Elaine Green
I am an active Quaker, serving on a number of committees supporting Quaker work and I am studying for the postgraduate certificate in Quaker Studies at Lancaster University.
Location Suffolk
Activity
-
@WilliamArmstrong As I understand different strands of Christianity, the balance between faith (grace) and works, agency does not uniformly rest with God.
-
I am very familiar with your understanding of this. I think this is quite complicated theology about the nature of God as an originating substance and the human being. I am just hesitant at saying to all Quakers or all Unitarians, 'none of you is allowed, buy my definition, to call yourself Christian.'
-
Elaine Green made a comment
I have enjoyed the challnge of this course of study and reflection. I am writing a faith study book a the moment and am considering whether it could widen to be interfaith and agnostic as opposed to a Christian study book. This course has prompted me to think of the discussion questions that could be posed in a way that promotes peaceful exhange.
-
I think it might be important to realise that we are not zealot missionaries seeking an instant result/conversion. Sometimes friendly informal conversations are drips on a stone. Opening up the converation is sometimes all that can be achieved but might be revelatory
-
Elaine Green made a comment
Both of these stories are of hearsay and assumption and illustrate how coomon this is. We all have dangerous unconscious biases and I worry about that in myself. The problem I have is that the professional training of public servants such as police, teachers and social workers relies upon 'instinct' to follow lines of enquiry in the public interest and for...
-
I have tried to read the Qur'an because someone gave me a copy once. It is impenetrable to me, and has the same problematics of translation and editing as the Bible. I don't have confidence that trying to look up the reference would help me develop my thinking.
-
Elaine Green made a comment
I don't know if this person is a Muslim, or a bystander. Assuming the latter, I would ask what that certainty is based on, and ask how we might find out more. I would want to convey that the observation is an important one and deserves attention, but I would want to be sure I understood my facts, especially as I am not a Muslim. I wold point out that the...
-
@ChristopherMorris As far as I know, and I may be wrong, it is not, but then the scriptures are incomplete and were contested so that is not surprising. I believe it came out of early church organisation and pious debate on the nature of God. Basil, Bishop of Caesaria (330-379) came up with it as a doctrinal explanation.
-
@CharlesCrawfurd My own position is that I see all humans as children of God, because that reflects my undersanding of God, a nomenclature incidentally that many of my co-religionists struggle with. I accept that the title 'Christ' or 'Messiah' underpins the badge of 'Christian' but there is no other word that people can use if they follow the teachings of...
-
Elaine Green replied to Ian Campbell
What's not clear to me though is who I am in this scenario. I am a nosy bystander, a friend, or an authority to whom the issue has been brought? If I am a complete stranger, walking into a family or a school might go badly.
-
Elaine Green made a comment
It is not clear to me whose problem this is. The grandparent has concerns and I would want to know what they are and why. The child may have concerns, and that may also be worth an enquiry with the grandparent. It is not clear at all where the parents stand on this. Grandparents may be legitimate whistle-blowers and the best service any friend can offer is to...
-
Elaine Green made a comment
Without the case studies (next section) this does not seem to need any response. I would comment though that I am reading this just as the USA is in turmoil (again) and President Trump has decided to appear in front of a church holding up, without words, other than to say what it is, a Bible. Thid is an appea to a particular faith group whose politics I find...
-
Elaine Green made a comment
My personal barrier to dialogue, and one that I belive is shared by my co-religionists, is that I can close down when I hear expressions of belief that I do not and cannot share. I am wondering if I feel threatened by the convictions of others and mentally run away from, at best, appearing to patronise them in their 'delusion', or at worse resenting their lack...
-
Elaine Green replied to Deuan Jones
@DeuanJones I find it very upsetting that some people, trans or gay as examples, say they do not feel they can belong in their own church. Messages of rejection are sometimes so subtle but are felt. I worry about my own unconscious biases, of which I suspect there are many, but my faith in a higher, more complex transcendent power convinces me that everyone...
-
Elaine Green made a comment
'Saving face' is surely a principle of negotiation. When two sides collide over their objectives, the only solution is that they both retrieve something out of the bargain. For one side to 'win' is pointless, becaue that means the other has to lose, which feeds resentment and a hardening of positions, so that no long term peace can be secured. For this to...
