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As we enter a new calendar year, it is a time of thinking about new beginnings - about turning over a new leaf. This is a classic Christian concern, and this article explores how Friends (Quakers) look at this matter.
Conversion As A Process
William F. Medlin writes in Born Again Quakers: The Experience of Christian Conversion Among Friends (Quaker House, Hustsonville, Illinois, 1988) that:
The Quaker experience is that Christian conversion is more of a process than a single event. Within the process there is a specific turning point that we might designate as the actual experience of conversion, but one gains little understanding of what is happening by looking only at the turning point.
T. Canby Jones, longtime Professor of Religion at Wilmington College, has sought to classify some of the most crucial, typical stages of the process. He notes that childhood inner experiences of God, a period of spiritual drifting, and a crisis of despair often precede the actual experience of conversion. This experience resolves the crisis of despair with the victory of Christ over self within the person, who turns in obedience to God, inwardly receives grace, and is born again as a new creature in Christ Jesus.
Friends do not see this experience as the end of the process. Jones notes that it is frequently followed by a series of inner trials and temptations, a phase during which there are often many openings in which the Light of Christ reveals things in the person's life that must change. Convincement of the truth might come before, during or after the actual experience of conversion.
Many experience a second intense crisis of despair about their continued sin and disobedience. This second crisis is resolved by a fuller surrender of self-will and the receiving of another work of grace, the baptism of the Holy Spirit, an experience sometimes referred to as sanctification. The final stage is the Lamb's reign, marked by radical obedience, suffering, active witness against sin and social evil, and continued surrenders and spiritual growth.
