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Quaker Environmentalism

© Marshall Massey

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This article is guest authored by Marshall Massey. Marshall proposed the creation of the North American Quaker environmental organization -- the Friends Committee on Unity with Nature -- in a 1985 plenary address to Friends in California. He helped set up the actual organization at the annual gathering of Friends General Conference two years later. He presently serves as staff for the Environmental Projects Center in Colorado, and leads workshops on witnessing skills for religious and environmental groups. Marshall attends Iowa Yearly Meeting (Conservative) of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers).

NOTE: Footnotes are in a separate document. Click on a footnote to be taken to the appropriate place in the Biblical Notes for Quaker Environmentalism.

Quaker Environmentalism Different

Quaker environmentalism is different from most other kinds of religious environmentalism because Quakerism itself is different! And so, to understand the one, we need to start by looking at the other.

Now, there are three things in our Quaker tradition that, in my opinion, explain nearly all the striking differences between our Religious Society and most other Christian bodies:

1. First, ours is truly a Society of mystics. It's not just a subordinate order of mystics within some larger denomination. Nor is it just a denomination that happens to contain a lot of mystics. Its whole reason for existing is our shared commitment to a continuing mystical experience -- a commitment that we express through our unique form of worship, waiting on the Presence in our midst.¹

   Our historic testimony is that all people are called to such mysticism. Just as Christ called Zacchaeus to come down out of the tree into his presence, there to be transformed,² so the living God calls each one of us today to come down out of our hideaways into His presence, and be transformed here and now.

   And our waiting worship is a straightforward answer to this calling; for it consists simply of turning our attention in God's direction, letting our minds fall silent and our hearts open, so as to hear and feel what God has to teach us. One could go to Sunday worship at any other denomination merely to be entertained by distractions -- the choir, the sermon, the ancient ritual. But Quaker waiting worship is devoid of such distractions, so that there is really just one reason to take part in it -- namely, to listen to God Himself.

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