A description of the approach to faith at Valley Mills Friends Meeting. This statement was approved by Monthly Meeting for Business on June 6, 2010.
What will you find at Valley Mills Friends Meeting?
Church can provide a framework for living your life and
giving it meaning. Perhaps Valley Mills Friends Meeting is – or could be – such
a resource for you. We are a Quaker meeting: a Christian church of the
Religious Society of Friends. We have spent more than a year in study and
discussions in our distinctive Sunday School classes, trying to describe what
we love about our Meeting. Here are some thoughts on which we have agreed.
The Foundations
The foundations of our faith include three things: the Bible, personal experience, and community.
The Bible
The Bible is always part of our worship, and often part
of our Sunday School. Our study of the Bible does not assume that the Bible is
free of errors, or that God’s revelation to us ended when the last Bible author
wrote the last verse.
The Bible is not a book but a library of
books. It preserves the writings of Jews and Christians who loved God, and who
understood God and Jesus in a variety of ways. We inform our understanding through
the study of many questions. For example, who wrote its many books? When were
those books written? What were the literary customs then? What was the
historical, cultural and scientific understanding of that period? How were writings
translated and edited in the centuries that followed? We haven’t stopped
learning. We want to know more.
Personal Experience
We are seekers. We expect that each person’s experience
of God can be transformative. George Fox, the founder of the Quakers, described
this transformative power and capability as “that of God in every one.”
Some of us, through our personal spiritual journeys,
have figured out some answers for ourselves. We do not condemn or exclude
anyone who believes differently. None of us expects the other people who
worship with us to know God in exactly the same way we do. There is no creed
nor is there a list of beliefs which any of us would expect another to accept.
Community
Our faith community helps us interpret, filter,
validate, and understand our individual experience of God and our understanding
of the Bible.
We find spiritual fulfillment and satisfaction in the
process of seeking answers to unanswerable questions. We are content to know
that there may be no absolute certainty. The process of seeking can engage us,
educate us, and bring us closer together. We find unity not in creeds and
doctrines but in sharing our experience of God.
While “creeds” may be unnecessary in our meeting, we do
want to live up to the Quaker “distinctive testimonies” of peace, equality,
integrity, simplicity, and community.
Few of us are motivated to spread our good news through
recruitment or persuasion. In general, we prefer the Quaker tradition of
“letting our lives speak.” We get involved, individually and as a group, in a
great number of projects and causes that improve people’s lives.
Diversity and Inclusion
We do not merely tolerate differences of understanding,
outlook, or style of living. We welcome them. We love to seek understanding
across lines of difference. We do not want to isolate ourselves, but to engage
in dialogue with our differences, listening more than speaking, giving and
taking, and sharing criticism and self-criticism.
Jesus and God
At Valley Mills Friends Meeting, Jesus is teacher,
interpreter, and the best example of “living the will of God.” We find a path
to understanding God through the life and teachings of Jesus. On this we agree.
Some in our meeting believe in the divinity of Jesus
Christ. Some believe he atoned for our sins through his crucifixion. To others,
the teachings of the human Jesus of Nazareth are at the center of their
Christianity.
Most of us believe it is not possible for us to fully
and truly understand the nature of God. We describe our experience of God in different
ways. We learn from each other.
We welcome and enjoy sharing these differences. These
differences unite us more than they divide us. We are a community of people who
care about one another. These topics are always open to discussion and seeking.