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Nontheist Quakers - Wikipedia 2019

Nontheist Quakers - Wikipedia

Nontheist Quakers
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Nontheist Quakers (also known as nontheist Friends or NtFs) are those who engage in Quaker practices and processes, but who do not necessarily believe in a theistic God or Supreme Being, the divine, the soul or the supernatural. Like traditional Quakers, also known as Friends, nontheist Friends are interested in realizing peace, simplicity, integrity, community, equality, love, joy, and social justice in the Society of Friends and beyond.

Contents
1Beliefs
2Nontheist Quakerism Books
3Notable Nontheist Friends
4See also
5References
6Further reading
7External links

Beliefs[edit]

Quakers in the unprogrammed or “silent worship” tradition of Quaker practice have in the 20th century begun to examine the significance of nontheistic beliefs in the Society of Friends, as part of the Quaker tradition of seeking truth. Non-theism among Quakers probably dates to the 1930s, when some Quakers in California branched off to form the Humanist Society of Friends (today part of the American Humanist Association), and when Henry Cadbury professed agnosticism in a 1936 lecture to Harvard Divinity School students.[1] The term "non-theistic" first appeared in a Quaker publication in 1952 on conscientious objection.[2][non-primary source needed] In 1976, a Friends General Conference Gathering hosted a well-attended Workshop for Nontheistic Friends (Quakers).[3]

Current resources include a nontheist Friends' website and there are nontheist Quaker study groups.[4] Os Cresson began a recent consideration of this issue from behaviorist, natural history, materialist and environmentalist perspectives. Roots and Flowers of Quaker Nontheism is one history. Friendly nontheism also draws on Quaker humanist and universalist traditions.[5] The book Godless for God's Sake: Nontheism in Contemporary Quakerism offers recent, critical contributions by Quakers.[6] Some Friends engage the implications of human evolution, cognitive anthropology, evolutionary psychology, bodymind questions (esp. the "relaxation response"[7][8]), primatology, evolutionary history, evolutionary biology, biology and consensus decision-making, online especially, in terms of Quaker nontheism.

Nontheist Friends tend to share the Religious Society of Friends (RSOF) historic Quaker peace testimony and support for war resistance and conscientious objection.

There are currently three main nontheist Quakers' web sites, including

the Nontheist Friends' Official Website,[4]
Nontheist Friends Network Website (a listed informal group of Britain Yearly Meeting),[9] and
the Nontheist Friends' wiki subject/school at World University and School,[10] which was founded by Scott MacLeod.

Nontheist Friends are a group of individuals, many of whom are affiliated or involved in the unprogrammed tradition in Quakerism. F/friendly nontheists are attempting sympathetically to generate conversation with others who are more comfortable with the traditional and often reiterated language of Quakerism.

Some nontheistic f/Friends see significance in this lower-case / upper-case distinction in terms of inclusiveness and friendliness, welcoming both to the ongoing NTF email list conversations.

Questioning theism, they wish to examine whether the experience of direct and ongoing inspiration from God ("waiting in the Light") – "So wait upon God in that which is pure. ..."[11] – which traditional Quakers understand as informing Silent Meeting and Meeting for Business, might be understood and embraced with different metaphors, language and discourse.

Nontheist Quakerism Books[edit]

Boulton, David (Ed). 2006. Godless for God's Sake – Nontheism in Contemporary Quakerism. Nontheist Friends.

Cresson, Os, and David Boulton (Foreword). 2014. Quaker and Naturalist Too. Morning Walk Press.

Notable Nontheist Friends[edit]
Piers Anthony
David Boulton
Henry Cadbury
Kersey Graves
Sharman Apt Russell
Nicholson Baker [12]

References[edit]

^ Cadbury, Henry, 1936. "My Personal Religion." Accessed online: July 17, 2007. Unpublished manuscript in the Quaker Collection at Haverford College; lecture given to Harvard divinity students in 1936.

^ Tatum, Lyle (ed.). 1952. "Handbook for Conscientious Objectors." Philadelphia, PA: Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors.

^ Morgan, Robert. 1976. "Report from the Workshop for Non-Theistic Friends – Friends General Conference, Ithaca, NY, June, 1976." (Note at end of report reads: "The author of this report is 'Workshop for Non-Theistic Friends'. The workshop was led by Robert Morgan (1916–1993), a Friend from Pittsburgh PA." Morgan was therefore "recording clerk" for this report).

