Quakers Worship

The argument

Quakers emphasise a direct experience of God rather than ritual and ceremony. Quaker communal worship consists of silent waiting, with participants contributing as the spirit moves them. They emphasise the importance leading your own life well as an example to others (what a person does can be much clearer than what they say). Quakers do not practise any sacraments including baptism and Eucharist. They don't regard some activities as more sacred than others, nor do they believe that any particular ritual is needed to get in touch with God, so they do not believe in the sacraments practised in mainstream Christian churches. Instead of using 'holy' rituals, Quakers attempt to carry the sacred into every part of their lives. Quaker worship is very different to the worship of most Christian churches in that it doesn't follow a set liturgy or code of rules - a service has no structure, and no one leads it. Quakers do without a liturgy because they believe that worship happens when two or three people come together to worship - nothing more is needed. Quaker meetings for worship take place in meeting houses, not churches. These are simple buildings or rooms. They usually sit facing each other in a square or a circle. This helps them to be aware that they are a group together for worship, and puts everybody in a place of equal status.

Premises

Counter-arguments

The description is accurate for liberal unprogrammed Friends and inaccurate as an account of Quaker worship in general. The majority of Quakers worldwide worship in programmed meetings: led by a pastor, with prepared sermons, hymns, scripture readings and a planned order of service. Kenya has the largest Quaker population of any country and its meetings are pastoral and evangelical, as are many across Latin America, East Africa and parts of the United States. An entry stating that Quaker worship 'doesn't follow a set liturgy or code of rules — a service has no structure, and no one leads it' describes a minority of the world's Friends as though it described all of them. 'Unprogrammed' is also not the same as unstructured. A meeting for worship has a settled and carefully maintained form: a defined period, a manner of settling into and rising from the silence, an eldership that closes the meeting, and a discipline governing when and how spoken ministry may be offered — that it should arise from the silence, not be prepared in advance, and not be immediately answered. The meeting for worship for business has a further distinct form again, reaching decisions through a clerk discerning the sense of the meeting. Absence of liturgy is not absence of order. The reasoning given for rejecting sacraments is slightly off its usual ground. Friends do not typically hold that no activity is more sacred than another in the sense of lowering everything; the position generally offered is the reverse — that the sacramental principle extends to the whole of life, so that outward rites are unnecessary rather than that nothing is holy. That distinction changes the force of the claim considerably. Finally, 'worship happens when two or three people come together' quotes Matthew 18:20 without saying so, and Friends have also long held that worship may be offered alone; and the entry describes practice throughout, where the position it sits under asks what Quakers believe.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The description fits liberal unprogrammed Friends but not the Society generally: most Quakers worldwide worship in programmed meetings led by a pastor, with prepared sermons, hymns and a planned order of service — Kenya, with the largest Quaker population of any country, among them. [Rejecting P2] Unprogrammed is not unstructured: a meeting for worship has a settled form, including a defined period, a discipline governing when and how spoken ministry is offered, an eldership that closes it, and a distinct procedure for meeting for worship for business. The ground usually given for rejecting sacraments is also that the sacramental principle extends to all of life rather than that nothing is more sacred than anything else, and the entry describes practice where the position asks about belief.