May 22, 2013

In response to a recent blog post on the seepage of the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy into Quakerism, a Friend asked for examples. Here is one.

In this month’s “Communicator,” the yearly meeting’s newsletter, Indiana Yearly Meeting’s Superintendent, Doug…

May 19, 2013

May 16, 2013

Worth reading this week is a blog post by Rachel Held Evans entitled Is God’s Presence Limited to the Scripture?

The question is on her mind (her answer is no) because of a blog post by Tim Challies, a prominent evangelical, on The Boundaries of Evangelicalism.…

May 13, 2103

For a very long while the Bible was clearly an unfinished work.  I believe it is still. 

The books in the Hebrew Testament were written over several centuries, probably most before 500 BCE. The set of books we have today were in final form by about 100 BCE – that is a few decades before Jesus’s birth. The books in the New Testament were mostly written in…

This is the third in a series of posts about the Bible in which I want to say how and why I find the Bible essential for my spiritual life. (The first is here. The second is here.) I hope these musings may be useful to others.  The reflections in these posts about the Bible draw on material I presented at the…

May 3, 2013

I have been rummaging again in the Friends Journal archive. Access to back issues is a terrific benefit of a subscription. In the June 15, 1968 issue (page 296) I found this gem, “‘Amo’ or ‘Credo’?” by L. Willard Reynolds, then a pastor in Nebraska Yearly Meeting (FUM).  His piece–could have been written today–follows.

+++

 Robert Frost, in an…

April 29, 2013

This is the second in a series of posts about the Bible in which I want to say how and why I find the Bible essential for my spiritual life. (The first is here.) I hope these musings may be useful to others.  The reflections in these posts about the Bible draw on material I presented at the Midyear gathering of Iowa Yearly Meeting Conservative, and on reflections that Friends at that…

April 25, 2013

I had the great good fortune to be a presenter at Iowa Yearly Meeting's Midyear Gathering this year at Bear Creek Meetinghouse near Earlham, Iowa. I spoke on "The Bible in Our Midst." On her blog, LizOpp provides a lovely summary of what we talked about.  Jeff Kisling took a great photo of those gathered. …

April 23, 2013

This is the first in what I am imagining as a series of posts about the Bible in which I want to say how and why I find the Bible essential for my spiritual life. I hope these musings may be useful to others. I know the Bible has come more to divide Friends than hold us together, but I believe it could be useful in our finding greater unity among Friends. The reflections in…

April 22, 2013

Over and over, CNN and ABC, CBS, NBC (I am repelled from Fox) show me the face of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev: the slightly sad, uncreased face of a man-boy, crowned by an appealing mop of hair.  These channel-constructors of reality endlessly replay the events, lionize and scorn, and hint darkly at things that ought to have been done or ought now to be done in the name of safety.

I believe he did something terrible, but honestly I still want to hug him, still want to…

April 3, 2013

“Supreme Court Debates Same-Sex Marriage – Should We?”   This was the title of a recent blog post by Micah Bales that has stayed on my mind.  In it, he says he strongly supports moves towards legalization of same-sex marriage and yet harbors reservations.

Concerning his reservations, he says, “I recoil from the rights language that so many advocates of gay equality have…

March 28, 2013

A month ago, I featured here three paragraphs from a 1959 Friends Journal article by Howard Brinton entitled “The Place of Quakerism in Modern Christian Thought.” The three paragraphs concerned Brinton’s view of fundamentalism among Friends.

The blog post drew…

March 25, 2013

This is the fifth of a series of posts on John Punshon’s Reasons for Hope: The Future of the Friends Church. Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here. Part 3 is…

March 22, 2013

Fourth of a series of posts on John Punshon’s Reasons for Hope: The Future of the Friends Church. Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here. Part 3 is here.

John Punshon begins his…

March 21, 2013

Third of a series of posts on John Punshon’s Reasons for Hope: The Future of the Friends Church. Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here.

John Punshon’s Reasons for Hope is unabashedly an argument. Those who are uncomfortable with arguments may not warm to this book,…

March 19, 2013

Second of a series of posts on John Punshon’s Reasons for Hope: The Future of the Friends Church. Part 1 is here. 

In no way does John Punshon attempt to give a proper history of Quakers in the U.S. over the past two centuries, but he does see Quakerism – indeed any denomination – as being a dynamic movement that constantly has to adjust in response to new…

March 15, 2013

I’ve been re-reading John Punshon’s Reasons for Hope: The Faith and Future of the Friends Church (Friends United Press, 2001).  I read it quickly in 2001 when it came out, but now see I didn’t give it the care and attention it deserved. What’s more, I can’t find any indication there was much substantial discussion of it among Friends. I think it was and is worth our careful…

March 13, 2013     Important Update Below

I was struck recently – quite favorably – by something written by Colin Saxton, General Secretary of Friends United Meeting (FUM).  Unity was his topic:

“For all of our principled moral and doctrinal stands, however, I keep wondering, “Why is there almost never a principled stand for unity, at least among those who are followers of Christ?” In fact, in the…

February 27, 2013

Fundamentalism Among Quakers — Brinton’s View stimulated a number of comments. Some of them were posted on QuakerQuaker, and some on Facebook, after Friends Journal…

Perhaps the dateline should read “January 10, 1959″ because, rummaging around in the Friends Journal archives, I stumbled across a piece by Howard H. Brinton entitled “The Place of Quakerism in Modern Christian Thought.” It was…