^ Jump up to:a b "NontheistFriends.org". www.nontheistfriends.org.

^ Cresson, Os Roots and Flowers of Quaker Nontheism NontheistFriends.org, September 16, 2010

^ Boulton, David (ed.). 2006. Godless for God's Sake: Nontheism in Contemporary Quakerism. Dent, UK: Dales Historical Monographs. ISBN 0-9511578-6-8

^ Benson MD, Herbert and Miriam Z. Klipper. 2000 [1972]. The Relaxation Response. Expanded updated edition. Harper. ISBN 0-380-81595-8

^ Benson MD, Herbert. 1976. Steps to Elicit the Relaxation Response.RelaxationResponse.org. From "The Relaxation Response." HarperTorch.

^ "Non-theist Friends Network". Non-theist Friends Network.

^ "Nontheist Friends' wiki school at World University and School".

^ Royce, Josiah. 1913. "George Fox as a Mystic" Cambridge, MA: The Harvard Theological Review. 6:1:31-59. JSTOR 1506970.

^ Anderson, Sam. 2011. "Nicholson Baker, The Art of Fiction No. 212." The Paris Review(198).

I'm an atheist, so how did I end up such a committed Quaker? | Aeon Essays

I'm an atheist, so how did I end up such a committed Quaker? | Aeo

I contradict myself

I am an atheist and a Quaker. Does it matter what I believe, when I recognise that religion is something I need?

A Friends Meeting House in Casco, Maine, USA.

Photo by MyLoupe/Getty

Nat Caseis is a cartographer living and working in Minneapolis, who blogs at maphead.blogspot.com

Brought to you by Curio, an Aeon partner

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I read voraciously as a child, even obsessively. Our family drove across the US when I was 13, and I hardly noticed the scenery, eyes glued to a mammoth book of classic science-fiction stories. As I recall, this ticked off my parents.

Magical stories moved me to tears. I vividly remember, at the age of eight, being surprised at how deeply the second chapter of Astrid Lindgren’s The Brothers Lionheart (1973) affected me. The narrator dies and goes to the land where sagas come from, and when he arrives he finds that all that he had wanted — to be strong, healthy and beautiful like his older brother — has come to be, and that his beloved brother is there, too. And this is just the beginning of the story. I remember arriving at the end of Penelope Farmer’s The Summer Birds (1962) and weeping bitterly as the children, who have spent the summer flying about the English countryside, return gravity-bound to school while their lonely classmate and the strange bird-boy fly off together over the ocean.

This essay wasn’t supposed to be about the stories I read as a child. It was supposed to be about how I manage to be an atheist within a religious community, and why I dislike the term ‘atheism’. But however I wrote that essay, the words died on the page. That story comes down to this: I do not believe in God, and I am bored with atheism. But these stories, this magic, and their presence in my heart, they don’t bore me — they are alive. Even though I know they are fiction, I believe in them.

My main religious practice today is meeting for worship with the Religious Society of Friends: I am a Quaker. Meeting for worship, to a newcomer, can feel like a blank page. Within the tradition of Friends, it is anything but blank: it is a religious service, expectant waiting upon the presence of God. So it’s not meditation, or ‘free time’. But that’s how I came to it at first, at the Quaker high school I attended.

After almost 15 years away, I returned to Quakerism in 1997. During a difficult patch of my life, a friend said I needed to do something for myself. So I started going to the meeting house on Sunday mornings. What I rediscovered was the simple fact of space. It was a hiatus, a parenthesis inserted into a complicated, twisty life. Even if it held nothing but breath, it was a relief, and in that relief, quiet notions emerged that had been trampled into the ground of everyday life.

‘Truth’, in the sense that it was used by 17th-century Friends, had less to do with verifiable evidence, and more to do with sense of being a ‘true friend’, an arrow flying true

I am an atheist, but I’ve been bothered for a long time by the mushiness I’ve found in the liberal spiritual communities that admit non-believers such as me. I’ve spent the better part of two decades trying to put my finger on the source of this unease, but it is not a question to be solved by the intellect: it must be lived through.

