Discerning Christ's Authority

I was pleased to read this post by Matt Hisrich, published today on Earlham School of Religion's blog, Learning and Leading. In his post, Matt observes the historical tension between centralized structures and decentralized models for decision-making and governance. He makes the connection that these tensions are equally present in secular government as they are in Quaker polity. Matt concludes by posing the worthy question:

Do different yearly meetings lean in different directions when it comes to centralized or decentralized authority, and is there a connection between the structure of authority and yearly and monthly meeting health?

These are serious questions. We live in a historical moment where centralized authority is increasingly coming under scrutiny. In the United States, and in the wider world, top-down structures of governance are under siege. Everywhere, the mantra seems to be, "down with big government."

Perhaps unsurprisingly, this decentralizing impulse goes beyond the secular sphere. In the Christian Church, denominational authority structures are widely questioned. As we move into the post-modern age, Christians no longer want to live under centralized governance structures, but prefer grassroots, congregational polity, where the local church is given primary authority over questions of faith and practice.

Many Meetings in the Liberal-unprogrammed tradition of Friends go so far as to shift authority away from the community entirely. In some modern-day Quaker congregations, the individual is the final authority on almost all matters; the Meeting rarely intervenes in the lives of its members except in the case of gross disruption or criminal behavior.

Michael Sheeran, a Jesuit scholar, wrote an excellent book on the history and present-day practice of Quaker decision-making, Beyond Majority Rule. In detailing the history of Friends business practice, he explains that in the very early Friends movement, most authority for discernment rested with individuals. There was a belief that each person could do a good job - perhaps even an infallible job - of discerning Christ's word to them. However, after a number of disastrous, public blunders - particularly the Nayler Incident - Friends began to emphasize the importance of corporate discernment. The local church community became the primary authority for discerning God's will.

Sheeran goes on to detail that, as persecution increased and Friends across England had urgent need to coordinate their response on the national level, authority shifted quickly to a centralized Yearly Meeting structure. Within a few decades, the national body, centralized in London, became the final arbiter of decisions for Friends in Britain.

Friends in America followed London's lead, and viewed the Yearly Meeting as the highest authority in decision-making. If a local Monthly Meeting was out of unity with a decision of the Yearly Meeting, the "superior body" (the Yearly Meeting) would be authorized to discipline the "subordinate Meeting." This understanding of church structure and levels of authority seems to have continued until the 20th century, when the more liberal Yearly Meetings began to adopt a congregational polity. The Orthodox and Evangelical Yearly Meetings, however, have largely maintained the older sense of the Yearly Meeting as a centralized authority, governing the faith and practice of its constituent Monthly Meetings.

While Jesus Christ, as we know him through his Holy Spirit, is our ultimate authority as the Church, this does not solve the question of how that sovereign authority is received and interpreted by fallible human beings. What person or group do we ultimately trust to discern Christ's teaching for us today? For the Ranters of George Fox's day, the individual was the ultimate judge of God's will. For some today, it is the local Meeting. For others, the ultimate authority for discerning Christ's guidance is the Yearly Meeting.

I believe that all sources of discernment - individual, congregational and movement-wide, should be considered and taken seriously. Just as spouses submit to one another in marriage, I believe that we should submit to one another as members of the Body of Christ. Individuals should submit to the discernment of the local church, and the local church should submit to the wider body of Friends to which it belongs. And yet the higher bodies should take seriously the concerns of their constituent individuals and Meetings. When Christ speaks through the individual or through a local Meeting, the wider Church should submit itself to Christ's ministry.

A healthy community of faith is characterized by ongoing dialogue between its more centralized and the more grassroots levels. If we stop listening to the grassroots, we easily miss out on the fresh, prophetic word that Christ wants to deliver to our often stubborn fellowships. On the other hand, if we do not submit ourselves to the wider body, we easily veer off course into heresy or fanaticism. We must remember that we need each other, that we are not whole until we wait together on Christ to teach us.