-
Elaine Green made a comment
I am very confused about what I found out. I began with an old Pelican book I have on Judaism, which told me that the Hasidim (the pious) defended the Torah in Judea under Antiochus IV (175-164 BCE) and developed into the Pharisees. I then find on social media sources that Hasidism is an 18th century Eastern European movement which then became a subset of...
-
I have found it harder to do than the guidelines intend. I have no problem ith the guidelines, but problems with holding hurt communities together.
-
Elaine Green made a comment
As a Trustee, as opposed to a profesional in this are, I have had cause to respond to safeguarding situations and I find it very hard to follow the safeguarding guidelines and take the worshipping community along that line together. Personal experiences and assumptions get in the way of any single perspective. Nonetheless, this job of acting in the interests...
-
Elaine Green replied to Anne Maonga
This is a good point. I am our representative on our local 'Churches Together', our ecumenical group in the district, and my best conversations have been with the clergy or Elders of other churches. I have not yet managed to hold similar conversations with a Rabbi or Imam, but I shall aim to make such contacts in future.
-
Elaine Green replied to Charles Crawfurd
At our Meetings for Worship, which are open to anyone, we ask you to give your name (first name will serve) and how you walked in to our worship. It is a genuine welcome. We are interested, but we do not proseletyse, on principle. Some people do drift in out of curiosity and we may never see them again. That is ok too.
-
I am one of those people who does talk to Jehovah's Witnesses on the doorstep, but I am now much more curious about my own motives and how I handle those conversations. I don't think I really want to know about them, and I suspect I use my own faith as a defense. I must try harder to listen better next time!
-
Elaine Green replied to Sarah R
Those Very Short books are very good - they do what they say they do.
-
Elaine Green made a comment
I have spent some time talking to other Christians and Jewish friends. I know it gives only partial information from their perspective, but theirs is better than my own. I also think that books on other faiths are helpful, though they sometimes have to go into a level of detail which may be beyond my initial social learning needs.
-
Elaine Green made a comment
I find this section very hard to read. There are some instances of abuse where religion is an excuse, conscious or unconscious, and there are others where the belief is so deep that the intentions may be well placed. Either way, I feel utterly incompetent to know how to engage with abuses of children, women and minority groups who are the usual targets of...
-
Elaine Green replied to Anne Maonga
You are right that we are not a mainstream church in Britain and have not been for a couple of hundred years now. This has been a discussion within the Quaker body here since the early 18th century, but in a very changed post-secular society that Britain now is, we are part of a broad offering of religious faith and practice. We may not offer a Truth that...
-
Elaine Green made a comment
I have detected a challenge within myself in dealing with the question:
"If they are unacceptable to you personally, can you identify exactly why? " I find myself wanting to be dismissive of some expressions of evangelical Christianity when I hear it, and the fact is, I don't know why. This question of all of them makes me think very hard about the nature of... -
I was also interested in the 'sect' nature of ths church. My faith group has that heritage too, and it has proved a weakness to believe that one is 'right' and the others are wrong. Individual Quakers have always struggled with this and our method of reaching collective decisions helps to test what we are led to beleive is 'right'. It's not infallible, but it...
-
Elaine Green made a comment
Two things strike me about her story. The one is that her solution seems to have involved giving up on God in order to fnd peace. Her home experience created an image of God which was uncompromising, so he/she/it had to be abandoned for her to find reconciliation with others of an alternative view. Secondly, she used the phrase 'rightness meant rudeness' and...
-
Elaine Green replied to James Martin
We all would like to think we got it right and we have something special to pass on to others, especially if it validates who we are. I brought my child up to be Quaker - he attended on Sunday and then in national youth events until about 17 years old. Then he 'grew up' and rightly formed his own world iew, based on what he cold understand, not what I ccould...
-
Elaine Green replied to Gareth Jones
I am not sure - well, that says more about me perhaps than any defined faith proposition.
-
Elaine Green made a comment
I belong to a faith body which started out attempting to recreate early Christianity, since they saw the contemporary church as having corrupted what Jesus Christ taught. That tradition of challenge to conventional and established Christianity has continued in this country into a faith of extreme liberalism, which seems to offer only uncertainty. What we do...
