** Godless for God's Sake - Nontheism in Contemp Quakerism By 27 Quaker Nontheists: 2017

Godless for God's Sake - Nontheism in Contemporary Quakerism eBook : Boulton (editor), David, By 27 Quaker Nontheists: Amazon.com.au: Kindle Store






Godless for God's Sake - Nontheism in Contemporary Quakerism Kindle Edition
by David Boulton (editor) (Author), By 27 Quaker Nontheists (Author) Format: Kindle Edition  2017


4.1 out of 5 stars 24 ratings

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Paperback $31.65

27 Quakers from 13 Yearly Meetings in four countries tell how they combine committed membership of the Religious Society of Friends with rejection of traditional belief in a transcendent, personal and supernatural God. 

For some of these 'nontheist' Friends, 

God is no more (but no less) than a symbol of the wholly human values of 'mercy, pity, peace and love'. 

For others, the idea of God and 'God-language' has become an archaism and a stumbling-block. 

Readers who seek a faith or world-view free of supernaturalism, 

whether they are Friends, members of other traditions or drop-outs from old-time religion, 

will find themselves in the company of a varied group whose search for an authentic 21st century understanding of religion and spirituality has led them to declare themselves 'Godless - for God's Sake'.
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Print length  141 pages
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Dales Historical Monographs (10 July 2017)
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4.1 out of 5 stars 24 ratings

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James Pavitt
4.0 out of 5 stars A good primer

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 21 June 2012
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As an introduction, this little book serves well. I loved the way that it reflects Quaker practice by presenting a range of viewpoints and personal stories from 27 long-serving Friends. Perhaps (and even hopefully) it will trigger discussion and understanding between those with a traditional view of God and those like me who feel that the real world as revealed by science is awe-inspiring enough without the need for the supernatural. There is so much to discuss and consider on this subject that I hope there will be more books on the same subject. Perhaps I should write one!

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Dufus
5.0 out of 5 stars There is no god

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 26 November 2021
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No god exists apart from in the minds of humans
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful eye opener on religion

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 20 August 2013
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I have listened to Boulton speak and 

the book is for non theist Quakers another people who think for themselves
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Jay
5.0 out of 5 stars Options for Quakers Comfortable without God

Reviewed in the United States on 11 April 2019
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Thoughtful book, unfortunate title.

Includes many different viewpoints of living Quakers. 

I've attended Quaker Meetings as a closeted non-theist for 10+ years; 

aways felt my beliefs were too far outside the norm. 

After reading this book, I felt much less alone within the Quaker framework. 

I'm recommending it to my Meeting to open a discussion.

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Clandestine Library For Further Reading
5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Look at the Religious Side of Atheism

Reviewed in the United States on 23 December 2011
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This book is very unique in that 27 atheists reveal why they are still Quakers. This book may seem strange to some because it is highly probable that many will have a stigmatized "Western/European", more precisely "Christian/Theistic", understanding of both religion and secular beforehand. 

As once looks at other cultures and even domestic sociological trends, one cannot help but notice that religion, secularity, theism, and nontheism all overlap an crisscross in significant ways. This book clearly shows that to be an atheist does not mean one is irreligious or nonreligious and it offers an internal look at how 27 people harbor both nontheism and relgiion simultaneously and how they interpret both at a personal level. 

Anthropologically and linguistically, religion really has nothing to do with gods, scriptures, or things that people often imagine a "religion" must have. Anthropologists have noted that, by the numbers of societies through time, the most common form of religions has been atheism (lacking gods), not theism. 

Some enlightening anthropological comments on this can be found in Ch.1 of "Atheism and Secularity" (product link below) for more on this fact. 

Since many in the West are often taught about theistic cultures in history (Europe and Middle East), but rarely about atheistic cultures (much of Asia, Africa, Polynesia, North America, etc.), it's understandable if people "cannot" imagine religions without gods. But this is why this book is very good. It offers a realistic look at religion through the eyes of Nontheist Quakers and shows that to be an atheist does NOT equate to nonreligion or irreligion.