That is the heart of authority as understood by Friends: Jesus Christ is present to teach us, today. With Jesus as the living Head of his Church, all of us - individuals, local Meetings, and wider structures, will hold together in him. Even when we become confused and fall into division, if we are steadfast in waiting on him, he will lead us into even greater depths of truth, love and unity.

What is Happening Here?

Yesterday, the March for Life descended on my neighborhood. Living just blocks from the Capitol Building, we see a lot of protests come through, and we generally do not pay much attention to any of them. However, I did take notice of the March for Life. It is a Roman Catholic youth rally that takes place every year around this time, which buses in thousands of children - mostly high school and middle school aged - to protest the continued legality of abortion in the United States. The stated goal of this rally is to end all access to abortion, regardless of circumstances. The March for Life defines human life as beginning at fertilization of the egg by sperm.

I remembered that last year's march had been quite a spectacle, with high schoolers running amok and Roman Catholic priests and monks clogging the streets, temporarily turning the capitol grounds into a carnival of Roman religiosity. I have been getting into photography lately, and it seemed like a good opportunity to take a few photographs. So, with the motivation of capturing some interesting moments on film, I spent an hour and a half observing the 2010 March for Life.

The epicenter of the demonstration was in front of the Supreme Court, where in 1973 the Roe vs Wade decision greatly eased restrictions on abortions in the United States. There, Roman Catholic youth and clergy gathered, chanting prayers, lifting up images of Mary, and a variety of anti-abortion placards. While I was present, there were only a few hundred anti-abortion protesters stationed there. The rest of the many thousands of Roman Catholic youth were still rallying on the Mall, on the opposite side of the Capitol Building. Soon, they would march en masse to the Supreme Court.

In the face of the overwhelming numbers of Roman Catholic youth and clergy, a few dozen counter-protesters also gathered in front of the seat of the nation's highest judicial authority. Most of them seemed to be college-age, some of them holding iconic NOW "Keep Abortion Legal" signs, others holding hand-made signs identifying themselves as political radicals.

For my part, I was just there to capture images, not wade into the intense feelings of the demonstrators. This was naïve on my part. Despite my task-oriented mindset, I could not help but be affected by what I witnessed through the viewfinder of my camera. More important than what I saw was what I felt: The air was charged with conflict, energy, youthful enthusiasm and braggadocio. I myself did not know how to feel. Several times I prayed, asking the Lord, "What is happening here?" What did all this mean?

I still do not fully understand what I experienced yesterday - watching hyped-up young people chant slogans and prayers, with little distinction made between the two. I felt the shock of hearing the name of my Lord and Savior being used by so many people as a battle cry, as a talisman to be brandished at those on the other side of a contentious public policy issue. I saw thousands upon thousands of those who claim to be serving the One whom I serve relating in a way that felt so alien to the self-sacrificial way of Jesus.

Protests are often like this. I myself have participated in a number of demonstrations during my lifetime that have been possessed of a self-righteous spirit - an assurance that we were right, and "they" were deluded and evil. I am no longer convinced that these types of events, and the spiritual condition that they flow out of, are grounded in the Spirit of Jesus Christ.

Granted that abortion is a symptom of the sin and self-destructive brokenness of our age, how are we called to address the groaning creation that cries out for redemption? How are we as disciples of the Lord Jesus to live out our call to be salt and light in the world, bringing healing to the nations? How can we be a source of comfort to a world that is suffering in slavery to sin? How can we cooperate with the Holy Spirit as it reveals our fallen condition and calls us to more radiant and abundant life in Christ?

As we consider these questions, it is important to remember that one of the most ancient names for Satan is the Accuser. One of the primary traits of the forces of darkness is that they seek to condemn us in our sin, rather than liberating us from it. We must take care to recognize the insidious spirit of the Accuser when it emerges: It is the voice of judgment and condemnation, damning others in their sins, rather than loving them and seeking their redemption in Christ. When we stand as witnesses for righteousness, I pray that we might speak and act under the guidance of the cleansing and liberating Spirit of Jesus.

