourselves. Ministry given in Friends meetings is understood to be the channeling of a message from God directly through the body of whomever is compelled to speak. It would do thee good to be open to being spoken to by the Lord. Friends meetings are entirely reliant on that openness, and not contributing to that openness could be detrimental to thy spiritual condition.
When Quakers began their witness to the world, they were very clear that they were not merely following ideals and doctrines set by others. The unity they found was from a direct experience with God, no one else. It then folows that It is inherently unquakerly to merely follow standards and ideals set by someone else which, if following secular humanism, would attribute the "Quaker values" to the broader Quaker body of membership and not God Himself. This is one of the direct conflict immediately observable if we are to take the quaker faith as a faith of direct experience and beholding of Christ.
Be mindful that the society did not start based on a following of loose ideals that human beings (George Fox, Robert Barclay, William Penn) have identified with as being Good. All works done by the early Quakers were ultimately done to glorify God with the works themselves being mere glimmers of light shining through the acts inspired by the true Light of Christ Jesus. “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.”
Quakers understood that we cannot do this alone. They understood humans to be completely broken from the moment of their first individual disobedience. We are prone to sin and in need of a savior and preserver, Christ Jesus. We are washed in his blood for past sins, and kept from sin through His inward dwelling and our own human cooperation with that illumination.
Above all, this reply is a plea for openness. Do not shut out God. Go to a meeting and allow thyself to be stilled. Answer the call of Christ should He reveal himself to thee.
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u/mjdau Quaker (Liberal) 6d ago
Thank you friend. Like OP may be, I'm a nontheist.
Answer the call of Christ should He reveal himself to thee
This is the problem, for me. I attend meeting with the hope that I might hear/feel/be moved by other, but so far, in 10 years, nothing has happened that isn't just my noisy neurons and self-talk. I'm a big dish pointed at the sky that is yet to receive anything.
Psalm 46:10 says "Be still and know that I am God", which sounds like a promise. I will keep finding stillness (in and out of meeting, coz I like it anyway), but so far my non-theism is based on that promise as yet being unfulfilled.
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u/RimwallBird Friend 6d ago
Early Friends were quite explicit about where to find God within you. They said, “You know the voice in your heart and conscience that reproves you when you do something that is hurtful to others, or disrespectful to God, or when you pass right by the needs of another when instead you could help them? That is God speaking within you. Listen to that, lower your barriers to that, let it search and reprove and instruct you, and the more you listen and the more attentive you are, the more clear its true being will become.”
We know that the early Friends said this, because we have multiple records.
Sometimes they added something along these lines: “That voice will also approve you, when you go beyond what is customary in doing good for others. And you may have already experienced this.”
I think everyone has experienced that voice. (The early Friends thought so, too.) The problem is that it’s like the proverbial treasure in the field. Most of us are like the farmer who just sees a dirty rock, and ignores it and goes on plowing. The jeweler recognizes a gemstone, covered with dirt and not yet cut into to reveal its facets, and so just looking like an ordinary rock, and so he goes and sells everything, and with the money, buys the field from the farmer. George Fox, the leading co-founder of our movement, got into arguments with skeptics who said, “Oh, that voice in the conscience? That’s just part of yourself. It’s not divine.” They were like the farmer.
You have to focus on it, brush away the dirt, dive into it, to know it in its essence. Doing this was George Fox’s great breakthrough, and for tens of thousands of converts to early Quakerism, it was the moment that transformed them. But I have seen for myself that plenty of people fear to make that dive and be transformed.
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u/particularlyPlain Quaker (Wilburite) 6d ago edited 6d ago
This reply is such a great explanation of identifying God's presence within according to Friends. This is actually going to be saved in my personal overall literary highlights, it reads a lot like a modernized version of Crisp's plain pathway. Thanks.
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u/RimwallBird Friend 6d ago
It isn’t often that I say this, and someone actually hears it. Thank you for this acknowledgment.
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u/Oooaaaaarrrrr 6d ago
"The voice in your heart and conscience" that you refer to could just be one's conscience right? How does one know this is God speaking?
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u/RimwallBird Friend 6d ago
My answer is contained in the comment you are responding to.
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u/Oooaaaaarrrrr 6d ago
I'm not seeing it. Could you respond directly to my question?
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u/RimwallBird Friend 6d ago
Sure. Let me try some different words, since the words I used before are opaque to you.
There is not just one voice in your heart and conscience. That is why it could not “just be one’s conscience.” Within your conscience, there is the voice that just knows what your mother would say if she only knew. You don’t have to reconstruct it or extrapolate from what she said about other things; you just know. And there is the voice that just knows what your boss would say. The voice that just knows what that self-righteous fellow down the street would say. And so forth. Your conscience contains a whole mob of such voices; it is not a unitary thing. And they are not the same voices. You know yourself that different people react differently.
