tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-57486261370303487902024-02-18T20:12:46.695-08:00Jon R. KershnerTheology, Quakers and Sundry SubjectsJon R Kershnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15847745773028620147noreply@blogger.comBlogger16125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5748626137030348790.post-49871815102145026712016-05-02T21:19:00.000-07:002016-05-02T21:20:12.009-07:00The Prophet as Agent of God's Time<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqeXvE03YTilIUaGarhjPh2unljNRwG5LlIdbTV3V655LPRXKa27CHELfr1SzljbosoX3gefVDo3kIoGo5mEKT2RJfkunqzzt0-rCrbv-l-IwVOv9qVcte3aAWsmJXwQnzNuvzIHn4H86C/s1600/pexels-photo-90891-medium.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqeXvE03YTilIUaGarhjPh2unljNRwG5LlIdbTV3V655LPRXKa27CHELfr1SzljbosoX3gefVDo3kIoGo5mEKT2RJfkunqzzt0-rCrbv-l-IwVOv9qVcte3aAWsmJXwQnzNuvzIHn4H86C/s400/pexels-photo-90891-medium.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<b>[A version of this was delivered as part of <a href="http://barclaycollege.edu/" target="_blank">Barclay College's</a> "Spiritual Emphasis Week"]</b><br />
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In the <a href="http://jonrkershner.blogspot.com/2016/04/john-woolman-1720-1772-and-apocalypse.html#more" target="_blank">last post</a> I discussed one way that time and eternity function in theology and in lives of faith in a direct experience of the indwelling Christ. These two posts address how a realizing eschatology changes the possibilities for spiritual transformation in the present, how God’s eternal promises are invading our lives at every moment, an apocalypse of the heart. Christ lives in us in His fullness. He dwells in our hearts in his completion, not as parceled out and obscured but as God’s revelation to the world. Christ resides in us as the crucified one, the resurrected one, and the glorified one. Christ is not only crucified, Christ is not only resurrected, Christ is not only glorified by the Father. The salvific and eschatological promises of the past and the future are directed incarnationally into every time and every moment.<br />
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Crucified, resurrected and glorified.<br />
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And the paradox of paradoxes is that Christ is all three eternally and dwells in us as this eternal presence. And according to Second Peter, we are “partakers” of this nature made incarnate in us (2 Peter 1:4).<br />
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What I want to say in this post is that the saints, the ministers, the faithful prophets of God, are those who see time for what it is. They are those who see the reality of time and are commissioned by God to proclaim the meaning of time and to embody the fullness of time. These are prophets. Prophets are those who can see God’s will and can call our brothers and sisters to a more living understanding of our place in God’s world, of our relationship to the fulfillment of God’s presence.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCm5oXIwaW49IkBQMWjTTJRs7WxRryQGHQvnmL-WL2THzNqaPaCeGh9RbCbtDDGroEREZS46pxL5STUlpxFAPGm6q-U97jJk3OzvmyRp1-ojlb4hgNjHW7vNglPTO0lXeO0bQAZd6pHOom/s1600/Washington_Allston_-_Elijah_in_the_Desert_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCm5oXIwaW49IkBQMWjTTJRs7WxRryQGHQvnmL-WL2THzNqaPaCeGh9RbCbtDDGroEREZS46pxL5STUlpxFAPGm6q-U97jJk3OzvmyRp1-ojlb4hgNjHW7vNglPTO0lXeO0bQAZd6pHOom/s320/Washington_Allston_-_Elijah_in_the_Desert_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg" width="320" /></a>Throughout history God has anointed men and women as prophets and ministers to witness to God’s unrelenting commitment to the world. Faithful ministers like Elijah, who in his dark moment of despair and desperation fled to a cave so he could die in peace and be done with the whole messy business. God would not let him go. “What are you doing here, Elijah. Go back the way you came, there is work to do. Do not be afraid and do not despair, for I will never be left without a witness."<br />
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And people like Jeremiah who knew they are unsuited for the task and unqualified for the job (Jeremiah 1). “I am too young God, I don’t sound very good when I speak.” And God says, “Don’t say I am too young, and don’t say I can’t speak. You must go wherever I tell you and I will be with you to rescue you.”<br />
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Or people like Martin Luther, the father of the Protestant Reformation. Luther was dragged in front of a court and accused of heresy for daring to say that salvation is by grace alone and with the threat of prison in front of him he refused to recant and declared, “Here I stand, I can do no other.”<br />
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If you think that God’s prophets are limited to bygone days and ages and have no relevance to the world today I want to remind you that God will never be left without a witness. That God will always reserve for himself men and women whose actions testify to God’s absolute commitment to love the whole world, every nook and cranny. A world that as often as not turns its back on that love, but that nonetheless hungers for it and groans to be reconciled with Christ as the first-fruits of a new creation realizing on earth.<br />
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It is no easy thing to categorize someone as a prophet. But I know it when I see it. When we talk about prophets and the prophetic we are pointing to the biblical tradition in which God works through human beings to point others to the activity of the Spirit, to abandon human strivings and to turn to God. A prophet is a truth teller more than a fore-teller. A prophet is someone who gives voice to their experience of God as it addresses the social and political <i>status quo</i> with the counter-cultural values of God’s Kingdom. A prophet keeps God’s time in a world distracted by meaningless time.<br />
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<a href="http://jonrkershner.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-theology-of-john-woolman-part-1-of-6.html" target="_blank">John Woolman’s</a> spiritual awakening in his early 20s coincided with his experience of being called to ministry. He wrote in his Journal,<br />
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<i><span style="font-size: large;">“From one month to another [I felt] love and tenderness [increase], and my mind was more strongly engaged for the good of my fellow creatures, [and I found it too strong… to be much longer confined to my own breast].”</span></i></div>
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Woolman felt God’s prophetic commissioning, a calling that God had appointed him to bear a message, to testify to the ways of God in the world. Woolman wrote, “I felt that rise which prepares the creature to stand like a trumpet through which the Lord speaks to his flock.” <br />
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Perhaps Woolman’s experience of being commissioned by God to ministry was in the spirit of Isaiah, who heard the word of the Lord say: “Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and shew my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins” (Is. 58:1).<br />
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A trumpet is an instrument that channels wind and breath. By itself, a trumpet is only a piece of metal. But when it is held and air is blown into it, the trumpet translates that breath into notes and sounds according to the will of the one who holds it. Throughout history, a trumpet is the instrument of harkening, of announcing, and of declaring. A trumpet announces a royal visitation, and important news. Woolman viewed his ministry as that of the trumpet because, like the Hebrew prophets before him, he wanted to hearken people to the revelation of God’s presence. Christ is come and coming!<br />
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Just as in the popular mindset the word “apocalypse” most often has negative connotations of devastation, catastrophic destruction, and zombies. So too, the popular image of the Prophet is of the self-righteous, angry zealot who shakes his or her fists at the world and cares very little about the actual fate of actual people in the messiness of their actual lives. However, neither a message of destruction nor a message of self-righteous condemnation resonates with a gospel that features a God who went into covenant with humanity and took on flesh as a statement of absolute solidarity with real people in all of their foibles and failures.<br />
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When Woolman felt commissioned to be God’s “trumpet” he was stepping into the role of Isaiah and Jeremiah. He was not primarily acting as an accuser, but as the harbinger of a restored creation. He was describing a new world in which humanity was no longer condemned, but opened up to intimacy with God.<br />
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Woolman quoted from the Hebrew prophets a lot. Woolman’s writings contain over 700 biblical quotations, and many of these are from the books of the Hebrew Prophets.<br />
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“A Time, I believe, is coming,” he said, “[when God’s will shall] so spread and prevail, that "Nation shall not lift up Sword against Nation, nor learn War any more." Isaiah ii. 4. And [I know] that this precious Work is begun.”<br />
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Woolman reminded his peers that the fulfillment of God’s promises has already “begun”, that the peaceable kingdom where lion and lamb coexist peacefully, and where nations learn war no more, was not merely wishful thinking.<br />
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Woolman was obsessed with time because every time was God’s time and time was pregnant with the eschatological reconciliation God willed to bring forward and to spend your time outside of a state of consistency within God’s will rejected the true meaning of time. Wasting time was not a trivial thing.<br />
Woolman took time seriously. He saw that the unnecessary use of time could damage the community and wasted what belonged to God. This is a hard line to hold.<br />
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But underneath this intensity and obsession, was a belief that every minute of every day was a scene in salvation history and was a moment for Christ to reign triumphant in the midst of world events. And he challenged his fellow Quakers to see the urgency of every moment and the eternal glory God would interject into our lives when we surrender to Him.<br />
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Woolman held out to his peers, his fellow Quakers, and all who would seek God, the prospect that the direct hear and obey relationship God established in Eden could be restored. The harmony of creation could be revived. Woolman challenged and he grieved and he called his fellow Quakers to live up to the gospel they said they believed. He challenged them to enter into a life that “is hid with Christ in God” so they would “behold the peaceable government of Christ” and become partakers of the spirit of Chirst.<br />
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Woolman embodied the ministry of Isaiah and Jeremiah. He called his fellow Quakers to stop the navel-gazing, the self-obsession and the pride, and step into the Government of Christ, where the faithful are partakers of Christ’s life and where the peaceable kingdom comes to typify the socio-political aspirations of those who surrender their allegiances to God alone.<br />
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But Woolman did not snap his fingers and see the changes he wanted. Woolman was ostracized and criticized for his ministry, and his neighbors remained stubbornly entrenched in their apathy and oppression. There was never a point at which Woolman felt his own powers of persuasion would be enough to convince people to change their ways. He knew all too well his own frailty and his own inadequacy to such a task, but it was a matter of faithfulness and witness to call his fellow Christians to be their best selves, the selves God wanted them to be, and to see the full integration of their spiritual and social lives.<br />
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Woolman lamented and mourned the distance between the world he knew God offered and the world he saw around him. He grieved the eternal danger he saw in the lives of the most stalwart citizens of his day. And he was led to tears over the distance his message put between himself and his neighbors. His message was not always welcome. In pointing to the emergence of the peaceable kingdom on earth he was sometimes made to feel like a man rejected by his community, when his community wanted to theorize and fantasize about the kingdom of God, but not actually enact it.<br />
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Woolman was deeply concerned with the issues of his day: lotteries, high rents and interest rates, poverty, egregious wealth, alcoholism, the injustices of the colonial economy. But he did not merely have a list of issues on which he took public stands, as if they could all be isolated, fragmented, and compartmentalized. Woolman’s prophetic voice was a comprehensive and unified whole: “let the Government of Christ spread and prevail!” By pointing, again and again, to the spiritual, eschatological and theological root and cause that taught him what a world remade would look like, Woolman directed his peers to the establishment of God’s will on earth as it is in Heaven. Like the Hebrew prophets, Woolman saw that the social degeneracies of his day were symptoms of spiritual alienation and rebellion. Woolman’s challenge to his fellow colonists was to hearken back to the spreading of God’s will.<br />
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Even in all the anguish Woolman felt when he witnessed materialism, greed, and the self-pride that results in oppression all around him and in his own church, he remained committed to his community. He stood with them and loved them, even as he reminded them that God had much better things in store for them. Woolman believed God could lead these fallen and lost people to overcome the dualisms of heaven and earth, the future fulfillment of all things and the present reality. He did not condemn his peers, he grieved for them. He grieved that they could not see the spiritual danger they were in. He grieved that they could not see the mercy God was offering to them. He grieved that they could not see these things, but he could. He could see it, and they wouldn’t listen.<br />
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To be an agent of God’s time, is to be under a heavy burden. It is also to be in good stead. The Hebrew Prophets, Jesus at Gethsemane, the Apostles; church reformers like John Wicklyffe, John Huss, Martin Luther, John Wesley; and Quaker ministers and martyrs, like George Fox, Margaret Fell, John Woolman, James Nayler, and Thomas Kelly: People who held out the Light of Christ’s immediate presence reconciling all things together in a world easily distracted by the flashy and cheap imitations.<br />
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We must grieve because the world as it is, is not the world as God wants it. And we must grieve again because God freely offers the reconciliation that can finally set things right, but we have rejected it. But grieving is an act of resistance to the status quo. Grieving is a statement that what is, is not what might be. To grieve in Spirit is to point to a Divine Reality that supersedes whatever the present reality appears to be.<br />
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Grief and mourning are the ultimate forms of criticism.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">We grieve for the distance between the world as it is and the world as God wills it to be, but in our grief we declare that the way things appear to be is only an illusion of the new reality established by God in Christ. </span></div>
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Woolman’s grief grounded the social manifestations of his prophetic commission in love for his people, his friends and neighbors. Like Jesus’ tears shed over Jerusalem, like an estranged parent’s tears for a child, Woolman’s grief for his neighbors was a sign that he was absolutely committed to their well-being no matter what and that he knew God had better things in store for them than what they ever knew possible.<br />
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Woolman’s own experience of the “apocalypse of the heart” opened to him the transformation God held out to all people. A transformation that entailed the unveiling of a new world, a revelation of ultimate human fulfillment, of eternity weaving itself into temporality and birthing an alternative socio-spiritual consciousness. Woolman believed that the world of the spirit and the physical world were intertwined and that God was bringing about a new world that repudiated the values, politics, economics and structures of a world alienated from God and God’s purposes.<br />
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In my estimation, Woolman understood himself to be within the prophetic tradition of the Hebrew Prophets, Protestant martyrs, and other reformers who were willing to die and endure persecution in obedience to the voice of God they discerned.<br />
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It is said that confession is good for the soul. And now, after all of your patient listening, after all of what I have said, I must confess to you that though I have studied John Woolman’s life and teachings for years upon years, I am not very good at following his wisdom. Though I know in my head that Christ has come to teach His people himself and that I, too, may be a partaker of his nature, I hold God at arms length. I am tempted to have that petty and shallow faith that says believing is enough, without ever letting believing become transforming.<br />
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It is possible to know in my head that Christ dwells in my life fully, without reservation or deficiency, and still not surrender every corner of my heart to the reign of Christ. I have studied enough theology and philosophy to tell me that the genius of Woolman, and the early Quakers before him, was that their transforming experience of Christ in His fullness overcame the dualisms that lead to fragmented allegiances and cultural accommodation.<br />
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For Woolman and the early Quakers, transforming faith was not a spectator sport and it was not like rooting for a football team and it was not like adding one more bullet point to your resume. It was an experience of God acting with such authority that it overthrew all barriers to a new, resurrected life.<br />
And even as I acknowledge my own inability to effect the faith I want to have I dare to hope that, even now, God is working in me in all of the fullness and power of eternity. I don’t know how long my mortal flesh can hold out against a God who is in the business of reconciliation and redemption, but, in the end, I am going to be putting my bets on God. In Christ, the dualisms of Spirit and flesh, present and future, heaven and earth, our social lives and our spiritual lives are overcome because they are all subsumed in the present Christ who reconciles them in Himself and brings that reconciliation into your life to reveal God’s will, day by day, if we let go of agendas and selfish aspirations.<br />
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It is possible to know all this, and yet to still live as if I were on my own, as if I were alienated from the True Voice that calls out to me, as if I could segment my religious life away from my whole life. It is possible to waste my time living as if eternity can wait.<br />
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And I grieve my own complacency. I grieve my own apathy. I grieve the limitations I place on God.<br />
But maybe, my grief over my own shortcomings is a sign of hope. I grieve for the world around me and the souls trapped in bondage to addiction, oppression, and narrow self-pride. I stand shoulder-to-<br />
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shoulder beside all these people and grieve for myself. Even as the promise of transformation and reconciliation is offered to me, even as a vision of heaven and earth interweaving is revealed to me, my own conviction of incompletion points to the very completion that can interrupt my life with God’s fulfillment, moment by moment.<br />
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And when I reflect on the power of Christ, incarnating in the world as the crucified, resurrected and glorified One, I am filled with wonder and awe and I begin to open myself up to a grace that is more than the forgiveness of sins, but is nothing short of a full integration into the life of God, beyond words, beyond time, beyond status and pride. A life that is a sign post on which God makes known to our brothers and sisters, our neighbors and our communities, that now is the Day of the Lord, that the promises of old have already begun to be completed, that the Kingdom is realizing on earth, that time is too short to sit by and bide our time because all time is God’s time and every time is pregnant with God’s eternal time.<br />
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And so I confess that the power of this testimony we bear, the power of the Kingdom of God realizing in our midst, is not something I feel I have gained any mastery over. But Lord willing, I hope it will master me. I hope I can be listed among those who truly surrendered to God. And if I can do that, I think I will finally be able to keep time accurately.<br />
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<br />Jon R Kershnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15847745773028620147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5748626137030348790.post-87415635295369554182016-04-25T20:58:00.000-07:002016-05-02T21:21:48.363-07:00John Woolman (1720-1772) and the Apocalypse of the Heart<br />
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<b>[A version of this message was given during <a href="http://www.barclaycollege.edu/" target="_blank">Barclay College's</a> Spiritual Emphasis Week]</b></div>
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In this post and the <a href="http://jonrkershner.blogspot.com/2016/05/the-prophet-as-agent-of-gods-time.html#more" target="_blank">next one</a> I want to mine theological resources from the Quaker tradition and interpret them for our day and age, for the spiritual power and hope God has called us to embody. I want to think about time, and the ways in which the future time of God’s fulfillment is already a present reality. Our faith traditions can be a teacher, an encourager, and a partner in our spiritual walk. My tradition, the Friends, have been that for me and have taught me ways for faithful living I have found meaningful. We look to the cloud of witnesses that have preceded us to relativize and deprioritize our self-obsessions and the the idols of our own day. We look to the past for perspective, to be educated in a different way of thinking, and to be shown the varieties of God’s mercy.<br />
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And for me, no one since the time of the bible has knocked me out of my self-absorption like the eighteenth century Quaker, <a href="http://jonrkershner.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-theology-of-john-woolman-part-1-of-6.html" target="_blank">John Woolman</a>.<br />
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Woolman's Legacy</h3>
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John Woolman has been called the Quaker Saint and if Quakers did canonize people he would be the one. He was born in 1720 on small farm near Mount Holly, New Jersey. He was raised by a devout Quaker family and recounted how as a boy his family spent Sunday afternoons and evening reading spiritual texts. During his life he worked as a shop-keeper and proprietor of a successful store, Wool-mart, before he curtailed his retail business in order to expand his ministry. He worked as a tailor, he wrote legal documents, he had a farm, grafted fruit trees, and spent some years as a school teacher. He is known for leading the Quakers to a corporate antislavery stance, for travelling thousands of miles as an itinerant minister. <br />
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He is known for pressing his fellow Quakers to greater faithfulness. His Journal is considered one of the classics of American spirituality. He challenged manners of living and consumption that served only to increased material possessions, but that had negative effects on the soul. He challenged parents who pushed their children into occupations that were lucrative but that ultimately damaged their spirits. In his 52 years he left a legacy of witness that has led some to call him the “<a href="http://www.amazon.com/John-Woolman-Quintessential-Quaker-1720-1772/dp/0944350437/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1461631073&sr=8-1&keywords=john+woolman+quintessential+quaker" target="_blank">quintessential Quaker</a>.”<br />
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Fifty years after Woolman's death, the English writer <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Lamb" target="_blank">Charles Lamb</a> said “The only American book I ever read twice was the Journal of John Woolman... Get the writings of John Woolman by heart."<br />
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The British poet and philosopher, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Taylor_Coleridge" target="_blank">Samuel Taylor Coleridge</a>, said, “I should almost despair of that man who could peruse the life of John Woolman without an amelioration of heart." And when I looked the word “amelioration” up in the dictionary I learned that Coleridge was being very nice to Woolman and saying that his writings made a person more sensitive to God. Coleridge reflected the experience that many readers of Woolman have: reading Woolman sensitizes your heart and soul and increases one’s desire to be a better person.<br />
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<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Greenleaf_Whittier" target="_blank">John Greenleaf Whittier</a> credited Woolman with founding the abolitionist movement. And indeed, Woolman's Journal influenced the abolitionism of Thomas Clarkson, William Wilberforce, and Tsar Alexander II's emancipation of Russian serfs in 1861.<br />
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Perhaps the highest praise of all came from the proslavery governor of Missouri and confederate army General who, in 1853, unknowingly paid Woolman a compliment when he blamed Woolman personally for the “evils” of the trans-Atlantic abolitionist movement.<br />
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Willard Sperry, dean of Harvard from 1925-1953, said of Woolman: “If I were asked to date the birth of social conscience in its present-day form, I think I should put it on... the day John Woolman in a public meeting verbally denounced Negro slavery.” <br />
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More recently, Philips Moulton declared that Woolman “deserves to be ranked among the great spiritual leaders of mankind... comparable to such better known figures as Albert Schweitzer and Mahatma Gandhi.”<br />
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For these quotes and others, see <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Beautiful-Soul-Woolman-Apostle-Abolition-ebook/dp/B004UNCQXM/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1461631479&sr=8-2&keywords=apostle+of+abolition" target="_blank">Thomas Slaughter's </a><i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Beautiful-Soul-Woolman-Apostle-Abolition-ebook/dp/B004UNCQXM/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1461631479&sr=8-2&keywords=apostle+of+abolition" target="_blank">The Beautiful Soul of John Woolman, Apostle of Abolition</a> </i>and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Journal-Major-Essays-John-Woolman/dp/0944350100/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1461631540&sr=8-1&keywords=the+journal+and+major+essays+of+john+woolman" target="_blank">Philips P. Moulton's <i>The Journal and Major Essays of John Woolman</i></a>.<br />
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But I don’t write all this so that we will think too highly of Woolman, so that we will venerate him and make him an idol or an icon. Woolman was just a man. I say all this to show that Woolman’s legacy lives on and that the testimony of his life continues to minister to people almost 250 years after his death. I say all this to prove that Truth reaches across the expanse of generations and finds fertile soil in sensitive hearts.<br />
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Woolman's Spiritual Struggle</h3>
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But Woolman had his spiritual struggles, just like we all do. As a young man he said he was tempted by friends whose influence was not good. He said he was tempted by “mirth”. A dictionary definition of “mirth” is simply joy and laughter. If “mirth” was his great sin you can already get the picture of Woolman as an overly serious and austere person. But I think Woolman meant more than simply laughter when he said he struggled against “mirth.” I think it went far deeper than that.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>I think what he described as “mirth” was really the propensity to take life for granted, to be flippant with our words and our lives, to overlook the connection that exists amidst all of life and the sacred will of God.</i></span></div>
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When he struggled against “mirth,” I think Woolman was coming round to the fact that what is done in the days we have to walk upon this earth is not trivial, it is not cheap, because it is a part of a grand drama in which Christ comes to reign on earth.<br />
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As a young man Woolman followed the pattern that many people follow, he would experience a spiritual breakthrough, followed by back-sliding and repentance, breakthrough and repentance, breakthrough and repentance. The constant see-sawing of his spiritual life was, for him, a symptom of a larger and more fundamental state of alienation to God, so that any ground he gained over sin was only sustained by his own strength and was destined to fail over the long haul.<br />
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And here is the kicker. Woolman could have remained in that state of alienation from God and still been a good Quaker, esteemed by his peers and considered as a faithful Christian. He could have ridden that see-saw for the rest of his life and been venerated by his peers. In the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of his day, many Quakers, by no means all, had made a subtle, yet crucial spiritual mistake. They had separated the ethics of the meetinghouse from the realms of business, politics, and society. What was necessary to be seen as a good Quaker in the meetinghouse had little bearing on what was required to be a successful business owner or a good neighbor.<br />
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Pennsylvania was founded by Quakers and because of this they had the most opportunity to do well, to shape the laws, and to form trade networks. And Quakers tasted success over the first 75 years of Pennsylvania’s existence. Some have joked that the Quakers came to Pennsylvania to do good, and they did very well. Others have said that Quakers hoped that the world would become like Philadelphia, instead Philadelphia became worldly.<br />
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<h3>
The Quaker Tradition</h3>
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We think of Quakers as being deeply involved in the abolition of slavery, and that is true, but during the time that Woolman was a young man, the slave ownership rate in Philadelphia was slightly higher among Quakers than it was among the city’s population as a whole. One of the most prolific slave importers in early Pennsylvania was also selected as a leader in the Quaker-run Pennsylvania Assembly and clerk of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. In the middle of the eighteenth century, Quakers were diverse and were suffering from something of an identity crisis as they struggled to discern how they could live faithfully while they wielded considerable power and prosperity.<br />
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Woolman’s youthful struggles between the spiritual breakthroughs he thought God held out to everyone and the apathy he sensed around him and within him was the beginnings of a new and revitalized Quaker faith. A faith that recaptured the zeal and power of the first generation of Quakers in England a hundred years before Woolman. Quakers like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Fox" target="_blank">George Fox</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Fell" target="_blank">Margaret Fell</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Dewsbury" target="_blank">William Dewsbury</a>. People who saw the Quaker movement grow from a small band of apostles in the late 1740s to over 60,000 members a decade later.<br />
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It was the revolutionary spiritual experience of this first generation of Quakers that shook them from their nominally Christian profession into a living experience of Christ. It was the experience of the first generation of Quaker that the indwelling Christ conquered their apathy with an inward incarnation in the heart so that they could no longer live according to the old ways, because Jesus had returned spiritually, and a new age of the Spirit was upon them. For these early Quaker, Christ’s spiritual and inward return was incarnated in them with such power and reality that they could no longer mindlessly follow the customs of the day, which only served to obscure the reality of the direct reign of Christ in the world. They could not doff their hats to nobles and elites as a sign of deference, because all people were equally in need of God’s grace and all people needed to be searched to the core by the shining Light of Christ in their hearts. They could not prohibit women from preaching the Gospel because the Spirit had been poured upon them and they could not help but testify. They could not support a church hierarchy that preached that people were dead in their sins with no hope of overcoming, and priests that claimed that the cycle of sin and repentance was the most people could aspire to. It was one of the early leaders of the Quakers, William Dewsbury, who wrote of the inward and spiritual return of Christ in a way that was so real that it could be known with certainty, and felt and tasted. Dewsbury wrote:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: left;">
<i>"Therefore all in the Light behold him, behold Him, who ascended over all the power of Hell, and Death, and Darkness, who now in like manner is descended, whose coming we behold in the Clouds with Power and great Glory... For as the Lightning is from the East unto the West, so is the Appearance of the Son of Man... O let your Eyes be all fixed on him..." </i></blockquote>
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Dewsbury was writing with prophetic vigor of what can happen in the heart that is seized by Christ’s presence. This was not a theology that believes the cycle of sin and repentance was inevitable, inescapable, or inexorable. This is a theology some Quaker scholars call a realizing eschatology, it is the emergence within time of the fulfillment of all things beyond time. A realizing eschatology overcomes the barriers between present realities and future possibilities, between the uncertainty of human capabilities and the certainty of divine reconciliation, between the world that is and the world under God’s reign that is already becoming.<br />
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And so, 100 years later, in a new land and in a new situation of influence, prestige and power, Quakers had turned their back on the need for conversion and the realizing eschatology that testified to the immediacy of Christ in them. But as a young man struggling with his own apathy and his own propensity to religious accommodation at the expense of a transformation of the human will into conformity to God’s will that Woolman was seized by God and a spiritual vibrancy was formed in him that shattered the apathy and alienation that had controlled him. John Woolman tapped into his Quaker theological legacy when he was no longer satisfied with going through the motions and never quite giving himself completely into God’s hands. He revitalized a realizing eschatology that claimed God’s power could be felt with such immediacy that he could be redeemed from the corruptions others took for granted.<br />
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<h3>
The Apocalypse of the Heart</h3>
<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Woolman’s own description of his conversion is instructive to us. Like I said, Woolman was a birthright Quaker, he was already in good standing with his faith community, so we might ask why a conversion would be necessary. But in his early twenties he experienced a spiritual shifting in which he became attuned to the voice of the Spirit in his life and in the world, and he felt himself renewed in Christ’s presence so that a life of complete faithfulness was opened to him. He wrote in his journal that God had revealed to him that a new life was available, a life lived within God’s will. Looking back on those days, Woolman wrote:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>“if I would live in the life which the faithful servant of God lived in, I must not go into company as heretofore in my own will, but all the cravings of sense must be governed by a divine principle… and I felt the power of Christ prevail over selfish desires.” </i></blockquote>
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Woolman felt that this transforming experience placed him in a new spiritual state, a state that was continually “under the cross” and so in a state within God’s will that experienced redemption not as an abstract idea nor as a future hope, but as a new state in Christ that changed the way he viewed the world around him and opened his eyes to see heaven and earth with new eyes. Woolman was a new creature, a harbinger of the world God was bringing about, called to testify to the contours of a world under Christ that was not apparent to many of those around him.<br />
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Woolman said of the change in his spiritual state he experienced in those days,<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><br />“I find no language equal to it nor any means to convey to another a clear idea of it. I looked upon the works of God in this visible creation and an awfulness covered me; my heart was tender and often contrite, and a universal love to my fellow creatures increased in me. This will be understood by such who have trodden in the same path…”</i> </blockquote>
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What happened in him and to him was something beyond words, beyond language. It was an experience so orchestrated by eternal forces that it could not be expressed fully in human communication, it must be felt. It must be experienced. It was a correlation, communion and cooperation between God and humanity that defied human categorizations, an incarnation of divine purposes that transcended human limitations. What was opened to Woolman in his conversion was a revelation of God’s power and purposes realizing on earth through human faithfulness.<br />
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Immediately following Woolman’s experience of God’s victory over sin, Woolman wrote that he came to see things differently. He came to embody a universal love that changed his relationships with God and the world in which he lived and that recognized for the first time the integration of faith and action that would come to typify his ministry.<br />
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Woolman wrote,<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"that as the mind was moved on an inward principle to love God as an invisible, incomprehensible being, on the same principle it was moved to love him in all his manifestation in the visible world; that as by his breath the flame of life was kindled in all animal and sensitive creatures, to say we love God as unseen and at the same time exercise cruelty toward the least creature moving by his life, or by life derived from him, was a contradiction in itself."</i></blockquote>
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Woolman pursued this integration of faith and life and sought to be harmonized with God’s will at work in the world. Not only did Woolman feel liberated from the power of sin in his life, as Woolman walked through the fields and farms of colonial New Jersey, he saw the manifestations of God’s hand at work.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;"><i>And it is in this victory over mirth as a young man, and in this opening of God’s will for human existence, that we see the beginning stages of the apocalypse of the heart.</i></span></div>
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In contemporary pop culture, the word apocalypse is tied to a future, destructive event that will usher in the end of the world. It is a word that we have tied to destruction and desolation from extreme weather events, war, pandemic disease, and Zombies. While apocalypse does entail a destruction, there is a long tradition within Christianity of a positive vision of apocalyptic. The word literally means, an <i>“unveiling, a revelation, a sudden breakthrough.”</i><br />
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An apocalypse is the sudden unveiling of reality in a way that was previously unknown. When the Apostle Paul wrote in Romans 1:17 that in the <i>“Gospel the righteousness of God is revealed,”</i> the Greek word translated “revealed” is the Greek word “<i>apokolupsis</i>.” In the gospel, God’s righteousness breaks through out of nowhere, it is unveiled, it is revealed by God and brings about a new life by the Spirit. Yes, the old passes away, but the emphasis is on the sudden unveiling of a new reality that makes a new world possible.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-size: large;">The apocalypse of the heart is the inward and spiritual unveiling of God’s eschatological purposes, in perfect fulfillment, within the hearts of the faithful so that God’s kingdom is enacted on earth as it is in Heaven. </span></i></div>
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When Woolman felt the power of God prevail over his fallenness, when he was so transformed of his mind to see the integration of divine love directed toward all living creatures, he was describing the creation of a new world where the Lion and Lamb lay down together and where the promises of the eschaton would be enacted on earth. In this new world, sin would be no more and people would live their lives moment by moment in communion with the will of God.<br />
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That is the apocalypse of the heart: It is a vision of the faithful so attuned to the will of God, and so recreated to see the world from God’s perspective that eternity overlaps temporality and dualistic views of time and spirituality are washed away in an overwhelming experience of Christ’s spiritual presence.<br />
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Later in life, Woolman would describe the creation of a new world in God on earth in which all people experienced this apocalypse of the heart, this revelation of God’s will made manifest through human faithfulness. However, he was aware that receiving these “openings” from God was not a done deal, it required surrender to God, what he called “resignation.” In a state of “resignation” the tender heart goes beyond words and strivings and human efforts to set the agenda for God, and becomes fertile ground for a new life in the Spirit on earth. A life that foreshadows, in the present, the completion of God’s purposes in the eschatological future.<br />
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<h3>
Surrender</h3>
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Woolman wrote in his journal in 1772, on a ministry journey to England, just months before his death:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"as long as [the] natural will remains unsubjected, so long there remains an obstruction against the clearness of divine light operating in us; but when we love God with all our heart and with all our strength, then in this love we love our neighbours as ourselves, and a tenderness of heart is felt toward all people … In this love we can say that Jesus is the Lord, and the reformation in our souls [is] manifested in a full reformation of our lives, wherein all things are new and all things are of God [2 Cor. 5:17-18] – in this the desire of gain is subjected…"</i></blockquote>
For Woolman, those who were resigned to God and sensitive to God’s opening in their hearts were reformed and remade so that God’s ultimate will for human community was enacted. The love of God was integrated with the love of neighbor and the world itself took on a new appearance in the light of Christ’s presence in their hearts. Sin and materialism no longer held sway over the faithful because as new creatures old ways were no longer possible. If all things were really new, then it made no sense to act in old ways. In his realizing eschatology, the old eon of sin and spiritual alienation was already finished in his experience, and had given way to the kingdom. <br />
