Quakers Do What! Why?

My second book in the Quaker Quicks series from Christian Alternative Books is coming out soon – I have some early copies to sign and sell, as pictured – so I wanted to say a bit about this book. What is it and why did I write it?

A box of copies of ‘Quakers Do What! Why?’

At the core of this book is a series of questions. I’d been collecting questions for a while – all my life, probably, because I’ve been a Quaker all along and from the time I was at school I was trying to explain what I was on about and where I went on Sundays. In this book I try to answer the most common questions, and some of the most difficult. There are questions in here which I’m practised at answering: I didn’t have much problem writing an answer to “What’s this about Quakers who don’t believe in God?” because I’ve already answered it so many times. It’s not a simple answer, but it’s not especially difficult for me at this point. Actually, the hardest answer to write was for “Do Quakers have structures like parishes?” – the initial answer is ‘yes’, but when I tried to say slightly more, I had to try and cover all the possible options, and Quakers around the world have lots of different structures. 

At the impersonal level, I thought it would be useful to have a recent and brief book which addresses these issues – partly for Quakers who might find it useful as a reference work, but mainly for people who are new to Quakers or want to find out more. There’s a chapter on Quaker weddings and funerals, for example, since that’s a time when people often encounter Quakers for the first time. There are chapters on Quaker worship and things which are sometimes mentioned (but not usually properly explained) when Quakers get into the news, like the way we make decisions. 

More personally, I started writing this book from a sense of frustration. I like answering questions, and I’ll be happy to keep repeating these answers in conversation – but there isn’t always time to give a full answer. I can and do refer people to other sources – for some of the topics in this book, specific Quaker groups have already produced good leaflets or videos or other materials – but sometimes there’s not a single good source for follow-up reading, or the best descriptions are aimed at people who already know about how Quakers do things. So I wrote this book so I have given the full answer somewhere, and if I give a brief answer I know there’s a full version easily accessible as well.

You can preorder this book from Christian Alternative Books or any other bookshop of your choice. Or if you’d like a personally signed copy, email me at rhiannon.grant@woodbrooke.org.uk with your details and I can arrange to post you one (and ask if you’d like to buy Telling the Truth about God or Between Boat and Shore at the same time). There are only 25 in the first box, so get in touch now!

Clarifying

At the end of Telling the Truth about God, I suggest that Quakers – and maybe other people who struggle with these issues around religious experience and how we express it, but are committed to remaining a community – should “try, cry, and clarify”. The idea is that you have to say something, but it will fall short in some ways and you or others may be hurt by that, but then you try and work out what went wrong so that you can try again. In this post, I want to explore some more practical things which might be meant by ‘clarify’. If you’ve got to that stage, what can you actually do?

Listen to find out where the questions are.

Is there a misunderstanding? Is someone else in the conversation using the same words or metaphors, but in a very different way? (‘Lamb of God’ might be a gentle, rural image; it might suggest a vicious killing; or call for mint sauce!) Are you making a reference that not everyone gets?

Try telling your stories about the words you use.

By telling your personal story about a word – where you learned it and how you use it, what historical and cultural touchstones it brings to mind for you – it is sometimes possible to help others see the word in your way. Even if they can’t use it themselves (especially if it reminds them of very different cultural and historical connotations), knowing why the word is significant to you can help a lot.

Try a different word from the same framework.

If you’ve tried expressing your theology – here understood very broadly, your understand of God and the world – in one way, but it didn’t seem to work, you could try using different terminology. Within the Christian theological framework, for example, I hear Quakers switching between Christ and Spirit (perhaps to the confusion or annoyance of careful Trinitarians!).

Try a different framework.

Not everyone will feel comfortable doing this, but some people who have experience with more than one faith tradition feel able to switch between ways of thinking: to redescribe God Within as the Inner Buddha Nature, for example. This sort of move is encouraged by some of the lists of apparent synonyms which I discuss in Telling the Truth about God, and it fits with some versions of the Quaker universal approach to truth.

Try inventing a new word (or repurposing an old one).

This might not be an approach for every day, but sometimes it’s possible to coin a new phrase, pull a new word out of thin air, or take a noun and verb it, or something similar. If the words you have all seem to lead to confusion, clarity is sometimes achievable by making up something fresh. The trick is usually to use it: use it often and consistently so that others can learn the pattern you have in mind for it.

Listen some more.

Even when you’ve improved the clarity and all involved in the conversation have a greater understanding of each other, there’s bound to be something else to work on. Taking time in silence can help – but silence can’t be the last word. In my experience, we will eventually be led to try again.

Seeking and answering spiritual questions

In her work on spiritual autobiographies, Gil Skidmore has identified stages which writers typically describe. One of these is a stage in which the spiritual search coalesces around a particular question.