Several years ago, Marshall Massey, a fellow Friend, pointed out to me that ‘truth’, in the sense that it was used by 17th-century Friends, had less to do with verifiable evidence, and more to do with sense of being a ‘true friend’, an arrow flying true. It was about remaining on a path, not about conforming to the facts of the world. This points to a deep truth: we humans are built for a different kind of rigour than that of evidentiary fact. It is at least as much about consistency, discipline and loyalty as it is about the kinds of repeatable truth that we hold up in a scientific world as fundamental.

This is a large part of what drew me to the Friends rather than the Unitarians or other study groups. Binding oneself to specific patterns, habits, and language seems to have the effect of providing a spine, and Quakers seemed to have more of this spine than other groups I was attracted to. It was a partial solution of my sense of mushiness, but it certainly didn’t solve everything.

If you are really going to be part of a community, just showing up for the main meal is not enough: you need to help cook and clean up. So it has been with me and the Quakers: I’m concerned with how my community works, and so I’ve served on committees (Quakerism is all about committees). There’s pastoral care to accomplish, a building to maintain, First-Day School (Quakerese for Sunday School) to organise. And there’s the matter of how we as a religious community will bring our witness into the world. Perhaps this language sounds odd coming from a non-theist, but as I hope I’ve shown, I’m not a non-theist first. I’ve been involved in prison visiting, and have been struck at the variety of religious attitudes among volunteers: some for whom the visiting is in itself ministry, and others for whom it’s simply social action towards justice (the programme grew out of visiting conscientious objectors in the Vietnam era). The point is: theological differences are not necessarily an issue when there’s work to be done.

But the committees I’ve been in have also had a curious sense of unease too, a sense of something missing, and I’ve now been on three committees that were specifically charged with addressing aspects of a sense of malaise and communal disconnect. The openness of liberal religion resonates strongly with me. It means I do have a place, and not just in the closet or as a hypocrite. But I wonder if my presence, and the presence of atheists and skeptics such as me, is part of the problem.

People need focus. There’s a reason why the American mythologist Joseph Campbell chose the hero’s journey as his fundamental myth: we don’t give out faith and loyalty to an idea nearly as readily as we give it to a hero, a person. And so a God whom we understand not as a vague notion or spirit, but as a living presence, with voice and face and will and command — this is what I think most people want in a visceral way. In some ways, it’s what we need.

And I do not believe such a God exists in our universe.

Here’s a peculiar sense I’ve been getting in Friends committee meetings: we often don’t know how to seek the will of God; we are uncertain whether God actually possesses will. And yet, I suspect that the way out of our tortuous debates is to stop arguing and submit. That submission — because that’s what it is, in the same sense that islam means submission — is what pulls us out of ourselves and gets us lined up to do what needs doing instead of arguing about whose idea is better.

In the 17th century, the Quaker theologian Robert Barclay argued for the bodiless Holy Spirit as the only way to reach Christ and then God. Nowadays, we might find comfort in the spirit alone, or the Light, as Quakers describe an inwardly detected sense of the divine. But submission to something so vague is difficult. We might love and treasure and ‘hold our beloved friends in the Light’, but that’s not a humbling of self, a laying low of ego, and that is what I believe we are missing.

How can we do that? How can I do that? Submitting to something I am pretty sure doesn’t exist? How can I bow down to a fiction? I did it all the time as a child. Open the cover of the book, and I’m in that world. If I’m lucky, and the book is good enough, some of that world comes with me out into the world of atoms and weather, taxes and death. It’s a story, and sometimes stories are stronger than stuff.

Maybe part of the trick is realising that it doesn’t have to be just my little bubble of fiction. I can read a novel, or I can go gaming into the evening with friends. I can watch a ballet on a darkened stage, or I can roar along to my favourite band in the mosh pit. I hated school dances with a passion, yet I have been a morris dancer for 23 years now: I just had to find the form that was a right fit. I don’t pray aloud, or with prescribed formulas. But I can ask Whatever-There-Is a question, or ask for help from the universe, or say thank you. And now that I’m in a place with a better fit, sometimes I get answers back. And so there I am, a confirmed skeptic, praying in a congregation.