-
Elaine Green replied to Gareth Jones
We govern by consent, which is, I think, what you might mean by universal accepted norms. Those 'norms' change though over time, by consent based on dialogue and alternative solution, especially if conflict is the outcome of imposition. At least, that it how it appears in this country which is regarded, rightly or wrongly, to be one of the most liberal and...
-
Elaine Green replied to Andrea Fossum
I am sometimes called to pray with others whose theology I do not wholly share, but I do it on the presumption that my God doesn't easily take offense. In a similar way, I can't bring myself to ask others to pray for me. It's an intersting balance between my Truth and that of other people of faith.
-
Elaine Green made a comment
In most examples of difference, separate religions and cultures can live side by side if they choose to. They all demand freedom and agency to be who they believe to be the best of themselves. Where there are clashes or contrary values are imposed upon another group, violence can flair and the value of community is of lesser weight at those moments. I question...
-
Elaine Green made a comment
I belong to a faith group which is not readily accepted as part of the ecumenical organisations in all localities of this country, but this changes all the time as all the members of these local bodies change their perspective over time, including my own. I never give up gope of finding common ground with people who, for a time, find the differences greater ...
-
Elaine Green made a comment
This introductory material doe not include any refernce to suggestability and emotional susceptibility to certain types of action. This is of itself moral failing but can lead individuals into situations where their inner resources fail them - so not everyone in a madras becomes a terrorist, not everyone who enters a seminary becomes a sex-offender. This is...
-
Elaine Green replied to Rahim Eboo
I have an empathy with your perception of this presentation. I suspect the easy response from someone like me, who does not carry the same sensitivity around this, to say it is a particular contemporary working example for us to be given as a case study, and that makes it ready material for this course. The example is a real one, so can be justified as...
-
Elaine Green replied to Sean Farren
@EmmaSnow Everybody's God says that as a principle, but Christians have killed for as long as it has been a thing. My son, aged under 30, simply cannot understand why the history of Ireland has not 'grown up' as he puts it, got over itself, but threads of identity run very deep and the 'cause' is entrenched by violent acts agaunst one's 'own people'. I have...
-
Elaine Green made a comment
Hitler's German expansionism was secular and political but the churches waded in to justify, or at least find no reason to oppose (notwithstanding the courageous acts of witness and sacrifice made by scrupulous individuals.) I am sure there would have been for individual German Christians the means and sources to allow them to do or say nothing, or even to...
-
Elaine Green replied to Jennifer Shoesmith
We all like to justify our actions. Maybe it's just that.
-
Elaine Green replied to Ian Campbell
You make an interesting observation that people tolerate religiously motivated violence less than politically motivated, if I undersand you correctly. Perhaps people are more morally outraged by religiously motivated justification for violence. Violence is violence, however justified though, and I am intrigued by the collective sensitivities about this.
-
Elaine Green replied to Ronald Skeet
I think there are huge problems of translation and editing that makes the scriptures complicated. For all those limitations I find the Bible to be poetic and illuminating. I don't worry too much about divine origins but look for prophetic enlightenment.
-
Elaine Green made a comment
It is the heart of all religons to include the concept of stuggle, wrestling with demons, the struggle to reach some form of redemption and to reach a holy state. Christianity and Islam have historically also interpreted this as fighting those who oppose this ideal, ie apostasy. A personal intenal struggle is an ideal but justification for all forms of...
-
Elaine Green made a comment
There is a dangerous dynamic at work when religious justification can be overlaid onto justifiable anger. Colonialism, in any form, can give rise to a collectivve justificable anger and this becomes toxic when it can be verified by a religous script or teaching. There are those who also have the ability to articulate this and propagate it, as religious leaders...
-
Elaine Green replied to Deuan Jones
American Quakers are also working in Burundi for the same reason.
-
Elaine Green made a comment
I think it is tricky to use the word 'religion' in this context. Christianity has a bloody past, but has peace deeply embedded in its scripture, so one might ask, how can any church not be a peace church? Only a few churches are in fact publicly recognised peace churches, such as mentioned in the intro, but not every member of those churches is an absolute...
