2022/08/19

Radha Soami - Wikipedia

Radha Soami - Wikipedia

Radha Soami

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Radha Soami
SethShivDayalSingh.jpg
Seth Shiv Dayal Singh Ji, a.k.a. Soami Ji Maharaj
Total population
c. 3,000,000[1]
Founder
Seth Shiv Dayal Singh Ji (1861)[2][3]
Regions with significant populations
Agra, Uttar Pradesh, India[3]
Beas, Punjab, India[2]
Religions
Sant Mat
Scriptures
Sar Bāchan[4]
Languages
Hindi • Punjabi

Radha Soami or Radhasoami Panth is a spiritual tradition founded by Seth Shiv Dayal Singh Ji in 1861 on Basant Panchami Day in Agra, India.[1][2][3][5][6]

His parents were followers of Guru Nanak of Sikhism and a spiritual guru Tulsi Sahib from Hathras. After completing his education, Singh gained employment as a Persian language translator, left that role and spent increasing amount of his time to religious pursuits. He was influenced by the teachings of Tulsi Sahib of Hathras, who taught Surat Shabd Yoga (which is defined by Radhasoami teachers as “union of the soul with the divine, inner sound”); guru bhakti (“devotion to the master”); and high moral living, including a strict lacto-vegetarian diet. He accompanied Tulsi Saheb a lot. He didn't take initiation from him, however. The movement does not promote celibacy, and most of the masters in its various lineages have been married. The teachings seem to be related to forms of 18th- and 19th-century esoteric mysticism that were circulating at the time in northern India. The founding date of the movement is considered to be 1861 when Seth Shiv Dayal Singh Ji began publicly to give discourses.[7][8]

As per some subtraditions, it derives its name from the word Radha Soami means Lord of the Soul. "Radha Soami" is used to indicate towards Seth Shiv Dayal Singh Ji.[9] The followers of Seth Shiv Dayal Singh Ji used to consider him the Living Master and incarnation of God (Lord Vishnu/Krishna).[10] After his death, Salig Ram and his other followers started the Radha Soami movement, which later got separated into different branches/denominations, including the Radhasoami Satsang Soami Bagh Agra, Radha Soami Satsang Beas, Radha Soami Satsang Dayalbagh, and Radha Swami Satsang Dinod.

Nomenclature[edit]

According to Mark Juergensmeyer, the term Radhasoami literally refers to Radha as the soul and Soami (swami, lord).[11] According to Salig Ram, quotes Juergensmeyer, these terms are symbolic and mean "master of energy", derived from the Vaishnava understanding of "Radha as the power of energy of God" (Shakti). It is a referent to the consciousness in a person and the cosmic energy source, states Juergensmeyer.[11] However, the founder Shri Seth Shiv Dayal Singh Ji himself never used the term. According to some other scholars, the name is derived from Shiv Dayal's wife. His wife Narayani Devi was nicknamed Radha Ji by his followers.[12] So, being the husband (Soami) of Radha Ji (Narayani Devi), Shri Shiv Dayal was named Radha Soami.

The writings of Soami Shiv Dayal, Sar Bāchan, use the term Sat Nam, rather than Radhasoami. The gurus and the tradition that followed him used the term Radhasoami during the initiation rites, meditation practices and as mutual greeting. This has led to the fellowship being commonly called Radha Soami.[11] In some subtraditions of Radhasoami, states Lucy DuPertuis, the guru's charisma is considered as the "formless absolute", being in his presence is equivalent to experiencing the incarnation of the Satguru, the guru is identified as the Radhasoami.[10]

Founder[edit]

The Radhasoami tradition can be traced back to the spiritual master Seth Shiv Dayal Singh Ji Maharaj (honorifically titled Soami Ji Maharaj) who was born on August 25, 1818, in the north Indian city of Agra. His parents were followers of Guru Nanak of Sikhism and a spiritual guru Tulsi Saheb from Hathras. After completing his education, Singh gained employment as a Persian language translator, left that role and spent increasing amount of his time to religious pursuits. He was influenced by the teachings of Tulsi Sahib of Hathras, who taught Surat Shabd Yoga (which is defined by Radhasoami teachers as “union of the soul with the divine, inner sound”); guru bhakti (“devotion to the master”); and high moral living, including a strict lacto-vegetarian diet. He accompanied Tulsi Saheb a lot. He didn't take initiation from him, however. The movement does not promote celibacy, and most of the masters in its various lineages have been married. The teachings seem to be related to forms of 18th- and 19th-century esoteric mysticism that were circulating at the time in northern India. The founding date of the movement is considered to be 1861 when Seth Shiv Dayal Singh Ji began publicly to give discourses.[7][13]

Successors and branches[edit]

Radha Soami fellowships and sects have featured gurus from many parts of the world.