Maybe that god would tell us not to tramp over the earth in armies, pretending we are bigger than we are, and that dying is OK

A year and a half ago, our family began worshipping with a smaller Conservative Friends group. Conservative Friends are socially and theologically liberal but stricter in adhering to older Quaker practices. The group uses the Montessori-based Godly Play curriculum for the children: it’s all about stories. Every session begins with a quieting and a focusing. The leader tells a story from the Bible or from the Quaker story book. Then ‘wondering’ questions are asked that spur the children to reflect on what’s going on, and what they would do in the same situation.

I wish I’d had this great programme as a child. The teacher is a good storyteller who clearly loves the kids, and they love the stories and the time with their friends. To me, it’s such an improvement on school-style lessons. It says: this is a different kind of knowing and learning — this is not about facts and theories you need to learn, but about the stories we want to become part of your life.

I love facts and theories, the stuff of the world. I spend most of my life wrestling and dancing with all this amazing matter. As the Australian comic Tim Minchin says in his rant-poem ‘Storm’ (2008): ‘Isn’t this enough? Just this world? Just this beautiful, complex, wonderfully unfathomable world?’ And yes, it’s enough. We don’t need to tell lies about the real world in order to make it magical. But we do still need impossible magic for our own irrational selves. At any rate, I do.

Because I don’t feel stuff-and-logic-based explanations deep down in my toes. There are no miracle stories of flying children there, or brothers reborn into the land where the sagas come from. The language of ‘stuff is all there is’ tells me that I can — even ought to — be rational and sensible, but it doesn’t make me want to be. ‘Atheism’ tells me what I am not, and I yearn to know what I am. What I am has a spine, it’s a thing I must be true to, because otherwise it evaporates into the air, dirt and water of the hard world.

Maybe I — we — need to start small, rebuilding gods that we talk to, and who talk back. Or just one whom we can plausibly imagine, our invisible friend. Maybe part of our problem is that we don’t actually want to talk to the voice of Everything, because Everything has gotten so unfathomably huge. George Fox, the founder of Quakerism, didn’t have to think about light years, let alone billions of light years. The stars now are too far away to be our friends or speak to us in our need. Maybe we could talk to a god whom we imagined in our house. Maybe we could ask what is wanted, and hear what is needed. Maybe that god would tell us not to tramp over the earth in armies, pretending we are bigger than we are, and that dying is OK, because it’s just something that happens when your life is over. Maybe we would ask for help and comfort from unexpected places, and often enough receive it and be thankful for it.

Maybe we need to name that little god something other than God, because maybe our God has a boss who has a boss whose boss runs the universe. Maybe we name this god Ethel, or Larry, or Murgatroyd. Maybe there is no god but God… or maybe there just is no God. And maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe we just tell stories that ring true to us and say up-front that we know they are fiction. We can let people love these stories or hate them. Maybe imagining impossible things — such as flying, the land where sagas come from, God — is what is needed. Maybe we don’t need the gods to be real. Maybe all we need is to trust more leaps of the imagination.

Sam Harris - Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion - Wikipedia

Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion - Wikipedia

Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion

Author Sam Harris
Country United States
Language English
Subject Spirituality
Publisher Simon & Schuster

Publication date September 9, 2014
Media type Print (hardcover and paperback)
Pages 256 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1451636017
Preceded by Free Will
Followed by Islam and the Future of Tolerance

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0:00

Excerpt from Waking Up read by Sam Harris on his podcast.

Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion
is a 2014 book by Sam Harris that discusses a wide range of topics including secular spirituality (essentially within the context of spiritual naturalism), the illusion of the self, psychedelics, and meditation. He attempts to show that a certain form of spirituality is integral to understanding the nature of the mind. In late September 2014, the book reached #5 on the New York Times Non-Fiction Best Sellers list.[1]

In September 2018 Harris released a meditation app entitled "Waking Up with Sam Harris."[2] Harris' podcast had previously been titled Waking Up, but he retitled it Making Sense to differentiate it from his meditation app.[2]

Contents

1Content
1.1Role of spirituality
1.2Meditation and experiences
2Reception
3See also
4References
5External links

Content[edit]
Role of spirituality[edit]