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Recreated by God as God's agents, those who were transformed by God’s revelation in Christ became participants in the full apocalypse of God's purposes on earth, the unveiling of God’s will for human affairs. This new creation, this new state in God’s will was such that Woolman believed the faithful could perfectly embody God's global and eschatological vision. <br />
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I don’t use the word “perfect” lightly. Perfectionism is linked to the way Woolman’s eschatology functioned. Perfectionism makes sense if God’s eternal purposes were invading historical time. Perfection was an outgrowth of the real presence of Christ in the heart.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Woolman never equated perfection with anything that he did, he reserved it for the spiritual power of God he saw being unleashed in the faithful.</i></span> </div>
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When God’s perfect fulfillment of all things is unchained from a purely futurist theology, but is seen as already invading time and space, earthly time, God’s time and human actions are filled with urgency and weight. Woolman could not limit God’s availability on earth, Woolman could not be lasseiz-faire about the new world in the midst of this world. And so he saw slavery for what it was: a blight of pride and self-love that corrupted the human-divine relationship. He saw materialism and greed for what it was, the acting out of human alienation to God, the human tendency to replace God with self.<br />
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Later in his life Woolman began calling this new reality, the <span style="font-size: large;">“Government of Christ.”</span> Woolman envisioned the apocalypse of the heart to be a spiritual Christocracy, an indwelling of Christ in the heart that would be the seat of Christ’s Kingdom and would reveal directly a new way of living in the world. This message of God’s will for human governance was clear and perceptible, it was capable of being heard and faithfully obeyed by his followers. Woolman does not explicitly say from where he derives his concept of the “Government of Christ.” But I think he is working out of Isaiah 9:6. In Isaiah, the prophet proclaims:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>“For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government shall be upon His shoulder. And His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.” </i></blockquote>
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In Isaiah’s prophecy, the birth of the Messiah would inaugurate an era in which the government of all things would be united under the Messiah. Far from being reserved only for Christmas-time, Isaiah’s foreshadowing of the Messiah was a way to understand Christ’s activity in the world. Woolman says that the day of Christ’s reign has come to pass in the Second Coming of Christ in the hearts of the faithful. And through the lives of the faithful, the eschatological reign of Christ’s government is made incarnate. Woolman wrote,<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>“Now to those, in the present age, who truly know Christ, and feel the nature of his peaceable government opened in their understandings, how loud is that call wherewith we are called to faithfulness; that in following the pure Light of Life, 'we as workers together with him,' may labour in that great work for which he was offered as a Sacrifice on the Cross..." </i></blockquote>
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In the “Government of Christ,” all people are commissioned as ministers and prophets who respond to the revelation of Christ in their hearts in ways that address the most challenging issues of their day. That experience of communion with the living and resurrected Christ in His Kingdom snaps people out of the mediocrity that passes for self-satisfied faith.<br />
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In pulling these biblical allusions together, in reaching back to the Prophets and forward to the Eschaton, Woolman destabilized the supposed inevitabilities of the present moment. These were social and political inevitabilities like the slavery of his day, like the French and Indian War, like the growth of a greed-based economy. Woolman rejected these supposed inevitabilities of his day because they were all built on the premise that God was not actually bringing Heaven to bear on Earth. Woolman rejected the sinful separation of God’s eschatological promises from the present reality and proclaimed that the present moment was already the day of the Lord.<br />
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And all of this is much more than what people thought back in the day. What I am trying to do is describe the way that an immediate, realizing, consuming experience of the present Christ changes the ground rules for what is possible in the lives we lead. Woolman proclaimed the gospel up and down colonial America and he attacked the social structures that hindered people in their lives of faith.<br />
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Sometimes he challenged the greed and materialism that allowed people to put their faith in something other than God, an idolatry that is alive and well in our consumer-oriented world. Sometimes he challenged slavery, which placed the slave-owner in eternal jeopardy for trying to usurp a mastery over others that is only safe in God’s hands. And, Woolman challenged the slave system that turned people into commodities and cogs in a profit-making machine. And this evil, too, is alive and well in our world. There are nearly <a href="http://www.endslaverynow.org/learn/slavery-today" target="_blank">20 million often unseen and anonymous slaves </a>in the world today - out of sight and out of mind - slave who make our clothes, shoes, and gadgets.<br />
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When Woolman uttered Jesus’ words, “your will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven,” he meant something a lot more urgent, a lot more powerful, and a lot more expectant than I do. When Woolman described the presence of the Government of Christ spreading in the world and ruling in his heart, he meant something a lot more real than I do in all of my apathetic, comfortable, respectability. And in all this apathy, I fail the Friends’ tradition, I fail the transforming power of the Gospel, I fail the transforming promise of the apocalypse of the heart. The beauty of our Friends’ tradition and the spiritual theology we inherit is that Friends have always been God’s agents in the world to call a comfortable society to greater faithfulness and a heightened sensitivity to the ways of the Spirit in the world.<br />
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All of Woolman’s social reforms, all of his preaching, was focused like a laser on removing the barriers that prevent people from living fully in the life of the Spirit, that prevent people from donning every day the “mind of Christ” to lead them through a complex and changing world. He saw a deep and hurting world, alienated from the spiritual reality that could heal their hearts and bring them to a saving intimacy with Christ. And in his experience of the apocalypse of the heart, in his submission to the Government of Christ, he proclaimed a gospel message that cut through the layers of alienation and pointed his peers toward a deeper experience of Christ than they ever thought possible.<br />
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And this is it:<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>The essence of Woolman’s realizing eschatology was a full confrontation with the living presence of Christ, offered without qualification or reservation. </i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
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It was a presence that embodied all of the biblical promises for the peaceable kingdom and fulfilled them in the hearts of the faithful. We need a message of Christian faith that is not merely wishing and hoping and escaping to some future point when things will work out, but can see the real world of today from the perspective of eternity. In our day, like Woolman’s day, we are in spiritual danger from the wealth we take for granted, from the political and social stratification that leads to demonization, and, so, like in Woolman’s day, we need a Gospel that is not abstract, not fractured and segmented and compartmentalized, but is whole. We need a message that reconciles the fissures in our society, and the hate in our hearts, and responds to insurmountable feelings of alienation from God with the unsearchable and unstoppable revelation of God’s righteousness.<br />
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I want to cast a vision that when we pray “your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” we actually believe it and we urgently enact it.<br />
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Jon R Kershnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15847745773028620147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5748626137030348790.post-86403140948429927372015-12-14T20:03:00.001-08:002015-12-17T13:57:29.571-08:00What to Get Jesus for ChristmasPreached at McKinley Hill Friends Church, December 13, 2015<br />
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<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>The Birth of Jesus</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>About that time Caesar Augustus ordered a census to be taken throughout the Empire. This was the first census when Quirinius was governor of Syria. Everyone had to travel to his own ancestral hometown to be accounted for. So Joseph went from the Galilean town of Nazareth up to Bethlehem in Judah, David’s town, for the census. As a descendant of David, he had to go there. He went with Mary, his fiancée, who was pregnant.</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>While they were there, the time came for her to give birth. She gave birth to a son, her firstborn. She wrapped him in a blanket and laid him in a manger, because there was no room in the hostel.</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Luke 2:1-7 (MSG)</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhf-DLJf3L_ntkjAktFfkSLNP8qzWYVdW_S_BLIq0cEEO7Ayi8KDxENJhaApS7XZZC4AtbO3bA3EYw8moGf_XbBdfoIFqhXk08ZqvJDRpBnIJNKZQ5td-zrAbmbLK6tKECydoWhLTj_Goq/s1600/presents-1058800_1280.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhf-DLJf3L_ntkjAktFfkSLNP8qzWYVdW_S_BLIq0cEEO7Ayi8KDxENJhaApS7XZZC4AtbO3bA3EYw8moGf_XbBdfoIFqhXk08ZqvJDRpBnIJNKZQ5td-zrAbmbLK6tKECydoWhLTj_Goq/s320/presents-1058800_1280.jpg" width="320" /></a>Each year many of us go through some sort of dance-like maneuvering to find out what would be a meaningful gift for our brothers, sisters, children, and grandchildren. We want to give a gift that’s useful, that shows we care, but it is not always apparent to us what that gift would be. The needs of each generation are so different and, unless we are a member of that generation, we really can’t predict what gift would be helpful.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0ybE7P1RGxu-6M3Kibuz7GKw_guqoL7GazKKx4o8zeRvEO2clljBRLfcsV7umpS5hwGzx-sxPY578M22JLDejQfGlhG-hcIsl985TPZFysyTJB3VmRyGV2Hc8UkpbmLk-u0BZcTNMs2gy/s1600/Osborne_1_open.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0ybE7P1RGxu-6M3Kibuz7GKw_guqoL7GazKKx4o8zeRvEO2clljBRLfcsV7umpS5hwGzx-sxPY578M22JLDejQfGlhG-hcIsl985TPZFysyTJB3VmRyGV2Hc8UkpbmLk-u0BZcTNMs2gy/s200/Osborne_1_open.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Look! A laptop!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I can’t remember a single one of my fellow high school students lugging a computer around with them from class to class. Today, many Middle Schoolers and High Schoolers are required to have with them a tablet computer the size of a manilla envelope, but more powerful than any of the computers readily available when I was in High School, fully loaded with all sorts of "apps" and software programs. Many of their textbooks are now carried around on tablet computers. How am I to know what they need for their classes? Do I sound old? Gifts can be tricky things, especially when generations are so separated by rapidly changing technology and cultural expectations.<br />
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Each year, the hint is usually dropped to me via my wife that I need to suggest a few things I want for Christmas, because our families are asking what on earth I want. I usually just say a couple inexpensive things off the top of my head, mostly so that my family can feel like they got me something I needed. The best part of giving gifts is the experience of being generous and helpful to someone else. The truth is that most of the time we don’t really need very much. We are surrounded by affluence and the fact that I often can't readily identify a need simply confirms the depth of my own cultural privilege as a member of western society. Clothes are cheap and easy to come by. We have food and we have a roof over our heads. I am usually just as tickled to get chex mix and homemade jam as more expensive gifts that I don’t really need.<br />
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This year I put a little bit more forethought into what gifts could be useful. I started writing down what I would like as a gift whenever the thought occurred to me throughout the year. It’s mostly simple stuff to fill in the gaps of things I already have, or things that I need for the next year. By jotting down what I need throughout the year, I’ve saved myself the frustration of trying to remember, all in one afternoon in early December, what would be a meaningful gift. So this year my Christmas list includes the basics that keep me going: razors, shaving soap, new tires for my bike since the old ones are cracked and need replacing.<br />
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<a name='more'></a><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBR6E5NAo28aEFvBrVrxuqwoQGVNv-jEsLvhUGBQbu088KcmdhhOA7nc6taO8EY3Djt1RsDD42uhBSN6h98s8JMePY5CxY2sJH8TWZkiiiyypl1QNPikbX3BZdR3XYy8ji7uxtau95JsOC/s1600/nativity.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBR6E5NAo28aEFvBrVrxuqwoQGVNv-jEsLvhUGBQbu088KcmdhhOA7nc6taO8EY3Djt1RsDD42uhBSN6h98s8JMePY5CxY2sJH8TWZkiiiyypl1QNPikbX3BZdR3XYy8ji7uxtau95JsOC/s400/nativity.jpg" /></a>While the giving of gifts can become self-serving, and it can seem pointless in a society like ours where many of us have most all of our needs met, hopefully the giving of gifts can be part of our Christmas celebration and devotion. We give gifts at Christmas as a reminder of the greatest gift of all. We give gifts as little acts of love that, in some way, point to the free gift of grace in Christ. When we set up our Nativity scenes, we place front and center the Christ child, as a symbol of God’s grace. The season of Advent anticipates this gift, it builds up to it and we await the coming of Christ into our lives. Advent celebrates the mystery of Christmas, that God took on human flesh. Like the Shepherds, we are expectant for the good news that God is going to do something new, something big in our lives and in our world.<br />
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As children, we expected all sorts of bounty for Christmas. Grand and wonderful gifts that we would receive, and often we were disappointed by the somewhat lesser reality. One year I really wanted a sling shot, a fancy sling shot. I really wanted it and I knew if I got it I would be this most skilled hunter who could subdue the wilderness, who could hit moving targets at long range, who would be the envy of all the other boys on the mile-long gravel road I lived on. What I got was a small piece of plywood cut in the shape of a Y with rubber tubing tied on the ends. The thing was unusable. I was better off throwing pebbles than trying to use the sling shot.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxvZboARvmvC6hMqai8L3Qm-bB7zxPMUIBBgvd497ROXY2EkTW-tpQNTOkFXPVKojizO1_GG8VWP-n20V3IEQEqcoqM5wjVHUyxLMG5mJC4bXSrInrL8VeyHmBojEuN7xH2sfyJzCDBYR5/s1600/sling+shot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxvZboARvmvC6hMqai8L3Qm-bB7zxPMUIBBgvd497ROXY2EkTW-tpQNTOkFXPVKojizO1_GG8VWP-n20V3IEQEqcoqM5wjVHUyxLMG5mJC4bXSrInrL8VeyHmBojEuN7xH2sfyJzCDBYR5/s400/sling+shot.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I was hoping for something more like this...</td></tr>
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In our heads, we think we know what we want, we think we know how something will affect our lives for the better. In reality, we are terrible predictors of anything about the future, and that includes how useful a Christmas gift will be, or how prestigious a new job will make us feel, or how special a new romance will make us feel. Often we are left disappointed.<br />
<br />
And here we are at Christmas. We already think we know what we want from God. We already think we know what we want God to do for us in 2016. We already think we know how we will minister to, of what type of help we need. This is Christmas and we know it is to be a season of anticipation for the presence of Christ in our lives and in our world, and we really don’t need any help figuring out what that is to look like.<br />
<br />
I was struck in the past month about how unexpected and unanticipated Christmas might actually be. How glad tidings of great joy don't show up in the ways we might expect them. You might have heard on the news about the newborn baby that unexpectedly appeared in a church nativity scene in Queens, New York. <a href="http://www.npr.org/2015/11/28/457626375/newborn-baby-abandoned-in-churchs-manger-already-being-loved" target="_blank">Scot Simon’s commentary on NPR highlighted for me just how unexpectedly grace sneaks into our messy lives</a>:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitiIriZHOff-PaAf9-_10opSy1AIAPFfTHHbVb2P2yHbeyRRh5EHSj8xKBd-BLkxkvqa1nJThl6glJO4RSZNKPbpxkPaIpS5KPTAM6gn0t7WBkIs12vEeN1eyj1N2aHHxCcIe5LERTpPFI/s1600/newborn+baby.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitiIriZHOff-PaAf9-_10opSy1AIAPFfTHHbVb2P2yHbeyRRh5EHSj8xKBd-BLkxkvqa1nJThl6glJO4RSZNKPbpxkPaIpS5KPTAM6gn0t7WBkIs12vEeN1eyj1N2aHHxCcIe5LERTpPFI/s320/newborn+baby.jpg" width="320" /></a> “A bible story came to life in Queens this week. Jose Moran spent Tuesday morning setting up the Nativity scene at the Holy Child Jesus Church, where he is a custodian. Mr. Moran put up the manger, and went to lunch. And when he came back at about 1 p.m., he heard the cry of a baby.<br />
The baby was in the manger, swaddled in blue towels. He was so young his umbilical cord still sprouted from his belly.<br />
Jose Moran ran to tell Fr. Christopher Ryan Heanue, who has been ordained for only five months. Imagine being a new priest, and told: there's a live baby in your manger.<br />
Fr. Heanue called 911. The baby boy was brought to Jamaica Hospital, where he was weighed—just over five pounds—and found to be healthy.<br />
Surveillance video reportedly shows a young woman enter the church with a baby in her arms, but leave without a child.<br />
New York, like other states, has what's called a safe haven law. It permits parents to leave their infant in some safe place—a hospital, a firehouse, a church—without being charged with child abandonment. It opens a door in the law for parents who may feel burdened, overwhelmed, and unable to take care of their child to safely leave them, with some confidence that they will be found, cared for, and eventually taken in by another family.<br />
Father Heanue says he feels only love for the mother.<br />
"A church is a home for those in need," he told the New York Times, "and she felt, in this stable—a place where Jesus will find his home—a home for her child."<br />
He says families in the parish have already asked to adopt the baby.<br />
"They feel that he was left in the parish and should stay in the parish," he told the New York Post.<br />
The Queens district attorney says the women who left her child in the manger has been located and interviewed. She apparently returned to the church the next day, to see that her baby had been found. She will not be charged.<br />
Bible stories stay compelling over centuries because they show people who struggle to do something good. Jacob wrestles with God. Sarah laughs at Him. Jonah runs away from God and gets swallowed by a whale. Moses, the baby boy left by a river, doubts God and can't enter the Promised Land; even though he's delivered his people from slavery.<br />
This week, the love of a mother who felt she couldn't care for her child led her to bring him some place safe and warm. And he was found by people who will—who already do—love him.” </blockquote>
<br />
A young mother, overwhelmed, over her head, at a loss of what to do, receives a precious gift in the form of a new life, a baby. She could have terminated the pregnancy, but she must have felt that this baby was a precious gift of grace and love and she saw the pregnancy through, not knowing how in the world she could provide for it. She takes it to the only place she can, a place that should love and receive an unexpected gift of grace: a church. She places her baby where the baby Jesus was to lay, in a manger, in the place where you put a baby after you’ve run out of all your other options.<br />
<br />
I think of Mary and Joseph wandering the streets of Bethlehem looking for a place to stay, and finally placing their newborn son in the manger. I have a feeling a manger wasn’t their first choice. Their son, who was this gift of God’s grace and love that answered the longings of the world, unrecognized and unexpected. I think of this young woman, loving this child, this gift, that needs a chance at life. And she knows for whatever reason that this child’s life, which she had nurtured and carried for nine months, must now be entrusted into the hands of others.<br />
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<br />
When Holy Child Jesus Church was planning its Advent calendar, I’m sure they had no idea a new, precious life would take root in their midst. It is crazy, it doesn’t make any sense, it isn’t safe, most people would look down their nose and say it is irresponsible of the mother to drop the child off like that.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“Mary! You are nine months pregnant and travelling to Bethlehem? It’s not safe with you like that! You don’t have reservations? You don’t know what is going to happen? Mary and Joseph, this is irresponsible!”</blockquote>
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And a gift is given, hope comes to us, God takes human form.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>In the most irresponsible of actions, the world received the most incalculable of gifts. </i></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4u9_MjCLemqszsISjanTuoZDeU_xLdo0IBc43einGtBuUDlYzBqf0Q1hvGRBk55ZKT15o8GUvieHtjUMSKZ2c0gHF5HThx42MKUNR6CkpVKtd4CSLTJrzxm5LeGwytkd1sbs0g8S4dtN1/s1600/lights-801894_1280.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4u9_MjCLemqszsISjanTuoZDeU_xLdo0IBc43einGtBuUDlYzBqf0Q1hvGRBk55ZKT15o8GUvieHtjUMSKZ2c0gHF5HThx42MKUNR6CkpVKtd4CSLTJrzxm5LeGwytkd1sbs0g8S4dtN1/s200/lights-801894_1280.jpg" width="200" /></a>For a church in Queens, hearts filled with love and grace have been stirred. A church in Queens gets a Christmas gift it never expected, never anticipated, and it never would have wanted. But this child is with them now, and their love has grown. Their wonder for the ways of God in a messy world has been amplified. A church in Queens gets to live the nativity story in a new way this Christmas, and, maybe, they will experience Christ in more powerful ways. In receiving this child as a gift of God’s grace, Holy Child Jesus Church lives as a continuation of their namesake, of the Incarnation that is at the center of every church.<br />
<br />
The church, our church, is a continuation of the Incarnation. In our words, in our reflections, in our love for others, we put flesh on the life of Christ inside us. Nativity scenes are nice, but the best nativity is the new life of Christ in our hearts, which stirs us to love and mercy; a new incarnate life in us that opens our hearts to the strange and unexpected ways Christ becomes real among us. And that is what we bring to Jesus on Christmas and every day: the gift of our surrender to God, which continues the Incarnation in our world. It is these acts of surrender and openness to the ways God chooses to become real in us and among us that reflects God's grace in all of its messy unpredictability.<br />
<br />Jon R Kershnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15847745773028620147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5748626137030348790.post-66256994462526806782015-11-14T16:01:00.000-08:002016-03-22T21:50:08.197-07:00A Simple Way to Pray: The Apostles' Creed<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>The Apostles' Creed</i></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>I believe in God, the Father almighty,</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i> creator of heaven and earth.</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i> who was conceived by the Holy Spirit</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i> and born of the virgin Mary.</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i> He suffered under Pontius Pilate,</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i> was crucified, died, and was buried;</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i> he descended to hell.</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i> The third day he rose again from the dead.</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i> He ascended to heaven</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i> and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty.</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i> From there he will come to judge the living and the dead.</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>I believe in the Holy Spirit,</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i> the holy catholic church,</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i> the communion of saints,</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i> the forgiveness of sins,</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i> the resurrection of the body,</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i> and the life everlasting. Amen.</i></div>
</blockquote>
<br />
This is now the third and final post that looks at <a href="http://www.se.lcms.org/uploads/simple_way_pray_luther.pdf" target="_blank">Martin Luther’s prayer advice to his barber.</a> Luther was one of the key leaders of the Protestant Reformation of the early 1500s, and one of the leading theologians of all time.<br />
<br />
He was also a pastor who had a deep relationship with Christ, and wanted others to experience the same deep intimacy that God holds out to all people. Luther’s advice to his barber is to ground his prayer in the words of the <a href="http://www.jonrkershner.net/2015/10/a-simple-way-to-prayer-lords-prayer.html" target="_blank">Lord’s Prayer</a>, first of all, then to move on to the <a href="http://www.jonrkershner.net/2015/11/a-simple-way-to-pray-ten-commandments.html" target="_blank">Ten Commandments</a>, and, finally, to The Creed.<br />
<br />
Prayer can start with the Lord’s Prayer, Ten Commandments, or the Creed, but it finds real traction when the Holy Spirit steps in and prays through a person. Luther’s suggestions in this letter to his barber are to be seen as suggestions that open the door for the Spirit to step in and pray through you.<br />
We’ve already looked at Luther’s teaching on the <a href="http://www.jonrkershner.net/2015/10/a-simple-way-to-prayer-lords-prayer.html" target="_blank">Lord’s Prayer</a> and the <a href="http://www.jonrkershner.net/2015/11/a-simple-way-to-pray-ten-commandments.html" target="_blank">Ten Commandments</a>. Luther’s final suggestion to his barber is that if he still feels drawn to prayer after praying through those first two texts that he turn his attention to The Creed as a springboard for prayer.<br />
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<a name='more'></a><br /><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-yf7E2Mufhqi2xzLRFoKQ3HP0zxfyBjHkQbRE-N15NjvIBUl6eyIaqMO7RxqJozzE6IGHHFvKD_kAAGv6xwF_tfnqXz9otLYWCQ9GwB6xWX75nAA4R9_hVG78QtFwHHIS8JIuZHnl_U-8/s1600/Synaxis_of_the_Twelve_Apostles_by_Constantinople_master_%2528early_14th_c.%252C_Pushkin_museum%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-yf7E2Mufhqi2xzLRFoKQ3HP0zxfyBjHkQbRE-N15NjvIBUl6eyIaqMO7RxqJozzE6IGHHFvKD_kAAGv6xwF_tfnqXz9otLYWCQ9GwB6xWX75nAA4R9_hVG78QtFwHHIS8JIuZHnl_U-8/s320/Synaxis_of_the_Twelve_Apostles_by_Constantinople_master_%2528early_14th_c.%252C_Pushkin_museum%2529.jpg" width="275" /></a> When Martin Luther is talking about “The Creed” he is referring to the defining statement of faith known as the Apostles' Creed. The Apostles' Creed was written in Rome, around the year 150. It was<br />
intended to distinguish Christians from the various heretical groups of that time. Anyone who was able to say the Apostles' Creed was considered a person of orthodox faith.<br />
<br />
In some sectors within contemporary Protestantism there is an automatic reaction against creeds. Creeds are sometimes seen as artificial and external statements that a person can memorize and recite without any of the conviction that comes from an inward experience of a transformed life. A creed can be seen as mere lip service or as a barrier to a real and living faith. When it was written, the Apostles' Creed was a life giving and easily remembered statement of faith that was incredibly valuable in a sometimes confusing religious environment.<br />
<br />
One can look at the Apostles' Creed as an artificial and foreign statement, or one can look at the Apostles' Creed as one example of God’s ongoing guidance with the church. My own approach to the Creed is that it is not Scripture, but it reflects the best discernment and leading of the Holy Spirit as understood by a gathering of people who were looking for God’s instruction. The Apostles' Creed has been reaffirmed by generations of Christians as divine teaching for almost two thousand years. As a result, it is a weighty statement for us to consider.<br />
<br />
For Luther, the Apostles' Creed provides a simple way of praying through the essentials of Christian faith. He divides the Apostles' Creed into three articles. These three articles are Creation, Redemption and Sanctification and they correspond to the three Persons of the Trinity, God the Creator, Christ the Redeemer, and the Spirit the Sanctifier. He suggests that his barber prayer through each article in the same way that he did the Ten Commandments, through the four strands of instruction, thanksgiving, confession, and prayer of petition.<br />
<br />
So you can recite the first article of the Creed:<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-size: large;">I believe in God, the Father almighty,</span></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-size: large;"> creator of heaven and earth.</span></i></div>
<br />
And then begin your meditation on that passage.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLBJ_JYr3iViMDyI1lIVZf7eSHrGp-Q4W3T6f9hx_dpc6z6vEOYug4dbuFyZcqZWPUoJ1HaiGvgp_cWOq-MiBMUIDrKsnxlEWGXqyD_SW0ka8QVZz7rS2ZNRxUX2bdJP7qALo1s_Ql3b9C/s1600/creation.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="145" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLBJ_JYr3iViMDyI1lIVZf7eSHrGp-Q4W3T6f9hx_dpc6z6vEOYug4dbuFyZcqZWPUoJ1HaiGvgp_cWOq-MiBMUIDrKsnxlEWGXqyD_SW0ka8QVZz7rS2ZNRxUX2bdJP7qALo1s_Ql3b9C/s320/creation.jpg" width="320" /></a> This first article teaches us in a very few words that we are God’s creation, God’s handiwork. Our life and breath are sustained by God. While the physical world around us might be bubbling over with biological causes and processes, we are more than biology alone. We are spiritual beings whose life exists eternally in the handiwork of God. Because we are God’s creation and God is our life-<br />
source, we did not create ourselves. We did not merit or earn our existence. Rather, our life is bounded by God, and, so, to God’s service and adoration it should be directed. Luther says that this teaching is<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>“the soul’s garden of pleasure, along whose paths we enjoy the works of God.” </i></span></blockquote>
<br />
In God we live and move and have our being and as we look at the world around us we see other people and creatures all of whom, like us, derive their life from God and are ultimately God’s handiwork. If there was ever a reason for Christians to be the most zealous in caring for the earth, the animals, and those who suffer, it is because all of these are God’s handiwork and have their eternal destiny in God, just as we do.<br />
<br />
We can thank God who creates and sustains us, because God provides for our daily needs. God has given us ingenuity, God has given us hands and feet and eyes and mouths that we can use to serve God and care for others and this gives us great joy and gratitude.<br />
<br />
But we can also confess that we do not always treat God’s good creation with respect. We plunder the earth. We are often more concerned with our own comfort and life-style than we are with the lives of people who live in other countries. We don’t always honor our own bodies as if they were God’s handiwork. We abuse ourselves physically and emotionally by not fully considering and reflecting with gratitude on God’s workmanship and daily sustenance in our lives.<br />
<br />
Thus, we can pray and ask God to give us hearts that see divine fingerprints in our lives and in all of the created world. We can ask God to teach us how to honor the world God has made and to honor it as we should.<br />
<br />
And if time and inspiration allows, we turn to the second article of the Apostles' Creed, which focuses on Christ the Redeemer:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,<br /> who was conceived by the Holy Spirit<br /> and born of the virgin Mary.<br /> He suffered under Pontius Pilate,<br /> was crucified, died, and was buried;<br /> he descended to hell.<br /> The third day he rose again from the dead.<br /> He ascended to heaven<br /> and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty.<br /> From there he will come to judge the living and the dead.</i></span></blockquote>
<br />
In the first article of the Apostles' Creed, we were taught to see ourselves as a part of God’s creation, as God’s handiwork and to never forget that truth. Now we are taught to view ourselves as redeemed, and never doubt that. We are taught that God’s mission and purpose in the world is one of reaching out to us, snatching us out of a life of insignificance, and placing eternity in our hearts.<br />
<br />
We can be grateful that Christ’s work is one of salvation and that Christ will accomplish God’s will regarding us.<br />
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And we can move to confession. We can confess that he seek to usurp Christ’s role and earn salvation on our own terms. We seek to follow moral codes to earn God’s favor, we seek to follow the path of religious performance rather than respond humbly to God’s grace. We can confess all this because Christ alone is the source of redemption, and Christ’s yoke is easy.<br />
<br />
We can then make prayerful petition that God will always draw us back to grace and faith. We can ask God to give us hearts that are grateful to God for our eternal livelihoods.<br />
<br />
Then we can turn to the third article of the Apostles' Creed, which teaches us of the Holy Spirit’s work of sanctification and that brings the church together in fellowship.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-size: large;">I believe in the Holy Spirit,</span></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-size: large;"> the holy catholic church,</span></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-size: large;"> the communion of saints,</span></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-size: large;"> the forgiveness of sins,</span></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-size: large;"> the resurrection of the body,</span></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-size: large;"> and the life everlasting. Amen.</span></i></div>
</blockquote>
<br />
To be sanctified is to be made holy, it is to begin to see the world as God sees it and to begin to have a life that corresponds with God’s will. This is the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit, which exists in us personally and in the community of saints known as the Church.<br />
<br />
We can be grateful that God is not a piece of historical fiction but comes to those with open hearts and unites us with others all across the globe who seek after God’s will.<br />
<br />
We confess that we often stop the full work of the Spirit by picking and choosing what we want God to do in our lives and not submitting our full lives to God’s work in the way that a potter shapes a clay vessel.<br />
<br />
We pray that we will endure and persevere in faith and in our seeking of the Spirit’s work in our lives. We pray that we will uphold the work of the body of Christ in the world until we remain eternally in God’s glorious presence.<br />
<br />Jon R Kershnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15847745773028620147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5748626137030348790.post-16033915864537669402015-11-07T15:25:00.004-08:002015-11-07T15:25:51.296-08:00A Simple Way to Pray: The Ten Commandments<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;">
<i>Exodus 20:3-17 (The Message)<br />“No other gods, only me.<br />No carved gods of any size, shape, or form of anything whatever, whether of things that fly or walk or swim. Don’t bow down to them and don’t serve them because I am GOD, your God, and I’m a most jealous God, punishing the children for any sins their parents pass on to them to the third, and yes, even to the fourth generation of those who hate me. But I’m unswervingly loyal to the thousands who love me and keep my commandments.<br />No using the name of GOD, your God, in curses or silly banter; GOD won’t put up with the irreverent use of his name.<br />Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Work six days and do everything you need to do. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to GOD, your God. Don’t do any work—not you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your servant, nor your maid, nor your animals, not even the foreign guest visiting in your town. For in six days GOD made Heaven, Earth, and sea, and everything in them; he rested on the seventh day. Therefore GOD blessed the Sabbath day; he set it apart as a holy day.<br />Honor your father and mother so that you’ll live a long time in the land that God, your God, is giving you.<br />No murder.<br />No adultery.<br />No stealing.<br />No lies about your neighbor.<br />No lusting after your neighbor’s house—or wife or servant or maid or ox or donkey. Don’t set your heart on anything that is your neighbor’s.”</i></blockquote>
<br />
<h3>
Introduction</h3>
In the <a href="http://www.jonrkershner.net/2015/10/a-simple-way-to-prayer-lords-prayer.html" target="_blank">last post</a>, I wrote about Martin Luther’s little essay, "<a href="http://www.se.lcms.org/uploads/simple_way_pray_luther.pdf" target="_blank">A Simple Way to Pray</a>." Martin Luther was a Catholic monk who became the leader of a movement of renewal and reformation that spawned the Protestant churches. He was a pastor and a theologian and all of his writings had the intent of helping other people experience a deep spiritual life. His essay, "A Simple Way to Pray," was written for his barber, who had asked him for practical instructions on prayer.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjy7dx37TFYCmzb1LJNndEFKjh9cfvyMyqYctQontaD322mZSBC1DGPgFYHpS8aFuT1Spv57JnjylHLW69p4682apgpOTorITTXZjW8zQWzwrYPcFL5Zh6utw9Bq4PXEAlmeL50TSYo3Doj/s1600/pray-664786_640.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="245" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjy7dx37TFYCmzb1LJNndEFKjh9cfvyMyqYctQontaD322mZSBC1DGPgFYHpS8aFuT1Spv57JnjylHLW69p4682apgpOTorITTXZjW8zQWzwrYPcFL5Zh6utw9Bq4PXEAlmeL50TSYo3Doj/s400/pray-664786_640.jpg" width="400" /></a><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Luther encouraged his barber to take prayer seriously. In order to do so, he said his barber should clear himself of distractions. No cutting people’s hair with one hand while holding a prayer book in the other. Rather, a barber should cut hair when he is at work and give a separate time every morning and evening for a short and simple prayer. There is wisdom in this. As much as we can and <br />
should make our whole lives an act of prayer, this life-prayer is sustained by regular periods of focused prayer.<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Luther said that true prayer only happens when the heart is properly inclined to it. In other words, there is a communion of Spirit and flesh that takes place in prayer and we can’t short-cut it by removing the Spirit. That would not be real prayer. So we are to ask God to listen to our prayers and have faith that God does. That God listens to our prayers is not magic, it is not some power that we hold over God and we can order God around. It is God’s act of free grace that we respond to with humility and gratitude.<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Luther told his barber that better than trying to sound all religious in his prayers was to simply respond to what the church affirms as God’s teaching. Luther gives three specific examples: 1) <a href="http://www.jonrkershner.net/2015/10/a-simple-way-to-prayer-lords-prayer.html" target="_blank">The Lord’s Prayer</a>, which we looked at last time; 2) The Ten Commandments, which we will look at today; and, 3) the Creed, which we will look at next week.<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Luther recommended the Lord’s Prayer as a starting point because it was the prayer taught by Jesus. Rather than merely repeating the Lord’s Prayer, Luther said that he would meditate on the Lord’s Prayer by repeating a phrase from the prayer and then adding his own prayer; then he would move on to the next phrase and add his own prayer, and so on. In this way, the form prayer Jesus taught became the foundation for personal prayer. The words of Scripture led Luther to reflect on them and to apply them in his own prayers by expanding them to include the people and events of his own life.<br />
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<a name='more'></a><br /><br />
<h3>
The Ten Commandments</h3>
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>In the second part of his essay, Luther encourages his barber to use the Ten Commandments as a basis of prayer. This might sound like an odd suggestion to our contemporary ears, but the Ten Commandments have a long tradition in prayer and worship.<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Luther proposes one way to turn the Ten Commandments into a guide for prayer that can give your own prayer direction and content while making the Ten Commandments applicable and personal.<br />
<br />
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<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>If you have time to go through the Lord’s Prayer, you can move on to the Ten Commandments. Luther says that each commandment can be divided into four parts.<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>First, there is instruction, which is what the commandments were intended to be. </li>
<li>Second, you could turn the Ten Commandments into a thanksgiving. </li>
<li>Third, a confession; </li>
<li>and fourth, a prayer. All of this is to be done in your own words.</li>
</ul>
<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>So, when you are praying, repeat the words:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="font-size: large;">“No other gods, only Me.” </span></i></blockquote>
<br />
The first commandment. Now, meditate on these words and what God is teaching you.<br />
<br />
Your reflection on this <b>teaching </b>might go along these lines:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
God wants to be your one and only, your beloved, because God desires to love you and be in relationship with you. In this first commandment, God is trying to teach you that the best way to go through life is to do so in radical trust in God. Our bodies will fail, our bank accounts can empty, prestige and power are fleeting, and all of our human relationships can fall apart. God is the only firm foundation for living, loving and trusting.</blockquote>
<br />
Because of this, we can <b>give thanks</b> to God who is infinite and eternal, and, yet, wants to be known and loved by us. So we turn to the second application of the commandment, gratitude:<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
God’s compassion comes to us without our asking for it and without our earning it. God comes to us as our refuge and strength in every time of need, and for this we can express our gratitude to God in prayer. </blockquote>
<div>
Turning to the third application, we can examine our lives to see if we have an undo longing for anything that is idolatrous. This is <b>confession:</b> </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The commandment to have “no other gods” before God invites us to confess the way we trample on God’s desire to love us. We can confess our ingratitude and our tendency toward idolatry. Whenever we place our trust in something over and above complete trust in God, we are worshiping an idol. The little voices in my head are always yearning <br />
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for something more. More influence over others, more control of my life. We can find ourselves striving and wanting and desiring the next big thing. With all of that striving, wanting and desiring it can be really difficult to have an uncluttered Spirit, a heart that is open to following God’s leading. And we might say implicitly, “once I get this job, which I really need, then I will rebalance my life and clear out the clutter.” This is a way of saying that there are gods that supersede a life of trusting God alone. So we can confess this idolatry.</blockquote>