After Seth Shiv Dayal Singh Ji's death in 1878 he was succeeded by several disciples, including his wife Narayan Devi (“Radhaji”); his brother Partap Singh (“Chachaji”); Sanmukh Das (appointed head of the sadhus); the army havildar/sergeant Baba Jaimal Singh, Gharib Das of Delhi; and the postmaster general of the Northwest provinces, Salig Ram (alias Rai Salig Ram), each of whom started their own distinct centers. According to some scholars, Seth Shiv Dayal Singh Ji passed leadership to Salig Ram.[14] After their deaths, multiple followers were claimed to be the rightful heirs, and this eventually led to a large proliferation of various masters and satsangs (“fellowships”) throughout India that were regarded by their followers to be the true manifestations of Seth Shiv Dayal Singh Ji and his teachings, described as Sant Mat (“the path of the saints”).[15]

The masters gave birth to over 20 lineages (guru-shishya traditions), most of which already disappeared.[3][15] The most famous living branches are Radhasoami Satsang Soami Bagh Agra, Radha Soami Satsang Beas, Radha Soami Satsang Dayalbagh, and Ruhani Satsang.[3]

The Radha Soami Satsang Beas based out of Beas, Punjab, India is the largest group.

The largest branch is the Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) with the headquarters in Beas City, established by one of Seth Shiv Dayal Singh Ji's disciples, Baba Jaimal Singh, in the North Indian state of Punjab in the 1891, who practised Surat Shabd Yoga on the bank of river Beas.[16][3] The Beas has grown enormously over the decades under the guiding hands of each subsequent successor (from Baba Sawan Singh to Sardar Bahadur Maharaj Jagat Singh and Maharaj Charan Singh to the current master, Baba Gurinder Singh). There are estimated to be two million initiates of the Beas masters worldwide. The one of a split the Beas is Dera Sacha Sauda (1948) led by Mastana Baluchistani.[17]

In Agra, the birthplace of the movement, there are three main satsang centers of branches. The Radhasoami Satsang Soami Bagh Agra with center at Soami Bagh occupies the original site in Agra, where a large memorial tomb is being built to honor the movement founder, and administered by the Central Administrative Council which established by second successor Maharaj Saheb in 1902.[3][13] The second center is Peepal Mandi, which was founded by Rai Salig Ram who was then succeeded by his son, grandson, and currently his great-grandson, Agam Prasad Mathur. And the largest of the Agra-based branches is Radha Soami Satsang Dayalbagh with center at Dayalbagh, which is located across the street from Soami Bagh. This branch was founded in 1907 at Ghazipur by Kamta Prasad Sinha and in 1913 the headquarters were moved to Agra,[3] it has flourished under the following leadership of Anand Sarup, Gurcharandas Mehta, Dr. M.B. Lal Sahab, and most recently as of this date Prof. Prem Saran Satsangi.

The Ruhani Satsang (a.k.a. Kirpal Light Satsang) in Delhi, founded by Kirpal Singh, a disciple of the Beas master, Baba Sawan Singh, became popular in the United States under the leadership of Thakar Singh.[1][3][13] The Ruhani Satsang followed by the Sawan Kirpal Ruhani Mission and its international organization Science of Spirituality (SOS), founded by Kipral Singh's son.[1]

Radha Swami Dinod Lineage
Radha Swami Satsang Dinod, lineage.