-
Elaine Green replied to Jim Bradshaw
Terry Waite still actively works for peace. He is an Anglican and a Quaker
-
Perhaps as all religions morph with different social contexts and therefore are all 'progressing' but not all in the same direction.
-
Oh and before that - Alfred (Christian) v Danes (other)
-
@NickLawler Surely any faith is interpreted through our life experiences. My mother used to say that she didn't believe in a God 'who could allow this to happen to me'. That presupposed a particular kind of God which she had been told about as a child, and which isn't the Spirit that I can recognise. So our conversations on the subject were limted by our...
-
I think this is more complicated than that. There are Quakers who call themselves Christian but who do not share the same theology of the trinity. Are we called something by others, or do we decide our label for ourselves? In Islam, the shi'ite and sunni have divergences which make them different but Muslim.
-
Maybe they have to be subversive. Otherwise what's the point?
-
Elaine Green made a comment
I am not sure this picture is any different to the history of Christianity. The passion for religous certainty and the associated anxiety about 'being right' combines toxically with political power in some settings. Britain has plenty of Christian examples going back to the Dark Ages. I don't see how Islam, although much younger than Christianity, can be so...
-
Elaine Green made a comment
Quakers were extreme in their very early days, and were bungled together with a whole range of other extremist groups that emerged from during the Commonwealth era. They are now regarded as extreme by some because of their starnge worship practice (in this country) and their pacifism in the 20th century conflicts, though they weren't the only conscientious...
-
This used to be a practice of Christian churches of an earlier age. Can I ask which is your Yearly Meeting ? I know there are many in Kenya.
-
Elaine Green made a comment
I am a member of a peace church. I sign up to our testimony which has morphed from a fairly narrow anti-war statement of 1663 (or thereabouts). I am not an absolutist by nature and I am not an absolute pacifist, or passivist, but the testimony prevents me from defaulting to a justification of conflict or aggression. I know that each individual is different by...
-
Elaine Green replied to Robin Fox
@RobinFox The nice church wedding might owe something to the established church which emphasised the right way to get married. I know we have recognised other churches for a few hundred years, but the legacy of the proper way to get married ie in a religious setting didn't get challenged until the 20th century, and now we have civil partnerships as well. The...
-
Elaine Green replied to Anne Maonga
yes, there are some circmstances when people look for greater assurance and traditional support.
-
Elaine Green made a comment
Isn't this what academics call 'vicarious religion'? That is, people may not go to church but on occasion, such as life and death experiences, midnight mass at Christmas etc, they are glad that the ceremony is there for them to express the significance of the circumstance. Some people like to see the 18th century church on the corner because the sense of...
-
Elaine Green replied to Ronald Skeet
Maybe our human inclination towards convention and social norms is an animal instinct of herd safety. It is as though wwe have to move together towards change rather than just impose radical change upon each other. We are threatened by change and difference, and maybe we can't help it, but it is in our herd interest also to work to accommodate that. The naked...
-
Elaine Green replied to Matthew Pointon
@MatthewPointon You point out that we think have choices but we are creatures of social and peer pressure. That is a feature of being human and living in a society. We are interesting animals.
-
Elaine Green replied to Robin Fox
This made me smile. I have a personal dislike of men's shorts. I have no defense for this, and I don't even know what it is that I don't like. When people make comments about women's dress, it serves me well to remember my assessment of men in shorts! I am sure you are right to appraoch Zoom as you do. This illustrated how the top half has to confrm and the...
-
Elaine Green made a comment
There are a number of factors about workwear. There may be a question of health and safety but this should not be exaggerated by reason of discrimination by either emplyers or co-workers. in other cases there is a commercial decision about customer or client expectation, which is a social issue, hard to assess. So much of this is better dealt with by...
-
There is a church I drive past sometimes in Cheshire that is now a rock-climbing centre. I always feel ncomfortable about that, and I am not a church-goer. So why is that? There is something about the emotional memory and expectations about the use of public space that unsettles me. Is it just sentimentalism ?
-
@RonaldSkeet Maybe the problem lies with how we might define 'entertainment'.