<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Fourth, form out of your meditations on the first commandment a <b>prayer </b>asking God to apply it to your life in new ways. Luther suggests this prayer:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"O my God and Lord, help me by thy grace to learn and understand thy commandments<br />
more fully every day and to live by them in sincere confidence. Preserve my heart so that I shall never again become forgetful and ungrateful, that I may never seek after other gods or other consolation on earth or in any creature, but cling truly and solely to thee, my only God. Amen, dear Lord God and Father. Amen" (Luther, "<a href="http://www.se.lcms.org/uploads/simple_way_pray_luther.pdf" target="_blank">A Simple Way to Pray</a>," 5).</blockquote>
Luther here prays that the first commandment would become a greater part of his spiritual life and that he would be more faithful in integrating it into his life.<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Then, if you have time, you can move on to the second commandment, likewise in the four strands of <b>teaching, giving thanks, confessing, and praying</b>:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="font-size: large;">“No using the name of GOD, your God, in curses or silly banter; GOD won’t put up with the irreverent use of his name.”</span></i></blockquote>
<br />
First, in terms of <b>teaching</b>, we see that God is due honor, that God is holy, that God is beautiful and not to be taken flippantly. This commandment teaches us not to diminish God for the purpose of advancing ourselves, but to be humble before God.<br />
<br />
Second, in terms of <b>gratitude</b>, we can be thankful that a holy God has chosen to be made known to us. God has bestowed God’s name on us, and in that relationship we can glory in God’s name and be called God’s servants. So we can be grateful that God has made known God’s holy name to us and that we can be counted among God’s followers.<br />
<br />
Third, in terms of <b>confession</b>, we can acknowledge that we have not always treated God with reverence and that we have often failed to fully live into our new identity as children of God.<br />
<br />
Fourth, in terms of <b>prayer</b>, we can ask for help and strength to learn this commandment and to be preserved from such ingratitude and superficiality. We can pray that our lives will be one of ongoing worship and reverence.<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"><span id="goog_1609766352"></span><span id="goog_1609766353"></span> </span><br />
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<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>There is no reason to be dogmatic or rigid about the ordering of this prayer. It might be, and probably will be, that in the midst of your meditations the Holy Spirit will begin to preach in your heart with rich thoughts. If so, honor the activity of the Holy Spirit by letting go of this format and being still before the Spirit. You can’t do any better than letting the Spirit pray in and through you.<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>In this way, Luther proposes praying through and meditating upon the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments are plain, straightforward, and almost boring, but in this fourfold approach of teaching, gratitude, confession and prayer, I hope they can serve as a springboard for your prayers.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Luther said he thinks of the Ten Commandments as a “school text, song book, penitential book, and prayer book. They are intended to help the heart come to itself and grow zealous in prayer. Take care, however, not to undertake all of this or so much that one becomes weary in spirit” (Luther, "<a href="http://www.se.lcms.org/uploads/simple_way_pray_luther.pdf" target="_blank">A Simple Way to Pray</a>," 10). </blockquote>
<br />
Those are good and freeing words, especially to a barber who has had a long day at work or to any of us.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgf0YLgCIZMm9KFaeYCOE-XlQJ4BNjYir2fmn-y0jzRXy-azG3N54KEyPQZfx9P_nbsrFkO_mqtFjngwFNi0kQntoJhSLcH0WsBUoFRjkD_FL8Hw5X7x4SlnBxujCx5OKTNF1uuWcBpJS5x/s1600/healthy-person-woman-sport.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgf0YLgCIZMm9KFaeYCOE-XlQJ4BNjYir2fmn-y0jzRXy-azG3N54KEyPQZfx9P_nbsrFkO_mqtFjngwFNi0kQntoJhSLcH0WsBUoFRjkD_FL8Hw5X7x4SlnBxujCx5OKTNF1uuWcBpJS5x/s320/healthy-person-woman-sport.jpg" width="320" /></a><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>In exercise there is a mode of training called HIIT, High-Intensity Interval Training. The goal of this type of exercise is to perform short bursts of vigorous exercise rather than long and low-intensity workouts. So in HIIT training, the person would perform 15 minutes of 30 second, all out sprints instead of a plodding 26 miles. Luther encourages this to be your approach to prayer. “A good prayer should not be lengthy or drawn out, but frequent and ardent. It is enough to consider one section or half a section which kindles a fire in the heart.”<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Most of all, Luther says that prayer can’t be forced but is most valuable when it comes from the clearing of our hearts and the inspiration of the Spirit.<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
Jon R Kershnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15847745773028620147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5748626137030348790.post-78998844935033018322015-10-18T08:50:00.002-07:002016-03-22T21:50:42.756-07:00A Simple Way to Pray: The Lord's Prayer<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Matthew 6:5-15</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>5 “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 6 But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. 7 And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>9 “This, then, is how you should pray:</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>“‘Our Father in heaven,</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>hallowed be your name,</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>10 your kingdom come,</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>your will be done,</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i> on earth as it is in heaven.</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>11 Give us today our daily bread.</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>12 And forgive us our debts,</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i> as we also have forgiven our debtors.</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>13 And lead us not into temptation,</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i> but deliver us from the evil one.'"</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<br />
<h3>
Introduction</h3>
The next three posts will focus on prayer, and how we can pray creatively and personally and directly. These posts will be based on the teaching of one of the most important theologians, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther" target="_blank">Martin Luther</a> (1483-1546). Martin Luther was probably the most significant figure in the Protestant Reformation in the 1500s, which separated the Holy Roman Church from the Protestant churches. So, we all owe a lot to Luther, and his teachings remain valuable for us. I am going to take Luther’s ideas and modernize them, making them my own prayers. The title of the essay by Luther I will be working with is A Simple Way to Pray, which was written for Luther’s barber, one Master Peter Berkendorf, in the Spring of 1535. I don’t think we know much about Peter Berkendorf, except that he was Luther’s barber and wanted to know how to pray. Luther was a top-notch theologian, but, like all theologians worth their salt, he was primarily a church leader who helped people express their faith. So when confronted with the very simple question of how to pray, he gave it some serious thought and wrote an eleven page essay. Luther says that there are three great catalysts for prayer:<br />
The Lord’s Prayer<br />
<a href="http://www.jonrkershner.net/2015/11/a-simple-way-to-pray-ten-commandments.html#more" target="_blank">The 10 Commandments</a>, and the<br />
Apostles Creed<br />
<br />
Today, I want to look at what Luther says about the Lord’s Prayer.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Martin Luther (For a nice overview of Luther and his accomplishments, see <a href="http://www.amazon.com/History-Christian-Thought-Vol-Reformation/dp/0687171849/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1445182494&sr=8-4&keywords=justo+gonzalez+history+of+christian+thought" target="_blank">Justo Gonzalez's <i>A History of Christian Thought, vol. III</i></a>)</h3>
<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Martin Luther was a somewhat moody young man with strong religious inclinations. He enrolled in a Catholic monastery in 1505, at the age of 21, with the goal of becoming a priest. He did not take his vows lightly. He was a dedicated pupil and was ordained as a priest. During the first couple of years of Luther’s studies at the monastery, there is no indication that he found Catholic teachings to be troublesome or that his vows were a burden to him. He was willing and eager and exemplary.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqBqNUvBqZt-J-j0O2d1ybLTaxTcoH93w4EW4BC2UFsTumf8ydw9AFFCgHCt4L0uoXah8k3LuwbVbk9Mu9sjyerMVU0ZlQUCpF-zUXCTyo3oFMQPoofdEdHZK68KZnJ-y6JdVAV1HXc_X7/s1600/Martin_Luther_by_Lucas_Cranach_the_Elder_-_Statens_Museum_for_Kunst_-_DSC08170.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqBqNUvBqZt-J-j0O2d1ybLTaxTcoH93w4EW4BC2UFsTumf8ydw9AFFCgHCt4L0uoXah8k3LuwbVbk9Mu9sjyerMVU0ZlQUCpF-zUXCTyo3oFMQPoofdEdHZK68KZnJ-y6JdVAV1HXc_X7/s320/Martin_Luther_by_Lucas_Cranach_the_Elder_-_Statens_Museum_for_Kunst_-_DSC08170.JPG" width="208" /></a><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>In fact, he enrolled in the monastery for the purpose of making himself right before God, or purifying himself. And so he led a strictly disciplined life, which included excessive fasting. In later years he would say that he thought the fasting he undertook in those days had resulted in some permanent damage to his body, but he found that it did little spiritual good and so he became disillusioned with his spiritual progress. Real concerns began to grow in Luther when he saw how the Catholic Church of his day was abusing the relics and indulgences that were to be used to grant forgiveness of sins. He saw that the Catholic Church’s use of indulgences was insufficient and he began to doubt Catholic doctrine.<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Following the advice of a friend, Luther gave himself to studying the Bible and found therein a doctrine of justification different from the one he was taught in the monastery. Then, in 1517, Luther composed his ninety-five theses, which challenged the doctrine of indulgences. The ninety-five theses were like the spark that sets off a powder keg and from that point on Luther garnered support from others who were dissatisfied with the Catholic Church and from that point on we talk about the growth of the Protestant Church.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br /><br />
I found Luther’s advice on prayer to be refreshing and personally helpful. Luther advises his barber to pray like a child. He advises that true prayer occurs when the meditations of the heart find authentic expression in the words of our mouth. The Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and the Apostles Creed are guides to expressing the concerns of our heart. By basing our prayer life on these classic expression of faith, our meditations are grounded on a foundation that exists beyond ourselves. And, so, our prayer is not completely subject to our whims, our moods, our frustration at being cut off in traffic. Our whims, moods, and frustrations are legitimately an important part of our prayer, because they are an important part of our authentic selves but Luther's way of prayer has a grounding that transcends our own subjectivity before incorporating it in a transformative way.<br />
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Prayer is essential to spiritual growth because in true prayer we surrender our wills more and more to God and, so, we come into contact with God’s presence. When our lives are punctuated by moments of contact and formation with God we are changed into reflections of God’s grace and love. We can then live the lives we wish to live, the lives that are the outward expressions of our inward prayers.<br />
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It is good to let prayer be the first thing we do in the morning and the last thing we do at night. Whatever you do, do not fall in the trap of saying, “I’ll pray tomorrow, or I will pray in an hour, or I will pray at some later time.” The habit of pushing prayer away until someday less busy, someday less hectic, can be stifling to our spiritual growth. As Creedence Clearwater Revival has told us repeatedly, “Someday Never Comes.” Make prayer the bookend around your day, framing the rest of your activities. Luther wants to be sure that his readers break the inner narrative that always finds a reason to ignore prayer, because that voice can begin to take on more and more power in a person’s life. That inner narrative is changed by replacing it with simple prayer.<br />
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A Simple Way to Pray</h3>
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So this is what Luther advises: When your heart is warmed toward prayer he says a person should kneel or stand with hands folded and eyes toward heaven. I am not so sure if that exact position is so important, but I do know that lounging in the lazy-boy is not the best posture for prayer. Sure, you can pray in your lazy-boy, but I’ve had too many experiences of praying, praying, snoring……… If you are kneeling or standing, you won’t be falling asleep. Sometimes the whole body needs to get into the act of praying, like Luther was suggesting. You could sit on the floor with your legs crossed and your back straight, or you could sit up straight in a sturdy, stiff chair. Pick a position that isn’t so comfortable you will fall asleep, pick a position that says, “now I am getting down to the serious work of letting God align my heart with eternity.”<br />
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Then pray or think something simple like this to begin your prayer time:<br />
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“Dear God, I don’t have much to bring to you right now. I know you are not at my disposal, but I am coming to you as best I can and I ask that your grace would fill me so that I know how to pray and what to pray. I trust that you are with me and hearing me even now. And so I pray what Jesus taught us to pray, ‘Our Father who is in Heaven, etc, etc,” through the whole Lord’s prayer, word for word.</blockquote>
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After praying through the Lord’s prayer, repeat one part of the Lord’s prayer and expound upon it. You can repeat as little or as much of the prayer as you want. Do whatever rises up in you. So you could repeat the first petition of the Lord’s prayer, “Hallowed be thy name” and, then, add your own prayer. Maybe something like this:<br />
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“Yes, Lord God, loving and perfect, teach me to revere your name and may my life be an act of devotion to you. When I think about the beauty of the created world, and your gracious accompaniment with me, I am filled with awe. I can’t even comprehend your patient, steadfast love from generation to generation, from eternity to eternity. You have worked wonders in my life and in the lives of so many. </blockquote>
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Dear God, overcome all things that are contrary to your will. Where there is violence, sew peace. Where there is hatred, sew love. Where people are persecuted for your name’s sake, bring justice. Where there is suffering bring dignity. Convert the hearts of all those who mistakenly seek to set up self-love and pride where you call for sacrificial-love and mercy. May our politicians, the most powerful of our society, as well as people of every station, including myself, be transformed in spirit and mind so that all people can honor You.” </blockquote>
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So you would use the first phrase of the Lord’s prayer as inspiration for your own prayer, making your prayer applicable to your own life and situation.<br />
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Then you could move on to the second petition of the Lord’s prayer: “Thy Kingdom come.” You could then expound upon this phrase and say something like:<br />
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“Holy God, you alone see the extent to which the pursuit of wealth and power corrupt the human heart. May I be cured of my desire to be admired, may I be healed of the search for status and the false-securities I seek to place around myself. Convert me into an agent of your kingdom, who lives by faith and who counts everything a loss if it is not a foretaste of the world made right.”</blockquote>
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In Luther’s essay, he goes through the rest of the Lord’s prayer offering his own exposition as a sample of the types of prayers one might choose to say.<br />
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When you are done with your prayer, you can say “Amen” which literally means “Verily, verily” or “truly, truly” and is a statement of faith that God has heard our prayers. When we say “Amen,” we are affirming that God hears the prayers of those who seek God out. Sometimes you might close your prayer with “thank you,” which again affirms that God is with us and listens to us. It is not a demand that God do everything our way, it is a statement of faith that God listens to us.<br />
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The examples I have given here are not meant to be prescriptive, but are meant to be springboards for your own prayers. This is a simple way of meditating with God and seeing what rises up as God gives you the words for your prayers. If your heart is warmed to prayer and if your spirit is seeking God, the prayer can be offered in many different ways and can vary from day to day.<br />
It might be that you become so involved in praying the first line of the Lord’s prayer that you never make it through the rest. That’s fine. Be flexible and responsive to what the Spirit is doing in you. As Luther says, do not obstruct the prayer that comes up: “The Holy Spirit himself preaches here, and one word of his sermon is far better than a thousand of our prayers” (<a href="http://www.se.lcms.org/uploads/simple_way_pray_luther.pdf" target="_blank">4</a>).<br />
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It is important that the heart is properly inclined to prayer and that one is prepared to be serious in prayer. If we are constantly distracted by other thoughts and our mind is wandering all over the place, we might not be taking prayer seriously. This does not mean we should not try to pray when we are scattered, just that we should ask God to give us focus. Luther must have had a sense of humor because as an example of this scattered type of prayer he wrote about the priest who prayed,<br />
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"Deus in adjutorium meum intende. Farmhand, did you unhitch the horses? Domine ad adjuvandum me festina. Maid, go out and milk the cow. Gloria patti et filio et spiritui sancto. Hurry up, boy, I wish the [fevers] would take you!" </blockquote>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEfvWOyN8BYb82EEcng1uj4YrXOaTP21eN4YQZPjF2M8m1LxzlM5i2WZbbWk5bTq7wW_riZWPbLi8OFFJB8YFV6MuK8me6qLwXUFmsyFSitHjBQ5NfeWKVlTHxEYRQP8Jsm4B2fDC35YZd/s1600/Musical_Jolly_Chimp1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEfvWOyN8BYb82EEcng1uj4YrXOaTP21eN4YQZPjF2M8m1LxzlM5i2WZbbWk5bTq7wW_riZWPbLi8OFFJB8YFV6MuK8me6qLwXUFmsyFSitHjBQ5NfeWKVlTHxEYRQP8Jsm4B2fDC35YZd/s320/Musical_Jolly_Chimp1.jpg" width="214" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The random thoughts in my head!</td></tr>
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This is me everyday. I will be praying and trying to focus on God’s presence with me when I am bombarded with all the things I need to do and worries about the future and concerns about politics and perfect zingers to say to so-and-so next time I see them. I am a living example of what the Buddhists have termed, the “Monkey Mind.” I am unsettled, fanciful, confused, indecisive, and all of these at the same time, especially when I meditate. In those moments, simply ask God for focus and gently turn your mind back to God. No shame. No blame. No frustration. Just a simple turning and reorienting back to prayer.<br />
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<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Luther’s advice to his barber is to be attentive in prayer and to be attentive in his work. If he is distracted when he is giving a shave he could do a lot of damage. Likewise, if his prayers are distracted by trying to converse with his customers and do his job, they will not be the serious, attentive type of prayer that Luther thinks is valuable. So Luther applies to one’s work and to prayer the proverb: “He who thinks of many things, thinks of nothing and does nothing right.” And then he adds, “How much more does prayer call for concentration and singleness of heart if it is to be a good prayer!”<br />
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Jon R Kershnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15847745773028620147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5748626137030348790.post-55533419333163128712015-09-26T21:34:00.000-07:002015-11-13T07:27:44.470-08:00Grow Potatoes in Trash Cans<div style="text-align: left;">
I am always on the watch for efficient and effective ways to grow food. I want to tell you about one of those methods in this post.</div>
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Potatoes are always good, but potatoes grown organically in nutritious soil are GREAT! If you are hesitant to dig up your yard to plant potatoes, or you have only a small yard and not much space, you can grow potatoes in a trash can, barrel or other type of bin.</div>
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This works particularly well for potatoes because the potato plant grows vertically and then puts out spuds every foot or so. In a large field, farmers will periodically "hill" the potato plants by raking soil to cover all but the very tops. After the plant grows a little taller, they will "hill" the potatoes again, thereby increasing the growing space vertically.</div>
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However, using a trash can to grow potatoes keeps the "hilling" in a tidy, confined space so that you could grow them on a balcony or walkway.</div>
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Here is what you need to get the job done.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRtGSd_GRjBqRvz-sZqiB1pUc5XBRW0632oQw4G94R_uXKSiLxWJ_DTK7A1SRyOeayLrRiU5nEKcR1XgulIHRwABjR6eKlHzG4IblrcS8k1cf_3eGZTDFuYVQIfzGTZrL4cvJDW_pZI4Tg/s1600/P1030494.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRtGSd_GRjBqRvz-sZqiB1pUc5XBRW0632oQw4G94R_uXKSiLxWJ_DTK7A1SRyOeayLrRiU5nEKcR1XgulIHRwABjR6eKlHzG4IblrcS8k1cf_3eGZTDFuYVQIfzGTZrL4cvJDW_pZI4Tg/s320/P1030494.JPG" width="240" /></a>You will need to purchase soil and fertilizer (or prefertilized soil) for the trash cans. Depending on how big the bins are, you can figure about two bags per trash can (2 cu. ft. bags). And here is the chief downside to trash can potatoes: you have to buy bagged dirt every year. Good soil costs about $8-12 per bag, so that can add up quickly. You do not want to reuse the same dirt for growing potatoes year after year because potato plants are highly susceptible to pests, which will become entrenched in the soil if you don't rotate the dirt out. However, if like me you have <a href="http://www.jonrkershner.net/2015/06/quick-easy-and-portable-vegetable-garden.html" target="_blank">many different pots going</a>, you can simply rotate the dirt from those other pots into the trash cans and move the dirt in the trash cans into the pots. You would just need to keep track of where your dirt has been.</div>
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Once you have the soil, you need the trash cans, bins or barrells. I had some unused 30 gallon trash cans about, so they were a natural choice. Any old trash can will do, just don't use one that had handled toxic materials. In the past I've used a galvanized trash can, this time I used plastic. Either type worked equally well. I cleaned and sanitized the trash cans well, and let them sit in direct sun for a couple days just to be sure they were safe to use for planting. </div>
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The next step is to add drainage points to the trash cans. Potatoes hate wet feet and will quickly rot if the soil does not have good drainage. I made drainage points by drilling 1/2 inch holes in the bottom of the can every few inches. Then I drilled 1/4 inch holes up the sides every 6 inches or so, four holes to each level.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLaKLODCjTJToOPZTCGspTrhHVesVqC_VMXzzLP1o1t_KSOsjxZy5FTIUJ6RjChZ4zlKbUXlPooy-Ccq02lhKXVZeP-CXJzglPCCO0D64_lA63eRKpV3EJtQUv4pyxGJ7MIkB8COaa7DK5/s1600/P1030508.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLaKLODCjTJToOPZTCGspTrhHVesVqC_VMXzzLP1o1t_KSOsjxZy5FTIUJ6RjChZ4zlKbUXlPooy-Ccq02lhKXVZeP-CXJzglPCCO0D64_lA63eRKpV3EJtQUv4pyxGJ7MIkB8COaa7DK5/s320/P1030508.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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After the holes were drilled, I added about six inches of soil. This would serve as my base layer and the seed potatoes will be set on this soil bed.</div>
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As you can see from the picture below, I planted four seed potatoes on the soil base. I like to use smaller potatoes like fingerlings and red potatoes, just so I know the plants will have room to branch out (and they will!).</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXaOmN4H2aHcJ64lADmGdsN16PQEYG5dCj0fCfkG36SO-cjm9OP1LETUK81Q6Y7bm8nM__pCtrr7VTb-cZ8kh8MQTaLSdzL1kADDeVN-Dr4-qVg_EjAaw1ys0LjaOQorOQlbk23Qv22fwE/s1600/P1030509.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXaOmN4H2aHcJ64lADmGdsN16PQEYG5dCj0fCfkG36SO-cjm9OP1LETUK81Q6Y7bm8nM__pCtrr7VTb-cZ8kh8MQTaLSdzL1kADDeVN-Dr4-qVg_EjAaw1ys0LjaOQorOQlbk23Qv22fwE/s640/P1030509.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
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By the time I purchased my seed potatoes from the local garden center, there were hardly any left. I purchased and planted my potatoes in early May and the best looking seed potatoes were long gone. Mid-April would have been a better time to plant, but everything worked out regardless.</div>
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At this point, I covered the seed potatoes with another 6 inches of soil by pouring the soil from the bag on top of the seed potatoes.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtUYAnhsCxmYl_EemwDpTn-i5JBEmVrdwErLshUJYZjRiy4H3xOP1eKFF-pGJDcgA3WTEMyXbpK5s_DWtJOI1lXqBj2s0hqUh_xaWoZA-_J7uUXv91zMnR25L6lJl8E6kBcOn21JxNH8UA/s1600/P1030525.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtUYAnhsCxmYl_EemwDpTn-i5JBEmVrdwErLshUJYZjRiy4H3xOP1eKFF-pGJDcgA3WTEMyXbpK5s_DWtJOI1lXqBj2s0hqUh_xaWoZA-_J7uUXv91zMnR25L6lJl8E6kBcOn21JxNH8UA/s320/P1030525.JPG" width="320" /></a>Then you water and wait. Potato plants like thorough waterings, so I was sure to do so a couple times a week in hot weather. After a few weeks you will start to see the potato plants poke through the soil. That plant will get bigger and bigger! When the plant is about 6-12 inches above the soil level, pour in more dirt. Be careful to pour gently so that you do not harm the plant or break the branches. Re-cover about 3/4 of the emerged plant and gently make sure the soil is evenly distributed around it. So if you wait until the plant has poked out 12 inches from the soil level, re-cover the plant to within a few inches top of the plant. You will be covering branches and leaves. That's ok. </div>
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The plant will keep on growing and all you need to do is keep on pouring more dirt into the trash can to cover the the bottom 3/4 of the plant. Repeat this process until there is no more room for dirt in the trash can. Soon after you reach the point of the trash can being completely full, the plant will start to bloom. I had pretty pink flowers.</div>
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But.... as the summer progresses those nice looking potato plants begin to shrivel and die. In late August the plants looked like this:</div>
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At first sight one might think something had gone terrible wrong, but this is actually a good sign. When the plant is dead looking, it is a good time to reach your hand into the soil to see if the potatoes are making progress. When I did, I felt healthy sized and firm spuds just barely under the soil level.</div>
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So, in early September I started harvesting potatoes. At first I just reached into the soil with my hand and groped around until I had grabbed enough potatoes for the night's dinner. But you don't want to leave mature potatoes in the soil too long for fear of rot. So in mid-September I toppled the trash cans and sorted through the dirt until I had picked out the potatoes (very therapeutic!).</div>
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All told, I harvested about 20 pounds of potatoes from the two cans. Now I will take the used soil, mix it with compost, cover it in black plastic to help with composting over the winter, and reuse the soil for other vegetable in the spring.</div>
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Jon R Kershnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15847745773028620147noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5748626137030348790.post-14718145299346626972015-08-02T15:14:00.001-07:002015-08-02T16:22:46.464-07:00 On Mercy, Commitment, and Being Right: John Woolman’s Way of Prophetic Non-Attachment<h2 style="text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">[[[This message was given at <a href="http://northseattlefriends.org/" target="_blank">North Seattle Friends Church</a>, 8/1/2015]]]</span></h3>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>This is the Message from GOD, the God of Israel, to whom you sent me to present your prayer. He says, "If you are ready to stick it out in this land, I will build you up and not drag you down, I will plant you and not pull you up like a weed. I feel deep compassion on account of the doom I have visited on you. You don’t have to fear the king of Babylon. Your fears are for nothing. I’m on your side, ready to save and deliver you from anything he might do. I’ll pour mercy on you. What’s more, he will show you mercy! He’ll let you come back to your very own land."</i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Jeremiah 42:9-12</i></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Many of you know that I have a special (and some would say excessive) affection for people of faith in ages past; people who lived lives of absolute surrender to the voice of God, who walked against the tide of human opinion and, in so doing, became a foretaste of heaven on earth. And, most of all, I have a special admiration for an unassuming colonial American tailor named <a href="http://www.jonrkershner.net/2015/04/the-theology-of-john-woolman-part-1-of-6.html" target="_blank">John Woolman</a>. </span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-size: large;"><br />John Woolman is one of the most famous of American Quakers. He was born in 1720 near Mount Holly, New Jersey. He was raised in a devout Quaker family. Woolman is best known as an early antislavery advocate who helped to lead Quakers toward a corporate antislavery position. However, Woolman did not see the end of Quaker involvement in slavery during his lifetime. As a young man in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, slavery was generally accepted by many Quakers. Before 1750, Quaker slave-ownership rates in Philadelphia were about the same as the Philadelphia population as a whole (Marietta 115–116). Over the course of his life, Woolman repeatedly called his fellow Quakers to conform their outward lives to the reality of God’s work in them, and for this he has been called the American Prophet.<br /><br />Now the problem with talking about someone like Woolman is that he has become something of a hero for many Quakers and we kind of just assume that wherever he went people were persuaded to free their slaves and that the waters opened before him and he changed the course of history and he lived happily ever after. From the perspective of history we look at his record of monumental accomplishments and neglect to see his own uncertainty, and his 30 year struggle to give voice to God’s will with mercy and humility toward those who disagreed with him.<br /><br />For some, Woolman’s message is one of simplicity, for others it is one of equality and crossing racial and religious boundaries. I’ve found Woolman to be all of these, of course. But I’ve mostly found Woolman to be a deeply unsettling presence, the prick in my conscience that will not leave me alone, that challenges the way I demonize those who disagree with me, and that presents me with a vision of a world remade. <br /><br />What distinguishes Woolman from myself is that where I am tempted to use my religious convictions as a bludgeon that is all too happy to create change through coercion, Woolman did not view Truth as something that can be wielded, but as something that consumes one’s life and in that experience of being spiritually and holistically consumed leads to comprehensive transformation and healing. A transformation that goes beyond the victory of one opinion over another, but is enraptured in a social and spiritual revolution that is universal and eternal. In other words, for Woolman, the prophetic vocation was about being subject to something beyond himself, a message that had as its goal the union of God and humanity and the submission of all aspects of human affairs to the direct and inward voice of God. I have found Woolman’s prophetic voice to be challenging and unwelcome because in its comprehensiveness it leaves me no place to hide; it rejects the compartmentalized way I create boundaries around the places in my life and in my heart that I would rather leave untouched, protected, and hidden. It rejects the demonizing and partisanship that characterizes conflict within the church and beyond it.<br /><br /><br />I am not the first to find Woolman to be a troubling figure. While we might think of him as a luminary, a standout, the most authentic representative of eighteenth century Quakerism; the truth is that, in his own day, he was not esteemed differently from any number of other Quaker ministers. Not only that, many Quakers did not know what to do with him and many found his views and habits excessive. <br /><br />To deal with some of his behaviors, soon after his death, he was edited and tamed. Gone were two supernatural visions. Cut out were references to refusing to pay war taxes and his criticisms of the British trans-Atlantic imperial economy. Some of his antislavery writings were watered down and abridged (Plank, “The First Person in Antislavery Literature,” p. 77). The image of Woolman that resulted was of a pious model of lowliness, self-effacement and humility. John Woolman, meek and mild. A spirituality devoid of moral embodiment and socio-political transformation.<br /><br />Not all of Woolman’s ideas found acceptance during his life. <br />Many of his peers considered him to be “singular.” To be “singular” was not a good thing. The label meant that Woolman’s views in some areas were not prerequisite to be a good Quaker, and, in some cases, implied that Woolman was dangerously close to stepping outside the bounds of accepted Quaker behavior. <br /><br />Upon meeting Woolman, one leading British Quaker was not overly impressed. He wrote: </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">"John Woolman is solid and weighty in his remarks. I wish he could be cured of some singularitys. But his real worth outweighs the trash” (Cadbury, John Woolman in England, p. 6).</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />In this particular letter there is uncertainty whether or not the final word is “trash” or “husk,” but, in either case, many Quakers thought some of Woolman’s habits were unsupportable and should be discarded.<br /><br />Perhaps the person most upset by Woolman’s “singularity” was Woolman himself. He knew he held different positions from others, he knew that people were making all sorts of assumptions about the motivations that underlie his conviction, and it caused him emotional turmoil. Some likely thought he was excessively pious, others thought he was an attention-seeker. <br /><br />The distress Woolman felt when he challenged the misguided notions of his peers was only mitigated by the intensity of divine revelations that were as real, direct, and understandable to him as if they were given person-to-person. Woolman’s experience of God’s revelatory presence led him to look for kindred spirits in the Hebrew prophets, and, especially, the prophet Jeremiah. <br /><br />Jeremiah, known as the reluctant prophet, was a model to Woolman of someone who would rather not be a prophet, thank you very much. Jeremiah wanted his message to go away and leave him alone. He wanted to be just like everybody else, he did not want to bear bad news against his neighbors. Like Jeremiah, the revelation of God to Woolman was one that challenged those dilutions of faithfulness and obedience that occur whenever humanity turns its energy into destructive egocentrisms, oppression, and negations of God’s creative intent for human thriving. All those corruptions of divine-human intimacy that only lead to spiritual and social alienation.<br /><br />Despite the momentousness and righteousness of Woolman’s antislavery work, nowhere in his writings does he ever appear giddy to take prophetic stances that he knows would be opposed by his fellow colonists and Quakers. Woolman was not looking for a fight. Like the prophet Jeremiah he found the message God had given to him a burden, an exercise, a duty, a solemn calling that brought with it interpersonal turmoil and anxiety. <br /><br />Woolman’s genius was that he did not place himself over and above his peers, even in those places where his conviction was strong. Rather, the distance between his sense of God’s leading and the apostasy he saw in the world around him caused him grief. He did not lambaste his fellow Quakers for their positions and for the oppressive systems they supported, he grieved for them. On several occasions he was reduced to tears when confronted with hardened hearts, and when he found himself under compunction from God to walk a different path than his acquaintances and friends (Woolman, Journal, pp. 72, 119). Woolman could not caricature or demean those who felt differently than him on the most controversial issues of his day, because he was committed to his community and he knew that his convictions were not his own invention. Since his vision for human faithfulness was given to him by God, they belonged to God and so it was to God that he entrusted them. <br />On one occasion, Woolman saw that he could not push his fellow Quakers any further, and, yet, they watered down the anstislavery language he knew to be right. In a moment of spectacular trust in God, he said, “[I] felt easy to leave all to him who alone is able to turn the hearts of the mighty and make way for the spreading of Truth in the earth by means agreeable to his infinite wisdom” (Woolman, Journal, 66-67).<br /><br />Later, on that same journey, Woolman described the type of prophetic non-attachment that invigorated both his obedience to the divine voice and his commitment to Quaker community: <br />"I have had renewed evidences that to be faithful to the Lord and content with his will concerning me is a most necessary and useful lesson for me to be learning, looking less at the effects of my labour than at the pure motion and reality of the concern as it arises from heavenly love” (Woolman, Journal, p. 72).<br /><br />For Woolman, the message was authored by God, and, so, held by God. And its fulfillment, too, was in God’s hands. Attentiveness to the Source of divine revelation was the litmus test for prophetic authenticity, and by placing his focus on God’s voice Woolman embodied the spiritual transformation out of which his social vision arose. Woolman was deeply concerned with the issues of his day: high rents and interest rates, poverty, egregious wealth, alcoholism, the rapaciousness of the British trans-Atlantic imperial economy. But he did not merely have a list of issues on which he took public stands, as if they could all be isolated, fragmented, and compartmentalized. Woolman’s prophetic voice was a comprehensive and unified whole: “respond to the motion of love, respond to the motion of love, respond to the motion of love.” By pointing again and again to the spiritual root and cause that taught him what a world remade would look like, Woolman avoided the pitfall of becoming merely a partisan. Like the Hebrew prophets, Woolman saw that the social degeneracies of his day were symptoms of spiritual alienation and rebellion. Woolman’s challenge to his fellow colonists was to hearken back to the “pure motion and reality” of God’s will. <br /><br />Outside of a state of obedience within God’s will, outside of the complete surrender of one’s self to God, slavery happens. Economic and physical bondage happen. Greed happens. Woolman’s letters show that not even his closest friends and allies escaped the unrelenting energy of his commission to call people back, over and over, to the presence of God and to warn them of the pride that put them in eternal jeopardy.<br /><br />In the spirit of Jeremiah, Woolman was the reluctant prophet. Called to a testimony he did not want, with a message he would have rather ignored. Because he knew that his message was one that originated elsewhere, he could only grieve for those to whom he was sent, and grieve for the path he must walk. But his grief was also his vindication. He took assurance from the fact that his message caused him angst and was contrary to his own inclinations, because that validated for him that his message was not of his own but was from God. <br /><br />Woolman’s grief grounded his social witness in love for his people, his friends and neighbors, whom he often disagreed with. It was a love that believed the apathetic, self-centered stagnation that passed for religion among some of his fellow Quakers was too small a thing and too puny a calling for a people sent by God to be in the vanguard of God’s will for human destiny. <br /><br />The prophet delegitimizes and rejects the present ordering of things while fostering and pointing to an alternative consciousness that energizes communities with its promise of another way of being toward which the community may faithfully move. <br /><br />Woolman was committed to his Quaker community all the while challenging Quaker stagnation with a vision of the world he thought God was bringing about. <br /><br />The core of Woolman’s prophetic voice was his consistent call to return to the experience of spiritual light and life without which Quaker action was nothing more than religious performance. Woolman attacked those practices and habits that hindered the activity of the Spirit in the world, that oppressed the soul, and that contradicted the divine intent for human faithfulness. In the apocalypse of the heart, Woolman believed the Spirit of Christ would so transform the individual as to show them an alternative vision of society, a perfected and just ordering that reflected God’s ultimate intent for human destiny, but available now, on earth, through human faithfulness. Woolman said of this vision in 1772: </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">“In the harmonious Spirit of Society, Christ is all in all.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">“Here it is that Old Things are past [sic] away, all Things are new, all things are of God; and the Desire for outward Riches is at an End” (Woolman, “On Loving Our Neighbors as Ourselves,” in Gummere, The Journal and Essays of John Woolman, p. 491-492). </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />The social dimensions of Woolman’s prophetic voice found cohesion in a vision of a world made new, where greed, schism and oppressive practices were no longer possible because their root cause was no longer viable in the new world of absolute human dependency on God.<br /><br />The more I know of Woolman the more uncomfortable I am with him, because to take him seriously is to let him question the assumptions I take for granted. Woolman challenges the individualism that preempts true corporate discernment and listening. Woolman exposes the way I replace the leadership of Christ with self-justifications. <br /><br />And most of all, I look at the heroic convictions Woolman held and I want to be so like him. I want to be the one taking the stand that people will honor. I want to be the one leading the charge. I want to be the one whose voice echoes through the generations. And in that conceit, I make the fatal mistake. For Woolman, it’s not about the impact a person has, it’s about following Christ. If Christ is the leader, we can take our stand in peace knowing our efforts are sustained by God and not by us and that it is God who will establish Truth on earth in God’s own timing. We can leave all to God who alone changes the hearts of men. <br /><br />Friends, every generation has a challenge to face. Like Woolman, we are looking with expectancy for the transformation of what is into consistency with what may be, and like Woolman we hope that what we do now might be a foretaste of the love we desire to become the norm for human walking on the earth. <br /><br />I want to submit to you this morning that the grace and mercy Woolman directed toward his fellow Quakers who disagreed with him was not incidental to the antislavery progress that occurred as a result of his ministry. And I want to submit to you that if there was ever a time when people feel justified in writing other people off it is in our own day. Our Yearly Meeting is wrestling with important issues of human sexuality and biblical interpretation and it is to be expected that we sometimes get hot under the collar. The lines in our Yearly Meeting are drawn just like they are in every other church in the country. <br /><br />But Friends, we are not called to be like every other church in the country.<br /><br /> We are peacemakers. “We are loudly silent, assertively contemplative, and humbly prophetic” and if there was ever a time that our Yearly Meeting and our world needed a group of people to reject the rhetoric that divides and the impatience that puts false boundaries around the Spirit, it is now!<br /><br />Woolman’s message presents us with an alternative to the discord and suspicion that often characterizes divisions in the church. Like the prophet Jeremiah, Woolman was absolutely committed to his Quaker community, even when they rejected his message. On multiple occasions Woolman reiterated the conviction that while he did not know how people could extricate themselves from slavery, the constrictions of wealth, and the pride that underlie it all, he had faith that God would provide a way out. The act of resignation to God’s will, itself, would provide the map for change, redemption, and transformation. <br /><br />Again and again, Woolman held up the prospect that the new world God was establishing on earth was one characterized by an intimate and direct hear-and-obey relationship with humanity, and, again and again, he declared that the path toward the implementation of that vision was to turn, even now, and respond to that Transforming Presence. He called colonists, and us, to become subjects to the one voice out of which any voice that is prophetic must spring; to the one thing that upends and redefines all others, and recreates the world with spiritual resources that can only be truly known in a life transformed.<br /><br /> Woolman found his prophetic voice in the commissioning that he felt could only come from a divine source, directed into human community. Like the Hebrew prophets who remained in community with Israel even as they rejected their warnings, Woolman did not seek to break fellowship with his Quaker community even when they were dead wrong. What we see in Woolman is that the prophetic voice is not primarily seen in the oppositional positions a person takes, but in the community a person builds. A prophetic voice is legitimated by one’s advocacy of issues relating to deeper spiritual growth and by the enhancement of the community in which one has been placed. Often this will mean taking the long view, like Woolman did. Taking the long view means finding a place to stand and to have a voice, but it opens the door for grace and community and to trust that the work of Truth is ultimately unstoppable, but that it cannot be forced. It will mean turning the other cheek when offended, hurt, or maligned in the course of following Christ.<br /><br />The way Woolman has exercised his prophetic voice is a helpful corrective to my own tendency to be strident in those places where I form positions of opposition to others that I would like to think are prophetic but that have at least some footing in self-righteousness and my own enculturation. While we don’t often associate humility with being prophetic, Woolman and Jeremiah before him, are examples of just that. When the prophetic voice arises from a humble heart it has the power to build community, preserve dignity, and point to the social and interpersonal transformation that is capable of achieving the impossible. <br /></span>Jon R Kershnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15847745773028620147noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5748626137030348790.post-6115375609209153962015-06-14T20:52:00.000-07:002015-09-26T22:42:05.921-07:00Quick, Easy, and Portable Vegetable Garden<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFBGYDCqns3Sh-JhXvU5eEUhS4aZP2f39UTnrKS5k6g-onQdkQeKRk6tE92vQLHS6tgtIy5InTuAEYJtCiSK631-zIKverJT61d1yn-v6jeiDhT957RcNTD67S8HNdKF_0HhnGO_1-prYW/s1600/P1030497.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFBGYDCqns3Sh-JhXvU5eEUhS4aZP2f39UTnrKS5k6g-onQdkQeKRk6tE92vQLHS6tgtIy5InTuAEYJtCiSK631-zIKverJT61d1yn-v6jeiDhT957RcNTD67S8HNdKF_0HhnGO_1-prYW/s320/P1030497.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A collection of pots, just waiting to be planted in!</td></tr>