Other Radha Soami subtraditions and groups that have garnered a significant following include Manavta Mandir, established by Baba Faqir Chand in 1962 at Hoshiarpur in the Punjab; the Tarn Taran satsang founded by Bagga Singh; Radha Swami Satsang Dinod, founded by Param Sant Tarachand Ji Maharaj (Bade Maharaj Ji), current master Param Sant Huzur Kanwar Saheb Ji Maharaj and several others scattered through North and South India.[13]

In addition, there are Radhasoami-influenced, derived from the Radhasoami often westernized groups but denies their connection, namely the Eckankar led by Paul Twitchell (a former disciple of Kirpal Singh), the similar American syncretistic Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness of John-Roger Hinkins, the linked to the Beas Elan Vital (formerly Divine Light Mission), established by Hans Maharaj, and "Quan Yin method" of Ching Hai (a female student of Thakar Singh).[1][14][13]

List of notable gurus[edit]

General founder

Radha Soami subtraditions[edit]

Radha Soami Satsang Beas lineage
Radha Soami Satsang Dayalbagh lineage
Ruhani Satsang lineage
Manavta Mandir
Others

Radhasoami-related groups[edit]

Dera Sacha Sauda
Eckankar
Elan Vital
Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness
Science of Spirituality
Jai Guru Dev Satsang
  • Gharibdas
  • Vishnudayal Sharma
  • Ghurelal Sharma
  • Tulsidas (Jai Guru Dev)
  • Umakant Tiwari
Others

Beliefs and practices[edit]

To the Radhsoamis, six elements form the framework of their faith:[18]

  • a living guru (someone as locus of trust and truth),
  • bhajan (remembering Sat Nam, other practices believed to be transformative),
  • satsang (fellowship, community),
  • seva (serve others without expecting anything in return),
  • kendra (community organization, shrine), and
  • bhandara (large community gathering).

The Radha Soami Satsang believes that living gurus are necessary for a guided spiritual life.[2] They do not install the Guru Granth Sahib or any other scriptures in their sanctum, as they consider it ritualistic. Instead, the guru sits in the sanctum with the satsang (group of Sikh faithfuls) and they listen to preachings from the Adi Granth and sing hymns together.[2] They believe in social equality, forbid caste distinctions and have also attracted Dalits to their tradition. They are active outside India too.[2]

The Radhasoami are strict vegetarians. They are active in charitable work such as providing free medical services and help to the needy. They do not believe in orthodox Sikh ritual practices such as covering one's head inside the temple or removing shoes, nor do they serve karah prasad (offering) at the end of prayers.[2] Their basic practices include Surat Shabd Yoga (meditation on inner light and sound), initiation of disciple into the path by a living guru, obedience to the guru, a moral life that is defined by abstinence from meat, drugs, alcohol and sex outside marriage. They also believe that jivanmukti or inner liberation is possible during one's lifetime with guidance of the living guru.[19] However, some of these practices vary depending on the branches of the Radhasoami faith (Beas, Dayalbagh, Dinod).

