Friends Study Conference
on
The Nature and Laws of Our Spiritual Life1
Dear Friend,
The Connecticut Valley Association of Friends, at its Fall Meeting in 1942, encouraged the concern of Northampton Monthly meeting for a small Friends study conference on The Nature and Laws of our Spiritual Life. Shortly before that the commission on spiritual reconstruction of the All-Friends Study Conference at Wilmington, Ohio, had expressed their interest in this concern and their hope that it would be followed up.
The frame of reference, as approved by the C.V.A., covers four main points:
1. The heritage of the Society of Friends in its group religious life, especially its mode of worship. A European psychologist, now teaching at a great American university, tells the story of his visit to the Swarthmore Race Relations Institute some years ago, and of the test he carried out on members of the different racial groups of the U.S. represented there. Somewhat to his surprise, all turned out to be alike in exhibiting an inveterate tendency to run away from themselves. There were a few individual exceptions. On inquiry, all of these were discovered to be members of old Quaker families, a result wholly unexpected and unlooked for! Such testimony from a disinterested observer should stir in us much more than complacent self-congratulation—it should light a flame of divine curiosity to understand better why our way of life produces this effect upon those brought up in it. If we fail to understand, we may fail also to preserve and pass on this way of life when the rush of change and collapse threatens our tradition. Even now are we not falling short of our full efficacy in commending it to the harassed contemporary world, which sorely needs to learn how to live with itself and how to be quiet and know that God Is?
2. The development of the individual inner life. Nogroup can maintain its spiritual level unless its members know what to “do with their solitariness”, when they have entered their closet and shut their door. Yet how much instruction have we ever received in this most difficult art? Do we in turn know how to advise those who come to us asking how to do it? We know of some, who joined the Society of Friends hoping for this very thing and being disappointed, turned to the East for guidance. This is a challenge hard to ignore.
3. The pastoral function of the Friends Meeting. A query for Meetings of Ministers and Elders reads: “Do you exercise a loving and watchful care over the young people of your meeting? Do you encourage or foster their gifts, and manifest an earnest desire that, through the operation of the Spirit of Christ, they may themselves come to a vital religious experience?” (Faith and Practice of New England Yearly Meeting of Friends, 1930, p. 76)
How far do the weighty members of our meetings go in this “loving and watchful care” over the young, who surely must be understood to include all who are young in spiritual experience of whatever age they may be? With the passing of the old custom of family visitation, the established channel for direct dealing with individuals has passed, too; have we substituted adequate, if less formal methods for it, or are we tacitly leaving the cure of souls to the spontaneous and sporadic ministrations of those who have what we call a natural gift for it? What do we do to cultivate our own share of this natural gift? What help and training do we give to meeting workers in this most important of all their tasks?
For a Religious Society which claims to have abolished, not the priesthood, but the laity, and especially for those sections of it which dispense even with a specialized pastorate, these are sobering questions.
4. Training in pastoral psychology is coming more and more to the fore among our sister bodies in the Christian church who maintain professional pastors. We cannot afford to lag behind in availing ourselves of all the knowledge obtainable concerning the perils of the soul. Problems of personality are fundamentally problems of religious adjustment either of the person himself or of his parents or of the society in which he lives. As such they are the concern and responsibility of his religious group and chiefly of its spiritually mature leaders. Have we the right to shirk our responsibility because it is difficult, and because we know so little, and because we might do the wrong thing? These objections can be urged against undertaking any deep-reaching human relationship; who would accept even the responsibility of parenthood if he let himself be deterred by its difficulty, his own ignorance and the serious danger of mishandling the child?
It would be foolish, indeed, to expect Friends in general to become amateur psychiatrists (though not more foolish than to expect medical men of infantile spirituality to become healers of deep-seated spiritual ills.) But they can and should obtain an insight into the inseparable interrelation of sick bodies, sick minds and sick souls. The last war brought us face to face with the manifold human maladjustments of a fast changing era. The present war, with its disintegration of the old order, is already multiplying our tasks and will certainly do so at an ever increasing rate. In child guidance and teaching, in student work, in reconstruction and rehabilitation at home and abroad, in the life of our CPS Camps and of C.O.’s in detached service (especially in mental hospitals) everywhere the challenge meets us.
Opportunities enough for considering these concerns exist if we can make use of them: where Meeting workers come together, where young men and women train for work under the A.F.S.C., wherever Friends gather to consider the implications of their message and their way of life. We propose to make a modest beginning by gathering some twenty to twenty-five persons at the John Woolman Memorial House, at Mt. Holly, New Jersey2, over the Easter week-end, April 23 to 26. Some will come with an individual concern for one or more aspects of the program, others will bring us the combined thought of small groups who have been studying along these lines. The program will give adequate time for practice of group worship as well as discussion of it, also for individual meditation and quiet conversation. Expenses will be kept low, and we are asked to take our share in the serving and clearing of meals. Inquiries should be addressed to: Elined Prys Kotschnig, 58 Kensington Avenue, Northampton, Massachusetts. As our numbers have to be limited both on account of accommodation and the purpose of our gathering, early replies are desirable. Detailed programs will be available later.
Signed:
Elined Kotschnig, Secretary
Mary Champney, Northampton
Elizabeth T. Butterworth, Hartford
Phebe F. Perry, Westerly
1. This call to Friends for “a study conference” to be held in 1943 includes the four points which Elined later referred to as “the Manifesto.”
2. Conference site was changed later to Haddonfield Friends Meeting in New Jersey.