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This spring I was very late to plan my garden and starting work on it. Fortunately, I knew that my schedule through the winter and spring would be tight, and I had been scheming in my head how to grow some vegetable this summer with the time I had.<br />
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Moreover, I did not want to dig up the yard and preferred something that was semi-portable. The property next to ours is slated for development, but the best sun is right on the property line. I wanted to do a garden that would allow me to move my vegetables a titch if need be.<br />
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Those two factors: 1) tightness of time; and, 2) uncertainty of placement of the garden, led me to consider a quick and portable way to get some seeds in the ground. An article in Mother Earth News gave me some ideas and a <a href="http://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/gardening-techniques/~/media/6978E8EC84B84DE9981F42436B44A310.ashx" target="_blank">rotation plan </a>that has been helpful.<br />
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Enter container gardening and dirt bag gardening. <br />
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I've been collecting planting pots for a while. Most of them were free. I had planted in the pots in years past, and dumped out the dirt in them this past winter. I removed a<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXziJSvOZZen-5B8YlIyRQ8FZ-fMx8vSWSPQBtksIeZSPj0f8xe2nzM6oGvzM9n5X1Z0D0Ev3R8NI8Dj06zr1_cS5dtDmJ9K3Mi70HWXUinzE4CUH6oI_Qab5dIHyKsrKSgMP_9laOzgOU/s1600/P1030501.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXziJSvOZZen-5B8YlIyRQ8FZ-fMx8vSWSPQBtksIeZSPj0f8xe2nzM6oGvzM9n5X1Z0D0Ev3R8NI8Dj06zr1_cS5dtDmJ9K3Mi70HWXUinzE4CUH6oI_Qab5dIHyKsrKSgMP_9laOzgOU/s320/P1030501.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Underneath this suspicious looking sheet of black plastic is two year old potting soil, now warming in the sun and ready to be mixed with compost and fertilizer for another term of service growing stuff.</td></tr>
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s many roots as i could from the dirt, through in some composted grass clippings, and covered the dirt pile with black plastic to give the dirt something of a reset. I wanted to kill whatever weed seeds were in the dirt, and I also wanted to insulate and heat the dirt as much as possible to speed the germination of <br />
my seeds in the spring. With the warm winter and spring we've had in Seattle, this strategy worked like a charm and the dirt was warm, nutrient rich, and ready to go when I had the chance to plant.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLQxzRbGRpCeV8gpugntE7NAYqV7pWnC2eBm5ff7aBL7Rw7fozNIDh2mQPRyE4uZXxKE6KES6ozryLHhKgg7P9tHKgF49IW36HVVjrRwhj9l6wHK5kzEaC_BQwBmBBVO8N_XeQ4yRYeRrd/s1600/P1030500.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLQxzRbGRpCeV8gpugntE7NAYqV7pWnC2eBm5ff7aBL7Rw7fozNIDh2mQPRyE4uZXxKE6KES6ozryLHhKgg7P9tHKgF49IW36HVVjrRwhj9l6wHK5kzEaC_BQwBmBBVO8N_XeQ4yRYeRrd/s200/P1030500.JPG" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I used compost to refresh the potting soil.</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"> I mixed my own compost with bagged stuff from the store to give some balance to the nutrients.</td></tr>
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All in all, I think I spent less than a full day getting my garden ready. It is pretty small, so that's to be expected, I guess. I was able to do it in increments as I had time:<br />
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<li>One afternoon (May 2) I spent an hour or so shoveling dirt into the pots, mixing with compost and fertilizer, and arranging the pots according to sun exposure and watering needs.</li>
<li>A few days later (May 4) I planted seeds, and tomato and summer squash starts.</li>
<li>A week or so later I spent an hour or so putting in some drip and sprinkler lines.</li>
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I planted veggies that I have some experience with and that have worked out for me in the past. This year I planted:<br />
<ul><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifJRRDUYK6WaZTMyTBux80fmh4o4MxVumnHYBy5ZEIzs_gm4O30E2h4gGbAAzfAztszuYp_DKciitNzc4u0dNx4DpmWdLBIViS9rVXDP544R-txwS4wfjn_2eJC97ZmBMPloKJgK1hVUzT/s1600/P1030503.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifJRRDUYK6WaZTMyTBux80fmh4o4MxVumnHYBy5ZEIzs_gm4O30E2h4gGbAAzfAztszuYp_DKciitNzc4u0dNx4DpmWdLBIViS9rVXDP544R-txwS4wfjn_2eJC97ZmBMPloKJgK1hVUzT/s320/P1030503.JPG" width="320" /></a>
<li>Eight tomato varieties</li>
<li>Two potato varieties</li>
<li>Lettuce</li>
<li>Rhubarb Ruby Chard</li>
<li>Russian Kale</li>
<li>Bush Beans</li>
<li>Yellow Squash</li>
<li>"Black Beauty" Zucchini</li>
<li>Two Carrot varieties</li>
<li>Once I eat the lettuce, I am going to rotate those to spinach</li>
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As I mentioned earlier, I organized the pots and dirt bags according to the amount of light they need and watering needs. Since I am using a programmable waterer - and so all the veggies get watered at the same time - I can adjust the flow on each drip head and sprinkler for the needs of the plants within reach.<br />
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Here is the layout:<br />
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This is how I've arranged the pots and dirt bags before I planted anything. I have since made some minor rearrangements, which is a nice option to have.<br />
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As you can see, the dirt bags are literally bags of potting soil laid out with a rectangular window cut in the top of the bag. I made some incisions on the bottoms of the bags, too, so that there would be good drainage. Dirt bag gardens are great if you are not sure about the quality of your soil, need something quick and easy, or need some portability. It works great for lettuce and shallow rooted veggies. Laying the bags flat like that would not work well for something large like tomatoes or something deep like carrots.<br />
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Since I had extra tomato plants this year, I planted some in big containers, and others I planted in a dirt bag standing up. I cut off the top of the dirtbag, leaving some overlap to reduce moisture evaporation, which basically has served as a mulch. I strapped the bag to an arbor in my yard and, again, made some incisions in the bottom for drainage. Tomatoes need a lot of water, but they also need good drainage. With the bags standing up like this, the soil has been kept really warm and the tomatoes have thrived. <br />
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This is just a picture of the same setup on the other side of the arbor. <br />
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And here are some of the tomato starts in their pots. You can't tell from the pictures, but these are BIG pots. The green one on the right is the smallest of the three and really only suitable for cherry tomatoes, as I have done. I mostly stick with determinate tomatoes in pots, which means they grow to a predetermined size and then fruit all at one. Indeterminate tomatoes grow, grow, grow and produce over the season. I have indeterminate tomatoes in the vertical dirt bags with cages and I will be adding some string or twine for the tomatoes to climb up to the arbor.<br />
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<h3>
Progress </h3>
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I've already started harvesting some of the lettuce and chard. The lettuce has been about a week and <br />
a half ahead of schedule. Below is a picture of last night's salad just picked from the garden. The white stuff is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diatomaceous_earth" target="_blank">Diatomaceous earth</a>, a natural way to control slugs and pests without posing any danger to wildlife or humans. It rinses right off and is harmless.<br />
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At least three of my tomato plants already have fruit on them, some of it good size. The potatoes are almost ready to flower, which seems early to me. Since I was so late in getting everything going, the seed potatoes had been pretty well picked over at the garden center. What was left were old, wrinkly, sprouting seeds, but they have done very well so far.<br />
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I was worried that the late start would hinder the garden, instead it has come along very quickly.<br />
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In the dirt bags I planted lettuce, beans, lettuce, beans. The beans were attacked by some pest early on and only about half of them have made it to maturity. The lettuce is amazing! <br />
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You can see the flower heads on my potatoes in the above picture. I'll tell you what I did for <a href="http://www.jonrkershner.net/2015/09/grow-potatotes-in-trash-cans.html#more" target="_blank">growing potatoes in garbage cans in a later post</a>, but you can see here how wonderful they are looking.<br />
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The tomatoes are out of control. Flowers and fruit and branches everywhere. I think I should do more pruning earlier on next year, but so far so good.<br />
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Here's an overhead shot of the garden with everything growing. I think most of my plants are a week ahead or more. This growth has all taken place in about five weeks.<br />
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And here are the tomatoes I planted in the vertical dirt bags. These are by far the most exuberant of my tomatoes. The dirt used here is Black Gold Organic. It is really good stuff and I might start using it exclusively.<br />
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My squash are looking really good in their pots. Underneath those big leaves are flowers and the beginnings of fruit.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Russian Kale</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Chard</td></tr>
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I've been taking one or two of the biggest outside chard leaves for salads, knowing that the chard will continue to grow as I do so. Since I like to simply tear up the chard and put it in the salad uncooked, this method keeps them tender.<br />
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So far, so good. Another benefit of the way I have done this is that there is no weeding to do. So I have very little work and can do as much or as little as I want. Ideally, I would like to have a much larger garden and to use the ground soil, amending it over time. However, for throwing a garden together in less than a day, I am pretty pleased with how it has turned out. <br />
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<br />Jon R Kershnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15847745773028620147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5748626137030348790.post-2534587673934342862015-06-06T10:00:00.000-07:002015-06-06T10:00:01.058-07:00The Theology of John Woolman, part 6 of 6<h2>
<span style="font-size: large;">Woolman's Books and his Peers: Constructing Theology, Maintaining Tradition</span></h2>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />This post concludes our look at the theology of John Woolman. In the <a href="http://www.jonrkershner.net/2015/04/the-theology-of-john-woolman-part-1-of-6.html" target="_blank">first post</a>, I introduced Woolman and his historical and cultural context. In the second through fifth posts, I described the theological elements that animated his social witness. I argue that these components constitute an apocalyptic theology, a radical vision of Christ's governance of human affairs. These elements are: <a href="http://www.jonrkershner.net/2015/05/the-theology-of-john-woolman-part-2-of-6.html" target="_blank">revelation</a>, <a href="http://www.jonrkershner.net/2015/05/the-theology-of-john-woolman-part-3-of-6_9.html" target="_blank">propheticism</a>, <a href="http://www.jonrkershner.net/2015/05/the-theology-of-john-woolman-part-4-of-6.html" target="_blank">eschatology</a>, and <a href="http://www.jonrkershner.net/2015/05/the-theology-of-john-woolman-part-5-of-6.html" target="_blank">perfection/judgment</a>. This final post does two things:</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />1: Compare Woolman to some of his reform minded Friends, to see how similar he was to them. My contention is that Woolman’s theology was different from many of his peers. It was not oppositional to his peers, but it was different, and we don’t see the same type of this-worldly eschatology in them that we do in him.<br /><br />2: Look at some of the books that were on Woolman’s bookshelf to see if we can find any clues as to the main influences on him. He read in the early Quakers, he read mystical literature, he also read some apocalyptic literature. My argument is that Woolman innovated on his Quaker tradition and the larger mystical tradition to construct a theology that was not a passive replication of any one source, but that was within the tradition of his readings while pieced together in a way that showed individuality and theological acumen.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">Woolman and His Peers</span></h3>
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<span style="font-size: large;">What we will see today is that even among the eighteenth century Quaker reformers there were differences of theology. There were differences of the role of Quakers in the world and differences regarding their expectations for the transformation of this world. Generally, eighteenth century Quakers are lumped together into two groups: 1) Reformers, and 2) non-reformers. I will only be looking at reformers today, and you will see some real differences among them, even as they viewed each other as good friends and working on common causes.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Quakers and "the World"</span></h4>
<span style="font-size: large;">One way we can track differences between Woolman and his peers is through the way they interacted with the broader world. This directly relates to their theology and the role they thought Quakers would play in the world as a whole.<br /><br />Woolman’s propheticism was centered around the concept that the inward revelation of the Government of Christ made claims on the outward world, and that the Government of Christ was an alternative ordering, a new world emerging in the present world. As such, it was universal and applied to the whole of world structures. But not everyone had this same understanding of the Quaker role in the world. This becomes apparent, below, when we talk specifically about slavery. Some Quakers believed that antislavery was primarily about purifying Quakers from participation in the world’s ways and therefore was only a Quaker concern, not something to convince outsiders to be a part of.<br /><br />British reforming minister, Samuel Fothergill (1715-1772), is an example of what I might call a sectarian-focused minister in that his writings were directly geared toward Quakers, but this sectarian focus did not preclude a larger scope of action and influence in non-sectarian arenas. However, for Fothergill and some others, the reforms made within Quakerism were viewed as a chance for non-Quakers to overhear their message and join in if they so desired. This is different from Woolman and Anthony Benezet (1713-1784) who saw their role as directly attacking social injustice everywhere with their religious convictions, and attempting to persuade people of all religious backgrounds to do likewise.<br /><br />Here’s a telling example of Fothergill’s view of Quaker involvement in the world: In 1755 Fothergill exhibited considerable trepidation and uncertainty on the Quaker ability to act positively in the complex world of British geopolitical imperialism, and wrote that he was not concerned about the events of the French and Indian War because "it is not my business, and have found it my concern to deny my curiosity in inquiring after news." Instead, he desired to "draw Friends" minds to their own warfare, "that as our hands cannot be active [in outward war], so our minds cannot be embroiled [in it], consistently with our testimony." Fothergill, here, seems detached from the events of the world around him. He expanded Quaker peace tendencies to such an extent that, to be faithful, Quakers could neither petition against the war, nor converse about it. In my experience, Quakers today would not even imagine that to be consistent with Quaker peace testimony they could not talk about a war, or work against it directly. <br /><br />This example, though, shows a much more detached view of the Quaker relationships to the world. The Quaker witness for Fothergill is not one of making claims on world affairs but one of erecting a hedge around Quakers within the world. Fothergill's position, here, is extreme, as I am not aware of any other Quaker minister of his era advocating this kind of willful ignorance about the course of human affairs. <br /><br />However, while Fothergill wanted Quakers to purify themselves from "the world," when he was dealing with non-Quakers he advocated social benevolence. Later in 1755, and into 1756, Fothergill began to pay more attention to geopolitical events, and reported news of the war in his letters home, interpreting political events within a providential framework of divine judgment. Moreover, he later spearheaded a campaign among the affluent members of his home-town to raise money for poor relief. Fothergill's original insular, sectarian position was not as absolute as it first appeared. Nonetheless, Fothergill's struggle to come to terms with the place of the Quaker minister in the realm of world events was not one that Woolman struggled with to the same degree. Of the reformist journals and memoirs I have examined, none spent as much time reflecting on the claims of Christ on world affairs as did Woolman. <br /></span><br />
<h4>
<span style="font-size: large;">Antislavery</span></h4>
<span style="font-size: large;">Differences among the leaders of the Quaker reforms is illustrated on the issue of slavery, because, as historian Jean Soderlund notes, for many ministers interest in the condition of blacks was secondary to their desire to purify Quakers. Daniel Stanton (1708-1770), with Woolman, was one of the members of a committee commissioned by the leadership of Pennsylvania area Quakers, in 1758, to visit and dissuade Quakers from slave-owning; yet, he rarely mentioned slavery in his journal. Fothergill, also, hardly mentions slavery, and only when he linked it to a general observation of spiritual depravity among Quakers. The leading American minister of the eighteenth century, John Churchman (1705-1775), only mentions the practice in reference to the divine judgment it will bring upon Philadelphia. <br /><br />While the antislavery activity of Stanton, Fothergill, and Churchman exceeds what they described in their writings, it is significant that they did not believe antislavery to be an important part of the spiritual autobiography they wanted to leave to succeeding generations. Slavery was of secondary concern to that of corporate purification for these ministers. However, the historical record of their activities demonstrates a greater degree of engagement with the events of the day than they admitted in their self-portrayal, but none of them cast the prophetic vision that Woolman did, which suggests they were not fully clear how their actions in the physical realm related to salvation-history. <br /><br />For Woolman, in contrast, prophetic self-identification, and an alternative vision for world affairs, were necessary parts of the apocalypse of the heart he had experienced and that was already spreading in world affairs. As such, Woolman mentioned slavery in his writings more than Stanton, Fothergill, and Churchman combined, and described, in both political and spiritual terms, life under the government of Christ. </span><br /><span style="font-size: large;">The most dedicated antislavery PYM leader among Woolman's peers was Anthony Benezet, who did not leave a journal, but who did leave many antislavery letters and tracts. Woolman was influenced by Benezet, especially in his incorporation of travel </span><span style="font-size: large;">narratives into his antislavery tracts. Benezet, was, also, influenced by Woolman and quoted from him in his own antislavery tracts. <br />Yet, despite their friendship and common cause, Woolman and Benezet are strikingly different in motivations and methods. </span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeZCtZHuVSHLGRSUeGjuot3DyACC4b8IAIIc_3VMkrqxMzMtd0uMzXdA2i-EDZNOozQ4Dyk2VNh1XWLnhIGy_XTmMuNeCI-Pp8UTGfuMVs1RwpzXLW5d1dh9eHGQrOYvr7iYAGTXEykhjT/s1600/benezet.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeZCtZHuVSHLGRSUeGjuot3DyACC4b8IAIIc_3VMkrqxMzMtd0uMzXdA2i-EDZNOozQ4Dyk2VNh1XWLnhIGy_XTmMuNeCI-Pp8UTGfuMVs1RwpzXLW5d1dh9eHGQrOYvr7iYAGTXEykhjT/s400/benezet.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Anthony Benezet, 1713-1784</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: large;">Woolman and Benezet emphasized differing perspectives on the best means of antislavery discourse, and their work was motivated by complementary but distinct convictions of God's will. The theological difference between the two is apparent when examining Woolman's unpublished notes and commentary on Benezet's 1766 pamphlet, <i>A Caution and Warning to Great Britain and Her Colonies</i>. Central to Benezet's tract was a philosophical argument that juxtaposed stated British philosophical ideals of freedom and happiness, with the harsh reality of slavery.</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="font-size: large;">"Britons boast themselves to be a generous, humane people, who have a true sense of the importance of Liberty; but is this a true character, whilst that barbarous, savage Slave-Trade, with all its attendant horrors, receives countenance and protection from the Legislature, whereby so many thousand lives are yearly sacrificed." </span></i></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />One of Benezet's greatest contributions to late-eighteenth century antislavery was his use of secular and philosophical sources. However, in his notes and commentaries on Benezet's tract, Woolman adjusted Benezet's secular and philosophical arguments to suit his own understanding of the grounds of antislavery: whereas Benezet quoted Enlightenment thinkers to demonstrate, on secular grounds, that the African had, by nature, the right of self-determination and must freely offer consent to be governed, Woolman adjusted the secular argument to make it a religious one. Woolman reflected that “the nature of slave-keeping [was] like that of an absolute government where one man not perfect in wisdom and goodness gives laws to others.” <br /><br />However, for Woolman the problem with "absolute government" did not originate in republican ideals of the consent of the governed. Instead, human "absolute government" was a "snare" that usurped the role which belonged to God. In other words, God alone had authority to rule over humanity. As we have seen other places in Woolman’s writings, there was only one true government to which all other forms of authority were subject, and that was “the Government of Christ,” a state of absolute dependence on the inward revelation of Christ. Slaveowners, usurped the role that belonged to God and in so doing oppressed others, and pridefuly rejected God’s governance over all things. When Woolman read Benezet, he did so in a way that supported his own motivations for antislavery, in which slavery was wrong because it violated divine commands, and not because of any secondary philosophical concerns. Slavery, Woolman argued, was opposite to "the pure undefiled religion of Jesus Christ in which oppression has no [place]." Woolman read Benezet's essay in a way that reinforced his apocalyptic concerns for the new world God was bringing about, not for the more compassionate and enlightened human governance Benezet advocated. This point represents a significant difference between Benezet's and Woolman's antislavery and theology. <br /><br />There are exceptions in Woolman’s writing that prove this rule. In <i>Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes, Part II</i>, Woolman </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">adopts a more dispassionate, more reasoned tone similar in places to Benezet. He quotes from travel narratives, like Benezet. I think he is taking a page from Benezet here. As far as I can tell, the only time Woolman employs Enlightenment philosophy is in regard to antislavery, only after Benezet has already begun to publish, and only in places where Benezet has already shown a path forward.<br /> </span><br />
<h4>
<span style="font-size: large;">Conversion and Perfection</span></h4>
<span style="font-size: large;">The scope of conversion and the possibility of perfection is another way of tracing differences between Woolman and his peers. <br />Churchman believed it was not until his deathbed that he would claim perfection. For Fothergill the work of conversion was the work of a life-time, and not accomplished definitively in this life. Thus, he would confess that he was not in a state of complete obedience to God's will, and that he continued to be in an estranged state, and, so, God must, </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="font-size: large;">"again and again turn his hand upon me, until he hath purged away all my dross, and made me what best pleases him... But the Lord, who has done wonderful things for my deliverance, has mercifully regarded and reached unto me, while in a state of open defiance to his tenderly striving spirit." </span></i></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />Churchman, Fothergill, and Stanton have in common a theology in which their pre-conversion state was one of enmity to God's will, but in conversion that enmity was overcome and the convert was brought to a spiritual state in which it was possible to please God. However, their post-conversion state did not hold that the power of sin had "come to an end" in the believers life, as Woolman's did. The moment of justification was separate from that of sanctification, which might only occur in death. This theology exposes Woolman's distinctiveness, who at the moment of conversion believed he related to the world in a new way and who saw his conversion as the moment where he was no longer subjected to the power of sin.<br /><br />Claims of personal and spiritual transformation made by Woolman's peers after their conversion were much more modest than Woolman's. Woolman's theology of conversion was more intense, more transformative, and the end result was more comprehensive and complete. <br /></span><br />
<h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">Woolman’s Reading</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">We don't know all the books that Woolman read, but we do know some of them. In a personal ledger, Woolman kept track of the books that he had lent out to others. So we know some of the books he owned based on the books people borrowed from him. He also references books in his writings, which add to the list of what he lent out. These known books give us some clues as to what might have provided him some food for thought.</span></span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />For example, Woolman referenced the Catholic mystic Thomas a’ Kempis’ (1380-1471) and his book the <i>Imitation of Christ</i> in his </span><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgdVfbcotznOnUnlb9q3K30SkHXiUu8KqejcTxEto4FDmB1aXR3jEU7oem59fNQTqwzLu_ycmPM3OeNDmsJMee8Me3R0ptse8XuDrmLLUllZYU1AfBKZC1ObIMlLgT9wuKrlIZ3L2ELB46/s1600/Thomas_von_Kempen_JS.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgdVfbcotznOnUnlb9q3K30SkHXiUu8KqejcTxEto4FDmB1aXR3jEU7oem59fNQTqwzLu_ycmPM3OeNDmsJMee8Me3R0ptse8XuDrmLLUllZYU1AfBKZC1ObIMlLgT9wuKrlIZ3L2ELB46/s320/Thomas_von_Kempen_JS.jpg" width="276" /></a>writings. Kempis teaches that the voice of Christ can be heard, spiritually, with the same directness and certainty as of an auditory sensation: <i>"...doubly blessed are they who hear the Sound of Truth, not only in the outward Administrations of the Word, but by the inward and familiar Communications and Motions of infused Grace."</i> Woolman, shared this belief in God’s direct presence.<br /><br />This theme of inward revelation and conformity to the inward "motion" of the Spirit was also present in the writings of German cobbler and mystic, Jakob Boehme (1575-1624), an edited summary of whose work was in Woolman's list of books lent, and who argued that Christ's act of submission to the Father's will – in the act of crucifixion – made salvation possible for all, and must be </span><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_9yEk_UaYmvVAeezFN2eevCrvWeqmDvWxKhLpu52rwRsKXWCqn4-s9mS7DrLuTjV628QaCUqaxym8to5DM8OSCnWYo1RuUiSL2ac683KDAlTwPhAZtYHvO-1e17tuzppeP2Kj-DaGlrVy/s1600/boehme.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_9yEk_UaYmvVAeezFN2eevCrvWeqmDvWxKhLpu52rwRsKXWCqn4-s9mS7DrLuTjV628QaCUqaxym8to5DM8OSCnWYo1RuUiSL2ac683KDAlTwPhAZtYHvO-1e17tuzppeP2Kj-DaGlrVy/s1600/boehme.jpg" /></a>mirrored in each individual's "yieldedness" to God's will. Boehme's concept of 'yieldedness' carries connotations of submission, resignation, and relinquishing one's own will, and is most often translated from the German in those forms. In a state of "yieldedness" the individual was united to divine love and redeemed from a state subject to divine wrath. Boehme's spirituality of "yieldedness", or "resignation," shows overlap with Woolman's theology of "resignation," especially as it opens up a new spiritual state on earth that makes available eschatologcial promises. <br /></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="font-size: large;">"It is real Resignation," the editor wrote in the volume of Boehme that Woolman owned, "that brings a Death upon Self-hood, and that must continually be performed, that the Enmity being mortified, the resigned Will may become an Instrument in God's Hand..."</span></i></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />Woolman might have had this type of transformation of self in mind when he argued that in "ceasing" from attempts to accumulate prestige and material possessions, a person could be transformed spiritually.<br /><br />Early Quaker leader William Dewsbury (1621-1688), who Woolman mentioned in his writings and who is on his list of books lent, urged Quakers to dwell, <br /></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="font-size: large;">"in the true silence of your Spirits, to wait in the Light for the unlimited Spirit of the Lord... to put an end to Sin, and to bring in everlasting Righteousness..." </span></i></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />Woolman might have picked up on this idea that one could experience the end of sin in this life. <br /><br />Woolman's religious reading was focused on those sources that reinforced the activity of the Spirit in the life of the believer, and that emphasized how this activity led to a different type of existence, one in which the promises of the perfected and harmonious heavenly life would be enacted on earth. Woolman read his books selectively, he did not pick up everything written by the authors he read, but he found in them some helpful tools for shaping his own theology and for constructing a vision of colonial society he thought was most in keeping with the emergence of the Kingdom of God.</span>Jon R Kershnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15847745773028620147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5748626137030348790.post-38643305856227820292015-05-30T09:00:00.000-07:002015-08-15T21:28:47.946-07:00The Theology of John Woolman, part 5 of 6<h2 style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">The Emergence of the “Government of Christ”: This-Worldly Perfection and Judgment</span></h2>
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">In the <a href="http://www.jonrkershner.net/2015/05/the-theology-of-john-woolman-part-4-of-6.html" target="_blank">last post</a> we looked at eschatology in relation to eighteenth century Quaker antislavery proponent, <a href="http://www.jonrkershner.net/2015/04/the-theology-of-john-woolman-part-1-of-6.html" target="_blank">John Woolman’s</a>, conception of time: one foot in the eschaton and one foot in historical time, so that he viewed himself as someone who brought God’s will to bear on the world of human affairs.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ5BJ88RKrLDOVij7XQF2M2tcGunHhAadbuKQEz_rQubHLAfdMLqv78kCbDStvr6O1WBccH2VxZ9CVbwEAvbSBn_gBKIC1h8Ouh1hxZKCgSN2LvkfLLVGqb3endSSzctMxfQ3gYo2ExbFo/s1600/lily.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ5BJ88RKrLDOVij7XQF2M2tcGunHhAadbuKQEz_rQubHLAfdMLqv78kCbDStvr6O1WBccH2VxZ9CVbwEAvbSBn_gBKIC1h8Ouh1hxZKCgSN2LvkfLLVGqb3endSSzctMxfQ3gYo2ExbFo/s320/lily.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />Today we are going to look at Woolman’s perfectionism and his views of divine judgment.<br />A theology of perfection and a theology of divine judgment are two beliefs that make us twenty-first century folks squirm in our seats a bit. Why would concepts of perfection and judgment make us uneasy?</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The concept of perfection brings with it fears of moral self-righteousness. It also makes us think of the infallibility that is associated with cults. When people claim perfection for themselves, they are usually abusing power in some way.<br /><br />Similarly, theologies the feature divine judgment prominently are often little more than blaming others for their suffering. Moreover, retributive views of divine judgment strike us as arbitrary because people who rarely know God's specific will for their own lives claim to know God’s motivations in dealing with other people. When someone has a difficult time deciding where to go for lunch, but then claims to know God's mind when a tragedy strikes another person or group, it seems phony.</span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-size: large;"><br />Here are some definitions that will guide my thinking on perfection and judgment:<br /><br /> <b>Perfection</b>:</span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"> conquer the power of sin (not necessarily complete sinlessness in practice)</span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"> united to the mind of Christ</span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"> completely transformed in this world</span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-size: large;"> <b>Divine judgment:</b></span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: large;">"Chastisements": God's use of natural and historical phenomenon to correct or guide human affairs. This is logical component of divine Providence, the belief that God interacts with human beings and is working within time for their good.</span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: large;">God’s Overthrow of Evil: This view is related to eschatology, because it deals with God's ultimate victory over evil and the vindication of the saints.</span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />Let's dig into Woolman's perfectionism.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<h4>
<span style="font-size: large;">Perfection</span></h4>
<span style="font-size: large;">Since Woolman believed that some part of the eschaton, the Kingdom of God, was available on earth and within history, he also held the corollary belief that humans could enter into the life promised for the eschaton. In the Bible, this future world is one where God conquers evil powers, wipes away every tear, and the saints dwell eternally in the direct presence of God. For Woolman, this was not merely a future hope but something God was enacting spiritually in the faithful on earth. Woolman's perfectionism, then, was not the result of his own efforts but of an overwhelming experience of having been transformed by God, and, indeed, changed in his nature to reflect the fulfillment of God's eschatological promises.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br />Historical time might be seeming to progress normally, but to those privy to God's ways knew that eternity was always shaping and transforming the physical realm with spiritual power. The faithful had experienced inwardly a death of the human will and a transformation into a new state, a state in which sin was overcome and the fullness of God's will was determinative. Quoting the Apostle Paul, Woolman talked about this eschatological and perfected state on earth as a "life hid with Christ in God." In that state, the carnal encumberances that separated people from actualizing the divine presence immediately were overcome.</span><br />
<h4>
<span style="font-size: large;">The Single Event: Justification and Sanctification</span></h4>
<span style="font-size: large;">Protestant theology usually identifies to separate and distinct works of God in the individual in what is referred to as "salvation." Justification is usually thought of as the regenerative work that establishes the individual as accepted by God. In some Protestant groups, justification is like a line in the sand and once a person crosses that line they are saved. Sanctification is then the process of growing in one's faith, or discipleship. This particular view inevitably belittles the role of sanctification in salvation, because justification is all that really matters. Other Protestant groups reverse the formula and look for particular evidences of salvation that would result from sanctification, viewing salvation as a long process rather than an instantaneous event. This view lessens the importance of justification in salvation.<br /> <br />For Woolman, there was a marked change that happened in the moment of conversion, a change in the spiritual state of a person that encapsulated both justification and sanctification. Similar to earliest Friends of the 1660s, Woolman felt that justification and sanctification were instantaneous and a single event. After the first generation, and during Woolman’s own day, most Quakers viewed justification and sanctification as two different event or processes. The result of the separation of these two events after the first generation was: </span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: large;">anxiety over whether or not a person was truly "saved," because they must always work to progress in the spiritual life (i.e. questioning their sanctification). </span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"> questioning the efficacy of their conversion, since it was still a work in progress (i.e. wondering if their experience of justification was sufficient)</span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />While Woolman described an ongoing process of purification, such that his initial conversion experience cannot be understood to be the climax of his religious life, he did not merely move beyond his conversion and leave it in his past as one step among many towards his religious goals. Rather, the conversion was always efficacious, even as he acknowledged God's continuing work on him and in the world. <br /><br />Take, for example, this passage, written in the late 1760s:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="font-size: large;">It is with Reverence that I acknowledge the Mercies of our Heavenly Father, who, in Infinite Love, did visit me in my Youth, and wrought a Belief in me, that through true Obedience a State of inward Purity may be known in this Life; in which we may love Mankind in the same Love with which our Redeemer loveth us, and therein learn Resignation to endure Hardships, for the real Good of others. </span></i></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />As a mature adult, Woolman looked back on his conversion as a transformation to "a State of inward Purity" which he experienced "in this Life." Out of this "State," the faithful could love others with God's very same love. The goal of this perfection was outwardly focused and resulted in manifestations of God's love "for the real Good of others." At the moment of conversion, a state of this-worldly perfection became the normative expectation for the faithful, and this new state was embodied in specific acts of love towards the creation. This point is important: Woolman’s sense of perfection and “inward purity” was not to suit his own self-righteousness, it was not to separate himself from others, it was for the purpose of loving others with the same love in which God had loved him. Woolman's experience of God, his theology, drew him into connection to others and service to others. <br /><br />And in his 1772 deathbed narrative in York, he reminisced on the freedom from sin occasioned by his conversion experience, but noted that, after that conversion, he was still a work in progress:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="font-size: large;">O Lord! It was thy power that enabled me to forsake sin in my youth, and I have felt thy bruises since for disobedience, but as I bowed under them, thou healedst me; and though I have gone through many trials and sore afflictions, thou hast been with me, continuing a father and a friend. I feel thy power now and beg that in the approaching trying moments, thou wilt keep my heart steadfast unto thee. </span></i></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;">Woolman recognised that, at the moment of conversion as a young man, things were forever different in his life, as he was no longer confined to a life under the power of sin. Yet, he admitted that he had fallen short since that initial, efficacious moment, but was "healedst" as he "resigned" himself to God's will. However, the bulk of his writings focused on the daily, ongoing, guiding presence of God. The "power" of God to uphold him continually and to enable him to "act on an inward principle of virtue," according to the manner in what God "opened" to him, was the key-stone of his perfectionism.</span><br />
