Quaker Consensus and Unity
I attended my first Quaker meeting at the Orange Groove Friends Meeting house in Pasadena yesterday. I sat in silence to “feel the presence” in the simple, well-lit room built in 1909. I was not moved to speak, but I observed and listened to others and learned a few things.
In Quaker worship, the congregation sits in silence. And when moved to speak, they do so. A volunteer moves the sixty minute silence along, but does so minimally.
Quaker meetings, without a clear hierarchy, follow what physicists call Brownian motion. Without a manager, priest, or pastor to guide the sermon, the content of worship comes from the bottom-up, and can feel random. When a congregant wishes to speak, they tell the group what they were moved to share. In previous writings I describe megachurch narrative agency structures as being top-down: one man explains to thousands of congregants the message of the Scripture and the inner workings of God. Quaker narrative agency structures, to the degree that they exist, are the opposite.
There is a clear lack of idolatry in Quaker meeting houses. Some members when moved to speak hinted at how they viewed the idol-based religions, like the Catholics with their woven networks of symbols, a bit less than the pure practice witnessed in the room that morning. Other congregants promptly challenged such claims when they chose to speak, telling the group “it is not our job to judge other faiths.”
A few people talk about ICE abductions they witnessed, and their gratitude for those volunteering to protect the more vulnerable.
After worship, I had coffee and pastries in the lobby. I spoke to an elderly English man who was wearing a Karolinska Institutet windbreaker (Sweden’s top research hospital). He was a medical research doctor and we talked about some of my research findings at UCLA. He said that in England, you could talk freely about God at a Quaker worship, but the California Quakers have stripped all references to God from their materials. Replacing “God” with “presence”.
After coffee I attended a Q&A in the Quaker library with a few other first timers. We met a few of the old timers and the house archivist in a cramped room with wood floors, wood furniture, wood bookshelves, and wood ceilings, Among other things that were difficult to follow, they discussed the difference between Quaker consensus and unity. Each house of friends must reach 100% agreement over a issue, from the color of the drapes they hang on the meeting house windows to endorsing the sanctity of queer marriage, before they can move forward as a group. They will meet week after week until ‘unity’ is struck. Unity, as I understood it, is different than consensus. Unity incorporates the fundamental human understanding - what English Quakers God and California Quakers call presence - into consensus. Consensus is formed around the superficial facts. Once unity is struck, so they say, everyone is rooted in: they mutually cohere around the same principles and objectives. They are strong in their conviction.
As a group psychologist researching consensus mechanisms for nearly a decade, I didn’t quite understand why the distinction between consensus and unity is useful. I also worry that consensus is not practical for making positive change outside of the walls of one’s home.
Can we help people understand the basic human unity without guiding them? Do we have the time to spend to reach unity on each issue, when our political, social, and religious infrastructure needs immediate TLC? Isn’t compromise the true unity?
I will be back to sit in silence again. Maybe the answers will dawn on me next week.
