Week 4: The Quakers, Pearl Harbor, and the Hubble Telescope

John Proctor: I may speak my heart, I think!

Reverend Parris: What, are we Quakers?  We are not Quakers here yet, Mr. Proctor.

-from The Crucible, by Arthur Miller

I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends.

-John 15:15

 

This week the Churchgoing Atheist project took quite a turn.  It involved a weekend trip to Philadelphia to meet some friends, and I wasn’t sure I’d want to find a church and attend services right before a five-hour drive home.  There was also a fair likelihood I’d be hung over.  So without planning for any church service, I went to Pennsylvania—a state that was founded for the sake of religious freedom.

I found myself walking the same streets that Ben Franklin had walked, wandering around Old City, wondering if he, too, had been tipsy on those streets.  And so I was already in this historical frame of mind, impressed with the aura of cobblestone and brick, when I realized my hotel sits right next to a Quaker meeting house from the early 1800s.  I knew little about the Quakers: their official name is the Society of Friends, they are most prevalent in southeastern Pennsylvania, and their meetings consist of sitting in a room and waiting for someone to be moved to speak.  That’s all I knew, so I could not pass up the opportunity to attend the Sunday morning meeting, especially in a historic building in charming Old Philadelphia.

This was also the first week of the project that I went somewhere completely foreign to me—I had no idea what to expect.  Luckily, they’re used to visitors since it’s one of the oldest meeting houses; they have brochures and books, like many historical landmarks.  I was a bit early, so I introduced myself to a gentleman setting things up, and asked if I might join them as a visitor.  Unlike my previous weeks, this didn’t feel like I was spying for some reason.  I was just a curious tourist, and they welcomed me. 

The room itself was nearly as I’d imagined: just four walls and benches facing each other to form a square.  The very layout emphasized the equality of all members of the Society of Friends.  There is no clergy or leader of any kind; volunteers from the membership make committees to handle nuts-and-bolts issues, but the essence of their belief system is that all people have equal access to wisdom.  I cannot help but compare this to most other Christian churches, in which the ordained minister or priest stands at the front, often elevated.  Surely this setup is practical, but it is also symbolic.  It creates a didactic tone, in which the seated listeners absorb wisdom from a standing fount of knowledge.  I’m sure this is an ancient religious practice, and I should point out that it’s a psychological tool.  It helps to establish the credibility and authority of the religious leader, which would help to perpetuate that leader’s beliefs.

So I meditated.  The meeting had begun, and nobody was moved to speak at first.  There were some thirty people filling the benches, most with their eyes closed, and so I tried to join in.  For me, meditation means trying to sit still.  It is torturous.  Searching for inner peace causes me anxiety and physical pain.  I am unable to sit still due to some combination of immaturity, lack of practice, and an irresistible compulsion to stretch and pop my knuckles and other joints.  Even writing that sentence makes me need to pop.  (Cure, anyone?  Please!)  So I thought, if this is what the Friends’ meetings will be like, count me out.  I was not quaking because I was not moved by the spirit.  I was not moved by the spirit, I conclude, because there is no spirit.

But I soon became moved.  A man rose to speak.  He said that he’s troubled by the approach of December 7^th.  He was a small man, but his voice was powerful, slow, emphatic, and I was fixed on his words.  He described being a young man during World War II, moving supplies to a car factory that had been retooled to make airplane engines for the British.  He reminded us that the war helped get the U.S. out of the Great Depression, and while the Europeans were fighting we were making money before 1941. We had no commerce with Hitler’s Germany, he said, but it is ironic that we did make money selling scrap metal to the Japanese.  He ended with this statement: I hope this country soon learns which end is up.  He needed say no more.  The weight of his statement was palpable.  Rarely, if ever, have I felt the power of an unspoken implication hang in a room.  I took his implication as follows: the US is in its 8^th year of war in Afghanistan.  We are fighting an enemy that we had helped to create and supply during the Afghans’ war against the Soviets—just like how in Iraq we fought an enemy we had helped create and train during the Iraqis’ war against the Iranians.  More broadly, we should resist violence and militarism rather than glorify them.  The passionate anti-war beliefs of Quakers were evident in this man, and I was indeed moved.