<h4>
<span style="font-size: large;">United to the Mind of Christ</span></h4>
<span style="font-size: large;">Woolman believed that the "mind of Christ" could dwell within him and could govern his decision making. 1 Corinthians 2:16 reads: </span><br />
<blockquote>
<i><span style="font-size: large;">“For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? but we have the mind of Christ.”</span></i></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />Woolman’s perfectionism and eschatology were influenced heavily by his understanding of Christ’s life, death and presence with the faithful. Woolman felt that Christ had physical form like other human beings, and was susceptible to the same temptations as everyone else, and yet he was perfect, and was absolutely obedient to the Father. Christ made incarnate the perfected life of God on earth for all to see. And now, the faithful carried within them the mind of Christ and could embody that same life. The faithful could incarnate the life, death, and resurrection of Christ: </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="font-size: large;">Now this mind being in us, which was in Christ Jesus, it removes from our hearts the desire of Superiority, worldly honours or greatness. A deep attention is felt to the Divine Counsellor, and an ardent engagement to promote, as far as we may be enabled, the happiness of mankind universally. This state, where every motion from a Selfish spirit yieldeth to pure love, I may with gratitude to the Father of mercies acknowledge, is often opened before me as a pearl to dig after; attended with a living concern, that amongst the many nations & families on the Earth, those who believe in the Messiah, that “he was manifested to destroy the works of the devil,” and thus to “take away the Sins of the world,” that the will of our heavenly Father may “be done on earth as it is in heaven.” </span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><br /><span style="font-size: large;">Strong are the desires I often feel, that this holy profession may remain unpolluted and the believers in Christ may so abide in the pure inward feeling of his spirit, that the wisdom from above may shine forth in their living, as a light by which others may be Instrumentally helped on their way, in the true harmonious walking! </span></i></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />The mind of Christ in his passion was in the faithful so as to cleanse them from sinful desires. The "mind of Christ" placed the faithful in a "state" that aborted "every motion" derived from a sinful spirit. Christ took away the sins of the world so that God's will could be accomplished on earth as it was done in heaven. Woolman believed that Christ was more than just a moral example. In Christ's obedience, suffering, and crucifixion, an actual mystical transmutation of states took place. <br /><br />The word, “transmutation” is not Woolman’s, of course, it’s how I am trying to discuss the process Woolman is describing. In evolutionary biology – which I know almost nothing about – a transmutation of species is what happens when one species gradually takes on the form and characteristics of another species. Or in other contexts, like alchemy, transmutation is the process in which a base metal, like iron, could be changed into a precious metal, like gold. With the presence of the mind of Christ, the faithful would "abide in the pure inward feeling of [Christ's] spirit" so that they made visible the realities of Christ's life and his present government in their lives. Just as the divine Christ overcame the weaknesses of human nature, a form of this-worldly divinisation took place in those under Christ's leadership, as they took on a measure of the perfected "mind of Christ. As a result, the recipients of divine revelation overcame sin and in practical embodiments were made harbingers of the age to come and participants in the unfolding reign of Christ" in human affairs. <br /> <br />Christ literally lived in the faithful. <br /><br />As a result of this tansmutation, there need be no separation between the world as it was and the world as God intended it to be. Christ was fully present spiritually in the faithful, and through the Spirit, could rule over the world. So the millennium was not a future state and time, it was a real possibility and an impending reality.</span><br />
<h4>
<span style="font-size: large;">Perfect and Complete</span></h4>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />But it was the death of self that led to this transmutation of states:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>No man can see God and live. This was uttered by the Almighty to the prophet Moses. And the mind at this day divinely enlightened feels that in losing our life for Christ's sake the understanding is quickened and enlarged in the knowledge of the work of Redemption. The natural mind is active about the things of this life but this activity must cease before we stand perfect and compleat [</i>sic<i>] in the will of God. When the mind is wholly turned to seek the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, then we learn to employ our time and our strength rightly and feel it necessary to be diligent in business, fervent in Spirit serving the Lord. Thus is fulfilled that which was spoken by the prophet: This is the name wherewith he shall be called the Lord our Righteousness (Woolman, John. “Manuscript of John Woolman’s Sea Journal,” 1772. Luke Howard Manuscripts. Friends House Library.)</i></span>
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</blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />To say that “no man can see God and live” was not to say that human beings are incapable of being in the divine presence, but that to experience God is to die to the old way of living. To know and experience God brought about the death of self. There was a spiritual, this-worldly death and resurrection in which new horizons of God's influence and power became known to the faithful. Here, the mystery of God's purposes was revealed to those whose "understanding is quickened and enlarged in the knowledge of the work of Redemption." With this knowledge, derived from a resurrection as a new creation in God, the "natural mind" was laid aside and the faithful could "stand perfect and compleat [sic] in the will of God." At that point, no further progression in the life of faith could be made as the "natural mind" became "wholly turned to seek the Kingdom of God and His righteousness." In the resurrected self, Woolman believed, one lived in a state of mutual indwelling with God which provided a new manner of living in the world. In this state of completion, Woolman believed he knew how to act consistently with God's purposes, "diligent in business, fervent in Spirit serving the Lord." When the claims of the inward apocalypse governed the outward, practical aspects of one's life, God's "Righteousness" was "fulfilled." <br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Woolman’s claim to be “perfect and complete” in God’s will is about as strong of a statement of this-worldly perfection as I have seen. </span><br />
<h4>
<span style="font-size: large;">Judgment: Chastisements</span></h4>
<span style="font-size: large;">I want to now switch gears to talk about Woolman’s view of divine judgment. Like his perfectionism, his theology of judgment was related to his eschatology in that it was the story of how God was actively intervening in society to bring about God’s ultimate purposes. <br /><br />He had two categories of divine judgment: chastisements and wrath.<br /><br />Woolman viewed “chastisements” as natural events with divine meaning, they were intended to warn, correct and reprove humanity for the purpose of changing their ways. Woolman, and many other devout religious figures, did not think that natural events happened on their own, they were guided and directed by God.<br />Chastisements were acts of God's grace designed to guide colonists towards a right application of God's will: </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="font-size: large;">"The care of a wise and good man for his only son is inferior to the regard of the great Parent of the universe for his creatures. He hath the command of all the powers and operations in nature and “doth not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men” [Lam. 3:33]. Chastisement is intended for instruction, and instruction being received by gentle chastisement, greater calamities are prevented." </span></i></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;">Woolman believed divine chastisements were elements of God's loving revelation intended to guide people towards their best selves. He implied that God was the rightful ruler of all aspects of world events and would, thus, intervene to direct them through the use of natural corrections. Woolman looked to the events of his day as guideposts and warnings colonists could recognise on the road to greater faithfulness: </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>"It is a time for us to attend diligently to the intent of every chastisement and consider the most deep and inward design of them."</i> </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />In a chapter entitled 'On Divine Admonitions' in Woolman's essay 'Consideration on the True Harmony of Mankind', he explained how God used natural forces as a "messenger" in the same way the Hebrew prophets interpreted God's actions in world events. He argued that plagues, storms and droughts were God's tools to instruct colonists in the right use of material things. The natural world was both subject to God's eternal purposes and an extension of God's revelation established on earth. <br /><br />Richard Bauman notes that Quaker reformers, like Woolman, tended to view natural events as "divinely caused and having particular referent to other earthly events, circumstances, or situations." This "apocalyptic reading" of temporal events implied the belief that human behaviour influenced God's intervention in human affairs. For example, Abner Woolman, John’s brother, wrote that God "often afflicts the children of men that he may bring them near to him." Thus, affliction and suffering were caused by God to evoke spiritual growth in those who had fallen short. Suffering and natural disasters were not arbitrarily meted out, these reformers believed, and so could be interpreted for the rest of colonial society. </span><br />
<h4>
<span style="font-size: large;">Judgment: God’s Overthrow of Evil</span></h4>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />In 1770, Woolman made this entry in his Journal: </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>I have seen in the light of the Lord that the day is approaching when the man that is the most wise in human policies shall be the greatest fool, and the arm that is mighty to support injustice shall be broken to pieces. The enemies of righteousness shall make a terrible rattle and shall mightily torment one another. For he that is omnipotent is rising up to judgment and will plead the cause of the oppressed. And he commanded me to open the vision. </i> </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />Woolman expressed concern that God's wrath was impending, and that God would use </span><span style="font-size: large;">supernatural power to overthrow evil and apostasy. This judgement would address social and religious sin, and would be manifest in social and religious ways.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />He calls this a vision, a supernatural revelation of foreboding. This is the kind of stuff we think of in regard to a more catastrophic apocalypticism, more catastrophic than we would usually attribute to Woolman. Judgment is immanent, because God’s kingdom will prevail. Humanity can respond to God’s lesser chastisements and change their ways, but if they do not, God will be victorious none-the-less by overthrowing all powers opposed to God.<br /><br />The central aspect of Woolman’s theology was that God had placed a "principle" in the human being, such that they could know God immediately, directly and because of that spiritual Second Coming of Christ into the lives of the faithful Christ could govern world affairs directly through them. The counter-point to this is that those who quelched the spirit, or who rejected God’s revelation were enemies to God and in grave danger. Slavery and economic oppression were fruits of this spiritual apostasy. We can easily identify with Woolman’s social and economic criticisms. <br />However, Woolman's focus was on the individual's state of obedience to the divine revelation, slavery and economic oppression were obvious repudiations of God’s will. But those were just two examples of the way that Woolman thought people rejected God’s revelation. And God’s judgment was impending for all who rejected the divine revelation, in whatever way it happened. That Woolman’s focus was on disobedience to divine revelation, and not to particular symptoms of that disobeidence, is seen in the fact that Woolman believed even doing something like giving vocal ministry outside of God’s leading was a grave evil that could bring about God’s judgment. The actual act of speaking might seem trivial in itself, except that the act sprang from a rejection of God's leading. <br /><br />An example of this can be found in Woolman's essay, "Concerning the Ministry." The essay, written while in England, in 1772, instructs ministers to be on their guard against preaching in their own strength or to enhance their reputation, they should, rather, listen continually for the direct revelations of Christ teaching the minister moment by moment. It was to the voice of Christ, he said, that ministers should listen obediently, not their own agenda. </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="font-size: large;">The natural man loveth eloquence, and many love to hear eloquent orations: and if there is not a careful attention to the gift men who have once laboured in the pure gospel ministry, growing weary of suffering, and ashamed of appearing weak, may kindle a fire, compass themselves about with sparks, and walk in the light, - not of Christ who is under a suffering, - but of that fire which they, going from the gift, have kindled: And that in hearers, which is gone from the meek suffering state, into the worldly wisdom, may be warmed with this fire, and speak highly of these labours, and thus the false Prophet in many may form likenesses & his coming may be with Signs and Wonders and lying Miracles; and deceivableness of unrighteousness; but the Sorcerers, however powerful - they remain without in Company with the Idolaters and Adulterers. That which is of God gathers to God; and that which is of the world is owned by the world. </span></i></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />Not only did Woolman condemn ministers who testified out of pride rather than God's Spirit, but he identified those ministers with the false prophet of the book of Revelation. Woolman’s spiritualized apocalyptic-eschatology contained not only the spiritual reign of Christ, but spiritual forms of the False Prophet of the book of Revelation. Woolman believed this eschatological judgment referred to people of his day, not people of some future time. In his apocalyptic theology, the eschaton was already realising and so were its judgments. Woolman believed that there were people of other religions who were part of Christ's society and there were professing Quakers who were on the outside of this society of the faithful because they acted out of their own will and not as united to God's will. The crucial factor was not credal affiliation, but one's standing in the government of Christ, determined by manifesting the kingdom of God and being in a state of union with the revelation of the Spirit. <br /><br />In 'Concerning the Ministry,' Woolman declared that some Quaker ministers of his day were in the state of apostasy foretold in the book of Revelation and 2 Thessalonians and would experience eschatological judgments. To reject God's revelation would lead to the spiritual judgment of eternal separation from God. <br /><br />In summary, Woolman's perfectionism and his eschatology functioned together. Since the eschaton would occur in this world and could be fully known in the present, the faithful could experience transformation in this life. In this transformed state, the false-self was crucified and the new-self in God was a resurrection beyond the effects of sin and the systemic corruptions of the transatlantic marketplace. Here, the faithful could perfectly hear and perfectly obey God's revelation, thus making it the normative standard for human affairs. Woolman believed that, as he lived in a state united to God, he was already what the world would inevitably become. <br /><br />Through divine judgment, in the form of chastisements and retribution, God would make God's self known no matter how stiff the resistance. Woolman's apocalyptic theology understood this world, its natural forces and geopolitical events to be, ultimately, controlled by a God who was determined to govern the world directly. As such, God did battle with the apostate who rejected God's will. Woolman believed divine judgment was initially gracious in its intentions to guide towards true happiness in this life. However, God would, ultimately, destroy all forces opposed to the divine will and so even these gracious judgments must be taken seriously. Indeed, for Woolman the historical events of his day illustrated that God's judgment was already at hand. <br /><br />Thus, Woolman's theology of impending judgment emphasized the notion that God did not act arbitrarily, but in consistency with God's just character. Likewise, human beings were not pawns with little control over their eternal states. Rather, God revealed God's will and human agents could live in consistency with that will, or reject it at their own peril. Therefore, Woolman called colonists to an alternative societal ordering as new creations in Christ's government. Woolman's theology of impending judgment recognized that God was active in the course of human affairs and intervened in history. Woolman was motivated, at least in part, by his conviction that God would ultimately overthrow all forces contrary to the divine rule, so that God alone would be established as direct ruler on earth. </span>Jon R Kershnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15847745773028620147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5748626137030348790.post-73600087444389216202015-05-16T09:00:00.000-07:002015-05-16T18:01:00.658-07:00The Theology of John Woolman, part 4 of 6<h2 style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;">“On Earth as it is in Heaven”: John Woolman’s Apocalyptic Eschatology</span></h2>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />The series of posts explores the theology of an eighteenth century Quaker minister, <a href="http://www.jonrkershner.net/2015/04/the-theology-of-john-woolman-part-1-of-6.html" target="_blank">John Woolman</a>. Woolman is most known as an antislavery proponent, but as we have seen his vision for the British Atlantic world was comprehensive and entailed the remaking of the world according to a radical vision of Christ's presence governing human affairs.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCfDcTmuqTohsc-bxYpuD8KXb9uXbgBkmXbk3lPdxQzzuhBfm5AX26Wqrf8gb3fNSEbtdUsGyo0iGkmbim9peMmY2kdoQnR7HW1KVN0ZAXLzipWHky3uPSLTAgdx2FQ_iKNCLlVxqlZfp7/s1600/time-94990_640.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCfDcTmuqTohsc-bxYpuD8KXb9uXbgBkmXbk3lPdxQzzuhBfm5AX26Wqrf8gb3fNSEbtdUsGyo0iGkmbim9peMmY2kdoQnR7HW1KVN0ZAXLzipWHky3uPSLTAgdx2FQ_iKNCLlVxqlZfp7/s320/time-94990_640.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-size: large;">We have explored how he knew what he knew of God, his theology of <a href="http://www.jonrkershner.net/2015/05/the-theology-of-john-woolman-part-2-of-6.html" target="_blank">revelation</a>. We then explored how the inward, spiritual revelation led Woolman to outward socio-political embodiments, his <a href="http://www.jonrkershner.net/2015/05/the-theology-of-john-woolman-part-3-of-6_9.html" target="_blank">propheticism</a>. In this post, we will explore how the revelation of Christ's governance of all things was a revelation of ultimate human destiny, that is, his eschatology. Because eschatology is such an important and multifaceted part of Woolman's theology I have split it into two posts. This post deals with the nature of time and eternity, and how time impacts the life of faith. In the next post, I will explore two implications of Woolman's eschatology, his views of Christian perfection and impending judgment.</span><br />
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<h4>
<span style="font-size: large;">Terms </span></h4>
<span style="font-size: large;">Here are three helpful terms as we get going:</span><br />
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<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Eschatology/eschaton:</b> doctrine of ultimate things/end things.</span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Millennium</b>: 1000 year reign of Christ</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Futurism: </b>A view of eschatology that emphasizes a future, otherworldly, supernatural resolution to human history</span></li>
</ul>
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<h4>
<span style="font-size: large;">Why does "time" matter?</span></h4>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Time is an important concept in Christianity, because Christian faith is related to events that happened in history. There are different schools of thought on this, but Christianity generally asserts that the present moment is dependent on God's sustenance and creative impulse in the past-but-ongoing sense of time. The resurrection of Christ, also a past event, is seen to transform the nature of time so that resurrection itself is somehow experienced in the present. Moreover, in the spiritual indwelling of Christ, God's future promises of the Kingdom are already present but not yet fully culminated. All of this is built upon a view of time that is not completely linear, but, rather, is pregnant, cumulative, and proleptic.<br /> </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Moreover, Christian theology is uniform in that there is some sort of conviction that there is pain and sin in this world, but that God, who is perfect, will someway somehow bring the world to direct intimacy with God’s very self. As the Apostle Paul would say, now – in this life – we see and know God dimly as in a mirror, but at some point, we know God as face to face. The creation will be restored and redeemed in God and the boundaries between God and humanity will disappear and along with that spiritual restoration, disease, suffering, heartache will also disappear. The world will be made anew, made fresh, spiritually and physically. That’s what eschatology is all about. But there is considerable debate on how and when all this will take place. <br /><br />By way of illustration, here is a chart that attempts to outline the major views on eschatology:</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /> These views have implications for one's theology and for how one's faith is lived out. For example, futurist views of eschatology tend to diminish this-worldly, human agency as being significant in the establishment of God's ultimate intent. This is more so the case with premillennialism than postmillennialism. In premillennialism historical time is one that progressively leads to degradation, until God intervenes supernaturally in judgment. In premillennialism, humans have little capacity to enact the eschaton on earth, because it has already been foretold that God will only intervene at the nadir point of salvation history. Conversely, postmillennialism views the present age as one that builds toward the establishment of the millennium and Christ's heavenly reign. Human progress (social and religious) sets the conditions for the millennium. However, even the famous postmillennialist Jonathan Edwards said that in the present age the Spirit was given "but very sparingly." In other words, for both premillennialism and postmillennialism there is a rigid distinction between the present time in which God's presence is only known "sparingly," and the future eschaton that will harbor God's full presence. Postmillennialism is more optimistic of the human capacity to add something good to salvation history, while premillennialism is skeptical. All of this differs from Woolman's amillennialism in which there was no rigid distinction between the present time and a future time, the capacity to know God in history and the capacity to know God in eternity.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />In short, differing view of time and how God is involved in time leads to differing views of human responsibility, hope, and providence. <br /> </span><br />
<h4>
<span style="font-size: large;">Woolman’s Spiritual Amillennialism</span></h4>
<span style="font-size: large;">I think Woolman’s eschatology is best described as a spiritual amillennialism. Woolman, though, was not well-versed in the debates about amillennialism, he didn’t know about its history in the Christian tradition. He wasn’t trying to be an amillennialist, he was trying to make sense of his experience of God and fashion a theology that answered the questions he had of the world around him. Because he was not trying to be an amillennialist, or any doctrinal category, he fits imperfectly within it. Nevertheless, I think that amillennialism is helpful in framing how Woolman believed God to be present and active in the world.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />Here is how I would visualize Woolman’s eschatology: </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Woolman never talks about a “millennium” as a set apart, predefined time period like most other eschatologies, rather he views Christ as already present. For Woolman, the eschaton already available.</span><br />
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<h4>
<span style="font-size: large;">Night Visions</span></h4>
<span style="font-size: large;">Woolman's eschatology comes to the fore in two dreams, or night visions, he experienced in 1770. These dreams are important because they depict him comprehending reality in ways that transgressed typical distinctions between epochs of time.<br /><br />In the eighteenth century, dreams and night visions were seen as revelatory and so were given special importance. We might take such visions with a grain of salt, but in that day they were given extra authority. They were often recorded and shared, and retold with multiple interpretations of their meanings. There were even widely read reference books that gave interpretive keys to common imagery.<br />Two excellent treatments of the importance of dreams in this era are <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Night-Journeys-Dreams-Transatlantic-Culture/dp/0813923107" target="_blank">Night Journeys: The Power of Dreams in Transatlantic Quaker Culture</a> </i>and <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Teach-Me-Dreams-Search-Revolutionary/dp/0691113335" target="_blank">Teach Me Dreams: The Search for Self in the Revolutionary Era</a>. </i></span><br />
<h4>
<span style="font-size: large;">Temporal Liminality</span></h4>
<span style="font-size: large;">Woolman's eschatology, as seen in the dreams we are about to examine, demonstrate what scholars call "temporal liminality." Temporal liminality means that ages and times that are by definition distinguished from each other are seen as overlapping. In experiences that show temporal liminality, people are made participants in events that occurred at such a time that there is no way they could have been there. Temporal liminality is especially important in apocalyptic understandings of time, because the apocalyptist views themselves as standing on the brink of the ages, and already present in both. Fully present in the old world, with its corruption and apostasy. Fully present in the new world, in the direct immediacy of divine revelation. The shifting of time from historic time to eternity are both present to the apocalyptist.<br />This concept will be evident in Woolman’s dreams.</span><br />
<h4>
<span style="font-size: large;">Vision One: Habitation with God</span></h4>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />In a 1770 vision, an angelic mediator commissioned Woolman to participate in eschatological events. This dream is recounted on page 160 of Phillips P. Moulton's edition of Woolman's Journal. His earthly, temporal existence crossed for a time into an eschatological "habitation" and then brought the meaning of the vision, if not the literal events, back into his this-worldly existence. In other words, Woolman was a harbinger of the new world God was bringing about, and he was commissioned to proclaim that message to his fellow colonists.<br /><br />The account of this experience in Woolman's Journal was heavily edited, either by Woolman or the editorial committee, so that it only exists in full in a crossed out section of a Journal manuscript and in footnotes in Moulton's critical edition of the Journal. In fact, this entire vision was not carried over to the earliest print editions.<br /><br />Quoted in its original entirety, with the redacted portion in brackets, the experience reads: </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="font-size: large;">The place of prayer is a precious habitation, for I now saw [and the seventh seal was opened, and for a certain time there was silence in heaven; and I saw an angel with a golden censer, and he offered with it incense with the prayers of the saints, and it rose up before the throne. I saw] that the prayers of the saints was precious incense. And a trumpet was given me that I might sound forth this language, that the children might hear it and be invited to gather to this precious habitation, where the prayers of saints, as precious incense, ariseth up before the throne of God and the Lamb. I saw this habitation to be safe, to be inwardly quiet, when there was great stirrings and commotions in the world. Prayer at this day in pure resignation is a precious place. The trumpet is sounded; the call goes forth to the church that she gather to the place of pure inward prayer, and her habitation is safe. </span></i></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;">Here, Woolman had a vision of the true Church gathered at the foot of the glorified Christ offering prayers and incense, as described in Revelation 8:1-4. This biblical passage occurs directly after the seventh seal was opened by the Lamb and the book was opened portraying the vindication of the saints, who were represented wearing white robes, cleansed by the blood of the Lamb, in God's direct, unmediated presence. After the seventh seal was opened, there was silence in heaven for half an hour in which the saints beheld God's glory and seven angels prepared to blow the seven trumpets of God's wrath. <br /><br />Interestingly, in Woolman's vision in the Journal, a trumpet is handed to <u><b>him</b></u>,<b> </b> </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="font-size: large;">"that I might sound forth this language, that the children might hear it and be invited to gather to this precious habitation..." </span></i></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />In other words, just as in Revelation, the angels blew the trumpets of God's wrath and rallied the saints, so, in his vision, Woolman himself called the Church to a position of direct mystical intimacy with God in the midst of world occurrence. <br /><br />Like the author of the Book of Revelation, Saint John, Woolman described himself as a witness and participant to/in these heavenly events as they occurred. He implied that God's faithful in the world were the white robbed saints of heaven, that the act of this-worldly prayer was the incense offered by the saints in the heavenly realm and that his prophetic ministry was the trumpet that called forth the Church for the consummation of God's purposes. He interpreted Revelation 7 and 8 to orientate his own actions eschatologically. Woolman claimed that faithful actions in this world represented a type of living in the eschaton itself. Here the relationship between what was the state of affairs in the eighteenth century and what was yet to be in the eschaton, was not simply a matter of historical sequence, or chonology. Rather, both were already present in time itself and, thus, a unity existed between the future fulfillment envisioned in Revelation 7 and 8 and the latent, implicit, potential known to those who dwelled in God's "habitation." <br /><br />I think this understanding of Woolman’s eschatology makes sense of his idealism, how comprehensive his vision for colonial society was, and his perfectionism – all these things begin to come into focus when we look at Woolman’s theology. If eternity and the presence of God were available in the present, and this-world was a place of eschatological transformation, then expecting the remaking of society as a whole makes sense.<br /><br />The real presence of the kingdom within time, Woolman believed, meant that those under its rule would experience a "habitation", or state of being, that was an earthly fulfillment of the vision in Revelation 8. This "habitation" was an alternative this-worldly order, hidden from most, but revealed by God to the true saints and which enabled a perfect obedience through which God's eschatological purposes could be enacted.<br /> <br />He did not proclaim the content of this vision just in his journal. Two years later, British Friend, Elihu Robinson, recorded the following, after Woolman preached at London Yearly Meeting: </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="font-size: large;">"[Woolman] made several beautiful remarks in this meeting with respect to the benefit of true silence, and how incense ascended on the opening of the seventh seal, and there was silence in heaven for the space of half an hour, etc." </span></i></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />It is difficult to tell what details of this vision Woolman proclaimed, based on Robinson's brief summary, but it is sufficient to say the imagery of Revelation 8 featured in Woolman's preaching in 1772. The fact that Woolman sought to make this vision public would not be surprising, if Woolman took seriously the angelic commission to gather the world "to this precious habitation." </span><br />
<h4>
<span style="font-size: large;">The End of Sin</span></h4>
<span style="font-size: large;">The “gathering” encompassed a whole new way to exist on planet earth, a way to exist within historical time as people who lived in eschatological time. In this new state old, fallen ways could no longer be supported.<br /><br />If all things were really new, then it made no sense to act in old ways. In his spiritual amillennialism, the old eon of sin and religious alienation was already finished in his experience, and had given way to the kingdom. In his short essay "On Loving our Neighbours as Ourselves," Woolman proclaimed that greed and materialism were finished because God had already reordered society in a new way: </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="font-size: large;">In the harmonious Spirit of Society, Christ is all in all.</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"> Here it is that Old Things are past away, all Things are new, all things are of God [2 Cor. 5:17-18]; and the Desire for outward Riches is at an End...</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"> Now this Matter hath deeply affected my Mind. The Lord, through merciful Chastisements, hath given me a Feeling of that Love, in which the Harmony of Society standeth, and a Sight of the Growth of that Seed which bringeth forth Wars and great Calamities in the World, and a Labour attends me to open it to others. </span></i></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;">Woolman felt called to "open" his vision to others, that is, simply, to make known the revelation he had received. As an agent of the apocalypse, Woolman's commission was to relate it to others. Recreated by God as God's agents, the recipients of divine revelation participated in the full apocalypse of God's purposes on earth. The newness of the state of being Woolman believed himself to have entered was one in which individuals could perfectly embody God's global and eschatological vision. I’ll talk more about Woolman’s perfectionism next week, but perfectionism is indelibly linked to the way Woolman’s eschatology functioned. Perfectionism makes sense if God’s eternal purposes were invading historical time.</span><br />
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<h4>
<span style="font-size: large;">Vision Two: John Woolman is Dead</span></h4>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />While traveling in England, in 1772, Woolman recorded a vision he had received a couple of years earlier, probably during his pleurisy attack, in 1770. This vision is on pages 185-187 of Moulton's edition of the Journal. In this near-death experience, Woolman,<br />saw a mass of matter of a dull gloomy colour, between the south and the east, and was informed that this mass was human beings in as great misery as they could be and live, and that I was mixed in with them and henceforth might not consider myself as a distinct or separate being. <br /><br />He, then, heard the voice of an angel say, <i>"John Woolman is dead,"</i> but the words were a "mystery" to him. Like the first vision we looked at this one was also mediated by heavenly beings, a common characteristic of apocalyptic thought. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Woolman's vision of worldly suffering and oppression coincided with the loss of his identity, "John Woolman is dead." In this vision Woolman experienced the death of self which went hand in hand with the reception of supernatural revelation in a couple ways: </span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: large;">First, Woolman was confronted by God’s presence addressing him specifically; </span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: large;">second, Woolman miraculously learned about people in places he had never been. </span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-size: large;">But revelation was more than just the passive dissemination of knowledge from God to God's agents, revelation changed the nature of the subject; gave them a renewed state. <br /><br />Let me put that another way, revelation was not just about the transmission of information. Woolman’s experiences of God’s revelation was that of a transfer of states. The eschatological, “made new” state was applied to Woolman in his earthly condition, and then made him God’s agent. In the rest of this vision, Woolman experienced the revelation of himself as a "new creature," enraptured in God's will. <br /><br />The initial"mystery" of these events revealed to him a foreknowledge of the condition of people in places he had never personally visited. John J. Collins calls these types of visionary travels an "otherworldly journey," which is, itself, a form of visual revelation. Here, God's knowledge and purposes break into the physical realm, an event in which Woolman believed he was integrated into the divine will, so that his vision became tangible.<br /><br />Woolman wrote,</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>I was then carried in spirit to the mines, where poor oppressed people were digging rich treasures for those called Christians, and heard them blaspheme the name of Christ, at which I was grieved, for his name to me was precious. Then I was informed that these heathens were told that those who oppressed them were the followers of Christ, and they said amongst themselves: “If Christ directed them to use us in this sort, then Christ is a cruel tyrant.” …My tongue was often so dry that I could not speak till I had moved it about and gathered some moisture, and as I lay still for a time, at length I felt divine power prepare my mouth that I could speak, and then I said: “I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ that liveth in me, and the life I now live in the flesh is by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” [Gal. 2:20]. Then the mystery was opened, and I perceived there was joy in heaven over a sinner who had repented and that that language John Woolman is dead meant no more than the death of my own will. </i></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />At this stage in Woolman's vision there is a confusion, or mixing, of the other-worldly and the earthly realm. Woolman has this spiritual experience of spiritual death leading to resurrection, but at the moment of resurrection in this dream he began to heal physically from his pleurisy and when he awoke from the vision he had a new conviction against the use of silver vessels, often the products of slaves. <br /><br />Here the lines between heaven and earth, the spirit and the physical, were blurred and Woolman believed himself to be on the threshold between God's eternal purposes and the fallen world, but he did not believe those two realms were so distinct because he could be in both at the same time. He believed he was already in that state in which "John Woolman is dead," and, therefore, he was literally alive in Christ. In that state, he thought he was prepared to speak and act directly as God wished, as God's agent on earth. <br /> <br />Visions like this one highlight Woolman’s confidence that God's total reign over all aspects of human affairs was a present potentiality. The supernatural revelation disclosed to human recipients in the present order envisaged a counter ethic, an alternative social ordering, which would be typical of the world fully under God's leadership, but entirely available in the present. </span><br />
<h4>
<span style="font-size: large;">Death and Resurrection</span></h4>
<span style="font-size: large;">As he wrote, in 1772, </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="font-size: large;">"In this state we are dead, and our life is hid with Christ in God. Dead to the love of money. Dead to worldly honour, and to that friendship which is at enmity with Him, and thus he is felt to be our Rock and our Safe Habitation."</span></i></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;">Spiritual death preceded resurrection to a state which was at once in the world and in the eschaton. Inward spiritual convictions and outward behaviours were linked together eschatologically and integrated wholistically because belief in God's inbreaking reign required obedience: <br /><br /><i>"that in all business by sea or land we may constantly keep in view the coming of his kingdom on earth as it is in heaven."</i> <br /><br />In that state in God's purposes, the faithful could experience on earth the spiritual state usually reserved for the eschatological future, and because that experience was already available, so the Spirit-inspired life of the saints in Revelation 8 could be known on earth.<br /><br />Woolman’s vision for his community, the colonies, and the British Atlantic world was of a society caught up in the reality of God’s presence, and resurrected to live outwardly in ways consistent with the new creation God had already brought about inwardly. Time did not disappear in Woolman’s theology, but his spiritual amillennialism meant that the time was ripe for enacting the transformed world most colonists reserved for a future, distant world. </span>Jon R Kershnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15847745773028620147noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5748626137030348790.post-40784306132013647802015-05-09T09:00:00.000-07:002015-05-09T14:46:54.547-07:00The Theology of John Woolman, part 3 of 6<h2 style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;">The Colonial American Jeremiah: Woolman’s Prophetic Witness</span></h2>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />In the <a href="http://www.jonrkershner.net/2015/05/the-theology-of-john-woolman-part-2-of-6.html" target="_blank">last post</a>, I explored how colonial American Quaker, <a href="http://www.jonrkershner.net/2015/04/the-theology-of-john-woolman-part-1-of-6.html" target="_blank">John Woolman</a>, came to spiritual knowledge. In other words, how did he know what he claimed to know of God's will? The answer to that question is to be found in an encounter with God that reshaped his understanding of reality and that dissolved physical/spiritual, temporal/eternal dichotomies.<br /><br /><br />In this post, I want to explore how the revelation Woolman received, which was spiritual and inward, made claims on human affairs and societal organization. In other words, I want to look at the way religious conviction can move beyond the predefined sphere of meaning we call "religion," and can shape all the venues that typically, and artificially, fragment human existence (i.e. political, spiritual, economic). The inward turns outward. I call this "propheticism," because the task of the prophet is to embody and pronounce the revelation she or he has received. This is what Woolman did, too.</span><br />