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Jump up to:a b c d e Zoccarelli, Pierluigi (2006). "Radhasoami movements". In Clarke, Peter B. (ed.). Encyclopedia of New Religious Movements. London; New York: Routledge. pp. 507–509. ISBN 9-78-0-415-26707-6.
  2. ^ Jump up to:a b c d e f g Kalsi, Sewa Singh (2005). Sikhism. Religions of the World. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers. pp. 12–13. ISBN 0-7910-8098-6.
  3. ^ Jump up to:a b c d e f g h i Jones, Constance A.; Ryan, James D. (2007). "Radhasoami Movement". Encyclopedia of Hinduism. Encyclopedia of World Religions. J. Gordon Melton, Series Editor. New York: Facts On File. pp. 344–345. ISBN 978-0-8160-5458-9. Archived from the original on 2016-12-20.
  4. ^ Singh 1934.
  5. ^ Juergensmeyer, Mark (1991). Radhasoami Reality: The Logic of a Modern Faith. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-01092-7. p. 90 note 5, Quote: "The date of Seth Shiv Dayal's first public discourse is Basant Panchami Day, February 15, 1861".
  6. ^ Lorenzen, David N. (1995). Bhakti Religion in North India: Community Identity and Political Action. State University of New York Press. p. 67. ISBN 978-0-7914-2025-6., Quote: "The movement traces its origins to Seth Shiv Dayal Singh, who began his public ministry in Agra in 1861."
  7. ^ Jump up to:a b Juergensmeyer 1991, pp. 15–19, 38–42 with footnotes.
  8. ^ Juergensmeyer, Mark; Lane, David Christopher (May 24, 2018). "Radhasoami Tradition". oxfordbibliographies.com. Oxford Bibliographies. doi:10.1093/OBO/9780195399318-0203.
  9. ^ Saarbachan Radhasoami Vartik.
  10. ^ Jump up to:a b DuPertuis, Lucy (1986). "How People Recognize Charisma: The Case of Darshan in Radhasoami and Divine Light Mission". Sociological Analysis. Oxford University Press. 47 (2): 111–124. doi:10.2307/3711456. JSTOR 3711456., Quote: "Various branches of Radhasoami have argued about the incarnationalism of Satguru (Lane, 1981). Guru Maharaj Ji has accepted it and identifies with Krishna and other incarnations of Vishnu."
  11. ^ Jump up to:a b c Juergensmeyer 1991, pp. 41–42 with footnotes, Quote: "The word Radhasoami literally refers to lord (swami) of his Souls., Radha" (p. 41); "The Beas group translates Radhasoami as 'lord of the soul' (p. 42).
  12. ^ Jeevan Charitra Soami Ji Maharaj.
  13. ^ Jump up to:a b c d e Juergensmeyer, Mark; Lane, David Christopher (May 24, 2018). "Radhasoami Tradition". oxfordbibliographies.com. Oxford Bibliographies. doi:10.1093/OBO/9780195399318-0203.
  14. ^ Jump up to:a b Jones, Constance A.; Ryan, James D. (2007). "Sant Mat movement". Encyclopedia of Hinduism. Encyclopedia of World Religions. J. Gordon Melton, Series Editor. New York: Facts On File. pp. 383–384. ISBN 978-0-8160-5458-9. Archived from the original on 2016-12-20.
  15. ^ Jump up to:a b Lane, David Christopher (1992). The Radhasoami tradition: a critical history of guru successorship. Sects and cults in America, Bibliographical guides, v. 14; Garland reference library of social science, v. 623. New York: Garland Publishing. ISBN 978-0-8240-5247-8. OCLC 26013140.
  16. ^ Juergensmeyer 1991, pp. 16–17 with footnotes.
  17. ^ Lane, David Christopher (December 12, 2015). "Split i the Radha Soami Movement". Sach Khand: The Journal of Radhasoami Studies (10): 11. ISBN 9781329755628.
  18. ^ Juergensmeyer 1991, pp. 11–12, 40–42.
  19. ^ Lewis, James R. (2002). Encyclopedia of Cults, Sects, and New Religions. Amherst, NY: Prometheus. pp. 590–592. ISBN 978-1-61592-738-8.

Further reading[edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Radha Soami.
  • Schomer, Karine; McLeod, William Hewat, eds (1987). The Sants: Studies in a Devotional Tradition of India, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1987. Academic papers from a 1978 Berkeley conference on the Sants organised by the Graduate Theological Union and the University of California Center for South Asia Studies. ISBN 81-208-0277-2

Primary sources[edit]

  • Singh, Seth Shiv Dayal (1934). Sar Bachan: An abstract of the teachings of Soami Ji Maharaj, the founder of the Radha Soami system of philosophy and spiritual science: The yoga of the Sound Current. Translated by Seva Singh and Julian Johnson from Hindi to English (9th ed.). Beas: Radha Soami Satsang Beas.

External links[edit]

Official websites[edit]

Radha Soami subtraditions
Radhasoami-related groups
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[[Book Review - Spiritual Link A Testament of Devotion  By Thomas R. Kelly

Book Review - Spiritual Link

Spiritual Link

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Book Review

A Testament of Devotion  By Thomas R. Kelly
 Publisher: New York: Harper/Collins, 1996.
 ISBN 978-00606-43614

Thomas R. Kelly (1893–1941) was a devout member of the Society of Friends, commonly known as the Quakers. The central principle of Quakerism is that each individual must seek and be guided by the divine light within. Kelly served as a Quaker missionary, a college professor, and a writer. After his death Douglas Steere collected five essays by Kelly and published them under the title A Testament of Devotion. The book includes “A Biographical Memoir” of Kelly by Steere. This book has been continuously in print ever since it was first published in 1941 and is considered a classic of Quaker spirituality and mysticism.