-
My locsl Quaker Meeting House is a community resource which hosts a variety of events, from yoga to public meetings, choirs and circle dancing. We also open our building for sight-seers on Heritage Open Days or other town events. It is also the local Mosque for Friday prayers. What is entertainment to some is worship to others. It's a tough line to discern,...
-
Elaine Green made a comment
I belong to a church which 300 years ago firmly rejected all enetrtainments as distractions from a faithful life. Now my church in this country and Europe is resistant to mission or evangelism but is challenged by its own retrenchment and 'hiding its light under a bushel', to quote the phrase. I see a crossover between mission and entertainment. In the video,...
-
Elaine Green made a comment
My own childhood family unit is now gone, and my childhood memories spread across the two World War generations, and they were different from one another for reasons of changing culture and social norms. My mother was a working woman and had routines that became entrenched, not for any romantic reason, but purely untilitarian. I am always surprised when my own...
-
@JamesMartin Thanks for that explanation. It all makes sense now.
-
Many of our seasonal celebrations, like Yuletide, have pagan origins, and some got absorbed into Christianity. I don't know if the Maypole is without some Christian justification. Bit limited on historical intelligence, I'm afraid.
-
The original St Nicholas story has a religious heritage and in Europe most counrties separate out the visit of St Nicholas from the Christmas Eve celebrations. I am not familiar enought with this history to be competent to distinguish the sacred from the secular.
-
I suspect that extent is quite significant in all countries.
-
Elaine Green made a comment
i know that there are circumstances when the distinction between religious and non-religous is important, but I am not sure it is always necessary to fix them as contrary to one another. Christmas is a classic mix of sacred and secular and that enables people to take out of it what they need. (Personally, I am uncomfortable with both, but society in general...
-
Elaine Green made a comment
I am not sure I can respond to this question since these practices are not my own. I am aware that social informing come from many sources, though most messages have mutated from an originally religious practice source.The tradition of religious law comes from some of the oldest religions. Some beliefs and practices in modern societies are deemed...
-
Elaine Green made a comment
There is no mention here of miltary displays or flowers by the side of the road for car accidents. Some will say some of these things are just socially respectful, but for so many people they are acts of ritual which reach emotional places that are intended to go beyond civil politeness. People do not want to be reduced to functional rationalists in situations...
-
Elaine Green replied to Martyn Coram
@MartynCoram You have expressed some of my own questions a bit more clearly that I can.
-
Elaine Green made a comment
I still struggle with the word 'religion'. I don't really know what it means and I sue the word 'faith' more readily though I don't know why either. Maybe I am learning what I don't know.
-
Elaine Green made a comment
Each legal system starts from its host culture and legal history, and that seems right to me in any understanding of democracy and nationhood. European approaches differ slightly from country to country and the European courts have the task of finding the reasonable ground which can apply across those boundaries. They have been doing diversity for a long time...
-
I have dug out this abridged road advice from th CIPD (HR professional body).
The safest approach for UK employers is to follow the EHRC and Acas guidance on religion and belief in the workplace. This suggests flexibility and reasonableness concerning religious clothing. The guiding principle for employers should always be based around the impact of dress on... -
Elaine Green replied to Elaine Green
I understand your point. My words inaccurately express the choices we make, and some do in fact exact a price. I think I am trying, badly, to reflect the situation in my own liberal country where conscientious objection still happens as does public demonstration, sometimes in contravention of elements of the law or they seek to change the law by the new case...
-
Elaine Green made a comment
I read through the comments on this topic before I commented for myself, and I see that this remains one of the most divisive topics of our time, and one over which people have strident and seemingly inflexible views. In another place this is a live ecumencial issue for me and whilst I have to speak my own truth before my God (forgive the religious language...
-
Well, the Church has moved on in the pelvic area sincce the Middle Ages but homosexuality is the last bastion here. Across the world people and governments are in different places on this and moving along different jagged lines. In the history of the world, perhaps we need not be impatient with everyone else.
-
We have here a huge divergence of culture, history and faith undepinning this exchange. As a liberal British Quaker I am fully aware of my Friend's position in Kenya, and it is one not understood by many Quakers in this country where we long since now changed our position on this. In our world church, and not only ours, this is a very sensitive and divisive...
