New Light

Renewing the book of discipline for our times

I have spent the last six months on secondment from my usual work for Quakers in Britain, to edit the first draft of our new book of discipline. This book, with the working title Our Quaker Way, will eventually replace Quaker faith & practice as our authoritative guide to Quaker spirituality, theology, practice and church government. (In the past, I’ve also served on both the revision preparation group and revision committee, which Yearly Meeting appointed to discern the aims and contents of the new book.)

Quakers in Britain have developed a tradition of rewriting our core text each generation, to include new insights, experience and practices. This reflects an important insight of the earliest Friends, that the language of faith can never be fixed in a specific set of words.

Quakers are not a ‘people of the Book’. Our faith is not based on interpreting a text that is fixed for all time. Early Friends claimed that Biblical scripture is not the source of faith, but a reflection of it. The source is the indwelling Spirit, the Inward Guide that is present in every person.

Our words need to be grounded in our own living experience of the Spirit. The language of former generations of Friends is precious, and is represented in each new book of discipline, but the same inward Light that guided earlier Friends is still available today. This Light is always active within us, so our community’s core text also reflects the new guidance received by each generation of Quakers, in response to changing circumstances and fresh insights. Our record of God’s work within and through the Quaker community is constantly remade afresh, as a testimony that faith can never be pinned down in an unchanging text. It is a living reality that grows from our own encounter with the principle of Life within.

The book of discipline has authority within Britain Yearly Meeting only because Friends recognise it as a true reflection of who we are now, and the Light we have received to guide us today. This is why the creation and approval of a new book of discipline is a participative process that involves all Quakers in Britain. The current draft will be published this November, and Friends will be invited to read, reflect and respond, including suggesting changes or additions. The aim is for a final draft to come to Yearly Meeting in 2030, when all Friends will have an opportunity to decide whether to accept it as our new book of discipline.

This process may be unique for a religious community. It reflects our faith in the continuing revelation of the Spirit and trust in the discernment of our Friends. It can also provoke anxiety, and may be difficult for some to trust. For some Friends, any prospect of change to the current book provokes the fear of loss. In particular, some have expressed anxiety that the new book will exclude God, or otherwise dilute the theological and faith basis of the Quaker way.

The current draft includes a range of religious and spiritual language in common use by British Quakers, including God, Light, Spirit and the Divine. It also encourages readers to engage with the language of spirituality generously and creatively, and to understand the words in a way that makes sense to them.

A new book of discipline can only be accepted by Quakers in Britain as a whole if it reflects the community that we are now. Just as in a meeting for worship for business, our collective discernment needs to embrace different perspectives, reaching for the potential unity beyond individual opinions. A minute will only be accepted if it describes the ‘sense of the meeting’ as a whole, rather than the fixed positions of a particular individual or interest group. In the same way, the authority of a book of discipline is derived from its acceptance by the whole community of Friends, based on the ‘sense of the Yearly Meeting’ as we are now.

This can only work if we are willing to acknowledge the diversity of spiritual language and experience that exists within Britain Yearly Meeting. The book of discipline needs to be the book of our whole community, not just the Friends we personally agree with.

We could decide never again to change the book of discipline, and to keep Quaker faith & practice as the final ever statement of the Quaker way for British Quakers. That would fossilise our core text as a reflection who we were in the 1990s. It would protect us from any risk of losing what we value in the current book, but at the cost of turning it into a historical relic, rather than a living document that expresses the gifts of the Spirit as they continue to be lived among Friends today.

If we focus only on the fear of loss we could also miss the potential of this process to create a more coherent and accessible book than we have at the moment; one which clearly explains the spiritual basis of Quaker practice. This is the aspiration of the current draft, based on the revision committee’s principle that “Content should make clear why we do what we do, especially the spiritual basis of our processes and structures.”

Whether the final version will achieve this depends on how Friends as a whole respond, and to what extent they recognise themselves in the current draft. But I think the draft text offers the basis for a book that is spiritually and theologically rich, that makes much clearer how Quaker practice is rooted in our spiritual experience, and also represents the full range of Quaker spirituality from Friends of all ages and backgrounds from the 1650s right up to the 2020s.

You can read more about the revision process, including the committee’s principles for revision and regular reports here.