The essays were written in the last few years of the author’s life. He had experienced a nervous breakdown, the effect of which was like a dark night of the soul, and he emerged from this with an intense and unshakeable love of and sense of unity with God. 

Kelly writes with intensity in a style sometimes like a sermon, and often poetic. Almost every paragraph is packed with religious imagery, and almost every page needs to be read and re-read slowly to be properly understood.

===

In the first essay, “The Light Within,” 

Kelly urges the reader to “secret habits of unceasing orientation of the deeps of our being about the Inward Light.” With this orientation, we stay attuned to the divine throughout the busy day. He quotes Meister Eckhart: “As thou art in church or cell, that same frame of mind carry out into the world, into its turmoil and its fitfulness.” Kelly uses a number of analogies to convey his idea of what this inner light is:

Deep within us all there is an amazing inner sanctuary of the soul, a holy place, a Divine Centre, a speaking Voice, to which we may continuously return. Eternity is at our hearts. … It is a Light Within which illuminates the face of God. … It is the Shekinah of the soul, the Presence in the midst. Here is the slumbering Christ, stirring to be awakened, to become the soul we clothe in earthly form and action. And He is within us all.

This “Divine Centre” is present within everyone. With rightly focused, devoted attention we may experience it. 

Yet he also explains that if we seek the divine within it is only because God is seeking us:

In this humanistic age we suppose man is the initiator and God is the responder. But the Living Christ within us is the initiator and we are the responders. God the Lover, the accuser, the revealer of light and darkness presses within us.

Quoting the Bible, Kelly notes that it is God who says, “Behold, I stand at the door.” The response of the soul to the Light Within is natural. Kelly says, “The basic response of the soul to the Light is internal adoration and joy, thanksgiving and worship, self-surrender and listening.”

===

In his second essay, “Holy Obedience,” 

Kelly refers to an inner “Shepherd.” He directs the reader to “the life of absolute and complete and holy obedience to the voice of the Shepherd.” Humility, suffering, and simplicity are all natural outcomes of obedience. Obedience, he says, may be intentional, arising from awareness of the divine within, or it may emerge from mystical experience:

It is an overwhelming experience to fall into the hands of the living God, to be invaded to the depths of one’s being by His presence, to be, without warning, wholly uprooted from all earth-born securities and assurances. … Then is the soul swept into a Loving Centre of ineffable sweetness, where calm and unspeakable peace and ravishing joy steal over one. … One emerges from such soul-shaking, Love-invaded times into more normal states of consciousness. But one knows ever after that the eternal Lover of the world, the Hound of heaven, is utterly, utterly real, and that life must henceforth be forever determined by that Real.

===

The third essay, “The Blessed Community,” 

focuses on the “Fellowship” of those who share a belief in the inner guidance of God within. The spiritual friendship and communion enjoyed by those who are attuned to the divine light within themselves – or are earnestly seeking it – is a source of great joy and spiritual vitality. In the early seventeenth century when the early Friends (or Quakers) began to meet, this “Fellowship” was evident. However, it was not unique in human history:

Every period of profound re-discovery of God’s joyous immediacy is a period of emergence of this amazing group inter-knittedness of God-enthralled men and women who know one another in Him. It appeared in vivid form among the early Friends.

Kelly says this is “the holy matrix of ‘the communion of the saints’.” While he extols the fellowship of the Society of Friends with its clear focus on turning within, Kelly asserts in no uncertain terms that the “spiritual fellowship” he is praising is incomplete until we treat all persons, without exception, as part of it: “For until the life of men in time is, in every relation, shot through with Eternity, the Blessed Community is not complete.”

===

In the fourth essay, “The Eternal Now and Social Concern,” 

Kelly states that the eternal can connect with time in a way that enables life to be lived on two levels, the “here” and the “beyond,” or “the eternal now and the temporal now.” Kelly thinks that people sometimes focus too much on the temporal but with serious commitment can shift their emphasis to the eternal. This shift in focus changes the entire quality of life:

The possibility of the experience of Divine presence, as a repeatedly realized and present fact, and its transforming and transfiguring effect upon all life – this is the central message of Friends. Once we discover this glorious secret, this new dimension of life, we no longer live merely in time but we live also in the eternal.

