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Quaker Culture vs. Quaker Faith

I’ve gotten into an interesting exchange HERE on Chris M’s mysteriously titled blog “Tables, Chairs and Oaken Chests.” I’ll have to look closer to see how he came to that title. Anyway, Chris’s article holds up Samuel Caldwell’s well-known 1998 address at Pendle Hill, and I take a couple of jabs at it. Below is [...]

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Belief or Commitment

I know who you are. I have read the innermost secrets of your heart.

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What is “God” anyway…

I was reading a post here, a lovely and painful description of convincement and felt called to write a few lines. It seems to be it all comes down to the Quaker practice of openness. God is only a word. We live in a universe that is following some sort of order, balance, cooperative motion, [...]

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Welcome!

Nontheistfriends.org presents the work of Friends (Quakers) who are more concerned with the natural than the supernatural. Some of us understand “God” as a symbol of human values and some of us avoid the concept while accepting it as significant to others. We differ greatly in our religious experience and in the meaning we give religious terms.

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Why Not Join the Unitarians?

Why Not Join the Unitarians? That is one of the questions most frequently asked when I tell people about being a nontheist Friend. The answer that comes to mind first has nothing to do with being of a nontheist bent. I grew up in the Religious Society of Friends, literally and figuratively. My parents joined [...]

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Notes for “Chanticleer’s Call: Religion as a Naturalist Views It”

These notes are keyed to the paragraphs in my chapter, �Chanticleer�s Call: Religion As A Naturalist Views It,� in Godless for God�s Sake: Nontheism in Contemporary Quakerism. The original text will not be posted on this website until March 2007 so as not to interfere with book sales as we attempt to recover the costs. [...]

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A liberal Quaker rant against conservative-leaning liberal Quakerism

I’ve been bouncing around the world of Quaker blogs, as I sometimes do, and once again, I find that world filled with Friends who are disappointed with the liberalism of liberal Quakerism, who want it to become more conservative, which is mostly to say more narrowly defined and exclusive. Of course, they don’t want it [...]

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Keeping an open mind

By Peter Arnold There may seem to be a tendency in medical research to regard the body as a machine whose unpleasant symptoms indicate faulty parts, most doctors know that many of these symptoms will fade away as the body repairs itself. Ones general practitioner may keep an open mind on homeopathy, acupuncture, herbalism and [...]

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Seeking a Religion of Daily Life

For some Quakers, religion is primarily about daily lives and living as well as possible in ones meeting community and in the wider world. This is Quakerism with an emphasis on our lives rather than an emphasis on talk about these lives. Standing on a rock in Firbank Fell in 1652, George Fox called out, [...]

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Quaker in a Material World

From Quaker Theology, #8 Spring-Summer 2003

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Quakers and the Environment: Three Options

Quakers live in and are part of the environment. Since the early days they followed the conventional practice of separating their faith from the world around them. Later, with the growth of the environmental movement, a second option emerged, that of spiritualizing nature. Then, with the development of nontheism among Friends, naturalizing religion became an [...]

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