More meditating, and this time, there was more to think about.  Time passed.  I was thankful when another person rose to speak.  I regret that I can only paraphrase him, for his words were beautiful and articulate.  He began with a topic I’d recently heard about myself: the Hubble telescope can look at a patch of sky that has no stars in it and no light.  After collecting data for 10 days, a patch of sky the size of a grain of sand will yield dozens of new galaxies (http://hubblesite.org/hubble_discoveries/).  He said his first thought upon reading this was “wasteful God.”  Why would he make so much universe?  But then, he thought, the universe is like falling in love.  As you begin to, you realize there is more to a person than you can ever know.  You can continue to learn about a person forever, nearly getting lost in infinity.  Learning about the universe has transformed his conception of God, forcing him to question what Jesus’s role is, and how his words can carry meaning in light of everything we now know about the universe.  And he concluded that Jesus had a simple message: love one another as Jesus loved us.  Learning about the universe doesn’t negate that, but complements it.  Both lead to grace.

Honestly, I found the speaker’s words inspirational.  Never have I seen this kind of sincere questioning and exposure of a person’s beliefs in a church.  I appreciate the Quakers’ acceptance of skepticism and their willingness to challenge conventional understandings of God in light of things like war and science.  Certainly this happens in other churches, but it is laid bare in the Friends’ meetings by average people.  Still, I must question: what is grace?  What does that word mean?  If Jesus’s words lead to love, are we defining grace as love?  Or happiness?  Or peace?  Or beauty?  Any of those words would be more meaningful to me than “grace.”  Many times have I heard, “May the grace of the lord Jesus Christ be with you forever and always,” or some similar platitude, without attempting to understand what that means.  Still, I admire this man’s eloquent words, and his awe at the majesty of the universe is something I share.  We need not see a divine creator’s hand in it, though.

I tried to meditate more, fidgeting less as I now had even more to think about.  I wasn’t really meditating.  In between thinking about war and the universe, I recalled some events from last night’s intoxicated blur.  Many Sunday mornings in college I thought about how I should be in church to somehow atone for the previous night’s revels.  Guilt is powerful, and churches serve to both create it and alleviate it.  But as an atheist, I seek no divine forgiveness, and I do not need church to somehow cancel out mistakes.  That was no different this morning, but still…quiet reflection—specifically about how one might live better—has much value.  I believe this is why many people go to church.  They don’t necessarily believe in a personal God that can hear their prayers and spends his time judging their every move.  Rather, they acknowledge that church is a valuable tool, a mechanism by which they can understand their own mistakes and make right in the future.  My mistakes?  Well, choosing Bud Light rather than a slightly more expensive option.  But seriously, wastefulness, selfishness, and immaturity.  But I knew all this already.  It doesn’t hurt to sit and think about it occasionally, but we must recognize that it is not God we offend, nor is there some good and evil balance up there in the sky that will tilt this way or that.  Rather, actions must be measured according to the joy or harm they bring to living things in this life.  This I believe, and I intend to pursue an understanding of morality in the weeks to come.

Finally meditating, now, I was nearly startled when the last person rose to speak.  She explained that she had spent a week serving on a jury, debating whether or not to convict a young man of a crime.  She had gotten to know 11 other jurors well, each of which came from a different background and religious persuasion from her own.  They had grown to understand and respect each others’ viewpoints, and the process had made her a better person.  She took to heart the words of the judge, to think of each person in the case as though he/she was a member of their own families.  The speaker said she came to a new understanding of the meaning of empathy. 

Jesus said, “I was in prison, and you visited me” (Matthew 25).  The Quakers have long been advocates for justice and compassion in the criminal justice system, and the speaker’s words reminded me of Jesus’s.  How many Christians hear this message?  How many Christians who believe life is sacred actually visit prisoners, or even treat them with dignity and compassion?  I cannot say, but I can say that in 20+ years of attending church, I cannot recall a single instance of mission work in prisons.  I certainly never would have gone. 

The meeting soon ended, and I made my way home, highly impressed.  This group of people showed that the Quaker traditions of nonviolence, social justice, and open-mindedness are alive and well.  I felt I had been sitting in a room of thinkers—that is not to say that thinkers do not exist in all churches, but rather that the Quaker church places such high value on individual thought that it forms the entire foundation for the service, whereas in other religions, thinking takes a back seat to liturgy, music, unison responses, and other traditions.  (Perhaps this overgeneralization will be confirmed or challenged in upcoming weeks and months.)  So to conclude, I return to John Proctor’s line from The Crucible that I cite in the opening.  As a Puritan, Proctor is scolded for speaking his heart.  Quakers were instrumental in founding Pennsylvania as a haven of religious tolerance because they believe that reasonable people must be allowed to speak their hearts.  The authoritarian character Parris criticizes Proctor and the Quakers for the very belief that should be most lauded, a belief essential for democracy, essential to a tolerant society.  I may be an atheist, but I write this blog because I feel compelled to speak my heart, as the Quakers do.