The cult of Quakerism?

Did that get your attention?  I’ll explain.

A while back, a Friend rose at Meeting to share a distressing story.  His teenaged daughter had invited a close friend of hers to accompany her to Meeting for Worship.  The parents of this young person’s friend told the invited party that under no circumstances was he to attend a Quaker “service,” that Quakerism is a “cult.”  The friend who shared this story was very upset by this, mainly because it showed such a lack of understanding and tolerance.

Well, as Morpheus said, “Welcome to the real world.”

There’s lots of misconceptions and misunderstandings about Quakers out there in the non-Quaker world, as most Friends know by now.  Some people are surprised that “we” still exist.  A couple years ago, at a workshop for teachers up in New Brunswick (NJ), we had to do one of those God-awful “ice breaker” activities, and the woman I was paired with was absolutely thrilled (it almost seemed excessively so, but it was kind of endearing) that she’d “finally met a real Quaker.”  She had a zillion questions, which was very cool, and she said, more than once, “You’re my first Quaker,” which was a little… interesting.  At lunch, she introduced me to her colleague as “Dave: he’s a Quaker!” 

While it was fun to share, I did feel like a bit of a freak.

As I’ve noted here before, I imagine that most Friends are used to being confused with the Amish (at least around these parts), with the guy on the cereal box (he’s not Plain, by the way), with the Shakers (“You’re the guys who make that cool furniture!”), and so on.  This confusion is fine by me: it gives me a chance to share, so I don’t mind.  I like the idea that people are interested, at least.   It gives me a chance to tell folks that the Religious Society of Friends is an active, breathing, busy, living faith community.

But a cult?

Well, there are no huge pictures of George Fox or John Woolman in our Meeting.  We don’t chant their names.  No pictures of Jesus, either, though it seems, as best I can tell, that most of our Meeting’s members (or at least half) would call themselves Christian as well as Quaker.   We don’t give up all our wordly goods to the Meeting, and we don’t shun all others for a life only amongst Friends.

And then there is that nagging question – usually brought up by non-believers, usually on the blogs I used to frequent – about whether Christianity itself is indeed a “cult.”  Some folks just love throwing that word around.  It’s soooo perjorative, and handy, too.  Well,  Jesus did indeed command his followers to leave everything they had (and everyone, too) to follow him.  That sounds like one of the defining characteristics of a cult to me.  He was, if nothing else, a charismatic leader.  And so on.

So I guess my question is…

So what?

In a book I recently finished (and reviewed), evangelical and “ordinary radical” Shane Claiborne says this:

Anytime we make a radical conversion, there is the danger that people will say we are being brainwashed or are joining a cult.  The truth is everyone in our culture has been deeply polluted by the noise and garbage of this world, and we all need to be washed clean.  We need minds that are renewed and uncluttered so they are free to dream again.  And let us not forget that the word cult comes from the same root from which we get our word culture.  So while we are not waiting for a UFO landing, preparing for a mass suicide, or stockpiling weapons, we are forming an alternative culture.  It is not simply a counterculture reacting to the dominant culture…  We are forming a new culture.  And in many ways, it is broader and more sustainable, much less “tribal”  than nationalism and much less dangerous than the cult of civil religion that is infecting the church.  And the imperial cult seems to be suspiciously closer to those infectious cults that stockpile weapons and await their suicidal fate while pretentiously fortifying themselves against any truth that would set them free from the illusions that are killing them – those cults who continue to offer blood sacrifices to Mammon and Violence on the altars of desert sand and jungle soil…

Well, can I hear an “a-men“?

When Claiborne says this, he’s talking about those who have become part of his “new monaticism,” or about when folks join his spiritual community in Philadelphia, The Simple Way, I guess, but to me, he could be speaking of Quakerism, too.  I found this passage within days of hearing the anecdote that opened this post.  (Coincidence?)  It spoke to my condition, especially when I was first convinced.  To actually believe in and then put into practice, for example, the Testimonies of peace, integrity, simplicity, and equality would be a truly radical act.  I am trying desperately to practice this more and more each day, with some life-changing results.

To have the community of Friends do this would cause a ripple. 

To be able to spread that practice could cause a revolution.  A for-real one.

So, does that make me a cultist?  Maybe it does. 

I can live with that.

Better that than confusing me with that poser on the oatmeal box.