Future of the Friends Church

Punshon also looks at the "postmodern" culture to see where evangelical Friends might fit in. While some have seen postmodernism as fundamentally inimical to the Christian faith, Punshon feels it provides a place to stand that didn't exist with modernism. Postmodernism looks to interpretive communities, and Punshon observes that the church is an interpretive community par excellence. He notes, quite correctly in my view, that the postmodern church needs "to lead its members to it by means of experience and tradition rather than argument." (page 351) Friends with an evangelical perspective would do well to heed this wise advice.

Punshon urges a strengthening of the Quaker roots of evangelical Friends, focusing on the nature of worship and the importance of Friends distinctives. He argues that open worship is the heart of Quakerism, and finds no necessary contradiction between a focus on open worship and the use of programmed elements in Friends worship. He also argues that Friends distinctives are not only soundly based, but provide an opportunity for Friends to have a distinct identity and niche within evangelicalism. Each strain of Christianity makes its own contribution to the whole, and the Quaker contribution is needed. Without distinctives, there is no good basis for the continuing of the Friends church as a separate entity.

What I found very disconcerting about the book was that it did not seem to be either Quaker or evangelical in character. The highly intellectual, academic style of the book seemed to contradict what it actually said. I found myself wanting to resist it, even though I generally agreed with its message. Punshon asserts the primacy of experience, which in both the Friends and larger evangelical traditions is often reflected in an approach to religious writing involving many references to how God has worked within the life of the writer to illuminate the truths being expressed. These are absent from this book, leaving the reader without support from the spiritual experiences of the author.

I also found disconcerting the lack of mention of the need for prayer and a heart for the Great Commission as key elements in the future of the Friends church. This may be because these are elements which are both part of the broader evangelical perspective rather than Quaker distinctives, and ones which are widely acknowledged as essential within the Friends church; neither of which is true about the elements Punshon emphasizes. However, it needs to be explicitly

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