Transition as Normative: British Quakerism as Liquid Religion

This article presents a consideration of the ways in which current Quaker belief and practice exemplify the condition identified by Zygmunt Bauman as liquid modernity. After a brief overview of Bauman’s thesis, we describe recent patterns of believing within British Quakerism within its socio-cultural context. While belief has been cast as marginal by scholars of this group, with the creation of habitus centred on behavioural codes or values narratives among participants, the way of believing within British Quakerism has rather unusual significance. An ortho-credence of ‘perhapsness’ maintains an approach to believing that is forever ‘towards’, with any truth considered to be solely personal, partial or provisional. From a rationalist liberal faith position, British Quakers have become cautious about theological truth claims that appear final or complete. They accept the principle of continuing revelation, a progressivist theology in which transition becomes sociologically normative. While wider Christianity may be in transition, British Quakers see perpetual modulation (liquifaction) of belief and practice as both logical and faithful.     

Those Who Leave and Those Who Feel Left: The Complexity of Quaker Disaffiliation

Unprogrammed Friends (Quakers) in Britain provide an interesting counter-example within the sociology of religion, particularly with regard to their patterns of believing and belonging. Due to its permissive belief patterns and conformist behavioural patterns, the group has been described in terms of a 'double-culture', as a group which behaves as both sect and denomination in alternate spheres of church life. The paper reports on a study of British Quakers who have resigned their Membership in the last five years. Quakers leave either because they are 'de-convinced' or because, in a group which places emphasis on continuing revelation, they are grieving the loss of what has passed before. A third type resigns because they feel the group is too slow to support new revelation. In these latter two cases, the disaffiliated feel left by the group. This typology is placed across the concept of the double-culture to give six types of ex-Quaker and to show how conservative or progressive thinking in each sphere of the double-culture may lead to different patterns of resistance to resignation from the group. Recent work on the Quaker group as an 'implicit sect' is briefly considered to examine how this new thinking affects the typology of church-leavers. It is suggested that the extended typology of the disaffiliated challenges conceptions of the disaffiliated as a single group and that it could be usefully employed in studying other religious groups.     

Research note: implicit conservatism in liberal religion: British Quakers as an ‘uncertain sect’

This research note takes Steve Bruce's analysis of secularisation within liberal religious groups and applies it to British Quakerism, noted for its permissiveness towards theology. It contends that Bruce has failed to allow for a conservative ‘behavioural creed’ operating to maintain conformity and elements of certainty within liberal groups. It also argues that the emphasis on a shared concept of ‘towards’ or ‘perhaps’ theology within the group, while appearing liberal, makes demands on its members which are more conformist and sectarian than may have at first appeared and which may help safeguard the future of the group. It is not that Bruce's analysis of liberal groups is necessarily wrong, but that ‘liberal’ groups may be less liberal than they first appear.