Overview: In the second decade of the twenty-first century, Quakers are increasingly divided over matters of theology, religious belonging, and the status of Friends’ Christian past.

Recent controversies over Theism, Non-Theism and Universalism have highlighted deep-rooted transformations of Quaker self-understanding. In contrast to earlier decades, many contemporary Quakers hanker after an intensely inclusive community, unhampered by the particulars of Christian theology.

Many British Friends no-longer see the Quaker movement as an expression of the Gospel nor a manifestation of the Universal Church. What might Friends be missing by re-imagining Quakerism in these resolutely post-Christian terms?

Verdict: Author Benjamin Wood argues that, far from limiting the bounds of Quaker identity, a selective return to Quakerism’s seventeenth-century roots can restore to modern Liberal Friends a shared story capable of deepening their spiritual life and worship-practice.

Based neither on doctrinal agreement nor inflexible religious borders, the Quaker narrative recovered in The Living Fountain: Remembrances of Quaker Christianity is drawn together by sacred experiments in mutual love and enduring hope.

Through a series of extended reflections on God, Jesus, and the language of salvation, Wood seeks to uncover a dynamic faith committed to universal healing, reconciliation, and the crossing of religious and cultural boundaries.

At the center of this retrieval is the insistence that the God revealed in Quaker worship cherishes our differences and delights in our diversity.

So, Can you be a Christian and a Quaker? In the early years it used to be a Christian-based religion, but that is no longer true in the last 50+ years for some members of the Society associate themselves exclusively with Quakerism, others combine with other faiths.

And so what author Benjamin Wood strives to find answers to is, at its core, fundamental: Can we live as Friends or Strangers? Which gives us the issue of what he has termed as being The Problem of Thin Quakerism.

Wood admits early that he wrote this book because of what he feared was being lost within contemporary British Quakerism. Chief among his anxieties was the sense that many liberal Quaker communities (of which Britain Yearly Meeting is one) have become simply incapable of communicating a collective spiritual story that can glue individual Friends together.

Sadly, from Woods’ point of view, this uncomfortable conclusion has been long in the making. When he first entered the Religious Society of Friends in the mid-2000’s, he began his worship life as someone who had felt deeply alienated from the Christianity of his Anglican childhood.

The Ceremonies and prayers of the Sunday service neither spoke to his heart, no satisfied his intellectual curiosity. Indeed, he had, like many in their teens and early twenties, explored other religious traditions, inclusive of Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, and Neo-Paganism, most especially).

As for Quakers, in general, they seek to experience God directly, within themselves and in their relationships with others and the world around them. Ergo, Quakerism is a way of life, rather than a set of beliefs.

Sure, it has roots in Christianity and many Quakers find the life and teachings of Jesus inspirational, but they also have no creed. Indeed, Quakers today do not look any different from other people, although they try to avoid extravagance and excess, of course.

Simply put, their vision is of a world of justice, peace and equality where their collective inner experiences lead them to be committed to equality, peace, simplicity and truth; all of which they try to live out in their lives.

And so, rounding back to the original questions, Can you be a Christian and a Quaker? and Can we live as Friends or Strangers?, here in The Living Fountain: Remembrances of Quaker Christianity, author Benjamin Wood deep dive’s into this thoughtful analysis of contemporary liberal Quakerism, and invites those curious to read, and therein get a better understanding going forward.

About the Author - Ben Wood is an Associate Tutor at Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre and a visiting researcher at the Centre of Religion and Public at the University of Leeds. He teaches undergraduate and postgraduate students in diverse areas of study including Systematic Theology, Christian ethics, and the history of Western Philosophy. He lives in Leeds, UK.

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