Harris rejects the dichotomy between spirituality and rationality, and seeks to define a middle path that preserves spirituality and science but does not involve religion.[3] He writes that spirituality should be understood in light of scientific disciplines like neuroscience and psychology.[3] Science, he contends, can show how to maximize human well-being but may fail to answer certain questions about the nature of being, answers to some of which he says are discoverable directly through our experience.[3] His conception of spirituality does not involve a belief in God.[4]

Harris' treatment of the nature of the mind draws on psychology, split-brain scientific literature, and philosophy of mind.[5] He explores various positions on the mind-body problem but states that the solution may lie beyond the capabilities of human reason.[6]

Harris writes that the purpose of spirituality (as he defines it – he says the term's uses are diverse and sometimes indefensible) is to become aware that our sense of self is illusory, and says that this realization brings both happiness and insight into the nature of consciousness.[3][5] He says spiritual discipline allows us to repeatedly recognize in our day-to-day lives that there is no self.[3][6] Instead, there is an apprehension of "pure consciousness," a profoundly peaceful state independent of any sense experience.[6] He argues this process of realization is based on experience and is not contingent on faith.[3]

Meditation and experiences[edit]

Harris provides brief guidance on how to meditate, and directs readers to his website for more in-depth instructions.[5] He has studied under several Eastern meditation teachers, and gives advice on how to identify a good spiritual teacher.[4] He describes his experience with Dzogchen, a Tibetan Buddhist practice, and recommends it to his readers.[3]

Although Harris assigns great value to religious experiences, he argues that facts about the cosmos and particular religious dogmas cannot reasonably be inferred from these experiences.[7] In this vein, he describes some of his own deep spiritual experiences, but does not interpret them as evidence, for instance, of Christian, Hindu, or Buddhist metaphysics, as he says adherents of those religions likely would.[4] He defends a segment of English spiritual author Douglas Harding's book On Having No Head against the sharp criticisms of neuroscientist Douglas Hofstadter. By contrast, he criticizes Eben Alexander's Christian interpretation of a near-death experience in Proof of Heaven at length as filled with unwarranted assumptions.[6]
Reception[edit]

Waking Up has been praised by literary critics. Frank Bruni of The New York Times wrote, "Harris's book [...] caught my eye because it's so entirely of this moment, so keenly in touch with the growing number of Americans who are willing to say that they do not find the succor they crave, or a truth that makes sense to them, in organized religion."[7] He notes that since publishing The End of Faith in 2004, Harris has shifted focus to some extent from criticizing religion to trying to understand what people seek in religion and arguing these benefits are possible without it.[7]

Stephen Cave of the Financial Times similarly described Waking Up as "a fine book" and observed, "although it portrays only a fragment of the emerging picture of post-Christian spirituality, it nonetheless does so with great colour and clarity – like a shining stained glass window for a church that is still being built."[8] Kirkus Reviews called it "A demanding, illusion-shattering book certain to receive criticism from both the scientific and the religious camps."[5] Peter Clothier, writing for the Huffington Post, described it as "an immensely readable and enjoyable book. Harris writes about the profound issues that affect our lives with clarity, and with occasional humor."[3]

It received a more mixed response from Trevor Quirk of The New Republic, who criticized what he perceived as the book's inconsistencies and Harris's willingness to belittle religious people. He nevertheless wrote, "[Harris's] new book, whether discussing the poverty of spiritual language, the neurophysiology of consciousness, psychedelic experience, or the quandaries of the self, at the very least acknowledges the potency and importance of the religious impulse—though Harris might name it differently—that fundamental and common instinct to seek not just an answer to life, but a way to live that answer."[6] Likewise, the Washington Independent Review of Books' Holly Smith writes, "Overall, Harris’ book has much to recommend it, but not so much that it should be anyone’s first stop on the road to secular spirituality."[4]

See also[edit]

Why Buddhism is True by Robert Wright
Secular Buddhism
Buddhism and psychology
Joseph Goldstein (writer)
Daniel Goleman
Richard Davidson
Hard problem of consciousness
New mysterianism

References[edit]

