Re: When is a Quaker a Quaker?




Marshall Massey wrote:

>As far as I know, *all* Friends meetings and churches hold members,
>attenders, first-time visitors, people who have never visited, and
>people in the world in general, to the same infallible standard:
>Truth. George Fox went about England decrying dishonesties in the
>marketplace as he saw them practiced by merchants who were not
>Quaker. Meetings today decry the dishonesties of the George W. Bush
>regime, regardless of the fact that the W. regime is not Quaker.
>
>The significant difference between members and attenders is not
>that Friends do not hold them to the same standards, but that members
>hold *themselves* more tightly to those standards. In applying for
>membership, they offer themselves up to those standards (and this is
>one of the things that good clearness committees for membership do
>watch for). Attenders do not necessarily do the same -- a lot of
>them just come for the silence, or for the peace testimony.

"Do not necessarily" is not the same as "do not." Some clearly do,
and by doing so they refute any claims that are based upon only
members holding themselves more tightly to those standards. If
holding yourself to a standard is the defining aspect of being a
Quaker, and some attenders choose to hold themselves to the standard,
then those particular attenders are Quakers.

>In applying for membership, members also shoulder a new potential
>penalty for violating those standards: they may be disowned as
>members, which means having their membership publicly discontinued.
>Attenders do not offer themselves up to have their membership
>discontinued, because they have no membership that can be
>discontinued.

This assumes a meeting where a distinction is made between members
and non-members when it comes to penalties. There are churches
where every Christian - member, attender, and visitor - is expected
to hold themselves to the exact same standard and which apply the
exact same penalty to all. This refutes any claims that are based
upon a meeting holding members more tightly to certain standards.

>In other words (and I can attest to this from personal
>experience) the (one of the, to be precise) actual meeting
>where I actually attend holds me to the exact same
>standards whether I am an attender or a member....
>
>Does that meeting say it may discontinue your membership
>if you do not live up to those standards?

They don't apply "discontinue your membership" as the sole
penalty to anyone. They follow the biblical standard:

Matthew, Chaper 18, verses 15-17

"If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault,
just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have
won your brother over.

But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that
'every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three
witnesses.'

If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he
refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a
pagan or a tax collector.

Nowhere in the passage above is there a mention of anything that
would apply to a member and not to an attender. That's because
the distinction between members and attenders is hundreds of
years old, not thousands, and thus is not in the Bible.

>It has [extra] leverage over those who want to be members

The biblical passage above does not, and thus no church which
follows the biblical method has any "extra leverage" over members.

>And the class of attenders may, even today, include people who
>were formerly members, but whose membership was discontinued
>for cause.

Churches that follow the biblical rules don't do things that way.
They apply the standards and the penalties equally to all believers.


.

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