Current research does indicate that beliefs, behavior, and belonging are simply not congruent in individuals - meaning that what people do does not always follow in a cohesive fashion from what they believe nor do beliefs manifest into behaviors or attitudes automatically in a consistent direction (Chaves, Mark. 2010. SSSR Presidential address rain dances in the dry season: Overcoming the religious congruence fallacy. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 49(1):1-14). 

This applies to nontheists as well since the lines between religion and secularity are often blurred. In fact, parallels between atheism and religion are becoming more common place. For instance, the fact that atheists have created atheist communities, self identification of people as 'atheists' and attaching values to it, creating collective identities of 'atheists' in the first place as if there were common characteristics between people who lack a particular belief, organizations strictly focusing on atheism (like American Atheists and Freedom From Religion Foundation), development of atheist music (Dan Barker and his CDs), development of religious rituals like freethought weddings, funerals and even baby dedications (Greg Epstein, an atheist chaplain, does this see NPR Report called "Removing Religion from Holidays a Tall Order" 12/27/07), atheist apologetics books by atheists defending atheism, atheist evangelism like Peter Boghossian's "A Manual for Creating Atheists" that strictly promotes atheist missionary work and seeks to convert unbelievers of atheism into their fold, emergence of atheist books on atheist parenting and how to raise your children as atheists (see next paragraph), participation and membership of atheists and atheist families in religious congregations (for diverse reasons), the existence of atheist chaplains in the military and universities serving the exact same functions as religious chaplains, numerous spiritual books on humanism, legal treatments of atheism as religion in some court cases in the US, and many other social realities and manifestations seems to show that nontheism has many more dimensions than is often admitted.

Indeed many books on atheism do not seem to emphasize that "atheism" is a major category of religion (the opposite of the major category called "theism") and that both theism and atheism can be split into many subcategories and divisions - usually into specific religions like Taoism or Islam. 

Religiosity and secularity cut both ways. Let us not forget the irreligious diversity in theism such as indifferent theists, agnostic theists, and deists. Europe has a good chunk of diverse configurations such as unbelieving theists, believing atheists, and those who are just culturally, not epistemically, embraceful (i.e. "Scandinavian Paradox"). 

Also lets not forget that many atheist religions do exist (Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Jainism, Church of Satan, Ethical Culture, Unitarian Universalism, Jewish Humanism, Raelianism, Scientology, other Humanist groups, etc). 

Atheist parenting books like "Parenting Beyond Belief: On Raising Ethical, Caring Kids Without Religion" and "Raising Freethinkers: A Practical Guide for Parenting Beyond Belief" offer some contact information on some of these. 

Other atheist religions can be found in The Encyclopedia of Cults, Sects, and New Religions and The Encyclopedic Sourcebook of UFO Religions . 

A few books have tackled religion without theism, for example, Religion Without God by Ray Billington and Religion without God by Ronald Dworkin may shed much more light on this discussion. 

Another book like Godless is Christian Atheist: Belonging without Believing which may be of interest to some. 

Raelianism offers a purely naturalistic and explicitly atheist religion which may be of interest to those wanting to learn more about diversity in atheism (fundamental texts are found in "Intelligent Design: Message from the Designers". 

Britain has an interesting history with "secular religion" as well (see Varieties of Unbelief: Atheists and Agnostics in English Society, 1850-1960 ).

These 27 atheist Quakers offer much of their biographies and experiences that have lead them to stay within the Quaker tradition and how they see "religion". They are quite diverse just as theists are about these things and looking at etymology of the word "religion" would help in pinpointing how broad religion is.

 I won't spoil any details in the book, but their views are really quite open to many possibilities of understanding religion and are quite blunt about their nontheism. For further research on the diversity in atheism other cultures please check out the following 3 research texts 

 Atheists: A Groundbreaking Study of America's Nonbelievers and 

 There Is No God: Atheists in America and Atheism and Secularity [2 volumes] (Praeger Perspectives) (worldwide sociological data on beliefs and cultures). 

In "Society without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us About Contentment", Phil Zuckerman did a qualitative study and interviewed about 150 Danes and Swedes to see how they cope with life without theistic beliefs. 

