Sunday, August 14, 2011

A Quaker Crossroads

A lot of us gathered in Room 12 today, to discuss Marge Abbott's new Pendle Hill pamphlet #402 entitled Christianity and the Inner Life.

We had about a two hour discussion, with every chair occupied, John Wish standing.

When it was my turn to speak, I expressed enthusiasm for Marge's terminology, as her pamphlet mentions Buddhist Quakers, Jewish Quakers and Christian Quakers.

That's enough of a design pattern to free at least a few boat loads of Quakers from the Christian brand if they so wish ("we do" I hear them say).

We may have lots of forward branching outside the domain of Christendom (which is like a DNS domain name, lots of web sites).

For me, it's like those Elven ships leaving Middle Earth towards the end of Lord of the Rings.

And it's not like we don't embrace Jesus as one of us. At least a few of Jesus's best Friends aren't Christian.