Quakers are known for taking positive action in the “temporal now,” through social concerns such as peace, non-violence, and fair treatment of all, following the guidance of the inner Voice.

Social concern is the dynamic Life of God at work in the world, made special and emphatic and unique, particularized in each individual or group who is sensitive and tender in the leading-strings of love. A concern is God-initiated, often surprising, always holy, for the Life of God is breaking through into the world. Its execution is in peace and power and astounding faith and joy, for in unhurried serenity the Eternal is at work in the midst of time, triumphantly bringing all things to Himself.

===

In the fifth and final essay, “The Simplification of Life,” 

Kelly addresses the stress and complexity of modern life. Describing the busyness of modern life, he says many of us feel “bowed down with burdens, crushed under committees, strained, breathless, and hurried, panting through a never-ending program of appointments.” He claims that the apparent complexity and unease of our lives is not due to external circumstances but to a lack of inner integration. “We Western peoples are apt to think our great problems are external, environmental. We are not skilled in the inner life, where the real roots of our problem lie.” 

Kelly suggests that basis of Quakerism is in this: “If the Society of Friends has anything to say, it lies in this region primarily. Life is meant to be lived from a Centre, a divine Centre. In that ‘divine Centre’ within us we will find ‘the welling-up whispers of divine guidance and love and presence, more precious than heaven or earth.’” The final paragraph of this essay summarizes its key points:

Life from the Centre is a life of unhurried peace and power. It is simple. It is serene. It is amazing. It is triumphant. It is radiant. It takes no time, but it occupies all our time. And it makes our life programs new and overcoming. We need not get frantic. He is at the helm. And when our little day is done we lie down quietly in peace, for all is well.

Book reviews express the opinions of the reviewers and not of the publisher.

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Quakers in China

Quakers in China

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Quakers in China

Quaker merchants from Britain, Ireland and North America traded extensively in China during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.  Hence when the opium trade was being imposed by Britain in the 1830s, Friends were well informed, and protested strongly: this was known in China, and Quaker merchants were permitted to continue trading when all other foreigners were expelled.

By the 1870s, Quakers were caught up in the evangelical movement, and in 1886 the Friends Foreign Missionary Association (FFMA) sent Irish Friends Robert and Mary Jane Davidson to China, followed by several others.  They set up a mission in Chongqing, in Sichuan, deep in the western interior, and later opened a second centre, in Sichuan’s capital, Chengdu.

Although they made few converts (when Sichuan Yearly Meeting was founded in 1904, there were only 56 Chinese Quakers), their work in the community had considerable impact. Chongqing Friends School thrived, and the International Friends Institute, opened in 1909, soon became a place where people could meet freely in a peaceful setting. In 1910, working with other missions, and Chinese Friends, they co-founded the West China Union University, in Chengdu (now the West China Institute of Medical Sciences, and one of the 6 key medical centres in China).

Ohio Yearly Meeting began a completely separate mission in 1887 when they sent nurse Esther Butler to Nanking, in eastern China, on the Yangste River, inland from Shanghai.  Other women soon joined her, and they opened an orphanage and a school for women, followed by a hospital for women and children in 1894. A new facility was opened in nearby Luh Hoh, and the pioneer women missionaries were joined by missionaries of both sexes, some from Ohio and others from New England and New York Yearly meetings.   Chinese men and women played an increasing part in the work, and by 1907 the Friends Church had a Chinese pastor, Pastor Gao.  As in Sichuan, Friends in Nanking and Luh Hoh worked extensively with other missions .

Both the Sichuan and Nanking Quaker missions had soon seen that ‘conversion’ was unusual, but that their community work was effective and helpful. It also demonstrated Quaker values in a tangible way, especially when done in equal partnership with their partnership with Chinese people.

There were a number of other Quaker initiatives. William Wardle Cadbury, from Pennsylvania, served as a Quaker medical missionary in Canton from 1909 to 1941.  He was Superintendent of Canton Hospital, and also served terms as vice-president of the Chinese Medical Association and chairman of the Chinese Red Cross. Lucy Burtt ran a Friends centre in a house in Beijing for 20 years from 1930.  There was a small Friends Centre in Shanghai, and a group of Quakers in Hong Kong.

