All Blog Posts (252)

I am a member of culture A, which has practice X. While traveling to a foreign country I meet you, a member of culture B. I am shocked to find that you have practice Y. I convince you that practice X is much better than practice Y and then return home. You now want to participate in practice X, but all the forces of culture B are against you. I have given you no power to forsake the practices of your culture to take up the practices of mine.…

This came out of a chat with some Friends at the Meeting I attend.  They were encouraging me in the Bible reading I was doing and I mentioned that I had been reading Acts chapter 10 and that it was a favorite of mine.  I also mentioned that it was one Biblical account Early Friends used for rejecting water baptism.  Some of them went and read the passage and one asked me how it could be interpreted as a case against outward baptism.  And how did I know Early Friends thought so?  I responded…

And when they were come to Capernaum, they that received tribute money came to Peter, and said, Doth not your master pay tribute? He saith, Yes. And when he was come into the house, Jesus prevented him, saying, What thinkest thou, Simon? Of whom do the kings of the earth take custom or tribute? Of their own children, or of strangers? Peter saith unto him, Of strangers. Jesus saith unto him, Then are the children free. Notwithstanding, lest we should offend them, go thou to the…

Almost all Christians incorporate the reciting of the Lord’s Prayer into their worship services. After all, Jesus said, “This is how you should pray,” before speaking the words every believer knows so well. (Matt. 6: 9-13 NIV)

However, the preceding passage in Matthew illustrates the reason the Lord’s Prayer is necessary: “[W]hen you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words.” (Matt. 6:7) This admonition goes to…

The Quaker’s revolution was a movement to recover the experience of the power of God through the recovery of that gospel of power which had been lost “since the Apostles’ days.” -- Lewis Benson

In August 1976 at Haverford College, near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,…

I keep coming back to Moses, so much started there. God had established his covenant with Abraham, renewed it through Isaac and Jacob (or Israel). The descendants of Israel, slaves in Egypt, were being subjected to infanticide. Baby Moses caught the attention of Pharaoh's daughter, who adopted him. As an adult, Moses killed an Egyptian who was abusing one of the Israelites, and had to flee Egypt.

For 40 years Moses lived…

And why is the devil, and they that be of him, called a deceiver, because he is out of the truth, and would draw others from and out of the truth, and so destroy them both body and soul, but Christ destroyeth him (George Fox, Headley Manuscript, Friends House London, p. 311, catalogue item number 8, 82F).

In Steven Spielberg’s 1993 film Schindler’s List, there was a scene that has remained with…

Part three

In a recent blog post, For the Love of Stories: Imagining Quakerism Beyond Belief, The Armchair Theologian posits the need to return to the stories of our beginnings, to sit with these stories even if they are uncomfortable to our modern ideologies, to live these stories. This…

In a recent blog post, For the Love of Stories: Imagining Quakerism Beyond Belief, The Armchair Theologian posits the need to return to the stories of our beginnings, to sit with these stories even if they are uncomfortable to our modern ideologies, to live these stories. This advice he directs to Universalist, Christian, and Non-theist Friends. In this three part series, it is not my purpose to summarize his blog post. Part one considered the source of these…

In a recent blog post, For the Love of Stories: Imagining Quakerism Beyond Belief, The Armchair Theologian posits the need to return to the stories of our beginnings, to sit with these stories even if they are uncomfortable to our modern ideologies, to live these stories. This advice he directs to Universalist,…

Woe to the rebellious children, saith the LORD, that take counsel, but not of me; and that cover with a covering, but not of my spirit, that they may add sin to sin: (Isaiah 30:1)

In 1976, at Haverford College, Haverford, Pennsylvania, Lewis Benson gave a series of lectures entitled A New Foundation to Build On. The first of these lectures considers…

I have been thinking about the reports in the British press that the Quakers (ie in Britain) are considering 'dropping God'. While this was a somewhat exaggerated report, there is a strong strain of nontheism or atheism in UK Quakers. I find this difficult, as I joined Quakers not to become a better person or find like minded people or even to do good in the world. I joined only to look for God. This (adapted) parable came to mind:

A woman lost a valuable coin. She lit a light and…

The dove descending breaks the air

With flame of incandescent terror

Of which the tongues declare

The one discharge from sin and error.

The only hope, or else despair

Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre-

To be redeemed from fire by fire.

Who then devised the torment? Love.

Love is the unfamiliar Name

Behind the hands that wove

The intolerable shirt of flame

Which human power cannot remove.

We only live, only suspire

Consumed by either…

This first appeared on my blog, This Was The True Light.

If I could stand before you and speak of the things of God, what should I tell you? What would be on my heart, as it is upon my mind now, is this one question: “Why are you here?”

There could be many answers to that question, ranging from the flattering “We are here to hear what you have to say” to the more mundane “I love the food that appears at…

When I began to concentrate my studies on all the writings of George Fox more than forty years ago, it was during the period of Quaker history that might be called the “high tide” of the mystical interpretation of Quakerism. And when I had first encountered Fox’s Journal just fifty years ago, I was not a professing Christian. If I had any bias when I read the Journal for the first time, it was in the direction of hoping to find in Fox the “perennial philosophy” of the mystics. But as I…

Is anyone here doing this?:

https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/quakers/3/

There’s more to the New Testament story of the rich young man than the passage in Matthew 19:16-26 records. This additional information, when I recently learned it, explained many things to me and deepened my understanding of the episode.

In brief the story is: A rich young man asks Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life. After Jesus establishes that the young man has kept all the commandments, the man further inquires, “What do I still lack?”

“Go,”…

“Ellis, do you believe in…?” I have been asked this question concerning many different “objects of belief:” God, Jesus, scripture, etc. But when I was recently asked “Do you believe in the Devil?” as an admonition to look at scripture as our safeguard against the wiles of Satan, I deemed it appropriate to make a thorough explanation.…