The conscience is the chamber within the consciousness where we hear such voices. This is implicit in the very word — from scientia, that which we know, and con-, with. We know with Mom, because we have been that close from infancy onward. We know with the boss, because all day every day at work she or he is in the back of our minds. Elizabeth Bathurst, a memorable early Friend you may not have heard of, referred to the conscience as a “faculty”, which is to say, an ability of the mind. It is the faculty we use to sense what the rest of our community will expect and demand of us, even when the members of the community are not physically present. (Cf., for example, Lutheran bible scholar John H. Elliott, in his commentary on I Peter for the Anchor Bible series, p. 630. This is a standard understanding, not just a Quaker one, and certainly not just mine.)
But there is one other voice that this faculty can connect with, that just knows what the God that Jesus pointed to has to say, and what Christ has to say. The advantage of being familiar with Jesus’s descriptions of God, and with the Jesus himself whom the Gospels describe, is that these can help in recognizing that voice; but they are not the voice itself. The voice is not a God or Jesus we model in the conscience, based on what we have read and been taught; it is a presence that has been there all along, that we discover — quite often with a shock — when we go looking.
And as the charismatic early Friend Edward Burrough wrote in 1661,
…Conscience may be mis-led, and mis-guided, and mis-informed; and Conscience may be made of doing such and such things which the Lord doth not require; and there may be a Fear not taught of the Lord, nor received by the sence of his Presense, but only received into the Heart by the Precepts of men, Example of others, Custom of Times, or the like: and here the Conscience being not truly informed, nor guided by the Spirit of the Lord, there is a false Fear and Zealousness in the performing of such things which the Lord doth not require….
And that is why you do not find the early Friends saying that they must do this, or must not do that, because of conscience. They never said that. Truly. They had a very clear understanding of the difference between conscience and God.
But there are distinguishing marks of the voice of God within the conscience, apart from its resemblance to what we can see that Jesus was teaching, and apart from the fact that our hearts leap when we finally recognize it. As Robert Barclay wrote in his Apology (Props. V & VI §16), it never consents to evil or wickedness in any. That is not true of those other voices we can hear with our conscience; they are all voices of persons who could be bought or persuaded or cowed, and deep down we know it. And as George Fox said, “There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition.” Meaning, this one, alone, can do so. This one, alone, can see through all the subterfuge with which we try to conceal our selves even from ourselves, and speak truly to what we truly are. It alone can fill the place in our hearts that is empty so long as the world seems empty. It alone can minister effectively to our wounds, when we have been wrongly injured for doing what was good and kind. It alone can fully answer our hunger and thirst for righteousness. There is nothing else in the conscience that can do all that.
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u/Oooaaaaarrrrr 5d ago
I think there is what one might call a "higher morality", which goes beyond what we absorb from significant people in our lives. Christ is one example, but not the only one. And "God" isn't necessarily behind this.
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u/RimwallBird Friend 4d ago
With all due respect, the only way to know whether what I am saying, and what the early Friends were saying, and what traditional Friends have been saying these 380 years, is at all correct, to dive into it and see for oneself. Theorizing from a distance is not a test.
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u/particularlyPlain Quaker (Wilburite) 6d ago
I empathize with this a lot. I was not raised religious and even spent some years being adverse and anti-theist. I find it needful to add this detail to avoid seeming like this is something that was picked up in my youth or something conditioned into me by others. The reason I do so is to make it clear of my personal witness to the universal Gospel of Christ.
I came into the Quaker faith after having already been convinced of some divine being, although I did not yet align with the understanding that the divine being whom I was searching for was Christ. I despised Christianity or what I thought was Christianity even upon my first attendance of a Quaker meeting.
I'm really appreciative of thy note here. know that this distinct kind of faithfulness does not go unnoticed by God, it takes a lot of courage and strength to continue seeking and being open even when it feels like a time of famine from the Word.
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u/Oooaaaaarrrrr 6d ago
As Meister Eckhart wrote, "There is nothing in all creation so like God as stillness". This suggests that "God" is to be found in the stillness, the problem might be not going deep enough into the stillness to connect.
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6d ago
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u/rsofgeology Friend 6d ago
I am given to understand that Friends center right practice rather than right belief, regardless of tradition.
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u/RimwallBird Friend 6d ago
If you visit any of the web sites for Evangelical Friends yearly meetings, you will find that they devote a good deal of the space on those sites to lengthy declarations of right belief. If you check out their history, you will find that they have very firmly distanced themselves from Friends with beliefs they consider wrong.
There is some of that among FUM (Friends United Meeting) Friends as well, particularly in Africa and in Iowa.
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u/PeanutFunny093 6d ago
I am clerk of our Meeting, which is of the liberal unprogrammed tradition in the US. I make it clear when speaking that although I speak of my belief in Spirit, people should translate that word into whatever concept speaks to them, like Love or Truth. We call that “listening in tongues.” For me what’s important is that a person holds SOMETHING that unites us that transcends the individual. Otherwise we are a collection of self-interested egos and cannot engage in meaningful collective worship or discernment.
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u/Substantial_Ad1714 6d ago
It'll be no problem, but in some meetings youwill be harassed by atheists who think that you need to applagoze for you beliefs!
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u/BackgroundConfident7 Quaker (Liberal) 7d ago
https://nontheistquakers.org
There are non-theist Quakers, usually in the liberal branch. However, the greatest number of Quakers in the world are Christian (programmed/pastoral, conservative, some liberal).