^ "Sam Harris' Waking Up a Top 5 New York Times Best Seller". BrightSight Group. Retrieved 3 October 2017.
^ Jump up to:a b Freeland, Ben (29 March 2019). "Sam Harris' Waking Up App, Reviewed". Medium. Retrieved 30 May 2019.
^ Jump up to:a b c d e f g h Clothier, Peter (2 September 2016). "'Waking Up', by Sam Harris: A Book Review". Huffington Post. Retrieved 1 October 2017.
^ Jump up to:a b c d Smith, Holly (17 September 2014). "Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion". Washington Independent Review of Books. Retrieved 2 October 2017.
^ Jump up to:a b c d "Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion". Kirkus Reviews. August 29, 2014. Retrieved August 12, 2016.
^ Jump up to:a b c d e Quirk, Trevor (September 10, 2014). "I Thought I Hated the New Atheists. Then I Read Sam Harris's New Book". The New Republic. Retrieved August 12, 2016.
^ Jump up to:a b c Bruni, Frank (August 30, 2014). "Between Godliness and Godlessness". The New York Times. Retrieved October 18, 2015.
^ Cave, Stephen (October 31, 2014). "'Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion', by Sam Harris". Financial Times. Retrieved August 12, 2016.
External links[edit]
Free audio and text of the first chapter
Two guided meditations on Harris' website
Harris discusses scientific research on meditation with Daniel Goleman and Richard Davidson
Harris discusses Buddhism and evolutionary psychology with Robert Wright (beginning at 9:00)
Book review on PhilosophyForLife.com
----------------

Sam Harris Books

The End of Faith (2004)
Letter to a Christian Nation (2006)
The Moral Landscape (2010)
Lying (2011)
Free Will (2012)
Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion (2014)
Islam and the Future of Tolerance (2015)

Other

New Atheism
Project Reason
Secular Coalition for America
Spiritual but not religious

Categories:
2014 non-fiction books
Books critical of religion
Books about atheism

David Suchet Audio Bible - New International Version, NIV: Complete Bible Audiobook | Biblica | Audible.com.au

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David Suchet Audio Bible - New International Version, NIV: Complete Bible
By: Biblica
Narrated by: David Suchet
Length: 83 hrs and 14 mins
Unabridged Audiobook
Release date: 10-08-2015
Language: English
Publisher: Zondervan
4.5 out of 5 stars4.7 (129 ratings)

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Publisher's Summary

Ever since he became a Christian at the age of 40, it has been Poirot actor David Suchet's dream to make an audio recording of the complete Bible. In between filming the final episodes of Poirot, David Suchet spent over 200 hours in the recording studio to create the very first full-length audio version of the NIV Bible spoken by a single British actor.

This audio Bible is also available as an app. The app contains the full text of the New International Version (British Text), so you can easily navigate the audio or read and listen at the same time.
©2015 Biblica (P)2015 Zondervan

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Robert Peterson
Brisbane, Australia
29-08-2017

Lovely rendering by David Suchet

Would you consider the audio edition of Complete NIV Audio Bible to be better than the print version?

This narration is slowly read, providing the listener with the opportunity to take in the Scripture and understand it much more effectively.Suchet's accent is perfectly appropriate for the readings and his assortment of inflections and use of pausing for effect is very easy to listen to.The pronunciation of names and places is very accurate.If only David Suchet could record New King James or English Standard version, too.

What other book might you compare Complete NIV Audio Bible to, and why?

There are better versions of Scripture but the recordings of these are not as desirable as this one.

What about David Suchet’s performance did you like?

His narration is not rushed, pronunciation is accurate, his silky tone is a pleasure to listen to. He brings the Scripture to life. It's better than listening to Shakespeare - the drama is there but God's Word is presented in all of its glory.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

The Gospels are particularly moving.

Any additional comments?

This recording is unique in its quality.

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13 of 13 people found this review helpful

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5 out of 5 stars
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Alex
Ellenbrook, Australia
15-01-2017

Makes the Genealogies Interesting!

This is a beautiful rendition of the Bible. Without a doubt the best I have ever heard. The timbre of Suchet's voice, his lovely British accent, his pacing and intonation are an absolute delight to listen to. He even makes me happy to listen to the genealogies - if only to listen to his narration. I might prefer a different version, but if you're after an audio Bible you will not do better than this recording.

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8 of 8 people found this review helpful

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Anonymous User
07-12-2018

Terrible navigation - Easy to listen to

This audio bible is very well read and is interesting to listen to. I am enjoying it.