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<a name='more'></a><span style="font-size: large;"><br /> Thomas Kelly's quote is helpful for understanding the inward/outward dimensions of the prophet:</span><br />
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<i><span style="font-size: large;">“[There is a] life beyond earnestness, beyond anxiety, beyond strain. Its strength sets in when we let go. This is a way frought with danger, for it is easy to deduce human passivity from divine initiative. But the root experience of divine Presence contains within it not only a sense of being energized from a heavenly Beyond; it contains also a sense of being energized toward an earthly world. For the Eternal Life and Love are not pocketed in us; they are flooded through us into the world… The beyond which is within opens up as yet another beyond, the world of earthly need and pain and joy and beauty. For the Inner Light illumines not only God but the world. Its discovery within ourselves does not insulate us, together with the Eternal, in solitary ecstasy, away from the poverties of earth; it opens our eyes to the old world and shows it to us in a new way.”</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;">-Thomas Kelly, The Eternal Presence, pp. 36-37</span></i></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /><br />Kelly highlights a prophetic impulse that originates within the apophatic tradition. In contrast to modern forms of activism that are often exclusively grounded in social scientific insights - such that the activist who is also a Christian and the activist who is also an atheist are nearly indistinguishable - Kelly points to a social consciousness that arises out of a revelation from God that rejects human striving, and out of that via negativa emerges divine striving through human agents.<br /><br /><br />One instructive way to view historic images of prophets is through their depictions in art. By looking at these famous paintings we can see how the prophetic task was conceptualized and interpreted in a particular place and time. Both of the paintings, below, are European, and, so, are not meant to give a global representation but they are meant to show changes in western views over time. Since Woolman found particular resonances with the prophet Jeremiah, for reasons we will delve into later in this post, let's start there.</span><br />
<h4>
<span style="font-size: large;">The Prophet in Art</span></h4>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />This first image is Michaelangelo's masterpiece, found on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel:</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br />Michelangelo's Jeremiah is a sober figure. He is not a firebrand, but is shown here pondering what he is to do. Whatever activity he is to perform, he starts as one in meditation and, perhaps, regret for bearing the message that sets him apart from his peers. This is where Jeremiah's title as "the weeping prophet" speaks to the angst he felt at the difference between his perception of God's will and his observation of historical events.<br /><br /><br />The other figures in the background of this scene are hardly friendly faces. Jeremiah is clearly one of these, his people, but he is separated from them and given a role he did not ask for.<br /><br /><br />The second image is Rembrandt's <i>Jeremiah Lamenting the Destruction of Jerusalem</i> (c. 1630):</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"> </span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKN8O3PfAHjHl22dnA3T2DnbF5HKCb50KM7ILQ-ilXIJxc3QogRmZa0rArmFClPBhZsvxehzKcoW_MAq-6pQtbFyVdywhHsTJHQBdK9c7noluDXTrnFqFF-p2E2Fy2Mz5WClUYzRLt8u6B/s1600/Rembrandt_Harmensz._van_Rijn_-_Jeremia_treurend_over_de_verwoesting_van_Jeruzalem_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKN8O3PfAHjHl22dnA3T2DnbF5HKCb50KM7ILQ-ilXIJxc3QogRmZa0rArmFClPBhZsvxehzKcoW_MAq-6pQtbFyVdywhHsTJHQBdK9c7noluDXTrnFqFF-p2E2Fy2Mz5WClUYzRLt8u6B/s640/Rembrandt_Harmensz._van_Rijn_-_Jeremia_treurend_over_de_verwoesting_van_Jeruzalem_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg" width="500" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br />Here Jeremiah sits in a dark setting, alone. He is distraught at the way events have played out, even though he tried to prevent them. I'll admit that I am not an art historian and have no particular specialty in analyzing this piece, but it looks to me that Rembrandt is doing something really interesting with light, here: Jeremiah's mournful face is highlighted in the light, but so are the treasures at his elbow. It does not console Jeremiah that he was right, that the vestiges of Jewish glory and religious pomp are of no use as Jerusalem burns in the distance. Rembrandt's juxtaposition of Jeremiah's lamentations and the uselessness of material glory serves to challenge the viewer's perception of value and meaning. This, too, is part of the prophetic task.</span><br />
<h4>
<span style="font-size: large;">Key Elements in Woolman's Propheticism: </span></h4>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />Woolman's propheticism has several key elements that illumine how religious conviction is integrated into social vision, and, from there, points to the way that a community falls short of its own vision for itself:</span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"> <b>inward/outward</b>: inward revelation making claims on outward affairs </span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"> <b>commissioning</b>: commissioning to a prophetic calling is not a one-off thing. Woolman was called to a prophetic vocation that was comprehensive, not issue specific. It concerned a reconceptualization of the powers and authorities that were seen as governing human affairs, which subverted "worldly" forces that alienated people from the true-selves-in-God </span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
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<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"> <b>divine intervention</b>: in his prophetic embodiment, Woolman was an agent of God’s intervention in the world. This is incredibly apocalyptic. God was not removed from world events, God was not a clock-maker who set things in motion and then stepped back and let humans do their thing like the deists believed. God had a will for the world and was intervening to draw the world toward the culmination of God’s purposes. As a prophet, Woolman saw himself as God’s agent through which God intervened on behalf of the world. The end result of God’s intervention would be the transformation of society and the end of sin. </span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><b>called the community to its truest interests</b>, which was in God: the prophet is concerned with absolute obedience to God’s revelation and to the communities eternal welfare. The prophet is not a schismatic looking to divert the community from its tradition. Rather, the prophet pushes the limitations of the tradition in a way that expands its reach in the cosmos </span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><b>representative of the community</b>, called to remain connected to the community. All of Woolman’s prophetic agitation was for the purpose of embodying the faithfulness that would be normative. He stood as a representative of the community before God, upholding a vision for human faithfulness on their behalf </span></li>
</ul>
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<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><b>interprets world events for the community</b>: the prophet sees God intervening through historical events and then interprets those events for the community. In the mid-eighteenth century, we have the French and Indian War and we have an outbreak of small pox. Woolman interpreted these events for his fellow Quakers. For Woolman, these events were God’s hand at work, intervening directly in history, calling colonists to greater faithfulness, to greater reliance on God </span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /> </span><br />
<h4>
<span style="font-size: large;">A Trumpet for the Lord</span></h4>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /><br />Woolman’s inward experience of God’s voice changed the way he viewed the world around him. The logic of the sinful world was upended and subverted under the power and presence of a God who was always reaching out, always at work, always right at hand. In Woolman’s propheticism, we see the way that the inward Government of Christ made claims on every aspect of world affairs. The inward took on outward significance. The voice of God to Woolman was, at the same time, the voice of God for the world. As a young man, first coming to his sense of ministry and divine vocation, Woolman wrote:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="font-size: large;">I was thus humbled and disciplined under the cross, my understanding became more strengthened to distinguish the language of the pure Spirit which inwardly moves upon the heart and taught [me] to wait in silence sometimes many weeks together, until I felt that rise which prepares the creature to stand like a trumpet through which the Lord speaks to his flock.[1]</span></i></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />The inward and spiritual revelation Woolman received commissioned him to a prophetic vocation that made public God’s vision for the world.<br /><br />The specific social issues Woolman challenged were those issues he could no longer accommodate without violating his understanding of the unfolding, remade world Christ had revealed to him.[2] As Woolman attended to God's revealed will, existing social structures were subverted by a new ethic dictated by God's immediate presence.[3] He could not benefit from slave labour because oppression and exploitation resisted the transformation of the divine revelation. He could not continue as before in his retail business when retail was part of a transatlantic economy which he felt advanced the idolatry of materialism, luxury and war.[4] He could not use silver dinnerware[5] when such opulence was the result of a misallocation and abuse of labour which hindered the spreading of the peaceable kingdom.[6] He proclaimed against the emerging luxury trade which created a sense of superiority in the economic elite and hindered the wealthy from full 'resignation' to God's revelation in all things.[7]</span><br />
<h4>
<span style="font-size: large;"> A Prophet Like Jeremiah</span></h4>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />Woolman had an affinity for the prophet Jeremiah, which can be seen by the way he framed his own struggles with eighteenth century colonial Americans. Woolman quoted extensively from the Hebrew prophets throughout his writings. Often, Woolman does something absolutely amazing with his use of the Bible. The bible is not just a record of past events, but a living narrative in which he himself is an actor. He was a prophet who understood his vocation to be like the Hebrew prophets. In one of Woolman’s antislavery essays, he notes how accepted slavery was in colonial society and how the general acceptance of slavery in colonial culture, meant that those who were against slavery had a difficult task and had to face the prospect of being pushed to the fringes of their communities. Many people backed away from their sense of God’s leading against slavery, because they felt that they were all alone. And to this prospect of rejection, Woolman wrote:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="font-size: large;">The repeated charges which God gave to his prophets imply the danger they were in of erring on this hand: “Be not afraid of their faces; for I am with thee to deliver thee, saith the Lord.” Jer. 1:8. “Speak...all the words that I command thee to speak to them; diminish not a word.” Jer. 26:2. “And thou son of man, be not afraid of them...nor dismayed at their looks. Speak my words to them, whether they will bear or forebear.” Ezek. 2:6[-7].[1]</span></i></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />In the next paragraph, Woolman proceeds to gently but firmly undercut some of the common rationales for slave-ownership. For Woolman the prophetic task did not end in the Hebrew scriptures. It was ongoing. God continued to commission prophets, continued to reveal God’s will to them, and continued to expect that they would face personal anguish on behalf of the community. God’s words to Jeremiah, were God’s words to Woolman whose calling to colonial America was in the same stream as Jeremiah’s calling to the Hebrew people.<br /><br /><br />Both Jeremiah and Woolman were distraught over the current state of spiritual affairs in their day. Jeremiah is known as the weeping prophet for two reasons: First, he wept for his people who were approaching their end; and, secondly, he wept because no one would listen to him and no one saw what was so transparent to him.<br /><br />On several occasions, Woolman mentions his own weeping over the sinfulness of the world around him. At times, he said he was “almost overwhelmed” by the spiritual conditions he encountered. Not only did the sin around him cause him suffering, but he suffered because the clear message God had revealed to him was not shared by others and so in order to be obedient to this revelation he had to stand in opposition to his social betters, his neighbors, and his fellow Quakers.</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="font-size: large;">Many are the Vanities and Luxuries of the present Age, and in labouring to support a Way of living conformable to the present World, the Departure from that Wisdom that is pure and peaceable, hath been great. Under the Sense of a deep Revolt, and an overflowing Stream of Unrighteousness, my Life has often been a Life of Mourning, and tender Desires are raised in me, that the Nature of this Practice may be laid to Heart.[1]</span></i></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<h4>
<span style="font-size: large;">"Singularity"</span></h4>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />A concept that was important to eighteenth century Quakers, though largely forgotten today, was the notion of "singularity." To be called "singular" was not a good thing, and could result in community ostracism and disownment. The threat of being considered "singular" was a method of Quaker control of dissidents. There was within Quakerism a tension between the individual's sense of divine leading and the conviction that one should not proceed the Spirit's movement in the community. Some Quakers acted on their own personal sense of leading, even though the community had not recognized it. These Quakers came to be seen as schismatics. Woolman faced the threat of "singularity," and it pained him considerably. However, he was absolutely committed to his religious community and never became schismatic. As a result, he was given important positions among Pennsylvania Quakers, even as many Quakers thought his convictions were outside of Quaker requirements.<br /><br /><br />On a trip to the eastern part of the colonies Woolman explained the hardship of confronting slaveowners and noted that it was only by submitting himself to God, giving up his desire for acceptance and popularity, that he was able to accomplish it: </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="font-size: large;"> “Though in this thing I appear singular… I do not repine at having so unpleasant a task assigned me, but look with awfulness to him who appoints to his servants their respective employments and is good to all who serve him sincerely."</span></i></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /><br />Notice how Woolman’s opposition to slavery and his decision to work against slavery were derived from God’s leading. Woolman was aware that he was risking “singularity,” but, like the prophet Jeremiah, he felt his commissioning and message to be from God.<br /><br /><br />Letters about Woolman show that he was not always accepted:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="font-size: large;">"London 5 of 9mo 1772 7th day</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;">...As I enclose thee a letter I received today from William Dilworth [of Lancaster] thou wilt esteem it prudent to be wholly silent about unacceptance of worthy John Woolman's white dress. To some it is unpleasing, but wisdom and authority are with him in his Gospel labors, and that strongly obviates with me the difficulty of singularity in superficial appearance."</span></i></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />And,</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="font-size: large;">John Pemberton to Joseph Row 4 mo. 28, 1772 letter:</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;">"[John Woolman] is a truly upright man but walks in a straiter path than some other good folks are led, or do travel in. He is a good minister, a sensible man, and though he may appear singular, yet from a close knowledge of him he will be found to be a man of a sweet, clean spirit and preserved from harsh censure of those who do not see and conform as he does. It will be safest for Friends with you to leave him much to his own feelings... He is much beloved and respected among us, and I doubt not will on close acquaintance be so to the truly religious with you."</span></i></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /><br /><br />Ironically, what kept Woolman connected to his fellow Quakers, and what kept him from simply dropping out of society, was his grief. <br /><br />The suffering and conflict he experience, which resulted from the disparity between Woolman’s vision for society and the reality of the situation he observed around him, could have led him to disconnect from others. However, he saw in the prophet Jeremiah’s grief and Jeremiah’s reluctance to make waves, a model for his own prophetic vocation.<br /><br />Woolman’s reluctance to confront his peers and the personal anguish he suffered from doing so, assured him that he was not acting out of his own human will, but in God’s will – because in his human will, he would rather not cause trouble.</span><br />
<h4>
<span style="font-size: large;">Irresistible Commission</span></h4>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /> The prophetic commission is given, not looked for. It is imparted with the divine revelation of the new world God is bringing about. Since it is irresistible, it is not a matter of human authority but of God's sovereignty designating human agents to embody the revelation.<br /><br /><br />On one occasion, while traveling in the South, Woolman attended an annual gathering of Quaker ministers and elders in which he felt led by God to confront the group with their sin, though his Journal does not identify what that sin was.[1] Directly after sharing his leading to confront the group, he wrote about the necessity of enduring in the midst of conflict because God's calling could not be resisted: <br /><br />Through the humbling dispensations of divine providence men are sometimes fitted for his service. The messages of the prophet Jeremiah were so disagreeable to the people and so reverse to the spirit they lived in that he became the object of their reproach and in the weakness of nature thought to desist from his prophetic office, but saith he: “His word was in my heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was weary with forbearing and could not stay” [Jer. 20:9]. I saw at this time that if I was honest to declare that which Truth opened in me, I could not please all men, and laboured to be content in the way of my duty, however disagreeable to my own inclination.[2]<br /><br />God's revealed Truth, as Woolman interpreted it, led him into conflict with other Quakers, but the prophetic identity in which the reluctant prophet acted only as compelled by God, guided and informed his interactions. In fact, Woolman claimed that the prophet who neglected the revealed will of God and did not confront Quakers 'undermine[d] the foundation of true unity.'[1][3] Woolman modified the accepted Quaker criteria for corporate unity[2][4] by emphasising obedience to divine revelation as "true unity."</span><br />
<h4>
<span style="font-size: large;"> The Act of Obedience, not the Effects</span></h4>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /><br />For Woolman, "true unity" was obedience to the prophetic task, regardless of how that revelation would be received.[1] What enabled Woolman to remain connected to the corporate body was his belief that the prophet was responsible for executing the divine revelation, but not for the "effects" of delivering that revelation.[2]<br /><br />On several occasions, Woolman confronted a gathered body of Quakers with his understanding of God’s will in relation to the evils of slavery or lotteries or excessive wealth.[3] The meetings became contentious and Woolman could see that he could not push any further and so "felt easy to leave all to him who alone is able to turn the hearts of the mighty and make way for the spreading of Truth in the earth by means agreeable to his infinite wisdom."[4] On one hand, this suggests that Woolman, despite his grand claims about knowing God’s will and being able to enact it, was, to a certain extent, a pragmatist. On the other hand, "to leave all to him" is consistent with Woolman's conviction that, ultimately, God is the sovereign revealer, whose will would be accomplished. In this sense, Woolman's own experience of revelation led him to believe that God would "make way", as he put it, in God's own time.[5]</span><br />
<h4>
<span style="font-size: large;">Beyond Quakers</span></h4>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />In the Bible, the prophets believed God’s revelation had two audiences, 1) the watching world as a whole; and 2) the specific religious community (i.e. Israel). The prophet’s outward expression of the inward revelation reaches both. However, when directed at the prophet’s own religious community, the prophetic voice becomes more specific and more poignant<br /><br /><br />God >>> prophet >>> the prophet’s community>>>>> the world<br /><br /><br />The message of the Prophets to their own religious community is one of challenging the dominant religiosity. The prophet declares that the religious tradition has lost it’s true focus on God and lost it’s rootedness in the advancement of God’s reign on earth, and has become insular and ethnocentric.<br /><br /><br />This helps us understand how Woolman engaged with his fellow Quakers and with colonial society. The vision he proclaimed of a</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"> world under Christ’s Governance, where the auspices of the economic order were transformed and God’s Kingdom came into being on earth, was for all of colonial society. But he spends much time focusing on the shortcomings of his own religious community and the specific ways that they were falling short of the broader, general vision that included Quaker and non-Quaker alike.<br /><br />Thomas G. Couser argues that Woolman’s concerns "clearly transcended tribal considerations, but his role was to extend rather than to ignore or denounce the concerns of the tribe."[1]<br /><br /><br />Woolman's concern was to ground Quakerism, and the Quaker tradition, within the power that gives it relevance. By subjecting the auspices of Quaker religiosity to the revelation of God that breathes life, Woolman placed Quakerism within the stream of salvation history. As a prophet, Woolman sought to challenge the difference between religiosity and revelation:</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">By subsuming the tradition within the Source that breathed it, but from which it had become alienated:</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"> Here "tribal" customs are no longer tribal because they become a part of God's universal mission, comprehensive of national identity, religion, and, even, time. Tradition remains important, but becomes reflective of the transforming experience that birthed it, rather than possessive and controlling.</span><br />
<h4>
<span style="font-size: large;">Woolman Beyond Tribal Conformity</span></h4>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /> Perhaps the ascetic practice that occasioned Woolman the most turmoil and ostracism, but that he understood to be a practical manifestation of the new order God was bringing about, was that of wearing undyed clothes.[2] Woolman viewed his clothing as a visible pronouncement of divine purposes and a chastisement of apostasy.[3] As he walked through England, in 1772, he noted dye running in the street of an industrial town and wrote: </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;"> <i> To hide dirt in our garments appears opposite to real cleanliness. To wash garments and keep them sweet, this appears cleanly. Through giving way to hiding dirt in our garments, a spirit which would cover that which is disagreeable is strengthened. Real cleanness becometh a holy people, but hiding that which is not clean by colouring our garments appears contrary to the sweetness of sincerity.[4]</i></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /> This opposition to dyed clothing seems obsessive. However, Woolman is here challenging tribal customs concerning the style of clothing one must wear to be a good Quaker for the purpose of exposing the spiritual depravity and prideful religiosity that had snuck in among them. Woolman used his own body as a signpost on which he exposed the real state of the dirtiness of his clothing, which reflected back to his fellow colonists the real state of the dirtiness of their souls. Woolman’s spiritual state of transparency before God and humanity stood in opposition to Quakers and other colonists, who claimed to be well-esteemed members of their religious groups on the basis that they rigidly adhered to its precepts outwardly, such as wearing their religious uniforms. Woolman thought that following tribal customs, like wearing traditional Quaker clothing,[5] fell far short of a state of union with God and it was that state in God that mattered.<br /><br /> Wearing dyed clothing allowed people to adorn clothes that were dirty, but outwardly appeared clean, to hide the true state of their clothing.[6] Likewise, being in the habit of covering over one's true state obstructed the necessary transformation God intended. When Woolman wore undyed clothing, he broadcasted this theology; it made visible the difference between sincerity and lies. Woolman demonstrated a fundamental desire for others to know a state of "real cleanness" in God.[7] Wearing undyed clothing, he thought, was an act of faithfulness, but also challenged colonial standards of piety and proclaimed a vision of society that established absolute dependency on God's governance as the true measurement of faithfulness.<br /><br /> This example of wearing undyed clothes challenged tribal norms of religiosity and extended the true concerns of the tribe beyond religious performance and to a state that reflected the authenticity of the divine-human relationship. </span><br />
<h4>
<span style="font-size: large;">Conclusion</span></h4>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />In <i>A Plea for the Poor</i>, Woolman wrote:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;"> <i> To labour for an establishment in divine love where the mind is disentangled from the power of darkness is the great business of man's life. Collecting of riches, covering the body with fine-wrought, costly apparel, and having magnificent furniture operates against universal love and tends to feed self, that to desire these belongs not to the children of the Light.[8]</i></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /> In the prophetic mold, Woolman challenged his contemporaries to replace tame theologies of religious performance and luxury consumption with a subversive theology that declared war on the fabric, ethics and assumptions of the transatlantic imperial economy.[9] Woolman intertwined explicitly theological concerns for the liberation of the true-self from sin with the outward and material because he could not separate the two into distinct spheres. Woolman's challenge to "labour" for the "establishment" of God's love in the human’s self was, simultaneously and authentically, a struggle for the establishment of God's purposes in all aspects of human behaviour.[10]<br /><br /> Woolman’s message was one of a new freedom available to those who dwelled in a state within God’s love. There is a new way of living, the old value systems that dominated a world apart from God no longer control those who are established in God’s love. Here, the accumulation of material goods that denote social status are distractions from the singleness of vision known to those who are transformed in God, but available to all.<br /><br /> In his propheticism, Woolman called his fellow colonists to re-evaluate standards of religious faithfulness, and called them to a direct, life-changing experience with God, a new spiritual state where the old value system was overthrown and replaced with a vision of the world that aligned with God’s ultimate purposes.</span><br />
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[1]Couser, American Autobiography, 38.<br />
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[2]Woolman struggled over the decision to begin wearing undyed clothing because:<br />
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the apprehension of being looked upon as one affecting singularity felt uneasy to me. And here I had occasion to consider that things, though small in themselves, being clearly enjoined by divine authority became great things to us, and I trusted the Lord would support me in the trials that might attend singularity while that singularity was only for his sake.<br />
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Woolman, 'Journal', 121.<br />
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[3]Woolman, 'Journal', 120.<br />
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[4]Woolman, 'Journal', 190.<br />
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[5]William Penn wrote that Quakers should dress plainly, not to receive attention: 'Chuse [sic] thy Cloaths [sic] by thine own eye, not anothers. The more simple and plain they are, the better.' While conformity to accepted standards of dress was prescribed among Quakers, there were very few cases of discipline on those grounds (comprising only 0.1% of total Quaker delinquencies 1748-1783, according to official records). However, Marietta notes that wealthy Quaker merchants were known to indulge their tastes in attire. Thus, while Woolman was unlikely to face official PYM discipline for his choice in clothes, he was nonetheless transgressing a community value and, perhaps, grieved at the prospect of associating himself with the contingency of apathetic Quakers much of his reforms were directed against. Amelia M. Gummere, The Quaker: a Study in Costume (Philadelphia: Ferris & Leach, 1901), 15–16; William Penn, Some Fruits of Solitude (London: Headley Brothers, 1906), 38; Marietta, Reformation of American Quakerism, 6, 22–23. Woolman, 'Journal', 120-121.<br />
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[6]Woolman, 'Journal', 190.<br />
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[7]Woolman, 'Journal', 190.<br />
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[8]Woolman, 'Plea for the Poor', 250.<br />
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[9]Elsewhere, Woolman proclaimed that through a deep spiritual struggle, individuals and nations entrenched in greed and the slave-based economy could be relieved by God and, in absolute trust in God, could overcome 'the most exquisite difficulties':<br />
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How deeply soever men are involved in the most exquisite difficulties, sincerity of heart and upright walking before God, freely submitting to his providence, is the most sure remedy. He only is able to relieve not only persons but nations in their greatest calamities. David, in a great strait when the sense of his past error and the full expectation of an impending calamity as the reward of it were united to aggravating his distress, after some deliberation saith, “Let me fall now into the hands of the Lord, for very great are his mercies; let me not fall into the hand of man.” 1 Chron. 21:13.<br />
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Woolman, 'Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes', 204.<br />
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[10]Woolman, 'Plea for the Poor', 250.<br />
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[1]Woolman, 'Journal', 52.<br />
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[2]Woolman, 'Journal', 52.<br />
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[3]Woolman, 'Journal', 112.<br />
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[4]The maintenance of corporate unity was a key theological value for Quakers because corporate unity reflected the unity of Christ. Individual behaviour not in line with Quaker communal norms could bring about the charge of 'singularity'. The individual Quaker charged with 'singularity' risked alienation from the larger Quaker body. This placed individual Quakers in a paradoxical position. On one hand, they were obligated to discern and obey divine truth. On the other hand, the 'singular' appropriation and outward embodiment of divine truth threatened corporate unity and challenged the status and acceptability of Quaker tribal norms. Around the time of Woolman's death, Esther Tuke took great pains to defend Woolman's ministry from the charge of singularity. Esther Tuke to “Friend”, 10mo 14, 1772, Swarthmore College, Friends Historical Library; Calvert, Quaker Constitutionalism, 37; Moore, Light in Their Consciences, 80-81; Meranze, 'Materializing Conscience', 75.<br />
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[1]Woolman, 'Journal', 112.<br />
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[2]Woolman, 'Journal', 72.<br />
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[3]Woolman, 'Journal', 66-67, 110.<br />
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[4]Woolman, 'Journal', 66-67.<br />
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[5]Woolman, 'Journal', 66-67.<br />
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[1]Woolman, 'On the Slave Trade', 497.<br />
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[1]Woolman, 'Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes', 212.<br />
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[1]Woolman, 'Journal', 31.<br />
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[2]Woolman, 'Plea for the Poor', 268.<br />
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[3]Woolman, 'Plea for the Poor', 268.<br />
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[4]Plank, John Woolman’s Path to the Peaceable Kingdom, 149-150.<br />
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[5]In 1770, Woolman had a vision he thought revealed the oppression and evil of the silver-mining industry. The appropriateness of silver dinnerware had been on his mind for some time by that point. Around the time of that vision, Woolman wrote an unpublished statement against the use of silver vessels describing the 'concern' about silver he had felt of 'late years'. In 1772, correspondence among British Quakers reflecting on Woolman's travels in England demonstrates that he had abstained from the use of silver in the last year of his life. John Woolman, 'Statement on the Use of Silver Vessels', A.D.S. Laminated, n.d., Swarthmore College, Friends Historical Library; Cadbury, John Woolman in England, 101-102.<br />
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[6]John Woolman’s Letter to a Friend, 9th Day of 7th Month, 1769, in Friends Miscellany: Being a Collection of Essays and Fragments, Biographical, Religious, Epistolary, Narrative, and Historical ..., ed. John Comly and Isaac Comly, vol. 1 (Philadelphia: Printed for the editors by J. Richards, 1834), 6–7.<br />
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[7]Woolman, 'Considerations on the True Harmony of Mankind', 443.<br />
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<br />Jon R Kershnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15847745773028620147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5748626137030348790.post-3415720127155493352015-05-02T18:57:00.000-07:002015-05-03T20:58:36.784-07:00The Theology of John Woolman, part 2 of 6<div style="text-align: center;">
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<![endif]--><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In the <a href="http://www.jonrkershner.net/2015/04/the-theology-of-john-woolman-part-1-of-6.html" target="_blank">last post</a>, I looked at some of the religious, economic and political events that influenced John Woolman's life and witness, and some of the key moments of his life. The next four posts will look at the core of Woolman's theology.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This post examines Woolman's theology of revelation (i.e. how did he know of God what he claimed to know?)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Post three explores Woolman's "propheticism," or, the claims of divine revelation on human affairs. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Post four takes up the question of "eschatology," or, how Woolman's views of human faithfulness were wrapped up in issues of human destiny and the fulfillment of divine promises.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Post five looks at the implications of Woolman's eschatology, namely that humans were capable of living in spiritual perfection such that their actions were consistent with God will. Moreover, Woolman believed God would judge humanity if they did not respond willingly to God's messages.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Post six examines Woolman's books and the influences that might have shaped his theology.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">My approach to Woolman is that he was not only a socially significant figure,
but that he was an important theologian who had a coherent and consistent way
of understanding God and God’s will for human destiny.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because Woolman was intelligent, consistent,
and coherent it is possible to describe his theology.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By looking at Woolman’s entire body of
writing, we can see the key theological themes that motivated him and guided
his actions.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Woolman’s main goal in his writings was to show people how to have the
relationship with God that he had.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His
writings are grounded in the historical situation, and demonstrate shared
understandings of how God operated in the world with others of his day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since his main goal was to share how to live
faithfully, he did not spend much time laying out the foundations of his
thinking.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is a great privilege to
reconstruct from his writings his theology so that we can enter into his world.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Woolman was not a systematic theologian that is someone who recapitulates a
certain predefined set of theological doctrines.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Instead, he constructed a theology that
addressed his deepest concerns for the world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>His theology is derived from his Quaker tradition, from his life
experiences and temperament, from his readings, and from his spiritual sense of
God’s activity in his life.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It is my contention, that the theological
framework that best describes Woolman’s theology is that of <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">apocalypticism</span>.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">So let’s look at a couple terms, as we
begin:</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><u><b> </b></u></span></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Theology</i>:
belief about God, God’s will for the world, and God’s relationship to
humanity</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Apocalyptic</i>: revelation, unveiling,
uncovering, the revealing of God’s ultimate purposes for the world</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<h4 class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Welcome to the Apocalypse </span></span></h4>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In pop culture, the apocalypse is usually described in terms of a catastrophic destruction of the earth. Here are just a few examples:</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJuLbjU4t0dB5NFDrmJwcTBB8fqNhNTMYZAav3Tf6gdiXefi9md95s3_E38aQ3stBR6uV3SlvvXANL82LpCZSDjqXWXf6atJh6f6HGlC_-IEg5Qlp88Bpw7wl9uYDGJ4ZAS85-OsV2ER4Q/s1600/Slide3.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJuLbjU4t0dB5NFDrmJwcTBB8fqNhNTMYZAav3Tf6gdiXefi9md95s3_E38aQ3stBR6uV3SlvvXANL82LpCZSDjqXWXf6atJh6f6HGlC_-IEg5Qlp88Bpw7wl9uYDGJ4ZAS85-OsV2ER4Q/s1600/Slide3.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">“Four Horsemen of Apocalypse” (1887) by the Russian artist Viktor Vasnetsov</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> The "four horseman" of Revelation chapter 6 are famous characters whose role is to mete out plagues and destruction on the earth. These guys are supernatural agents of God's wrath. In most Protestant thought, the "four horseman" appear when human sinfulness has tipped the scales against humanity and God needs to intervene to restore the creation. They are almost synonymous with apocalyptic thought in the West.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYGIEMcGF4gd3K4l1Gr7ZbGcPJgb49Q1fUlzBctGOZVk9XCbl5FgoiW4tb3gjxaRugkmXqKxGitqnLypHGFXTpIeOX_8WRx56mS8UyRlzLjl5u497xjpDotyYOUOAd-wKVTcGCaRLAe31B/s1600/Slide4.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYGIEMcGF4gd3K4l1Gr7ZbGcPJgb49Q1fUlzBctGOZVk9XCbl5FgoiW4tb3gjxaRugkmXqKxGitqnLypHGFXTpIeOX_8WRx56mS8UyRlzLjl5u497xjpDotyYOUOAd-wKVTcGCaRLAe31B/s1600/Slide4.JPG" width="640" /></a></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> Apocalypses can also be the result of human causes. This image shows two nuclear power plants in a fiery hell-scape. Common human-caused apocalypses are drawn from ecological, nuclear and political crises. This is a very popular genre of apocalyptic thought.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://static.cinemarx.ro/poze/postere/filme/2004/The-Day-After-Tomorrow-5600-560.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://static.cinemarx.ro/poze/postere/filme/2004/The-Day-After-Tomorrow-5600-560.jpg" height="320" width="229" /></a></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjj-0VYI2bE3ePo7ALNgFSWd5lyMnWB50VEaMu0J4xWOjGodaiSi7Fm7ff0Qgid_TYbnbpshONuwHNdR6tuHL-tslTt4WxhvwdkWhXhQx0fcEcofbZNO2qkoFFVqj16HjbVQvy18FgZi_fr/s1600/Slide6.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> In <i>The Day After Tomorrow</i> a climatologist predicts that human causes will result in a superstorm that sets off a chain reaction of natural disasters. This is another take on the human caused apocalypse. The earth itself is here seen as the agent of wrath. When human actions tip the scales irrevocably against an ecological stasis, catastrophe ensues.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Most western sources favor these catastrophic portrayals of the apocalypse in which the emphasis is on the destruction of the world. In contrast, eastern traditions tend to have more of a cyclical view of time and the cosmos, and thus have apocalypses that emphasize apocalypse as the progression of one epoch into the next.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://fc09.deviantart.net/fs42/i/2009/074/7/1/Age_of_aquarius_by_tropicalfairy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://fc09.deviantart.net/fs42/i/2009/074/7/1/Age_of_aquarius_by_tropicalfairy.jpg" height="350" width="400" /></a></span></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">For example, the "Age of Aquarius" is an eastern-style apocalypse. The earth, time, and the cosmos are all at play in the creation of a new world, but the catastrophic destruction of the present world is not the prominent feature.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i> Apocalyptic literature will always feature the unveiling of a new world, but the amount of catastrophe will vary by theology and culture.</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">My aim is to describe an apocalyptic <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Theology. </i></b><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">By this I mean that one's faith and understanding of God can have particular themes that would combine together to form an apocalyptic framework. Here are the basic theological elements of apocalyptic:</span></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><br /></span></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">God speaks
directly and intimately to humans (i.e. revelation)</span></span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">this divine
revelation concerns God's intent for human behavior and relationships.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>God is actively restoring God’s purposes on
earth. God’s revelation concerns ultimate human and world destiny.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The content of divine revelation is a
disclosure of the new world God is bringing about.</span></span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">the human
recipient of this revelation serves as a harbinger of the age to come </span></span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">the human recipient acts as a prophet
who proclaims God's intent for the world and who begins to enact God's kingdom. The revelation of God’s ultimate purposes are not readily apparent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>God’s true purposes are known only to the
elect who have received the divine revelation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The job of the apocalyptist is to open the eyes of others to what God is
