Quaker Environmentalism - Page 5
© Marshall Massey
Source of Guidance
And fourth, since our fundamental source of guidance is the Paraklete rather than the scripture, our movement feels little need for constant recitation of Biblical "proof texts" to justify what it does.
As we Quaker environmentalists seek to be guided and corrected by a collective experience of God's will, we focus our efforts entirely on maintaining a complete, honest and humble faithfulness to this guidance. And as long as such a faithfulness exists, we find that it is a sufficient justification in and of itself.10 (We do, though, seek to be guided and corrected by scripture as well, as I think my running footnotes to this essay demonstrate.)
And as we feel this way, when we appeal to other people to join us in environmental reform, we tend to speak of what our listeners can discover in their own hearts regarding God's will -- rather than trying to persuade our listeners by means of abstract scriptural apologetics.
Thus our religious environmentalism tends to express itself in simple, down-to-earth, experiential ways. And I believe this has made our ministry and outreach far more effective than it otherwise might have been.11
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This essay is copyright ©1999 by Marshall Massey and The Environmental Projects Center. For permission to quote from or reprint it, contact The Environmental Projects Center, 4353 East 119 Way, Thornton CO 80233, USA, epc@earthwitness.org. Permission to quote is freely granted when we are notified in advance and receive proper credit for authorship. We appreciate receiving copies of publications in which we are quoted.
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