By the 1930s major changes were afoot in China. Communism was on the rise, and Japan was a growing threat. War broke out in 1937 and the Chinese coast was soon occupied by Japan, while the Chinese Communists controlled the north. The  ‘Free China’ that was left, including Sichuan, was landlocked and soon in desperate need of relief.

The Friends Centre in occupied Shanghai provided help to refugees and street children, and ran feeding programmes, from 1938.  Relief for ‘Free China’ became a great concern for Friends elsewhere, and seven American organisations, including the AFSC, combined to form United China Relief, to fund such work, once the necessary permissions could be granted. In 1941 the Free China government in Chongqing finally agreed that the Friends Ambulance Unit (FAU) could send a team to provide medical assistance to the Chinese Red Cross in “Free China”.  They based themselves in Kunming, close to the Burmese border, and a key transport hub. From Kunming the FAU's China Convoy distributed supplies over much of China for the next 5 years.

In 1946 the China Convoy team was reconfigured as the Friends Service Unit (FSU). under the aegis of the AFSC. Locally they were known as the Gong Yi Diu Hu Dui, which roughly translates as the “Public/Justice Friendship Plead/Save Protect Group” – although they were also locally nicknamed the “Public Silence Group” – reflecting their practice of Meeting for Worship.  Activity continued up until 1951 including a major relief project during the 1946-7 famine, and work to relieve sufferings on both sides of the Chinese Civil War.

Eventually the presence of foreigners was untenable against the backdrop of growing tensions between the new Communist Government and the West. In 1951 the FSU and any remaining missionaries, of all persuasions, were expelled.

AFSC returned in the 1970s, with a programme of visits and exchanges, for mutual understanding, which still continues. They have a small office in Sichuan. QPS (now QPSW) has helped fund volunteer teachers.

Chinese Christians on the mainland today are non-denominational. There is a small and active Friends Meeting in Hong Kong: amongst other things, they founded Oxfam Hong Kong, and supported many Vietnamese refugees in the 1970s.



Further Reading and Credits

EXTERNAL LINKS
FURTHER READING
  • Tyzack, Charles
 Friends to China : the Davidson brothers and the Friends' Mission to China 1886-1939, The Friends' Quarterly, vol. 24, no. 6, April 1987

 

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Thomas Kelly - Friends Journal

Thomas Kelly - Friends Journal:

Thomas Kelly

February 1, 2006
By Brian Drayton

Thomas Kelly is the first of four activist Friends that I intend to write about in this column over the next several months—Friends whose spiritual experience and their testimony for us are shaped in a fundamental way by purposeful engagement with the world. I say "purposeful" because everyone’s spiritual life is shaped by the manifold experiences of work, human relationships, and the sheer business of organismal being, but it is useful sometimes to try to trace in someone’s spiritual expression the impact of their intentionally hurling themselves into specific actions.

Now, it may come as a surprise to find Thomas Kelly grouped with such energetic bodies as John Bellers and Lucretia Mott. This view of Kelly dawned on me only recently, as I revisited his writings and biography after a long period in which I thought of him hardly at all. In his devotional pieces, I heard accents that come from fierce joy, commitments maintained under testing, and many kinds of longing. The three sorts of world-engagement that seem most important in Kelly’s life were his concern for souls, his direct service in Germany and other places with AFSC, and his almost lifelong ambition to make a significant academic mark, especially in philosophy. All of these seem to have in common a longing to be something special, which is epitomized vividly in the famous incident, in which as a Haverford student he comes to visit Rufus Jones, and in the course of the conversation says, "I just want my life to be a miracle!" While Rufus’ personality and style might well have played midwife to expansive statements from many admiring students, the heat and intensity of that ambition are Kelly’s.
Concern for souls

Kelly was born to an active, devout, evangelical Quaker family in Ohio. From an early age he was surrounded by rhythms of worship, persons of magnetic spirituality, Bible and preaching, hymns, and community life. Like other future ministers, he "played preacher," and exhibited early a commanding yet winning personality, as well as an acute mind. After college, he went to Hartford Theological Seminary, and received both theological and philosophical training; his original goal was to enter missions. He worked as a supply pastor in a variety of local Protestant and Quaker churches. While he swerved from the path to pastoral ministry for which he seemed (to others) well suited, his sense of the urgent value of each human soul and his fascination with the vagaries of inward and outward life remained strong. As he grew spiritually, his "authentic" voice more and more reached towards soul-health, high aspiration, the need for abandonment to God, and the realization that joy was part of the promise. Whether he was writing or speaking about political events, relief work, or problems of daily life, he had from youth an acute awareness of the soul life in all, and God’s beckoning and workman-like love.
Direct service