-
Not all faiths see the scripture as inerrant. More diversity.
-
Marriage was invented by the church somewhere along the line. Before that, couples made babies and stayed together for safety etc. So marriage is indeed a religious thing, and not required by everyone.
-
Elaine Green replied to Deuan Jones
And in many countries Christians are persecuted, presumably for the same reason of apostasy. I feel naturally uncomfortable with any state being directly govenred by a religious authority, such as Islamic Iran, but I cannot see how a state can or should not take the religion(s) of its people into account when policy-making, because it is what motivates them...
-
Elaine Green replied to Anne Maonga
Quakers have married out for three centuries because of an individual decision no longer to live with the 'rules'. All faiths have this and it is a reflection of social movement and change. Nothing is fixed forever but is the best that we can come up with at the time within our faith and culture.
-
Elaine Green made a comment
I find it interesting, and limited by my own lack of understanding if it, perhaps, that a government can tell an individual what to 'believe' as their religion, as distinct from how to behave. If the Chinese government wishes to contain a set of behaviours, that is obviously possible in an authoritarian regime, but how do they control the individual mind?...
-
Elaine Green made a comment
There is insufficent public debate in many countries about this to decipher whether or not religious law contravenes the commonly applied criminal or civil laws. In more authoritarian cultures, religion is also seen through that prism, and I am not qualified to comment on hat experiencee. The example of the conscientious objection by Jehovah's Witnesses to...
-
Elaine Green replied to Ronald Skeet
The phrase 'applied equally' is tricky if we take into account equal impact. Some universal measures are, by definition quite crude in their concepton and disproportionate in their application. So I am uncertain what is 'fair' in appliying civil laws commonly without some consideration of impact, and that then includes consideration of social, economic, and...
-
Elaine Green made a comment
I find it quite unhelpful in this COVID19 crisis that the UK government finds it easier to use the traditional church-state mechanism for considering the mass of worshippers by speaking first through the Church of England. There are perfectly good functioning ecumenical instruments for talking to a wide range of Christians, and they should make a greater...
-
Elaine Green replied to Moira Vangrove
Charles's position, a you rightly describe it, raises major constitutional issues, but my sense is that the time will be right for such change to be accepted by the citizens, through parliament.
-
Elaine Green replied to Martyn Coram
The new life offered in the New Testament is not of this world. Jesus of Nazareth, whom most Christians believe to be an earthly incarnation of God brought the promise of a new covenant/agreement with God to gain access to this 'other' sense of being with God, which is offered but must be actvely accepted.
-
Elaine Green made a comment
I find this topic extremely difficult to fathom emotionally and intellectually, and I resist forming an opinion about it. The Westphalia example shows a compromise solution to one problem, which worked for their time in a country that was not a nation state. In this country Catholicism was prohibited for much longer than any other Christian church because it...
-
What short memories we have in this country, when we know that in our lifetime religious affiliation has governed basic rights of our own citizens in Northern Ireland, and we are still paying for that in so many ways. There is a classic example of how religious literacy has been inadequate and limited by historical experience.
-
Elaine Green made a comment
We all read our faith (or none) through our life experiences and as they change so our justifications change. I don't see religion as any different in that sense from other social principles for which we might be prepared to fight/conscientiously withdraw. Many Quakers in America and the Carribean were slave owners in the earlier times, and Pennsylvania was...
-
These things have their time. Religious difference is a human condition and can create sadness at some critical points, but nothing is static and we are all oblige to constantly look for those possibilities of reconciliation if we sign up to any concept of a God/higher wisdom based on love. I am more hopeful than sad.
-
I agree that this will not appeal to all people, but then no faith or values system will ever do that. It is attractive to me that diffrent people are motivated by different drivers to make a better world, her and beyond, if that is part of the motivation. This is the strength of diversity, the whole kaleidoscope being of a greater value than any of its...
-
In a complex economy we are beyond expressing religious values purely in terrms of abstinence. Computers, phones are now part of a way of life in which we all have to operate. Different people can choose what they should or need to give up in order to live out their values to the best of their ability. Perhaps all faith-based values are delusional, or maybe we...
-
Do we have to be absolutist? Is that important to some?