Gil and I recently ran a course together in which we looked at spiritual autobiographies, blogging, and other ways of sharing. As a writing exercise, I asked people to consider writing a tweet (or some other short statement!) in which they compared themselves to one of the historical writers Gil had described, or fitted their own spiritual life into the stages she identified. For one of my answers, I wrote:

My spiritual seeking centred on two questions. Firstly, why is it so hard to talk about God? Secondly, if it’s so hard to talk about God, how does everyone know he’s a He?

Writing out the questions like this made me realise that, although it’s taken me perhaps fifteen or twenty years, I have now answered them. The answer to the second question I would summarise with the single word ‘kyriarchy‘. The answer to the first question I explored at full length in my book, Telling the Truth about God. There are definitely more things to say about both of these questions, and many related issues, but over the past few years I’ve become gradually more and more relaxed about them. I’m still interested, still happy to have these conversations, but the urgent drive I once felt to start those conversations has faded.

I also realised recently that an answer I’ve had for a long time, ‘I’m a writer’, has finally met the right questions. It’s no longer the answer to future-focussed questions like, ‘what do you want to be when you grow up?’ or ‘what do you aspire to be?’; no longer the answer to counter-factual questions like ‘what would you do if you weren’t doing this job?’ or ‘if you had a million dollars how would you spend your time?’; no longer the answer to inner-world questions like ‘what is your favourite hobby?’ or ‘what is your vocation?’ Instead, it’s a real answer to here-and-now question, ‘what do you do?’ and I have the ISBNs and Goodreads profile to prove it.

This does lead to the question: what next? I have some ideas – actually, I have a list of 17 ideas for things I want to write, including more novels, more books about Quakers, more academic articles about how multiple religious belonging works, and more poetry. I also know what some of the next questions are going to be, although I don’t know which ones will end up being the next stage of my spiritual journey. Some which are in the air for me include:

• How will my own journey of multiple religious involvement develop? Will I drop or come back to Buddhism, especially the Community of Interbeing? Will my connection with Druidy, especially OBOD, weaken or strengthen as I approach the end of my Ovate work? Are there other things I want to explore? How will my relationship with Quakerism develop as I spend more time teaching and writing about it? (And now working on the revision of my community’s core text?)
• How will my commitments to social justice, climate justice, and resisting climate collapse develop? At the moment these are areas where I read and retweet and think and sometimes discuss or facilitate discussion but rarely write or teach in my own voice. (Unless writing a novel full of LGBTQ+ characters counts.) For a little while I thought I might end up being much more politically active – but then I moved and still haven’t found my place in local campaigning. I also haven’t found a specific topic or piece of work where I feel there’s both leading to act and space to make a difference, but I am looking for that. I feel like I’m tuned in and waiting for a signal to find out what I need to do.
• What are my questions? In a meta way perhaps this is the biggest question!

What questions, if any, have guided different stages of your spiritual life? Do you have any questions for me? (Would you like to ask them on has-existed-for-years-but-suddenly-reached-my-social-networks social media site Curious Cat?)

Q is for Queer Theory

I was about to say that lots of people ask me questions when they hear that I have studied queer theory, but it’s not quite true. Some people do. Other people just look at me for a minute and then change the subject.

People who do ask questions often begin with something like, “do they really call it that?” Well, yes, it’s genuinely in the title of courses and indeed my degree. It is a provocative name, and I know many people are uncomfortable with the use of the term ‘queer’. The thinking behind its use here has, I think, two main strands. Firstly, using an insult to refer to yourself takes the sting out of it; this process is called ‘reclaiming’. Pagans, especially women, who call themselves witches are doing some of this; religious groups, such as Quakers or Methodists, who take on originally offensive or sarcastic nicknames are also doing this. It turns the power of the word to your advantage – with the disadvantage that a lot of people are going to raise their eyebrows and say things like, “do they [whoever they are!] really call it that?”

The second strand is the need for a clear but not too specific term. ‘Gay’, although sometimes used for all homosexuals or even everyone who experiences same-sex attraction, is more often associated with men – as ‘lesbian’ is with women. Terms like ‘homosexual’ don’t make sense when you’ve noticed the existence of people outside the gender binary – what’s ‘same-sex’ if you’re intersex or third-gendered? Abbreviations – LGBTQIA… – build up into long lists and can never include everyone. ‘Queer’ – people whose sexualities are oppressed under the use of offensive terms like ‘queer’ – can include, as someone memorably put it in questioning me about my course, “gays and stuff”, with a very wide scope on ‘stuff’. Polyamory, kink, BDSM, asexuality, heteroqueer, and a whole array of gender identities can be included under the suggestive-but-not-definitive term ‘queer’.

What does queer theory do, then? Two main things: it theorises queerness and it offers queer readings. Queerness – whatever that is – has often been medicalised and sexuality and gender treated reductively (I refer you to whatever debate about ‘gay genes’ or the existence of ‘female sexual dysfunction’ is happening at the moment). Working from a perspective which takes the experiences of queer people seriously, queer theory can open up new ways of looking at these questions.

