Consensual Honesty - Timothy Ashworth - 4th July 2024

In Eden Grace’s 2019 Swarthmore Lecture, On Earth as it is in Heaven: The Kingdom of God and the yearning of creation, and in the final chapter of the accompanying book, she considers communication and motivation in relation to the climate crisis. She’s acutely aware that facts about the climate crisis can generate fear and that fear paralyzes creative thought and action. ‘The research shows that facts coupled with invitations to concrete action are much more effective than facts alone.’ (p.105)

 As a consequence of this thinking, I am pondering the idea of one simple piece of action that Friends could take as a tool for effective change. ‘Quaker’ was originally a pejorative nickname arising from the view outsiders had of the tears and shaking sometimes triggered in Meeting for Worship. But the first chosen name of the movement was ‘Friends of Truth’. The capital ‘T’ can be misleading. It evokes grand religious themes and philosophical ideas. How about replacing it with honesty? Down to earth and revolutionary; everyday honesty. This is what Friends have been known for: keeping their word; honest dealing. It brought them commercial success; it got them into a good deal of trouble. But they knew it carried a power. When Eden describes the work of John Woolman she uses a resonant phrase for his way of working: ‘meticulous integrity’ (68). It was his concern with ‘holiness in even the smallest detail of everyday life’ (67) that revealed how all issues of justice are interrelated (80).

 I have come to see the experience that propelled me out of the Catholic priesthood in 1989 was what Friends describe as ‘convincement’. Just as for early Friends, for me it certainly involved a sharpening of physical perception, a new way of seeing the world. But that was tied together with a demanding honesty that both precipitated the experience and then sustained the outcome. James Nayler speaks of ‘minding the light which will reveal your condition’. In my experience of convincement, the light was all about honesty with myself and with others. There can be no transforming light – as early Friends conceived it – without honesty.

 It is a deep-down human ability to recognize honest words, that we have the capacity to recognize the truth when we hear it, that informs Quaker discernment. The corporate disciplines of Friends are there to ensure that the tendency of our individual minds to become distorted by self-interest and self-protection is countered by the public testing of our intentions in a spirit of worship. The witness of George Fox or James Nayler or John Woolman arises out of the conviction that there is no place where the light of God, where honest speech, does not belong. Eden Grace does not shy away from the acknowledgement that John Woolman was an irritant to his fellow Quakers. That word irritant reminds me (and, I’m sure, those old enough to remember) of the effectiveness of the women’s movement in the 70s and 80s which found ways to deliberately expose, repeatedly and uncomfortably, the minutiae of routine male privilege in the worlds of work, leisure and religion. It is, of course, clear and obvious that the Quaker business method depends upon participants speaking truthfully, but can this same truthfulness become an everyday testimony?

 This is not a light undertaking. The title, ‘Consensual Honesty’ came out of my experience of one-to-one work where, from time to time, I have shared an agreement with an individual that we move to more direct engagement. It’s riskier but carries the possibility of deeper healing and more substantial change. And it’s important to say explicitly that honesty does not mean being carelessly unrestrained. To be honest and effective involves speaking in a way that can be heard and understood. There are appropriate groups and settings to be considered. Timing matters; we can recognize that someone is just not ready to hear something. Sometimes truth needs to emerge piecemeal over time. While there is a risk that, just as with gentleness, holding back the truth can be avoidance, honest intention is a powerful thing, and accountability through discernment with others, something Friends have well developed tools to provide, is an effective check to evading what might be difficult.

 Is the Quaker community today open to this? Can Quaker meetings be communities where we learn to hone our ability to speak truth to power by speaking truth to our fellow members? Do we trust that the truth will set us free? When I was working with Alex Wildwood on the project, Rooted in Christianity, Open to New Light, we identified that Friends often felt faced with the question: if we are more open and honest with each other about our beliefs, are we not then risking our present valued sense of companionship and community for an uncertain deeper unity that we cannot be sure will emerge?

 In his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul presents the nature of his own role of leadership in the communities and in witness in the wider world. When Paul speaks of ‘the word of God’ it carries the sense of speaking in the Spirit, of speaking words from God, the Quaker understanding of prophetic ministry. It is clear that prophetic speaking is not easy but he says, ‘we are not cowardly … We refuse to dilute the word of God, but by the open statement of the truth we commend ourselves to each person’s conscience in the sight of God’ (2 Cor 13:2f).  We are seeing clearly the impact of dishonesty in public life. Words become unreliable. No agreements, no shared basis for action can be built with them. Every deceitful word undermines community and the potential for collectively owned action. Faced with a threat to all humankind which demands a whole range of corporate responses from local to international, do we not have a tool to hand in John Woolman’s ‘meticulous integrity’? He saw that the everyday ‘dilution’ of the truth was a kind of cowardly retreat that obscured what must be faced and dealt with. We cannot demand honesty of others without practising it.