doing.</span></span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This is an overview of what would
constitute an apocalyptic theology, which I see represented in Woolman through
the theological themes we will look at in depth over the next four weeks.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The three themes of Woolman's apocalyptic
theology:</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<br />
<ul>
<li>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Revelation: God
speaks directly and intimately to human recipients </span></span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Propheticism: the
inward voice of God making claims on outward affairs</span></span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Eschatology: God's
ultimate will coming into being</span></span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">These themes are impossible to separate
from each other, they are intertwined so that they build upon each other.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Revelation is the place to start though,
because it is the transmission of knowledge from God to the human recipient
that is the foundation for everything else. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Propheticism applies the divine revelation to
world affairs and eschatology describes the new world that is foretold in the
divine revelation.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<h4 class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Revelation </span></span></h4>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">A theology of revelation addresses the
question of how people attain knowledge or convictions of God and God’s
will.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How do we come to know what we
know about God? Philosophers call this "epistemology."</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Woolman's theology of revelation is grounded in his belief that God approaches humanity, thus making God's Self knowable. Woolman wrote:</span></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Thus he whose tender mercies are over all his works hath placed a
principle in the human mind which incites to exercise goodness toward
every living creature; and this being singly attended to, people become
tender-hearted and sympathizing, but being frequently and totally
rejected, the mind shuts itself up in a contrary disposition (Woolman, <i>Journal</i>, Moulton edition, p. 25).<span class="Footnoteanchor"><span lang="EN-GB" style="vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5748626137030348790#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" title=""><span class="Footnoteanchor"><span lang="EN-GB" style="line-height: 107%; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span></a></span></span></span></span></div>
</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> And,</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">There is a principle which is pure, placed in the human mind, which in
different places and ages hath had different names. It is, however,
pure and proceeds form God. It is deep and inward, confined to no forms
of religion nor excluded from any, where the heart stands in perfect
sincerity. In whomsoever this takes root and grows, of what nation
soever, they become brethren in the best sense of the expression. Using
ourselves to take ways which appear most easy to us, when inconsistent
with that purity which is without beginning, we thereby set up a
government of our own and deny obedience to him whose service is true
liberty (Woolman, <i>Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes</i>, Moulton edition, p. 236).</span></span> </div>
</blockquote>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Woolman believed God gave humans the capacity to understand the divine voice and obey it perfectly. In his journal, Woolman described a “principle” which God imparted to human beings. This "principle" is an innate connection point between God and
humanity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> The "principle" is not divine in itself, but it provides a line of transmission directly from God. </span>This connection point is not
God, but draws human beings toward God. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Woolman understood this connection point to give real
knowledge of what God desires for human behavior. In other words, revelation was not only about feelings but about direct and explicit divine commands for living in the world. Moreover, Woolman viewed revelation as universal in that it transcends
confessional distinctions, but it was exclusive in that it can be shunted and is
only effectual for those who attend to it and obey it. The principle was “inward,” meaning that
revelation was primarily spiritual rather than external, but the content of revelation was addressed into human affairs, and, so, had outward manifestations.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Importantly, for Woolman revelation always derived from God’s "principle." It resides
in humans, but it “proceeds” from God.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Humans can bear this "principle," but it’s value and power comes from God
alone not from human capacity. So, Woolman believed God wanted to reveal
God’s will in an imminent way to humanity and that humanity had a capacity to
receive this revelation through the inward principle, but first they must be
converted and resigned to God.</span></span>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><br /></u></b></span></span></div>
<h4 class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Conversion and Resignation</span></span></h4>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">However, the <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">principle must grow and begin
to take over the life of the individual</span>.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">How did Woolman believe this was to take
place?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the event of conversion Woolman's will was
"subjected" to God’s will, and after conversion he sought to live “resigned” to
God’s will. “Resignation” was a spiritual state where
human knowledge, effort, and status were relinquished and were subjected to
God’s will.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the state of
“resignation,” the human could perfectly know God’s will and perfectly enact
God’s will.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Modern day readers will likely have some qualms with Woolman's use of the word "resignation," because it sounds passive and fatalistic. Yet,</span> it is the lynchpin to his
theology of revelation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In fact, some
scholars have reacted negatively to Woolman’s spirituality of “resignation.” One
of the greatest Quaker scholars of the 20<sup>th</sup> Century, Rufus Jones,
has linked Woolman with those whose only hope for human action on earth was to
“annihilate the self,” and retreat from all things pertaining to the creature.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jones’ said Woolman practiced a spirituality
that was too pure to bear any real fruit in the day to day affairs of one’s
life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think Jones’ critique of 18<sup>th</sup>
century Quakers represents his own modernist biases.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jones witnessed the ascendancy of religious
liberalism in American and European culture, and along with it was a strong
sense of optimism about natural human capacities to enact modern values and the
rightfulness of doing so.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Woolman,
however, was reflecting the long tradition starting with the Apostle Paul and
throughout Christianity that was aware of the difference between life in the
Spirit and life in the flesh and the need to be converted to the Spirit and
live as a new creation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the early 20<sup>th</sup>
century when Jones was most active, especially before the Holocaust,
theological scholarship had largely moved toward an unquestioned acceptance of
historical progress and the human capacity to work redemptively and positively
in themselves without the need for a transformation that was a work of God, as
previous ages had. Jones’ scholarship has left a lasting impact on many
understandings of Woolman, and has led many to gloss over Woolman’s
spirituality of resignation. However, I hope we can pick it back up in order to understand the cohesion within Woolman's theology.</span></span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Through resignation, the individual was
transformed into consistency with God’s intention for the world.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="Textbody" style="margin: 0in 31.5pt 6pt 36.45pt;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Footnoteanchor"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I believed the hand of <i>Providence
pointed out</i> this business [tailoring] for me and was taught to be content
with it, though I felt at times a disposition that would have sought for
something greater. But through the <i>revelation of Jesus Christ</i>, I had
seen the happiness of humility, and there was an earnest desire in me to enter
deep into it; and at times this desire arose to a degree of fervent
supplication, wherein my soul was so environed with heavenly light and
consolation that things were made easy to me which had been otherwise.</span></span><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5748626137030348790#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="Footnoteanchor"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="Footnoteanchor"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-font-kerning: 1.5pt; vertical-align: baseline;">[1]</span></span></span></span></span></a></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Woolman does not mention “resignation” in
this passage, but it speaks to the process of resignation in a very concise
way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here God revealed to Woolman a new
way of living in the world, which is leaving merchandising and taking up
tailoring.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This new vocation was pointed
out by God’s work in his life, what he here referred to as “Providence.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Obedience to this revelation was also made
possible through God’s inward voice, “the revelation of Jesus Christ.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When he entered into God’s revelation, he was
then able to see the world and his role in it in a new “heavenly light.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><br /></u></b></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Resignation” then was both human activity
and divine activity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Enabled by the
extension of God’s self to the individual, the individual could then respond
positively and enact a way of living consistent with God’s intent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Resignation” was, for Woolman, an
epistemology wherein God’s will was received and enacted transformatively on
earth. "Resignation" was part of an apophatic spirituality that sought to become subject to the divine truth that redefined all of reality. Apophatic spirituality believes there is a limit to what human language can provide in the approach to God, and, so, usually values silence as a way to relationship with God. In Woolman's "resignation" and "subjections" to God, he found himself to be integrated and aligned with divine purposes in such a way that he embodied God's will on earth. </span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">We saw something similar to this quote
last week, where Woolman said the change wrought in him was beyond what words
can convey.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here, though, the new life
God had revealed to him and brought about in him was not only beyond words, it
was an earthly state that correlated with eschatological events.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In other words, Woolman’s conversion to a new
state in God was not only a revelation of the best way to live, it was a
revelation of the eschatological community that God was bringing about on
earth. </span></span></div>
<div class="Textbody" style="margin: 0in 33pt 6pt 37.5pt;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Footnoteanchor"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; vertical-align: baseline;">This
will be understood by such who have trodden in the same path.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some glances of real beauty may be seen in
their faces who dwell in true meekness. There is a harmony in the sound of that
voice to which divine love gives utterance, and some appearance of right order
in their temper and conduct whose passions are fully regulated. Yet all these
do not fully show forth that inward life to such who have not felt it, but this
white stone and new name is known rightly to such only who have it.<a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5748626137030348790#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2;" title=""><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="Footnoteanchor"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-font-kerning: 1.5pt; vertical-align: baseline;">[2]</span></span></span></a><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
</span></span></span></span></div>
<div class="Textbody" style="margin-right: -.75pt;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Footnoteanchor"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; vertical-align: baseline;">Woolman's
reference to a "white stone and new name" alludes to Revelation 2:17, where the
post-Resurrection Christ inaugurated an eschatological community of the
faithful with power to overcome Satan and rule over the nations.<a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5748626137030348790#_ftn3" name="_ftnref3" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn3;" title=""><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="Footnoteanchor"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-font-kerning: 1.5pt; vertical-align: baseline;">[3]</span></span></span></a><i> </i>The
true-self, Woolman believed, was only discerned by those who were united with
the revelation of God.<a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5748626137030348790#_ftn4" name="_ftnref4" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn4;" title=""><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="Footnoteanchor"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-font-kerning: 1.5pt; vertical-align: baseline;">[4]</span></span></span></a> This secret
knowledge of eternal and spiritual states existed in the physical world for
those who "understood."<a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5748626137030348790#_ftn5" name="_ftnref5" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn5;" title=""><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="Footnoteanchor"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-font-kerning: 1.5pt; vertical-align: baseline;">[5]</span></span></span></a> Without that
secret knowledge, granted by divine revelation, but hidden to the worldly, the
transformed state was impossible.</span></span></span></span></div>
<div class="Textbody" style="margin-right: -.75pt;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Footnoteanchor"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div class="Textbody" style="margin-right: -.75pt;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Footnoteanchor"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>This was a fully transcendent
revelation unknowable through objective proofs or the criteria of reason and
thoroughly apocalyptic.<a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5748626137030348790#_ftn6" name="_ftnref6" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn6;" title=""><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="Footnoteanchor"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-font-kerning: 1.5pt; vertical-align: baseline;">[6]</span></span></span></a> Inaugurated
at the moment of conversion, Woolman
experienced a "change wrought in me" that was total in scope.<a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5748626137030348790#_ftn8" name="_ftnref8" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn8;" title=""><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="Footnoteanchor"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-font-kerning: 1.5pt; vertical-align: baseline;">[8]</span></span></span></a> Not only did
this change alter the standards of ethical behaviour, so that slave-keeping,
abusive economic practices and pollution<a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5748626137030348790#_ftn9" name="_ftnref9" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn9;" title=""><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="Footnoteanchor"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-font-kerning: 1.5pt; vertical-align: baseline;">[9]</span></span></span></a> were no
longer tenable, but it initiated a new, true identity within the world and a
new community of the faithful, able to discern God's intentions and participate
in the establishment of God's government.
For Woolman, not even benevolence could "fully show forth that inward life to
such who have not felt it."<a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5748626137030348790#_ftn11" name="_ftnref11" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn11;" title=""><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="Footnoteanchor"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-font-kerning: 1.5pt; vertical-align: baseline;">[11]</span></span></span></a> The kingdom
was only understood by those who had been transformed and given a new identity.<a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5748626137030348790#_ftn12" name="_ftnref12" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn12;" title=""><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="Footnoteanchor"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-font-kerning: 1.5pt; vertical-align: baseline;">[12]</span></span></span></a></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<h4 class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The content of divine revelation </span></span></h4>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Now I want to shift to say something of
the content of the revelation that Woolman received from God.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So up until now we have been talking about process, now
we are talking about content. Woolman does not ever record in one spot the whole vision for the new world he thought God had revealed to him and was already bringing about. He let's it out in bits and drabs in response to the needs of the world around him. However, the following passage gives some interesting insights into the type of new world he thought would become normative in a remade society:</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="Textbody" style="margin: 0in 31.5pt 6pt 37.5pt;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Under
the humbling Power of Christ, I have seen that if the leadings of his Holy
Spirit were faithfully attended to by his professed Followers in general, the
Heathen Nations would be exampl'd [<i>sic</i>] in Righteousness. A less Number
of People would be employed on the seas. The Channels of Trade would be more
free from Defilement. Fewer People would be employed in Vanities and
Superfluities.<br />
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The Inhabitants of Cities
would be less in Number. Those who have much Lands would become Fathers to the
poor.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="Textbody" style="margin: 0in 31.5pt 6pt 37.5pt;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>More People would be employed
in the sweet Employment of Husbandry, and in the Path of pure Wisdom, Labour
would be an agreeable, healthful Employment.<br />
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In the Opening of these Things
in my Mind, I feel a living Concern that we who have felt Divine Love in our
Hearts may faithfully abide in it, and like good Soldiers endure Hardness for
Christ's Sake.<a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5748626137030348790#_ftn13" name="_ftnref13" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn13;" title=""><span class="Footnoteanchor"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="Footnoteanchor"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-font-kerning: 1.5pt;">[13]</span></span></span></span></a></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="Standard">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Woolman
was not a fan of the burgeoning imperial economy of his day, though his reasons for
feeling that way were neither political nor nationalistic.<a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5748626137030348790#_ftn14" name="_ftnref14" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn14;" title=""><span class="Footnoteanchor"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="Footnoteanchor"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-font-kerning: 1.5pt;">[14]</span></span></span></span></a> For Woolman, the "Power of
Christ" revealed the apostasy of an economy driven by the profits of a luxury
trade.<a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5748626137030348790#_ftn15" name="_ftnref15" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn15;" title=""><span class="Footnoteanchor"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="Footnoteanchor"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-font-kerning: 1.5pt;">[15]</span></span></span></span></a> He envisioned a world where
the followers of Christ dwelled in "the leadings of his Holy Spirit" and, by
their faithful example, evangelized "the Heathen Nations."<a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5748626137030348790#_ftn16" name="_ftnref16" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn16;" title=""><span class="Footnoteanchor"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="Footnoteanchor"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-font-kerning: 1.5pt;">[16]</span></span></span></span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></span></div>
<div class="Standard">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="Standard">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span></div>
<div class="Standard">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span></div>
<div class="Standard">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Specifically, Woolman's vision
called for fewer people "employed on the seas" and in the production of what he
felt were extravagant items and for fewer people living in cities.<a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5748626137030348790#_ftn17" name="_ftnref17" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn17;" title=""><span class="Footnoteanchor"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="Footnoteanchor"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-font-kerning: 1.5pt;">[17]</span></span></span></span></a> While he did not dismiss all
sea trade as sinful, he argued elsewhere that sea traffic should be "no more
than was consistent with pure wisdom."<a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5748626137030348790#_ftn18" name="_ftnref18" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn18;" title=""><span class="Footnoteanchor"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="Footnoteanchor"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-font-kerning: 1.5pt;">[18]</span></span></span></span></a> In other words, he believed
economy and trade itself should be dictated by God's immediate revelation.
Ultimately, his ideal was an agrarian society of farmers and moderate labour.
This is not just the vision for world organisation towards which Woolman felt
personal affinity, he gave it theological weight by claiming this vision was
the result of divine "openings," encapsulated "the Path of pure Wisdom," according
to God's intentions for the world, and incited the faithful to be persistent,
spiritual "Soldiers" in this cause.<a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5748626137030348790#_ftn19" name="_ftnref19" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn19;" title=""><span class="Footnoteanchor"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="Footnoteanchor"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-font-kerning: 1.5pt;">[19]</span></span></span></span></a> "Abiding under" the
leadership of Christ, Woolman believed, not only the larger social structures,
but the daily choices of living, would be representative of God's intentions
for the world.<a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5748626137030348790#_ftn20" name="_ftnref20" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn20;" title=""><span class="Footnoteanchor"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="Footnoteanchor"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-font-kerning: 1.5pt;">[20]</span></span></span></span></a> Woolman thought divine
revelation carried social implications: "From an inward purifying, and
steadfast abiding under it, springs a lively operative desire for the good of
others," he wrote.<a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5748626137030348790#_ftn21" name="_ftnref21" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn21;" title=""><span class="Footnoteanchor"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="Footnoteanchor"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-font-kerning: 1.5pt;">[21]</span></span></span></span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></span></div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSmzPKWzEwauWzFI7QuqPK3gtoiATrb2O7UN6QQIYvxF7HezvDmYQwWXRyr2sv_jPLtl5ly6SePCkOWcYOSdY8d1xhjKQjee-gpGWnxFFMXciSWJOTPrlF59Hzrj7RIvbUxMoP0RPABklA/s1600/Slide17.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSmzPKWzEwauWzFI7QuqPK3gtoiATrb2O7UN6QQIYvxF7HezvDmYQwWXRyr2sv_jPLtl5ly6SePCkOWcYOSdY8d1xhjKQjee-gpGWnxFFMXciSWJOTPrlF59Hzrj7RIvbUxMoP0RPABklA/s1600/Slide17.JPG" width="640" /></a></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The
content of God’s revelation was received spiritually, but the message Woolman
received framed every aspect of human affairs: political, social, economic and
religious.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For Woolman, the functioning
of the world was dictated by the immediate presence and revelation of the
Spirit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Society itself would be governed
by Christ, and made to conform to God’s ultimate intent for human affairs.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In Woolman’s theology, God’s “leadings”
were not confined to a purely subjective and personal spirituality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rather, Woolman’s theology of revelation was
equally spiritual and social, and subverted the dominant world order and left
in its place a christocracy where all things were directly governed by the inward
voice of Christ, revealed immediately to the faithful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Woolman called this apocalyptic revelation in
which the world as it was was transformed and remade according to God’s perfect
intent, “The Government of Christ.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In conclusion, the foundation of Woolman’s
theology was a view of revelation as supernatural, but available to human
beings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was transcendent in that it
derived externally from God, but was received spiritually and inwardly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It gave real knowledge about God’s will for
human affairs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was not only a message
of individual faithfulness, rather it sought to conform every aspect of world
affairs to God’s reign on earth through the faithful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Woolman’s theology of revelation, then, was
nothing less than a revelation of the new world God was bringing about on earth.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span>
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="mso-element: footnote-list;">
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<div id="ftn1" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="Footnote">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5748626137030348790#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Mangal; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-font-kerning: 1.5pt;">[1]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-GB">Woolman, 'Journal', 35-36. Emphasis mine.</span></span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn2" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="Footnote" style="text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5748626137030348790#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Mangal; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-font-kerning: 1.5pt;">[2]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-GB">Woolman, 'Journal', 29.</span></span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn3" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5748626137030348790#_ftnref3" name="_ftn3" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn3;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[3]</span></span></span></span></a>Revelation 2:17, 26-29: <span class="woj"><sup><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font: major-fareast;"> “</span></sup></span><span class="woj"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font: major-fareast;">Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the
churches. To the one who is victorious, I will give some of the hidden manna. I
will also give that person a white stone with a new name written on it, known
only to the one who receives it.</span></span> <span class="woj"><sup>26 </sup>To the one who is victorious and does my will to
the end, I will give authority over the nations—</span> <span class="woj"><sup>27 </sup>that
one ‘will rule them with an iron scepter and will dash them to pieces like
pottery’<sup>[</sup></span><a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation%202&version=NIV#fen-NIV-30745b" title="See footnote b"><sup><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">b</span></sup></a><span class="woj"><sup>]</sup></span><span class="woj">—just as I have received authority
from my Father.</span> <span class="woj"><sup>28 </sup>I
will also give that one the morning star.</span> <span class="woj"><sup>29 </sup>Whoever
has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”</span></span></span></div>
<div id="ftn4" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="Footnote" style="text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5748626137030348790#_ftnref4" name="_ftn4" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn4;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Mangal; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-font-kerning: 1.5pt;">[4]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-GB">Early Quaker, Edward Burrough, signed his 1656 pamphlet, 'by one
whose name is truly known by the children of the same birth, Edward Burrough.'
Like Woolman, Burrough and other early Quakers believed that God had given them
a new identity, a new name, which was only known through divine revelation.
Dandelion argues that early Quakers lived in a duality of time and experience
in which they were known by their outward and worldly names in the world, but
truly only known by their new names by God. Woolman appears to share this sense
of duality, believing that the real essence of the self was only knowable
through revelation. Edward Burrough, <i>A Trumpet of the Lord Sounded Out of
Sion Which Gives a Certaine Sound in the Eares of All Nations, and Is a True
Noyse of a Fearfull Earthquake at Hand, Which Shall Shake the Whole Fabrick of
the Earth, and the Pillars of its Standing shall Fall, and Never More be Set up
Againe</i> (London: Giles Calvert, 1656), 1; Dandelion, <i>Liturgies</i>, 36.</span></span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn5" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="Footnote" style="text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5748626137030348790#_ftnref5" name="_ftn5" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn5;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Mangal; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-font-kerning: 1.5pt;">[5]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-GB">Woolman, 'Journal', 29.</span></span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn6" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="Footnote" style="text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5748626137030348790#_ftnref6" name="_ftn6" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn6;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Mangal; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-font-kerning: 1.5pt;">[6]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-GB">Schmithals writes: 'The main concern in apocalyptic is a set of
truths which are not generally accessible and do not at once result from the
rational consideration of reality, but must be revealed to man, must be
announced to him from beyond himself. What the apocalyptist has to say is
therefore new to his hearers; the one truth, formerly unknown but now
revealed.' Schmithals, <i>The Apocalyptic Movement</i>, 14.</span></span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn8" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="Footnote" style="text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5748626137030348790#_ftnref8" name="_ftn8" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn8;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Mangal; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-font-kerning: 1.5pt;">[8]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-GB">Woolman, 'Journal', 29.</span></span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn9" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="Footnote">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5748626137030348790#_ftnref9" name="_ftn9" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn9;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Mangal; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-font-kerning: 1.5pt;">[9]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-GB">Woolman, 'Plea for the Poor', 246.</span></span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn11" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="Footnote" style="text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5748626137030348790#_ftnref11" name="_ftn11" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn11;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Mangal; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-font-kerning: 1.5pt;">[11]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-GB">Woolman, 'Journal', 29.</span></span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn12" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="Footnote" style="text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5748626137030348790#_ftnref12" name="_ftn12" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn12;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Mangal; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-font-kerning: 1.5pt;">[12]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-GB">Likewise, i<span class="Footnoteanchor">n 1659, Penington foreshadowed
Woolman's theology of revelation: 'for until ye know, and have received the
thing itself, ye are at a distance from that to which all belongs.' Isaac
Penington, <i>The Works of Isaac Penington</i>, vol. 1, 4th ed. (Philadelphia,
1863), 314; cf. Pryce, 'Tradition of Quietism in Early Quakerism', 4; Woolman,
'Journal', 29.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn13" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="Footnote" style="text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5748626137030348790#_ftnref13" name="_ftn13" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn13;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Mangal; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-font-kerning: 1.5pt;">[13]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-GB">Woolman, 'On a Sailor’s Life', 505–506.</span></span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn14" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="Footnote">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5748626137030348790#_ftnref14" name="_ftn14" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn14;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Mangal; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-font-kerning: 1.5pt;">[14]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-GB">Contrast Woolman's rejection of the transatlantic marketplace with other
colonial voices which eschewed economic dependence on England, while promoting
material choice in itself.</span></span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn15" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="Footnote" style="text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5748626137030348790#_ftnref15" name="_ftn15" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn15;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Mangal; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-font-kerning: 1.5pt;">[15]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-GB">Woolman, 'On a Sailor’s Life', 505–506.</span></span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn16" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="Footnote" style="text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5748626137030348790#_ftnref16" name="_ftn16" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn16;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Mangal; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-font-kerning: 1.5pt;">[16]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-GB">Woolman, 'On a Sailor’s Life', 505–506.</span></span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn17" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="Footnote" style="text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5748626137030348790#_ftnref17" name="_ftn17" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn17;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Mangal; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-font-kerning: 1.5pt;">[17]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-GB">Woolman, 'On a Sailor’s Life', 505–506.</span></span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn18" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="Footnote" style="text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5748626137030348790#_ftnref18" name="_ftn18" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn18;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Mangal; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-font-kerning: 1.5pt;">[18]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-GB">Woolman, 'Journal', 158.</span></span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn19" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="Footnote" style="text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5748626137030348790#_ftnref19" name="_ftn19" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn19;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Mangal; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-font-kerning: 1.5pt;">[19]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-GB">Woolman, 'On a Sailor’s Life', 505–506.</span></span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn20" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="Footnote" style="text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5748626137030348790#_ftnref20" name="_ftn20" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn20;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Mangal; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-font-kerning: 1.5pt;">[20]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-GB">Woolman, 'Journal', 31.</span></span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn21" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="Footnote" style="text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5748626137030348790#_ftnref21" name="_ftn21" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn21;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: Mangal; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-font-kerning: 1.5pt;">[21]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-GB">Woolman, 'Journal', 31.</span></span></span></div>
</div>
</div>
Jon R Kershnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15847745773028620147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5748626137030348790.post-18873711100837320762015-04-25T13:48:00.000-07:002015-07-23T21:18:17.926-07:00The Theology of John Woolman, part 1 of 6<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" SemiHidden="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" SemiHidden="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" SemiHidden="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="0" SemiHidden="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="35" SemiHidden="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="0" SemiHidden="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="10" QFormat="true" Name="Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" SemiHidden="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="0" SemiHidden="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="22" QFormat="true" Name="Strong"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 1"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" Name="Revision"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="30" QFormat="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 1"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 2"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 2"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 3"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 4"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 5"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="19" QFormat="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="21" QFormat="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="31" QFormat="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="32" QFormat="true"
Name="Intense Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="33" QFormat="true" Name="Book Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="37" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" Name="Bibliography"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" QFormat="true" Name="TOC Heading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="41" Name="Plain Table 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="42" Name="Plain Table 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="43" Name="Plain Table 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="44" Name="Plain Table 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="45" Name="Plain Table 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="40" Name="Grid Table Light"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46" Name="Grid Table 1 Light"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark"/>
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<h2 class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">The Life and Times of John Woolman (1720-1772)</span></h2>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">The eighteenth century Quaker, John Woolman, is a personal hero of mine. He is most well known as an antislavery advocate, but his reforms go well beyond that. I did my Ph.D. research on Woolman, and have written a bit about him. One of the things I like to do is to think about Woolman's life with others, and think together about what implications his life has for our own. This series of blog posts is based on some talks on Woolman I've given at <a href="http://reedwood.org/" target="_blank">Reedwood Friends Church</a> in Portland, OR, and <a href="http://northseattlefriends.org/" target="_blank">North Seattle Friends Church</a> in Seattle, WA. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">My goal in these posts is to explore Woolman not only as a sensitive soul, not only
as a social reformer, but as a theologian who had a coherent and comprehensive
conviction of God's role in colonial American society.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I hope that this series will help us to view Woolman
in context, to let Woolman challenge us and make us uncomfortable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The highest honor we can give Woolman is to accept him as he was without
trying to mold him into a figure who conforms to our modern sensibilities. </span></div>
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<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small; mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">In this post, I want to do two things:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">1) First, I want to explore the eighteenth century colonial American context, and, in particular, those pieces that concern Woolman and his vision for the British Atlantic World; </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">and, 2) second, I want to give a brief overview of his life and how he fit into larger developments within Quakerism.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Naturally, Woolman was a part of the eighteenth century world in which he lived, and his theology, like all theology, was an
attempt to address his deepest concerns and the concerns of his
generation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Theology is contextual, and
in this post I want to highlight aspects of Woolman’s life, colonial Quakerism, and
colonial society that will be a backdrop to the discussions of his theology in posts to come.