However, he does note that just because some people do not have theistic beliefs, that does not mean they are without religion or are irreligious. 

Another excellent text is "State and Secularism: Some Asian Perspectives" which offers great perspectives from Asian cultures.

A relevant scholarly collection of criticisms on the New Atheism and its social dimensions/impact please read 

 Religion and the New Atheism: A Critical Appraisal (Studies in Critical Social Sciences) . Since the New Atheists are popular and do provide rigid and stigmatized versions of atheism, it good to consider criticisms of those versions.

Other international studies on atheism and secularity that discuss the religious diversity among the secular can be found in 

Kosmin, Barry A. and Ariela Keysar, Editors. 2007. "Secularism & Secularity: Contemporary International Perspectives". Hartford, CT: Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture (ISSSC). 

https://www.scribd.com/document/17142803/Secularism-Secularity-Contemporary-International-Perspectives

Also, qualitative research on borderlands and overlap between nontheism, belief, and religion is available (see for instance, 

Rosen, Ina. 2009. "I'm a Believer - But I'll Be Damned If I'm Religious: Belief and Religion in the Greater Copenhagen Area - A Focus Group Study. Lund Studies in Sociology of Religion. Volume 8).

In the end, the definition of atheism (from the Greek "a" (lack) + "theos" (god) + -isma (belief or condition)) means to lack beliefs in gods only. 

Everything beyond God - is optional - even religion. Probably people should see theism and atheism as components of both religion and secular since none of these terms are ever mutually exclusive or with hard boundaries in real life.
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https://www.friendsjournal.org/godless-for-gods-sake/

Godless for God's Sake (2006)

Nontheism in Contemporary Quakerism, by 27 Quaker nontheists

Edited by David Boulton. Dales Historical Monographs, 

2006. 146 pages. $18.50/softcover.

By Martha Paxson Grundy  November 18, 2006

This series of essays purports to prove that there are significantly large numbers of people who identify as Quakers who do not believe in any supernatural deity. They hope that the response of the Religious Society of Friends will range from openly welcoming such interesting diversity to dropping its unnecessary attachment to the superstitious, outmoded concept of "God."

As evidenced by their more nuanced self-definitions, 19 of the 27 contributors to this book would not be happy with the label "nontheist" applied in the book’s title. But the title sets the editor’s tone. It is taken from Meister Eckhart: "Man’s last and highest parting occurs when, for God’s sake, he takes leave of God"; and editor David Boulton cites a modern interpreter, Raymond Bernard Blakney, to suggest that Eckhart was keen to distinguish between what we might wish to be true and what we find to be true experimentally. What Eckhart demands is equivalent to what pure science demands of the laboratory investigator. He means to say that the price of truth is self-denial in things spiritual, as well as in things material and intellectual.

To think this means that the methods of science should be applied to God is a misinterpretation. Eckhart, and the Rhineland mystics in general, were engaged in the via negativa. They knew that God, transcendent and imminent, was too great, too mysterious to capture in human words and concepts. Eckhart was warning against making idols of our perceptions of the nature of God. 

He was not saying the best thing is to discard God, but rather to lay aside our fondest ideas, definitions, and expectations about God, to step into the void and in the unknowing find the Presence. Stir into this misunderstanding of Eckhart the misuse of science-as-Truth when investigating spirituality, and there is a heady stew that makes logical sense only if you accept without question its basic assumptions.

So perhaps the most useful review of a book that wants to change the fundamental basis and understanding of the Religious Society of Friends is to examine the assumptions underlying the book and compare them with Friends’ faith. They are vastly different.

First, let’s look at Friends’ tradition, that more than any other, rests for its knowledge and ongoing guidance on faith/trust in the experiential availability of the Living God, within a Biblical framework of interpretation. The message of early Friends was not the cliché "that of God in everyone"—a quotation often torn out of context. Their message was more accurately stated as "Christ is come to teach his people himself." It was realized eschatology; it experienced "the power of the Lord is over all" and "the Lord did gather us up as in a net."