During World War I, Kelly sought alternative service with the YMCA in England, and then worked with German prisoners of war. He took an active part in AFSC work between the World Wars, going twice to Germany, once for an extended period of time as part of the relief effort there. He was articulate about the need to work in practical ways to relieve physical, psychological, and spiritual suffering; and as his writings reveal, he understood clearly how these are interrelated.
Ambition and failure

After his alternative service, and a teaching position at Wilmington College, Kelly returned to Hartford for a doctorate in philosophy. There followed several years of teaching at Earlham, in Hawaii, at Wellesley College, and finally at Haverford. During this period, deciding that his main goal was to become an accomplished and productive academic philosopher, he determined to take a second doctorate in Philosophy at Harvard. In the face of a policy not to grant a doctorate to someone who already had a PhD, Kelly wrote an agonizingly revealing letter in which he insisted that in order for him to really do first rate work in philosophy, he must both be trained at Harvard (the premier school in the country, in his opinion), and take a degree. This was reluctantly allowed, and Kelly wrote a thesis that was published to good notices. When he came to defend his thesis, however, he blanked out and was unstrung. The Harvard faculty both failed him, and barred him from ever trying again. Kelly fell into a major psychological crisis (though Haverford was happy with him on the faculty in any case).

The outcome of his failure, and his encounter with ultimate questions of his values and commitments, was a relatively sudden and dramatic integration of his personality, and a sense of liberation. His intense religious life seems to have gained an added mystical depth, and his writings from this period to his death are full of light, conviction, joy, and the sweetness that comes of walking in the Light, but knowing firsthand the ocean of darkness and death.

In Reality of the Spiritual World he writes:


"When our souls are utterly swept through and overturned by God’s invading love . . . we find ourselves enmeshed with some people in amazing bonds of love and nearness and togetherness of soul, such as we never knew before. . . . Into this fellowship of souls at the center we simply emerge. No one is chosen to the fellowship. When we discover God we discover the fellowship. When we find ourselves in Christ we find we are also amazingly united with those others who are also in Christ.

. . . Theological differences are forgotten, and liberals and conservatives eagerly exchange experiences concerning the wonders of the life of devotion. [Yet] the last depths of conversation in the fellowship go beyond spoken words. People who know one another in God do not need to talk much. They know one another already. In the last depths of understanding, words cease and we sit in silence together, yet in perfect touch with one another, more bound into the common life by the silence than we ever were by words."
For further reading

The most famous of Kelly’s writings is A Testament of Devotion, which was pulled together by Douglas Steere and a few others within months of Kelly’s death. It has a good, brief biographical sketch, as well, though this leaves out some important elements, and bears the marks of haste and grief. Recently I have found The Eternal Now and Social Concern of particular value. However, I strongly urge you to read Reality of the Spiritual World, if you have not done so recently. There is a great breadth of vision in this pamphlet, which embraces contemplation and action, prayer and service. Thomas Merton’s famous quip that Quakers have produced no great mystics finds one of its best refutations in this piece. In the 1960s, Thomas’ son, Richard Kelly, compiled a further collection of essays and short pieces under the title The Eternal Promise. For biography, the best source is still Richard Kelly’s Thomas Kelly: A Biography, which, among other virtues, quotes extensively from Thomas’ correspondence. In addition, though, the reader will enjoy T. Canby Jones’ Pendle Hill pamphlet, Thomas Kelly as I Remember Him. T. Canby Jones was part of the "gang" of inspired young people who gathered with Thomas Kelly at Haverford in his last years for study and prayer, and to feel their way into lives of service and witness. The pamphlet is warm in its recollection of Kelly’s personality, but it is especially valuable for its interpretation of his teaching on prayer and spiritual experience.

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Brian Drayton

Brian Drayton is a member of Weare (N.H.) Meeting.
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