Unfortunately, it is split into 13 sections called Part 1, Part 2, ....., Part 13 without any detail about what is included in each part. It is really disappointing that I cannot simply navigate to the book and chapter of the Bible that I wish to listen to. For example I wanted to start listening to the Book of Matthew in the New Testament so I had to download and listen to the start of Parts 7-11 before I discovered it is somewhere in Part 10. Part 10 starts with the Book of Jonah, Chapter 3. So I could either listen from Jonah 3 knowing that Matthew would be read after the last eight books of the Old Testament are complete OR I could start playing several chapters like I did with the parts to find out where the Book of Matthew begins. Instead I started from Part 11 which is near the end of Luke and did not bother listening to Matthew as I had planned. This process is far too complicated for something that could be simple.

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7 of 7 people found this review helpful

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genesispainter
20-08-2016

Hear God's Word

David Suchet reads the entire bible with zeal and passion. You can tell that he delights in God's word. It's a blessing to have this book in my library.

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5 of 5 people found this review helpful

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Fiona

26-05-2016

The Bible is a collection of books

It would be more useful if the division into parts corresponded with the actual names of books of the bible. As it is one has to memorise which books/chapters are included in each part. Great performance by David Suchet.

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11 of 12 people found this review helpful

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Janice Chong
29-06-2018

Very difficult to navigate.

This audio Bible has been presented as a novel, not as a Bible. With 13 segments and 50 chapters in each it is not even presented as Bible books. The 13 segments have no indication which actual Bible books are contained in them.

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Amazon Customer

20-05-2018

No good, can't go to any book easy, must be able t

No good, can't go to a book easy e.g. Romans 5
I feel Ive lost $15.00, as I'm very disappointed

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4 of 4 people found this review helpful

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Ranjit

14-08-2016

A most worthwhile exercise

Loved it. Very moved by it. Well read. Thank you David for your work, commitment and ministry in putting this audio Bible together.
You made it possible for me to read/ listen to God's Word for the 1st time in my life and I am 55 years old. Thank you and I hope that God continues to bless and use you. Ranjit

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16-08-2017

Such a great book!! could really change your life

I'm so happy that someone made an audio copy of the Bible. often we will never have time to sit down and read bible from back to front but it's great to be able to listen to it on the way to work and working around the house

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Ben

14-10-2016

awe-inspiring

loved it definitely changed my views on almost everything. a must read for everyone. tops

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John Woolman, Quintessential Quaker, Review by Bill Samuel - QuakerInfo.com

John Woolman, Quintessential Quaker
Review by Bill Samuel
Originally published May 1, 2000 at Suite101.com

John Woolman: Quintessential Quaker book cover

Book cover
cover illustration John Woolman and the Slave
based on an illustration by H. Williamson
in A Quaker Calendar for 1914

This article is intended to serve both as an introduction to John Woolman and a review of the book, John Woolman: Quintessential Quaker, 1720-1772 by David Sox (Sessions of York in association with Friends United Press, 1999). David Sox was raised in North Carolina but now lives in England. He is both a Quaker and an Anglican clergyman. Such dual affiliation would generally not be permitted among North American Friends (Quakers), but is allowed in Britain. The book title is apt, as probably no other Friend is held up as often by other Friends as an example of someone who truly lived the Quaker faith. Harold Loukes described him as "the purest and sweetest flowering of the Quaker spirit" (The Quaker Contribution, London, 1965, p.67).

Introduction to John Woolman

John Woolman's grandfather, also named John Woolman, was one of the early Quaker settlers of New Jersey. John Woolman (the grandson) was the fourth child and eldest son in a family of thirteen. The family homestead was halfway between Burlington and Mount Holly, New Jersey. Woolman lived all his life in that area, but traveled considerably and died while on a visit to England.

For the first two hundred years or so of Quakerism, it was common for ministers and other prominent Friends to write spiritual journals of their life which were often published after their deaths. I think there can be little doubt that the most widely read of these journals is the Journal of John Woolman. Like many such journals, it focuses on his spiritual labors and concerns, and does not say a lot about his family. However, it is known that he married at 29 and had at least one child.