 Individual Friends for generations experienced the pain and glory of taking up the Cross daily, of submission, surrender: "not my will but thine be done." They lived into the experience of knowing Jesus, who said "you are my friends if you follow my commands." It was the experience of the inward availability of Christ, enhanced and felt in community, that drew Friends together. The hallmarks of the group became its structures of worship in expectant waiting, church governance based on corporate discernment, and the expectation that the outward life of every Friend would witness to what the group had learned from Christ about living daily as if in God’s kingdom.

Several assumptions underlie the book, all of which presuppose that theism is a fallacy. 

1. First is the assumption that only that which can be apprehended through the senses or deduced with logic and reason is real. But different phenomena have separate ways of perceiving and "knowing" them. To subject everything to scientism begs the question of whether there are realities knowable in other ways. 
2. Second is the assumption that only what is inside one’s own head or experience is real. Allowing that solipsism is correct closes the discussion before it begins. 
3. Third, they assume that only that which can be comprehended by human intellect is real, and that the best value humans can imagine is the ultimate measure of truth. This dismisses by fiat the early Quaker understanding of ultimate Truth.

Many contributors claim "experience" as the major tenet of Quakerism and offer it as proof that there is no God. 

George Fox’s statement, "this I knew experimentally" does not make experiment an indispensable factor of Quakerism; it is the means to the end. 

The end Fox proclaimed was "there is one even Christ Jesus that can speak to thy condition." 

It is curious and sad that when contributors have had a "unitive" or mystical experience, apparently they have chosen to explain it away as something caused by nature, or a welling up of the collective unconscious. 

"God" for them is a figment of human imagination, and a sorry one at that, causing most of the evil they recount throughout history. 

Repeatedly they insist that experience is their only measure of truth. 

But they have deliberately chosen to emasculate their own experience and to misinterpret that of others. 

The experience of the Presence of God is real.

Once you have tasted it, you know it. It cannot be measured by science, but that does not make it unreal.

• Does this book prove the difficult negative that God does not exist? No. 
• Does it prove that the contributors’ varying interpretations of nontheistic humanism belong in the Religious Society of Friends? No. 

Ignorance of, or misuse or misappropriation of language, image, and metaphor does not change the reality of the matrix within which these symbols are embedded, and toward which they point. 

It is peculiar that a group of nontheist individuals should insist on grafting their theology onto another (Quaker) tradition.

None of these writers speak of inner struggles, of transformation, or even of joy. Sin, and therefore forgiveness and grace, are banished. 

They are defiantly or wistfully lonely but proud that they are superior to those of us deluded by superstition and the "lies" perpetrated by religion.

Ironically, they consider themselves religious. 

Several of them deconstruct the word’s etymology to prove religion has nothing to do with a supernatural omnipotent deity. 

Even the Oxford English Dictionary dismisses this intellectual game based on "its supposed etymological meaning." Religion is an institutionalization of what binds us together with God. Over and over the contributors offer their stories as seekers making the conscious choice to remain in rationalism or scientism. 

They come among Friends and enjoy the silence, peace activities, and community. Nobody challenges their lack of belief, no one offers a deep understanding or explanation of Friends’ tradition. So they begin to assume they are Quakers. They reiterate that to be a Quaker it only matters what you do, not what you think or believe. They appear ignorant of the place from which "what Quakers do" arises.

And their stories raise questions: 

• have we unprogrammed Friends been so sloppy in our membership procedures that, for many years, we have taken no care to assure that we are, in fact, a community of like minds and searches? 
• 
  
• Have we been so overeager for numbers and so needy to feel ourselves tolerant that we gather in anyone who can find no home elsewhere, and then invite them to redefine us in their own image?

Meetings too often have become socially and politically homogenous assemblages, forgetting or never knowing that what created the foundations of the structure and outward traditions that they currently enjoy (i.e. silence, community, and social action) were forged in the experiences of "primitive Christianity revived." 

Early Friends knew Christ and that is how our Religious Society got what is most precious about it. Let’s reclaim its power and experiential Truth.

Nontheism

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Martha Paxson Grundy

Martha Paxson Grundy is a member of Cleveland (Ohio) Meeting and author of Resistance and Obedience to God: Memoirs of David Ferris, 1707-1779.