HAS THE HICKSITE ORTHODOX SPLIT EVER HEALED

HAS THE HICKSITE ORTHODOX SPLIT EVER HEALED

This question comes up in several present loggerheads in our meeting. I wont go into the details, other than to say that I find that whether or not a Friend self identifies as Orthodox or Conservative, the Sadduceean mind set I write of in my earlier post, defines any orthodoxy.

Hicksite Friends, in the Phariseean model, accept that the advices are not rules, and that we may not see eye to eye on the advices, but we still help each other, or at least do not block each other. On the other hand, to be orthodox: the book, the rule, the image rules. And, more, as any abstraction can be interpreted, the interpretation of the orthodox individual rules. This is why when looking at the history of Quakerism the Hicksite tradition remained somewhat stable, while the orthodoxy split into hundreds of facets.

I am not ragging on Conservative Friends. I only say, that for us to be a single community of faith, we must bend to each other. Let orthodox Friends be hard lined on their rules with each other and with themselves. However, for us to work together, there should be enough understanding that they not demand that Hicksite Friends act as if they were converted to an orthodoxy.

How does this work. I have had projects that cost me time, money and effort, vetoed by members using unity as a club. I have NEVER stood in the way of another member's light. However, even the gentlest suggestions to the meeting, that some decision was rash or not in our traditions, without objecting to a proposal and breaking unity, has often led to my censure by conservatives in the meeting. I use the small "C" on propose as some are conservatives who are not Orthodox in the traditional sense.

Instead of a split, as happened over the Hannah Bernard incident, at the dawn of the great schism, I see Friends leaving our meeting again and again burned out and angry. I sometimes have to center myself painfully in my faith in order not to follow them.