A commentary from the London Guardian by a former Anglican priest who became a Quaker. He reflects on what the priority of religion should be.It is easy for faith organisations to get their priorities misplaced - to strain out gnats while swallowing camels, as Jesus vividly put it. When the preoccupation with certain doctrines, traditions and practices blocks the path to spiritual creativity, and turns the focus away from the foundation values of justice, compassion, integrity and peace, it is time to take stock.
I left the Anglican ministry eight years ago because I felt its priorities were awry. It seemed more preoccupied with issues of sexuality than with those highlighted for concern in the gospels: the widow giving her mite, the madman among the tombs, the halt, lame and blind, the victim of robbers, and the wastrel son who returns home a penitent. When a bishop would not ordain our curate because the curate's wife would be participating in the laying-on of hands, I thought the leaders of my part of the church had lost an important part of the plot.
Compassion had taken second place to dogma. I am heartened that the Religious Society of Friends (the Quakers), which I then joined, has recently taken stock and identified a set of priorities for the next six years which I can feel committed to. In a new document, Together in Worship and Witness, new ideas are encouraged from anywhere within the society. This bottom-up attitude is a Quaker characteristic, coupled with an emphasis on evaluating ideas with discernment.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/06/faith-quaker
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