For Heelas and Woodhead (2005) Quakers exist in practice between what they call the congregational ‘life-as’ religion of churches and the ‘the holistic milieu’. The latter is a culture of wellbeing concerned with alternative spiritualities, and centred in what they call ‘subjective-life’. They argue that a ‘spiritual revolution’ from ‘religion’ to ‘spirituality’ has taken place. They base
their view on a subjectivisation thesis,51 which they argue explains both why
people are less attracted to congregational religion and more attracted by the
holistic milieu.52 Although they did not study Quakers, they classified them as
a group which gives weight to subjectivity and experiential material in the
search for truth and guidance. 53 This shift, in their view, has as much to do
with trust in the authority of external guidance as much as the decline in belief (Heelas and Woodhead, 2005:1793). They argue that organisations in the holistic milieu and mainstream churches will recruit members ‘insofar as they offer to enhance subjective wellbeing and bring the sacred within the realm of personal experience’ (Heelas and Woodhead, 2005:1787). The attractions of the holistic milieu include a sense of integration and ‘centring’, care of the
51 They link this specifically to the work of Taylor discussed here (Heelas and
Woodhead 2005:134).
52 Heelas and Woodhead’s (2005) work is based on a large-scale empirical survey of
the town of Kendal in northern England in 2001. The ‘holistic milieu’ is defined and described as comprising activities within a ‘wellbeing culture’ in which people use a generic vocabulary such as ‘spirit’ or ‘holism’ and engage in ‘mind-body-spirit’ practices of ‘yoga’ ‘feng shui’, and ‘meditation’. The full list of activities is set out in Appendix 3. Heelas and Woodhead (2005).
53 Heelas and Woodhead (2005: Appendix 2) developed a taxonomy of
congregational religions: ‘religions of humanity’ such as the Holy Trinity, Church of England, ‘religions of difference’ such as Jehovah’s Witnesses, ‘religions of experiential difference’ such as the Salvation Army, and ‘religions of experiential humanity’ in which they include Quakers. These definitions relate to the extent to which the subjectivisation thesis is exemplified and the religions place emphasis on the experience of the individual as the source of authority. Heelas and Woodhead did not study Quakers in any detail.
body as well as the spirit (Heelas and Woodhead, 2005:1496). Taylor also notes that the desire for wholeness and authenticity based on experience and the pre-eminence of the body may be linked with two other features: a rejection of disembodied reason and a preference for spirituality rather than religion.
Spirituality as opposed to religion, is indeed defined by a kind of autonomous exploration which is opposed to the simple surrender to authority; and people who engage in this kind of spiritual path are indeed put off by moralism and the code fetishism they find in churches (Taylor, 2007:509).
These perspectives raise some questions for this study. Do Quaker practices exemplify the subjectivisation thesis and have they shifted from their traditional domain of religion to that of spirituality? How significant, for Quakers, in such a shift towards subjectivisation, are matters of trust and authority as compared to matters of belief? Do Quakers recruit people from, or import practices from the ‘holistic milieu’?
Bruce (1995) also noted a shift in religious organisation under the pressures of modernism away from churches, which see their role as linked to the nation and the community in general, towards sects, denominations and cults. Churches were associated with total communities, with states and nations and had therefore legitimacy. Sects by contrast are more egalitarian and by creating pressures on the individual retain their commitment. Bruce (1995:20) outlines a framework for locating religious movements:
Fig. 1:
Typology of Ideological Organisations
External Conception
Respectable Deviant Uniquely CHURCH SECT Internal legitimate
Conception
Pluralistically DENOMINATION CULT Legitimate
Source: Roy Wallis, The Road to Total Freedom: A Sociological Analysis of Scientology
London Heinemann, 1976:13.
On the basis of the historical outline in Chapter 1, it is clear that Quakers began as a sect. The contemporary features of inclusion, pluralism, and tolerance, together with the demographic picture of their current composition suggests that Quakers may have moved, in the terms of this framework, from a sect to becoming a respectable, pluralistically legitimate, denominational organisation. In Douglas’s (1996, 1998) terms Quakers were a sectarian religious group but now might be better described as an egalitarian enclave. This is a question to which I will return in Chapter 5.
Warner (1990:45ff) developed a framework that considers religious ‘form’ in relation to ‘content’ along two dimensions. First, religions tend either to ‘institutional’ or ‘nascent’ forms, particularly of ritual, and second, they tend to express either ‘liberal’ or ‘evangelical’ content. From the history set out in Chapter 1, it is clear that early Quakers manifested ‘nascent evangelicalism’. I
shall consider below in Chapter 5, in the light of the ethnography whether contemporary Quakers might be considered to have now moved to a more ‘liberal’ location, have become more conservative and institutional in their ritual form, and whether renewal initiatives promote new inspiration, or ‘nascence’. Warner’s framework also raises a critcal question for Quakers: what is the relationship between (ritual) form and (belief) content, and is this changing over time, and if so under what pressures?
Fig. 2:
Warner’s model of Religious Form and Ideological Content Institutional
Institutional Liberalism Institutional Evangelicalism
Ideological Content
Liberal Evangelical
Nascent Liberalism Nascent Evangelicalism
Nascent
These perspectives enable Quakers’ position relative to other churches and to emerging practices of spirituality to be assessed. These frameworks also suggest that there are certain pressures upon such groups as Quakers in the