Similarly, queer readings of texts – literary works, TV shows, archaeological evidence, whatever – offers insights from contemporary and historical queer experience. Again, this can open up new perspectives on all kinds of questions: the relationships between characters in a novel, the burial of a body with ambiguous gender markers, the ways that gay marriage is depicted in advertising.

Lots of people ask me whether queer theory is really called that, and what it’s about. Sadly, I don’t think anyone’s ever asked me why I’d want to study queer theory or what makes it a useful subject – things I do get asked about theology and philosophy in particular. That’s sad because I’d have a lot to say about how enriching I found it as a discipline.

M is for Multiple Religious Belonging

Sometimes I wish I had a shorter, neater term for this concept! ‘Polyreligiosity’, perhaps. Anyway,  what I am interested in here is the situation some people find themselves in whereby they belong to more than one religion. This situation raises obvious questions. What does it mean to belong, and how does that vary between traditions? What counts as a ‘religion’ for this purpose? What are you supposed to put on forms where you are asked to tick one box and presented with a list in which you identify with two or more options?

It also raises some less obvious questions, such as: Who can assess whether ‘multiple belonging’ is really taking place? How do other members of the religions involved react? What are the potential advantages and dangers of belonging, or trying to belong, to more than one religious tradition at once? How should sociologists, theologians, and philosophers talk differently about religion if multiple religious belonging is possible? Why are some pairs of traditions apparently more common and/or claiming more scholarly attention than others? Is belonging to more than one religious tradition like speaking more than one language, or like supporting more than one political party, or like supporting more than one football club, or like enjoying both Star Trek  and Star Wars, or like being bisexual, or none of these, or something else?

One intuition some people have about these questions is that being involved in more than one religion is either confusing, or dangerous, in the sense that mixing the belief-claims or practices of two religions might destroy their cohesiveness and/or be a kind of ‘pick-and-mix’ in which only the nice bits are included and the harder parts – to do with death, sin, or changes needed to the believer’s lifestyle – are ignored. Sometimes people also feel that the situation of having more than one religious identity is different depending how you got there: that being raised in a family with more than one tradition (a Christian parent and a Jewish parent, for example) is different to trying to learn a new tradition on top of your old one as an adult. Others suggest that learning a new tradition to the level which would make it possible to experiment with multiple belonging involves a lot of scholarly work – learning a language in which to read ancient scriptures, for example, even if many people who grew up in that tradition do not have this language.

As you may be able to tell, I am at a stage with this issue where I am collecting lots of questions and not yet finding many answers! I think some of the answers might lie in the question about what religion is like – when we think about religion, what do we think are the closest comparisons? In my previous work (and blog posts) I’ve written about religion as like language, drawing on Lindbeck’s work in this direction; and others, notably Kathryn Tanner, have written about religion as like culture. However, there are also other analogies: is religion like gender, or ethnicity, or fandom, for example?

Q is for… Questions

There’s nothing Quakers like quite like a question. Previously on this blog I’ve tried to suggest some of my answers, even when the post had a question at its core, but in this post I want to share some of the Quaker or related questions for which I do not presently have any answers.

What is the nature of the divine? Can we know?

Is it possible or sustainable for me to be a Quaker and an academic or even a Quaker academic?

How can we inform and enthuse Friends about our central work, making them feel involved with it and excited by it without threatening their attachment to local and area meetings?

Will our membership go Wooosh?

How can we help nominations committees to give those they ask to consider service an accurate idea of what that service involves?

Is sharing Unwilling, Unable with my non-Quaker friends an acceptable form of outreach?

Can you learn to tell those Friends who answer email from those who don’t at a glance, or at least before you’ve waited a week and tried again and eventually resorted to the phone?

What makes Yearly Meeting such a dramatically different experience to other Business Meetings? Is it really spiritually richer or do I just like it better?

Why do I find tea and coffee after Meeting such an awkward experience?

If I dyed my hair grey, would Friends stop saying how much they like seeing ‘young people like you’ at Meeting/on committees/not being drunken drug-taking layabouts or whatever it is they think other people my age are doing?

Can we expand our appeal? What make my friend who would be a Quaker if he wanted to go to church at all decide to come to Quaker events?

Can we celebrate our diversity and openness – our gay Friends, straight Friends, non-theist Friends, Christocentric Friends, questioning Friends, young Friends, older Friends, middle aged Friends, just retired Friends, agnostic Friends – while also pushing ourselves to more fully accept Friends who are not white, not middle class, not as well-educated, not dressed the way we expect?

How can I most fully use those few talents I have in the service of the Society? What do I do with those talents – like asking awkward questions – which the Society may need but doesn’t really want?