At a recent small gathering of Friends, the subject of Quaker testimonies was raised. Modern liberal Friends formulate these "fruits of the spirit" as Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Community and Equality (SPICE). This formulation, as LA Quaker pointed out a few years ago, is Howard Brinton's, from 1943. Previous to that, Quaker Books of Discipline and Faith and Practice had a hodgepodge of advices (the word "testimony," prior to Brinton, was reserved for the Peace Testimony).
There's nothing wrong with the content of these formulated testimonies. They are all full of virtuous and productive models... but there's something missing from the fact of this formulation—the fact of their being, in fact, formulaic.
Formulas make remembering things easy. They give us a pattern to organize ourselves. They also give a sense of completeness which may or may not be justified.
The point of these testimonies, to me, is that they are the product of a faithful (dedicated) life in a certain way: they summarize statements from three centuries of Friends who live their life into their faith, and in living those lives, discovered these important things.
When we adopt these formulated testimonies, we are not necessarily growing and living in a way that will add to these fruits. We are not listening for new instructions, but settling for the perfectly good-sounding instructions already offered to us. And this, I think, is not what George Fox et al. had in mind.
This is the metaphor that occurred to me in this meeting: We need a house. And so we cut down trees, and if they are good wood, they make the beams of a good house. But they are no longer living wood. We can't live out under the trees, not entirely. Maybe in L.A. you could, but we need houses here in Minnesota. But we also need to be sure when we cut down that timber to build that house, that we replant and tend the grove that wood came from. Because sooner or later the beetles will come and infest the old wood, and then where will you be?
How does Brinton's formulation give us an excuse to avoid the living wood? Would we know good wood outside that formulation if we saw it? And how about those old beams in our house? Have we inspected them for rot or beetles lately?
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8 comments:
Adding to your allegory is that people often outgrow their house and have to add to it. What if Quakers can't grow because they have decided their house is too small to have any more children? What if what is required is a "new", at least to Quakers, testimony requiring the cutting down of more trees for another wing? What if it's time to serve our neighbor by restoring him? Where does the "R" go?
I suppose you are already aware that Brinton’s list of testimonies was not “Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Community and Equality (SPICE”) but Community, Equality, Simplicity and Harmony (viz., Friends for 300 years, 1952). The SPICE formulation arose some time in the 1990s.
If this is indeed a subject that interests you, let me recommend John Punshon’s booklet Testimony and Tradition (UK, 1990). Speaking of London Yearly Meeting, he writes,
“The written form of the Discipline throughout the eighteenth century was called the Book of Extracts. This was a collection of short passages (extracts) from the epistles and minutes of Yearly Meetings which contained directions relative to Friends’ conduct and the life of the church. ... Arranged quite arbitrarily according to the alphabet, it runs from Affirmations and Appeals ... to Wills, Women’s Meetings and Youth.... It often does not answer the questions a different age wishes to put to it, and there is certainly no one set of entries under the heading ‘Testimonies’. ...
“There are fewer references to particular testimonies than in our present book. The ones mentioned are against bearing arms (which we still have), observing days (that is, festivals like Christmas, or thinking of Sunday as a sabbath), mixed marriages (that is, against union with non-Quakers) and defrauding the revenue (which we still have). Plainly there is much advice about other matters, but the word ‘testimony’ is not used in those connexions. ...
“We can see from the book that the word ‘testimony’ in our sense is a shortening of a longer form of words arranged round the notion of branches of one central testimony. Thus we get phrases like ‘any branch’ or ‘the several branches’ or ‘in all its branches’. The trunk from which the branches come is single and entire, it is ‘Our Christian Testimony’, or in other words, the Christian faith in its Quaker understanding. Other words are also used in these combinations, notably ‘truth’, as in ‘our Testimony to the great truths of the Christian religion’, or a fulmination against practices which ‘lay waste the testimony of truth and cause the offence of the cross to cease.’
“Thus, there are matters that could be called theological or doctrinal, as well as ethical, which can be the subject of testimony, like not ordaining ministers, or baptizing in water, or holding that good works are necessary to justification. They may not preoccupy this Yearly Meeting at this time, but elsewhere in the Quaker world the preservation of the ‘Distinctives’ is of considerable importance. The concept of testimony is less than comprehensive unless due weight is give to them.”
I think this passage, though lengthy, is pertinent at several levels. One which I would like to point out here is the shift from the “our Christian testimony” [singular] of the classical age to the “Quaker testimonies” [plural] of the present. This shift is comparable to a shift from monotheism to polytheism: it sets up plural loyalties that can sometimes come into conflict. The original Friends commitment was not to interpret and balance and reconcile the demands of multiple testimonies, but to keep the eye single and focused on Christ, and walk accordingly.
Thanks Marshall. It should be noted that the original link I made (to a 2009 blog post by LAQuaker), points not to Friends for 300 years, but to the earlier guide to Quaker Practice. LAQuaker says of this, "Howard surveyed this jumble of advices and distilled them into four distinct and memorable social testimonies—simplicity, peace, community, equality—and one personal testimony (integrity)." I don't have the originals of either in front of me, so I can't tell if LAQuaker is paraphrasing or quoting here, but in any case, he's pointing to a different book, and he does note that of the later SPICE formulation, Brinton distinguishes four social and one personal.
I like the Punshon quote, and will see if I can get a copy. I think it says something similar to what I am saying, though you/he and I differ about the specific source of that singular trunk. But the point of plural loyalties is an good one. My further question is whether "hyphenated" loyalties are truly divided, or are pointing towards a common unnameable source. I personally lean strongly towards the latter explanation. To me the divided loyalties this distinction points to are between the "cut timber" of human formulations and the "living wood" of a sense of spiritual engagement and presence.
It's interesting to me to see Community in Brinton's list. Friends who were children in First Day School in the 80s and 90s have told me that they were taught 4 testimonies, while children now are taught 6 (SPICES, the second S is Stewardship).
The list my friends say they were taught does not spell a word all nice and neat: peace, truth, simplicity, and equality, and so "community" is regarded as a "new" one (or "testimony creep" similar to the "feature creep" one sees in designing a product/program/plan).
"Peace, Equality, Simplicity and Truth" makes a perfectly good and appropriate word, yes?
Forrest: Yes, but shouldn't it be Peace, Equality, Truth and Simplicity? My dog thinks so.
I too appreciate Marshall's contrast of "our testimony" with "the testimonies." It is an important distinction that had been mostly lost on me before.
Eric Moon from Berkeley had an article about this in Friends Journal, which was pushed online 5/31. (But you know that, because you commented there in July!)
http://www.friendsjournal.org/categorically-not-the-testimonies/
The comment thread on that article reawakened just in the last 4 days...
As someone new to Conservative Friends (Ohio Yearly Meeting), I think Marshall's post from OYM Friends. Their book of discipline specifically mentions testimonies only in reference to not taking oaths and in being against all war.
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