Being Publishers of Truth

"Let all nations hear the sound by word or writing. Spare no place, spare no tongue, nor pen; but be obedient to the Lord God: go through the work; be valiant for the truth upon earth..." - George Fox

The early Quakers were serious about preaching the gospel. In the first decades of the Friends movement, the message that "Christ is
come to teach his people himself" was carried out from the Quaker strongholds in northern England to other parts of the British Isles, America, various kingdoms on the continent of Europe, and even into the Muslim world. Young men and women emerged from the fields and towns where they had grown up and, compelled by Christ's call in their hearts, journeyed to distant lands whose languages they did not know.

Wherever they went, the early Quaker missionaries announced the arrival of the King of kings, who overthrew all earthly pretenders to the Throne. They called attention to the Lord's living presence through prophetic signs - such as burning their musical instruments, walking naked in the streets, and heaping burning coals on top of their heads. They preached the good news wherever they could find an audience - whether in the open air, in a crowded bar, or in a government-run church building where they faced beatings and imprisonment for interrupting the state-sanctioned preacher.

One of the most powerful ways in which the early evangelists bore witness to Christ's resurrection presence was through the use of pamphlets. During the turbulent years following Parliament's execution of King Charles I, England was awash in written propaganda from a variety of religious and political perspectives. Print media was new then, and the early Friends took advantage of it to spread the word of God-with-us.

Today, we as Friends in the English-speaking world are, in many ways, experiencing a drastically different context from the Valiant Sixty. We are not, at the moment, living in the kind of intense societal upheaval that characterized the first decades of the Friends movement; and we are not, in general, facing any real persecution for our faith. Perhaps relatedly, we are not - as a general rule - particularly committed to personal evangelism, publicly sharing our faith with the wider culture, or taking risky, prophetic action to witness to the love of Jesus Christ that we have experienced.

How might we today be called to, as Fox put it, "let all nations hear the [gospel] by word or writing"? What might it mean to share the good news of Christ's literal, teaching presence, both within our own culture, and in the wider world? The Quaker community today is overwhelmingly concentrated in areas of historical British influence - Kenya, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand - with Central and South America being the only places where there are significant concentrations of Friends without an historic connection to the British Empire. Why have we as Friends failed to reach beyond the English cultural sphere?

Is the good news that Jesus can be personally known, loved and obeyed unique to British colonial cultures? God forbid! Our faith as Friends is rooted in the belief that Christ's presence and power is universal, transcending all national, linguistic and cultural boundaries. How, then, can we demonstrate the practical truth of our faith? How can we share this good, universal news of immediate relationship with Christ, both as individuals and as communities?

As different as our circumstances may be from that of the early Friends, we do have at least one thing in common: We are living in an age of new communications technology. Just as the printing press was a revolutionary breakthrough in the seventeenth century, we are experiencing a similarly game-changing technological shift in the twenty-first. How is God calling us to use the internet, and other forms of electronic communication, to advance the gospel in our day?

There are signs that some Friends are experimenting with these new media. QuakerQuaker.org is an example of creative use of the online blogging community to draw together Friends and seekers to exchange ideas and develop relationships that can serve the Lord. Another recent, if still embryonic initiative is QuakerMaps.com - which, if further developed and cared for, could serve as a modest platform for outreach to non-Quaker seekers, as well as existing Friends. There are other sites that provide information about the Quaker faith, such as QuakerInfo.org, QuakerInfo.com, and Quaker.org. All of these sites are useful and have the potential to reach many Friends and seekers in the English-speaking world. But what about the other 95% of the world's people?

There are some signs of hope. For example, Spanish Quaker Luís Pizarro recently began publishing a blog, Cuaquero.org, that is intended to share the gospel message with the people of Spain. Yet, there is still so much that remains to be done. What if we placed an emphasis on training ourselves to be ambassadors to other cultures, learning another language and familiarizing ourselves with another culture? What if we made it a priority to share the gospel message online in every major language, providing resources for learning about Friends' beliefs, practice, and how to set up a new worship group? Surely Friends already have the capacity to do this sort of outreach in dozens of languages. Are we ready to take the time and effort to live into Christ's call to preach the good news to all people? Do we still believe that we have received a message worth sharing?