Quaker Dogma?

by Jeffrey Aaron
New Brunswick Meeting

Some of us — perhaps many — were attracted to Quakerism in part because “Friends have no dogma.” There is no prescribed statement of faith or theology in our branch of Quakerism, although Quaker history is clearly Christian in derivation. What that means to any given Friend is entirely the responsibility of the individual; it is not laid on us as dogma. There are as many spiritual paths as there are Friends; we do not tell each other what to believe. 

Or so it is said. What Friends do believe, it is often said, is that there is “that-of-God” in everyone. If it is true that “this is what Friends believe,” then apparently there is Quaker dogma. Dogma, a concept from ancient Greek, means “a settled opinion, a principle held as firmly established,” or “a philosophical tenet*,” similar to the tenets in other religious sects such as the Holy Trinity, or kosher laws or Sharia law or bodhisattvas.

Perhaps identifying what “that-of-God” means would help. Is “that-of-God” the awareness of the “greater good,” the lifting up of all of humanity? The fact that we assume that we each know what we mean when we refer to “that-of-God” without further clarification is intellectually careless. I would suggest that the assumptions, the implications, may be that we are referring to the deep spiritual attributes of conscience, compassion, and empathy, qualities that bind humanity together for the common good of humanity and of all life. I expect that clarification would work for most: the belief that somewhere, sometimes deep and hard to reach, there is, inside every person, compassion and empathy. It is a beautiful, deeply spiritual ideal.

In her book, The Sociopath Next Door, Harvard faculty psychologist Martha Stout presents case histories of people who, she claims, were apparently born without a conscience, and who often rise to powerful positions in business or politics because of their ruthlessness and the absence of attributes that they perceive as foolish liabilities, such as conscience, empathy, compassion. “Imagine — if you can — not having a conscience, none at all, no feelings of guilt or remorse no matter what you do, no limiting sense of concern for the well-being of strangers, friends, or even family members…that the concept of responsibility is unknown to you, except as a burden others seem to accept without question, like gullible fools.”** Such people, she claims, are true psychopaths, a minority in our world, different from those whose experiences of bad nurture led to hidden empathy and conscience that might still be salvageable through kindness and good treatment. Such psychopaths are often from otherwise totally normal families, as her case histories demonstrate.

Elon Musk recently told podcaster Joe Rogan, “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy,” referring to the emotion as a “bug” in our system. He refers to the masses that he holds in contempt as “NPCs” (Non-Playable Characters), video game jargon for dismissible characters that have “no agency”***. Are there others in power among us and across the globe and throughout history that similarly come to mind? If you follow the news and know basic history, you can likely think of many. Is it possible that there is that-of-God only in most people, or does that qualifier undermine our ideals, our Quaker dogma? Is the idea unimaginable to Friends? Are we open to the possibility that we do not yet fully understand the nature of all of humanity, despite the claim implicit in our oft-referenced tenet?