Dear Sam,
You wrote 13/10 11:17 +0100:
"I wouldn't recognize a distinction in terms of 'seeking God's
will' between the different varieties of faith, I would recognize
distinctions in the methods and traditions used to get there."
I agree.
You also wrote:
"However, I would question your comment that religious authority
in the Quaker community is based (solely/primarily) in
experience."
I wrote 8/10 22:35 +0200 (emphasis changed):
"For Quakers religious authority is based in individual religious
experience MODERATED TO AN EXTENT BY COLLECTIVE RELIGIOUS
EXPERIENCE OF WORSHIPPING COMMUNITIES."
I agree that "if we managed to argue this down to fundamentals
there wouldn't be a huge amount on which we would disagree". It
would be primarily difference of valuation of our respective
methods and traditions used to seek God's will. Well, that's
where we started anyway: my criticism on a tradition employing
priests to interpret God's will, thereby disempowering the other
believers. They get used to thinking that they can't or shouldn't
seek God's will for themselves.
Thanks for your clarification on Anglicanism in your 23/10 13:15
+0100 posting. I like your ladder metaphor and agree with your
conclusion about the permanent necessity of the lower rungs. It
is a similar metaphor to the "jumping platform" metaphor I used
20/6 11:29 +0200 in discussion with Matt:
"Does being part of static social (and intellectual) patterns
deter people from pursuing DQ??? Maybe they don't experience them
as static because they identify with them and use them as
'platform' to jump to the moon? Maybe they are busy 'putting them
to sleep' (Lila ch. 30)?
Religion is not the static patterns associated with it. They are
only the result of DQ experienced in the past. Once experienced
DQ sometimes latches and creates a new static pattern of value.
Even if it doesn't latch, the platform that was used for jumping
gets the credit. Different religions are like different platforms
humanity uses for jumping to the moon. That which connects and
defines them is the act of jumping, the pursuit."
Using the ladder metaphor: at what relative rungs would you
position Anglicanism and Quakerism...?
Referring to Protestantism and capitalism you wrote (13/10 11:17
+0100 again) about "a widespread movement of the spirit, that had
synchronous aspects in all fields of human endeavor -religion,
philosophy, business, social relations etc etc-".
Mmm. I tend to translate that as "intellectual pattern of values"
defined as in my posting of 25/9 23:00 +0200:
"An intellectual pattern of values does not consist of one system
of ideas (developed by either a privileged or an underprivileged
group of people) but it consists of all the systems of ideas
developed in that (part of) society, the pattern being their
correlation with social roles and positions." I agree with you
then. I guess you don't object.
You wrote 23/10 13:15 +0100 that you "prefer to say that
fundamentalism occurs when any system becomes 'closed' to further
development, whenever a group claims to have the final word or
solution."
I agree, but (still) would add that this situation usually occurs
when this group "limits religious authority to only one source".
Our different definitions of fundamentalism in practice describe
largely overlapping phenomena, I think. In MoQish one might say
that "an intellectual pattern of values that limits religious
authority to only one source values adherents of its constituent
religious systems of ideas that claim to have the final word or
solution and is therefore closed to Dynamic Quality and unable to
migrate further towards it".
You reacted 13/10 11:17 +0100 with "Ha! Touché!" on what I wrote
8/10 22:35 +0200:
"I tried to do most of my own thinking before reading a lot of
books."
Because of the negative subjective value some of the other
contributors to this list attach to Marxism, I felt much more
"touché" however when I wrote the next sentence:
"I was influenced quite a bit by an American neo-Marxist
sociologist writing about the history of capitalism, however,
Immanuel Wallerstein."...
I hope the subsequent description of my struggle to clear and
eventually take off my neo-Marxist spectacles got across.
With friendly greetings,
Wim
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