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"> For a nice look at Woolman from a historical perspective, I heartily recommend Geoffrey Plank's book, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/John-Woolmans-Path-Peaceable-Kingdom/dp/0812244052/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1429831773&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=plank+woolman+peacable" target="_blank">John Woolman's Path to the Peacable Kingdom, A Quaker in the British Empire</a>.</i></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://media-3.web.britannica.com/eb-media/38/91538-004-503731F9.jpg" height="320" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="" width="257" /></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">William Penn (1644-1718)</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">
Early eighteenth century context</span></h4>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"> William Penn received a royal charter for the colonizing of Pennsylvania in 1681. He and his colleagues envisioned Pennsylvania as a “Holy Experiment,” a place where Quaker religious ideals could be practiced without threat of persecution. These Quaker leaders also believed that Pennsylvania would become a witness to the rest of the world and that once other nations saw the truth of the Quaker way, the world would become Quaker.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">However, eighteenth century Quakerism was diverse, with many
different ways to be a Quaker in good standing. Many of what modern Quakers consider
“Quaker testimonies” were not yet codified. So, for example, what modern Quaker call a testimony of "simplicity" was not really conceived as such in the eighteenth century. It was, rather, a more general tendency toward "plainness." While Quakers eventually became famous for their antislavery views, Quakers in the first part of the eighteenth century were about as involved in slavery as everybody else.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.questgarden.com/151/76/4/121120095012/images/13mapmiddlecoloniessmall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" src="http://www.questgarden.com/151/76/4/121120095012/images/13mapmiddlecoloniessmall.jpg" height="146" width="200" /></span></a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">There were, though, some general religious insights that became influential among Quakers as they debated slavery internally. In the seventeenth century, early Quaker leader, George Fox (1624-1691), for example, noted that slavery was not consistent with the "Golden Rule." Fox did not call for the immediate emancipation of slaves, but the trajectory he started would eventually move Quakers as a group to take that stand before any other Anglo group. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Additionally, Quakers at this time did not have the "peace testimony," they have been associated with. Rather, they held to what might be called a
non-participation testimony. They generally viewed war as inevitable and even the legitimate duty of government, but they believed they were held out of it. So, Isaac Norris, Sr., who during
his career was both the leader of the Pennsylvania Assembly and Clerk of
Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, was consistent with most Quakers in believing that
paying war taxes did not contradict Quaker principles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In 1711, during the War of Spanish
Succession, Norris and the Quaker led Pennsylvania Assembly voted to raise taxes “for the
Queen’s use,” though everyone knew the monies would be spent to support the war
effort.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5748626137030348790#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[1]</span></span></span></span></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">
John Woolman </span></h4>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">John Woolman was born near Burlington, New Jersey, October 19, 1720. He notes in his <i>Journal </i>that early in his life he had a spiritual sensitivity that separated him from his peers and that led him to expect direct experiences of divine present: “…before I was
seven years old I began to be acquainted with the operations of divine love.”</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">As
a teen and young adult, Woolman experienced spiritual conflict, as he was
tempted to engage in “mirth and wantonness,” all of which stemmed from “an
unsubjected will.” Around 1741 he moved out of the family home and began work in a
shop in Mount Holly. Sometime
in his 22<sup>nd</sup> or 23<sup>rd</sup> year, Woolman experienced a
conversion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He felt that he was finally
gaining traction in his spiritual life:</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i><span style="font-family: inherit;">“While I silently ponder on that change wrought in me, I find no
language equal to it nor any means to convey to another a clear idea of it.”</span></i></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">In
this conversion he felt himself to be united to God’s presence in a new way, and
so he saw the world around him in a different light.<span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span>He
saw that true religion had both inward and outward dimensions. Moreover, his experience was universal in that it encompassed the entire creation and all of humanity, regardless of racial and religious distinctions. This is not to say that he was a "universalist" in our modern sense of the word, because he wasn't as I'll explain in a later post.
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: small; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: inherit; mso-list: Ignore;">However, Woolman's conversion experience reoriented him toward the world around him in radical and comprehensive ways:</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i><span style="font-family: inherit;">“as by [God’s] breath
the flame of life was kindled in all animal and sensitive creatures, to say we
love God as unseen and at the same time exercise cruelty toward the least
creature moving by his life, or by life derived from him, was a contradiction
in itself.”</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">At </span></span>the age
of 22, Woolman wrote a bill of sale for a slave, but mentioned while doing so that
slavekeeping was “inconsistent with the Christian religion.” This was an important event for Woolman and he would no longer participate in term of life slave transactions. In his early 20s Woolman was recorded as
minister and began travelling as an officially recognized Quaker minister.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>As an adult, Woolman would travel as far south as North Carolina, north
into Massachusetts, west into the Pennsylvania frontier, and east to England
where he died in York in 1772.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All in
all, Woolman averaged a month per year away from home,<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5748626137030348790#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">[2]</span></span></span></span></a> but
almost 70% of the content of the <i>Journal</i> concerns his travels.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The high concentration of itinerant ministry
material in his <i>Journal</i> is not unique as eighteenth century Quaker
journals tended toward greater fullness during periods of travel.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5748626137030348790#_ftn3" name="_ftnref3" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn3;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">[3]</span></span></span></span></a> In 1749, he married Sarah Ellis, “a well inclined damsel.” They had two children, but only their daughter, Mary, survived infancy.
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<h4>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small; mso-tab-count: 1;">Woolman and the Quaker Reformation </span></h4>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;">Woolman's adult years coincieded with significant changes among Pennsylvania Quakers. Beginning <span style="font-family: inherit;">around</span> 1<span style="font-family: inherit;">7</span>48 a group of young leaders, of which Woolman was only one, joined an existing group of devout, reform-minded</span> Quakers to strengthen the Quaker discipline and to attempt to bring the Quaker public perception in line with stated principles. This period in the middle of the eighteenth century has been described as the
Reformation of American Quakerism by <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Reformation-American-Quakerism-1748-1783/dp/0812219899/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1429835871&sr=8-1&keywords=reformation+of+american+quakerism" target="_blank">Jack Marietta</a>, and he's written an important book by that name. While we are most familiar with the anti-war and antislavery views that emerged during this time, much of the Quaker reforms were geared toward maintaining internal purity. Thus, these reformers wanted to strictly enforce prohibitions against Quakers marrying non-Quakers, because they thought the practice was diluting their corporate purity. To some extent they were right. Some people were marrying into Quaker families and joining Quaker Meetings, but not out of a sense of conviction. Quakers were both the political and religious power holders in Pennsylvania, allying with them brought with it some economic advantages.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.classicapologetics.com/b/Benezet.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" src="http://www.classicapologetics.com/b/Benezet.jpg" height="291" width="400" /></span></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Anthony Benezet, Quaker school teacher and abolitionist</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://ia700804.us.archive.org/zipview.php?zip=/0/items/olcovers595/olcovers595-L.zip&file=5951255-L.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://ia700804.us.archive.org/zipview.php?zip=/0/items/olcovers595/olcovers595-L.zip&file=5951255-L.jpg" width="206" /></span></a><span style="font-family: inherit;">One of the Quaker groups that changed the most under the reformation was the Overseers
of the Press. This group was in charge of approving books for publication. Any Quaker who wished to publish must go through this group. Before 1754, no antislavery document was allowed to be published through Quaker channels. However, once the committee makeup changed in the early 1750s, antislavery protests emerged and with them a new vision of Quaker faithfulness. In 1754, Woolman published <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Some Considerations on the Keeping of
Negroes </i>through Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, the chief Quaker organizational body in the region.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This and
the publication of Anthony Benezet’s (1713-1784) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Epistle
of Caution and Advice </i>mark a definite change in official policy in regard to slavery. Neither document carried the authority to discipline or censure slavery among Quakers, that would come later, but they represent the coalescence of a centuries worth of growing antislavery sentiment and the emergence of a new Quaker openness to officially question slavery.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">The French and Indian War (1754-1763) also caused introspection and change among Quakers.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">French and British imperial
policies had their visions set on the Ohio River Valley to the west of Philadelphia, which made
Pennsylvania a chief theater of their war for global supremacy. These geo-political events put
the "Holy Experiment" to the test. In a series of events known as the "crisis of 1756,"<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>pragmatic Quakers in the Pennsylvania
Assembly decided it was politically necessary to protect the Pennsylvania
frontiers from French and Amerindian forces and levied a tax for the raising of a militia and, essentially,
declared war on the Delaware Indians.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This was different than the passive acceptance of taxes “for the Queen’s
Use,” because the Quaker led assembly was actively raising the money and
spending it on military purposes. For reform-minded Quakers, this
was a clear indication that the “Holy Experiment” had gone terribly wrong.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Reform minded Quakers held to a more strict
pacifism, and so they were dismayed when their fellow Quaker politicians voted
to raise taxes to conduct a war, and commissioned Quaker magistrates to collect
taxes from the pacifist Quakers, or else confiscate their goods. As a result of these events, some Quakers withdrew from the Pennsylvania Assembly because they knew they could not stop the war bill, which did pass. Some scholars consider this the end of Penn's "Holy Experiment," because nearly seventy-five years of Pennsylvanian history without calling for war had come to an end, and the Quaker majority in the Assembly suffered.
</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9c/French_and_indian_war_map.svg/2000px-French_and_indian_war_map.svg.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9c/French_and_indian_war_map.svg/2000px-French_and_indian_war_map.svg.png" height="285" width="400" /></span></a></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">At this time, in 1756,
Woolman started writing his <i>Journal. </i>
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">In the crucial Philadelphia Yearly Meeting sessions of 1758, an annual gathering where Quakers considered their policies, they took the next step against slavery.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>When the Yearly Meeting was about ready to table the issues of slavery
for another year, Woolman stood up in the meeting and stated that “…it is
not a time for delay,” and that God had opened Quaker eyes to God'swill and so to
reject that would bring judgment against them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Woolman said, “…it may be that by terrible things in righteousness God
may answer us in this matter.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Woolman's witness was influential and </span>the
Yearly Meeting adopted a minute cautioning its members from participation in
slavery, and appointing a committee to visit slave owners in their homes in order to convince them to manumit their slaves.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">With the end of the Holy Experiment, reform minded Quakers
sought a new vision of Quaker witness through corporate purity, benevolence,
antislavery, and the extension of Quaker testimonies into new areas like
anti-war.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This new vision was a reaction
to the apathy they saw in their more prosperous peers and to the perception
that Quaker were no better at wielding wealth and influence than anyone else
and so had better leave it off if they were to remain faithful.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ca/Triangle_trade2.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ca/Triangle_trade2.png" height="233" width="320" /></span></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">The Atlantic Triangular Trade</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">An important part of their concerns related to the growing trans-Atlantic imperial economy, which provided the economic drive that supported slavery, greed, wealth accumulation and the growing divide between economic classes. During the course of the eighteenth
century, colonists became more and more intertwined in a globalized marketplace
of goods. Farmers paid increasing attention
to foreign markets, and sometimes shipped their goods across the sea. After 1750, the variety of goods
available in the colonies increased dramatically. Colonial port city shops carried
the latest fashions from London and Paris. The most obvious increase in goods
came in those sectors that displayed social and political status: calicoes, mahogany furniture and carriages. Colonial resources were shipped
to European ports, they then either returned to the colonies with luxury good
from Europe, or went down the African coast to pick up slaves before heading
back to the colonies. During
Woolman’s life, homes among the wealthy grew in size, ornation and in the number of
rooms. Woolman noticed all these developments, and warned of the spiritual danger the increased devotion to materialism posed. In fact, the social criticism that runs
through Woolman’s writing more than any other is his condemnation of luxury and
material consumption, which he viewed as causing the evils of colonial society
including slavery.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The burgeoning
trans-Atlantic economy sets the background for Woolman’s theology and social
criticisms.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<h4>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">
Woolman's Asceticism and Death</span></h4>
</div>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">In the 1760s Woolman became more
and more radical.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His writings take on a
more dramatic apocalypticism and become increasingly virulent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He was always accepted within Quakerism, as shown by the important positions he held in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting through
the 1750s and 1760s, but his comportment
became more intense. For example, in 1761 he began to
wear undyed clothes, because he thought the dye covered over true dirtiness and
signified a person who wanted to pretend to be clean when they were in fact
not.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In 1763 he journeyed into the Pennsylvania wilderness to
visit the American Indian town of Wyalusing at a time when the French and
Indian War was raging and his life was in danger. In the mid-1760s he begins to walk
on his travels, so as to be an example of lowliness to slaveholders and to
spend more time in reflection between destinations.
He also had several visions during
these later years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One of which is
absolutely remarkable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In 1772 he
recounted a vision he had during a pleurisy attack a couple years earlier.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this vision he viewed himself as mixed in
with human beings in as much suffering as possible to still be alive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He said he heard the words, “John Woolman is
dead.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At first, he didn’t know what the
words meant, but then he knew that he was once John Woolman and that he was no
longer living in the same way but had joined with the sufferings of others. He talked about this vision as a literal death and resurrection. The old John Woolman was dead, the resurrected John Woolman could see all things from the perspective of eternity and divine perfection.
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">In 1772 Woolman sailed to England in the cargo
hold of a ship.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He landed in London, and
from London he walked north to York.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Along the way, he took in many meetings and drew a crowd because
of his peculiar undyed garb.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He also
wrote several essays during his journey.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He died of the
Small Pox in York.
</span><br />
<div style="mso-element: footnote-list;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br clear="all" /></span>
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">For f<span style="font-family: inherit;">urther reading, here are some <span style="font-family: inherit;">of Woolman's writings <span style="font-family: inherit;">ava<span style="font-family: inherit;">ila<span style="font-family: inherit;">ble online:</span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.ccel.org/ccel/woolman/journal" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The Journal of John Woolman</span></span></span></span></span></span></a></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.umilta.net/woolmanplea.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> A Plea for the Poor</span></span></span></span></span></span></a></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=6UQLAAAAIAAJ&dq=amelia%20mott%20gummere%20woolman&pg=PA348#v=onepage&q=amelia%20mott%20gummere%20woolman&f=false" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The Journal and Essays of John Woolman, forwarded to <i>Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes, Part II</i></span></a></span></span></span></span></span></span>
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br clear="all" /></span>
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><a href="http://trilogy.brynmawr.edu/speccoll/quakersandslavery/commentary/people/woolman.php" target="_blank">Background on Woolman and antislavery</a></span>
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br clear="all" /></span>
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br clear="all" /></span>
<br />
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<div id="ftn1" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5748626137030348790#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[1]</span></span></span></span></a> <span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Frederick Tolles, <i>Meeting
House and Counting House: The Quaker Merchants of Colonial Philadelphia,
1682-1763</i> (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1948), 19.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn2" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5748626137030348790#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2;" title=""><span class="FootnoteCharacters"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="FootnoteCharacters"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">[2]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Woolman, “Journal,”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>5.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn3" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5748626137030348790#_ftnref3" name="_ftn3" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn3;" title=""><span class="FootnoteCharacters"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="FootnoteCharacters"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">[3]</span></span></span></span></a><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Henry Cadbury. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">John Woolman in England: a Documentary Supplement.</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>([London]: Friends Historical Society, 1971)
1.</span></div>
</div>
</div>
Jon R Kershnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15847745773028620147noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5748626137030348790.post-48421535601362374542015-02-25T21:16:00.002-08:002015-05-03T20:57:54.977-07:00Living in the Land of “Nevertheless”: Reflections on Isaiah 9:1-4<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_yLl_h14peeoBynVhmvKcDC_TT7Wq0kGKpWVfU-QBrYZLgInaYiF9b17eJq-w8kjNSXCo1QA_IZqykyfUykDaRgB2gIegSogPECE_SJzIITGZGN6DelnzDhnCluGIMpHSm_EuGBP_mmJN/s1600/clearing-desolation-fallen-tree-4451-525x350.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_yLl_h14peeoBynVhmvKcDC_TT7Wq0kGKpWVfU-QBrYZLgInaYiF9b17eJq-w8kjNSXCo1QA_IZqykyfUykDaRgB2gIegSogPECE_SJzIITGZGN6DelnzDhnCluGIMpHSm_EuGBP_mmJN/s1600/clearing-desolation-fallen-tree-4451-525x350.jpg" width="640" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">
</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Is. 9:1-4</span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="chapter-1">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="text">Nevertheless, there will be no more gloom
for those who were in distress. In the past he humbled the land of Zebulun and
the land of Naphtali, but in the future he will honor Galilee of the nations,
by the Way of the Sea, beyond the Jordan—</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="line">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span id="en-NIV-17832"><span class="text">The people walking in
darkness</span><br />
</span><span class="indent-1-breaks"> </span><span class="text">have seen a great light;</span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="text">on those living in the land of deep darkness</span><br />
<span class="indent-1-breaks"> </span><span class="text">a
light has dawned.</span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="text"><span id="en-NIV-17833">You have enlarged the nation</span><br />
</span><span class="indent-1-breaks"> </span><span class="text">and increased their joy;</span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="text">they rejoice before you</span><br />
<span class="indent-1-breaks"> </span><span class="text">as
people rejoice at the harvest,</span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="text">as warriors rejoice</span><br />
<span class="indent-1-breaks"> </span><span class="text">when
dividing the plunder.</span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="text"><span id="en-NIV-17834">For as in the day of Midian’s defeat,</span><br />
</span><span class="indent-1-breaks"> </span><span class="text">you have shattered</span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="text">the yoke that burdens them,</span><br />
<span class="indent-1-breaks"> </span><span class="text">the
bar across their shoulders,</span><br />
<span class="indent-1-breaks"> </span><span class="text">the
rod of their oppressor.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
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<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
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<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: small;">John Steinbeck wrote, “What good is
the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.” Taking
a somewhat less optimistic approach, Florence + the Machine railed, “It’s
always darkest before the dawn.”</span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">In the words of the
Hebrew prophet Isaiah, <i>“the people
walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the
shadow of death a light has dawned.”</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">There is something
austere about these words. On a closer
look I see an unsettling and unwelcome message about the inevitability of
darkness and shadow. </span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">We wish we could
fly from the darkness and into the light.
However, real faith must gain traction in an ambiguous world, a world
with rough edges and pot holes and shadow – a world where God is obscured every
bit as much as God is evident, and where faithfulness often means an
uncomfortable familiarity with distress and gloom. Anything less would turn our faith into a
crutch, and rob it of its power.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">However much we
want to focus on the sweetness of the morning, or the sparkle of light after a
long darkness, we know that much of our lives are spent groping in the shadow,
muddling forward as best we can. </span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">To speak of faith
in this way is to say that the cost of true discipleship will entail struggle
and victory, agony and elation, doubt and faith. It is to say that God is not obvious, God is
not predictable. It is to say that faith itself is stretched in the gloom. It is to say that the God of the Scriptures
is a hidden God who speaks into the darkness as much as God speaks into the
light.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">It is sometimes
shocking how intensely realistic the Bible is about the pervasive shadow of
death and distress in the world. After
hearing much of the TV preachers pronouncing health and wealth on those who
give money to their cause you would think that a life of faith and devotion was
filled with sunny days and affirmations.
But the Scripture never shuts its eyes to the shadow that makes
Christian faith the most challenging of adventures. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Before Isaiah can
talk about a <i>great light</i> in chapter
9, he talks about the death and darkness of chapter 8: </span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">The Lord<i> </i></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 1in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><i>will be a stone that causes men to stumble
and a rock that makes them fall. And for
the people of Jerusalem he will be a trap and a snare. Many of them will stumble; they will fall and
be broken, they will be snared and captured.
Bind up the testimony and seal up the law among my disciples. I will wait for the Lord who is hiding his
face from the house of Jacob.</i><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5748626137030348790#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" title=""><span class="FootnoteCharacters"><span class="FootnoteCharacters"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">[1]</span></span></span></a> </span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">And later, </span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 1in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><i>Distressed and hungry, they will roam
through the land; when they are famished they will become enraged and, looking
upward, will curse their king and their God.
Then they will look toward the earth and see only distress and darkness
and fearful gloom, and they will be thrust into utter darkness.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5748626137030348790#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" title=""><span class="FootnoteCharacters"><span class="FootnoteCharacters"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">[2]</span></b></span></span></a></i></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">If we are at all to understand the
Scriptures, we must learn to wrestle with this darkness. Whatever else our lives might be, they are
not easy, neither do we have the power to shape them according to the fairy
tales of our imagination. </span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWnQPrSdlgVSlQJDxw4Y-Wxt-ONqlE4S9vhTKWgkK_G7TaxYaGw10Jh19l9QlaxWKlYJWd8w29ZeodoGGApQlIYbXZxCOI1ALVBVEj8REwi1D2KqxBwsRYzqL2CxiijhX28gmV7JnOB-Xl/s1600/desolation.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWnQPrSdlgVSlQJDxw4Y-Wxt-ONqlE4S9vhTKWgkK_G7TaxYaGw10Jh19l9QlaxWKlYJWd8w29ZeodoGGApQlIYbXZxCOI1ALVBVEj8REwi1D2KqxBwsRYzqL2CxiijhX28gmV7JnOB-Xl/s1600/desolation.jpg" width="365" /></a>That perfect
husband or wife of our dreams does not exist.
</span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">The security of
luxury and wealth is a phantom. </span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">The happiness that
comes from fame is fleeting. </span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">At times we are
plunged into the darkness with such force that it seems amazing our legs do not
snap. Father Andrew Greeley forces us to
view the distress and shadow head-on: </span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 1in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><i>“Life is filled with so many senseless
events. Mindless tragedies fill our newspapers
every day – airplane crashes, the murder of innocent children, insane
terrorism, natural disasters. And much
in our own lives seems without purpose or meaning – a rainstorm on a picnic
day, a bad cold when we are having a party, a handicapped child, the early
death of a parent of spouse, a broken marriage, a car that won’t start in the
morning, a wrong number in the middle of the night, the treason of friends and
envy of neighbors.”<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5748626137030348790#_ftn3" name="_ftnref3" title=""><span class="FootnoteCharacters"><span class="FootnoteCharacters"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">[3]</span></b></span></span></a></i> </span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Why do such things
happen? Is there any point and purpose
behind them? Or have we been left to our
own devices in a dark universe, with an absentee god - a frigid wasteland
without compassion or care?</span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">For some it gets
even worse. Sometimes the darkness shuts
its jaws around one’s soul. Here, God is
not just missing in action, but a cruel tyrant.
After the brutal and painfully slow death of his wife Joy, CS Lewis
wrote: </span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 1in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><i>“What reason have we, except our own
desperate wishes, to believe that God is, by any standard we can conceive,
"good"? Doesn't all the… evidence suggest exactly the
opposite? What have we to set against it?”<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5748626137030348790#_ftn4" name="_ftnref4" title=""><span class="FootnoteCharacters"><span class="FootnoteCharacters"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">[4]</span></b></span></span></a> </i></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Lewis, a man whose
faith and spirit are almost legendary, decried, <i>“Sometimes it is hard not to say, ‘God forgive God.’” </i></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">That’s how it is
sometimes. We seem as though exiles in a
foreign land, stripped of our humanity, desecrated by enemies and lost. A premature death, a job lost, a future
denied, a relationship shattered, injustice observed. </span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">God forgive God.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">How about
you? How about me? If you are trying to build an impenetrable
fortress around yourself it will only be a matter of time before your defenses
are blown away like sand on a beach. No
use pretending otherwise. In a world
like ours faith does not come easy. It
never has and it never will. At least
not a faith that is as real as our terribly real world. No, our only hope is often hanging onto every
glimmer of light as hard as we can, trudging through the shadows in a world
that is both unfair and cruel. </span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Life in the land
of the shadow of death is real.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Just as real as
this is, there is something else that is real too. Even as we walk in the gloom and shadow there
is light. Perhaps in the midst of death
and pain and loss the light is hard to see, it is faint, and obscured, but it
is there nevertheless. </span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">After describing
the foreboding realities of exile and despair, Isaiah added <i>“<b>nevertheless</b>,
there will be no more gloom for those who were in distress…the people walking
in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow
of death a light has dawned.”</i> That
light – the light of dawn – is a glow off in the distance, it peeks, it barely
lifts its head – but it is there. You
can’t control it, you can’t make it rise on cue, you can’t even force it out
from behind the mountains – but it is there.
</span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Nevertheless. </span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><i>“Something quite unexpected has happened.”</i>
CS Lewis wrote, </span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 1in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><i>“It came this morning early. For
various reasons, not in themselves mysterious, my heart was lighter than it had
been for many weeks. For one thing, I suppose I am recovering physically
from a good deal of mere exhaustion. And I'd had a very tiring but very
healthy twelve hours the day before, and a sounder sleep; and after ten days of
low-hung gray skies and motionless warm dampness, the sun was shining and there
was a light breeze. And suddenly at the very moment when, so far, I
mourned Joy least, I remembered her best. Indeed it was something
(almost) better than memory; an instantaneous, unanswerable impression.
To say it was like a meeting would be going too far. Yet there was that
in it which tempts one to use the words. It was as if the lifting of the
sorrow removed a barrier.”<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5748626137030348790#_ftn5" name="_ftnref5" title=""><span class="FootnoteCharacters"><span class="FootnoteCharacters"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">[5]</span></b></span></span></a></i></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">There’s a notice
on your door. Your utilities will be
shut off in three days unless you can come up with the money. You drop your head and say to yourself, <i>“God, what now…”</i> As you go through your
mail with dread, you find a card. <i>“It’s not my birthday.”</i> Inside is a check – unexpected, unaccounted
for, but undeniably for you. It happens. Not always,
but there are moments when providence peeks around the corner and a light dawns
in the darkness of night. There is no formula to this. Most of the time the grace we get is the grace to persevere, the grace of God's accompaniment through the difficulties.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifPsuQiwiUns5vuQuVKUuCLqJS7LkxhViKnG7OTtRWiNtYtVSrK6GYBq-JVucObSXuLgf_OoCO3H3bysbJvqsZzAtHBXkSKrMf_X4oWpKd6QEyGo7T42pgft4YmmSulKNio5kLjT-wl2vI/s1600/bench-man-manhattan-1200-466x350.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifPsuQiwiUns5vuQuVKUuCLqJS7LkxhViKnG7OTtRWiNtYtVSrK6GYBq-JVucObSXuLgf_OoCO3H3bysbJvqsZzAtHBXkSKrMf_X4oWpKd6QEyGo7T42pgft4YmmSulKNio5kLjT-wl2vI/s1600/bench-man-manhattan-1200-466x350.jpeg" width="400" /></a></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Your co-worker,
for whatever reason, has made your life miserable from day one. Rumors, lies, treachery – even sabotage. You have prayed and prayed and prayed for
that person. <i>“Lord, convict me of any wrong I have done. Give me the grace to love and forgive.”</i></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Then one day,
after years of trouble, you see her coming your way. You want to escape. You look to the left,
nowhere to go; you look to the right, you’re trapped.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">And all she says
is, <i>“I’m sorry – I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”</i></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">You know how it is
don’t you? You’ve seen it in your own
life, too. You’ve seen light popping
into the darkness, you’ve looked back over your life and have seen God’s
presence sprinkled like dew in what was an arid desert. Sometimes, even when things are at their
darkest, you know – <i>you know</i> – that
God is right there with you, that you are loved. And in the darkness you can say, <i>“It is dark, death is all
around…Nevertheless, God is with me, God is working in me. Nevertheless.”</i></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">In the comings and
goings of our days there is more than enough of the shadow of death to make us
wonder how on earth a good and loving God could be behind it all. But there are
also those moments of God's light that break into our darkness so that we are
willing to stake it all on God, come hell or high water. There is not enough certainty to remove all
of the darkness, but looking back over the span of our days, whether from the
vantage point of the shadow or the mountain top, we have seen enough glimmers
of God's grace to say our prayers and hold on with a tenacious trust.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">The story of
Isaiah is God's history with the Jewish people over a long period of time. Even when doom is all around, when everything
that was held dear would be crushed under the heels of an invading army, even
then, Isaiah can say <i>“nevertheless, there
will be no more gloom for those who were in distress... the people walking in
darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of
death a light has dawned.”</i></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">That is the
response of real faith. <i>“Yea though I walk through the valley of the
shadow of death...”</i> Nevertheless, <i>“thou art with me.”</i></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">“<i>Calamity</i>,” Beaumont wrote, <i>“is the human's true touchstone.”</i> Walking through the darkness and shadow, with
gloom and despair all around – in those difficult, arduous times God can still
be doing His best work. Purifying,
growing, and reaching out to places in our lives that we hide even from
God. </span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">The greatest
mystery is this: that it can be the shadow of calamity that let’s loose the
fire that tries the gold, the wind that tests the tree, the water that sweeps
away everything in life that is not anchored, not grounded, not imbedded in the
firmament of our souls. In fact, it can
be in the presence of storm and darkness and danger that God is most at work in
you and most present with you.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Always the mystery
remains. That's the way God wants
it. God will not force our faith. We might wish it were otherwise. We might wish that God would reward the
religious with riches and security, but that is not the case. Instead, our God became for us a great light,
but a light that was despised and tortured – entered into our world as a real
person with real faith and real struggles.
He took up common cause with us, walked through
the valley of the shadow of death with us and for us. And now we can scream into the most
threatening moments of our lives with a faith that goes beyond certainty, </span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQMBa5Mxt8SE4xgWtRAL90y8PcL3oUfQxepJTAV3oBEsEzumjee_gHDyeNgAgxfEX9k2pZJDZlhYYA0ke0mmklWvzomM0S90Bs-xeC5PgKZMBQQGxyvVkySCNFc0iYE_MTxV9kUb6dsWOF/s1600/bench-227-460x350.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="484" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQMBa5Mxt8SE4xgWtRAL90y8PcL3oUfQxepJTAV3oBEsEzumjee_gHDyeNgAgxfEX9k2pZJDZlhYYA0ke0mmklWvzomM0S90Bs-xeC5PgKZMBQQGxyvVkySCNFc0iYE_MTxV9kUb6dsWOF/s1600/bench-227-460x350.jpg" width="640" /></a></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><i>“<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NIV-28140"></a>For I am convinced
that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,<span style="position: relative; top: -4.5pt;"> </span>neither the present nor the
future, nor any powers, <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="en-NIV-28141"></a>neither height nor depth, nor
anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God
that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”</i><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5748626137030348790#_ftn6" name="_ftnref6" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">[6]</span></span></span></a> </span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: small;">Even as we live and minister in a
world that can be harsh and unforgiving, we do so not on our own but by the
power of the One who said, <i>“Remember, I
will always be with you.”<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5748626137030348790#_ftn7" name="_ftnref7" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">[7]</span></b></span></span></a></i> </span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-size: small;">When the darkness
is all around, when the situation seems irredeemable, know that you are loved -
that your life, with all of its tumult and uncertainty, is being held with
loving hands and from that place of security, you, too, can be God’s
“Nevertheless.” You, too, can be the light of God’s grace.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><br />
<div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><br clear="all" /></span>
<br />
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<div id="ftn1">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5748626137030348790#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" title=""><span class="FootnoteCharacters"><span class="FootnoteCharacters"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">[1]</span></span></span></a> Is.
8:14-17.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn2">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5748626137030348790#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2" title=""><span class="FootnoteCharacters"><span class="FootnoteCharacters"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">[2]</span></span></span></a> Is.
8:21-22.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn3">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5748626137030348790#_ftnref3" name="_ftn3" title=""><span class="FootnoteCharacters"><span class="FootnoteCharacters"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">[3]</span></span></span></a> Andrew
Greeley, <i>The Great Mysteries</i>, 2-3.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn4">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5748626137030348790#_ftnref4" name="_ftn4" title=""><span class="FootnoteCharacters"><span class="FootnoteCharacters"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">[4]</span></span></span></a> CS
Lewis, <u>A Grief Observed</u>.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn5">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5748626137030348790#_ftnref5" name="_ftn5" title=""><span class="FootnoteCharacters"><span class="FootnoteCharacters"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">[5]</span></span></span></a> Ibid.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn6">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5748626137030348790#_ftnref6" name="_ftn6" title=""><span class="FootnoteCharacters"><span class="FootnoteCharacters"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">[6]</span></span></span></a>Ro. 8:38.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn7">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5748626137030348790#_ftnref7" name="_ftn7" title=""><span class="FootnoteCharacters"><span class="FootnoteCharacters"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">[7]</span></span></span></a>Mt.
28:20.</span></div>
</div>
</div>
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</xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]>
<style>
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-priority:99;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;
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mso-para-margin-right:0in;
mso-para-margin-bottom:8.0pt;
mso-para-margin-left:0in;
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mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:11.0pt;
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mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri;
mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}
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<![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<o:shapedefaults v:ext="edit" spidmax="1029"/>
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<o:shapelayout v:ext="edit">
<o:idmap v:ext="edit" data="1"/>
</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]-->Jon R Kershnerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15847745773028620147noreply@blogger.com0