Concern About Slavery

Woolman's best known concern was about the evil institution of slavery. At age 23, his employer asked him to write a bill of sale for a slave. He was uneasy about this, and told his boss he thought slavekeeping was "a practice inconsistent with the Christian religion." He came to try to live as much as he could without depending on the labor of slaves. For example, in his last decade he wore undyed clothes because slaves were used in the making of dyes. When receiving hospitality from slave owners, he would leave them some money to be distributed among the slaves from whose services Woolman benefitted. Woolman was deeply distressed about the oppression of slaves. He also thought slavery was spiritually damaging to the slave owners, and genuine love and concern marked his laboring with them to give up slaveholding.

While there were indications of unease among Friends about slavery from the earliest days, Quakers nevertheless did not have a clear testimony against slavery in Woolman's early years. Woolman spent much of his life seeking to persuade Quakers to give up slaveholding, and bodies of Quakers to make this a matter of discipline. His efforts, along with those of other similarly concerned Friends, bore much fruit during his own lifetime and the Religious Society of Friends everywhere accepted this discipline well before the abolition movement in the wider society gained much strength.

Doing It the Quaker Way

Woolman's efforts to rid the Society of Friends of the sin of slavery were not those of a rabblerouser on the fringes of the Society. Woolman was a recorded minister of the gospel, and held significant leadership positions in the Society. He always accepted accountability to the faith community. All his travels on the slavery issue were subject to the discernment of Friends, and Friends minuted their approval of them. The travels were frequently in the company of other Friends, and Woolman served on a Philadelphia Yearly Meeting committee to visit slaveholders. He labored gently and lovingly with fellow Quakers who held slaves, and spoke as someone sent by a body of Friends not as an isolated individual. Woolman's example of bringing his concern under the discipline of his faith community is frequently cited by Friends even today.

Living Simply

Simplicity is one of the classic Quaker testimonies. It arises not from an aversion to things, but from the desire to live one's life centered on God. Woolman is generally viewed as an excellent example of living out this concern. When his business steadily increased, instead of rejoicing he "felt a stop in my mind." He felt his business grew too cumbersome, interfering with his faithfulness to the callings of God upon his life. So he withdrew from retail trade, and decided to rely solely on tailoring and orchard-tending to earn his livelihood.

Other Aspects of Faithfulness

The aspects of his life outlined above are probably those for which Woolman is best known. However, his faithfulness to God manifested itself in many ways, and I would like to briefly touch on a few more of them:

His concern over oppression extended beyond slavery to others of humble circumstance. For example, on his voyage to England for what proved his final journey, he felt led to travel in steerage with the sailors rather than to have a cabin. He explained, "I was now desirous to embrace every opportunity of being inwardly acquainted with the hardship and difficulties of my fellow creatures..."
He also had a concern for native Americans, and was moved to take a difficult and dangerous journey among them. He explained, "Love was the first motion, and then a concern arose to spend some time with the Indians, that I might feel and understand their life and the spirit they live in, if haply I might receive some instruction from them, or they be in any degree helped forward by my following the leadings of Truth amongst them."
He felt the Quaker peace testimony deeply. During the French and Indian War, he argued against any compromise with the warmakers. He signed an epistle with 13 others presenting the case for refusing to pay taxes levied to support the war.
His compassion extended beyond humans to other living creatures. He was deeply concerned about overworking of oxen and horses. In his final travels in England, he walked rather than use "those coaches which run so fast as oft to oppress the horses."
While Friends in their earliest days wrote and spoke harshly about other groups of Christians, Woolman felt a stop about that. As a teenager, he "found no narrowness respecting sects..." As an adult he believed "All true Christians are of the same spirit but their gifts are diverse." He cited both the Dutch Catholic monk Thomas à Kempis and the Protestant martyr John Huss as "of a true Christian spirit."

The Book

I feel Sox has done a good job of communicating the exemplary life of this humble Christian, and placing it in context. The biography is easy to read, and extensively referenced. It is well worth reading.

However, I do see some indications of weaknesses in knowledge about Quakerism. I found one glaring error that somehow escaped the editors at the two Quaker presses which cooperated in producing the book. On page 13, Sox states, "During Woolman's time it was customary to record those with vocal gifts as 'Ministers'; subsequently the name was changed to elders." There was no such change. Ministers and elders are groups both traditionally recorded by Friends for different gifts.