Quakers on Wikipedia

While working on an essay on Quaker metaphysics—what’s going on in our personal mystical experiences, and especially, in the psychic dimensions of our gathered meetings—I looked up the Wikipedia entry for “divine spark” to clarify its neoplatonic source. That entry was terrible in many ways; it did not even mention neoplatonism, but only Gnosticism. But it also mentioned Quakers. In fact, the section on the Quaker use of divine spark took up more than half of the entry. See below for the original entry.

This was quite a surprise to me. And as I say ad nauseum in this blog and elsewhere, the claim in this entry that “Friends”, meaning all Friends generally, believe in a divine spark is just not true. Well, I supposed we may all see “that of God in everyone,” as the entry says. But Friends are NOT “generally united by a belief” that “that of God in everyone” is a divine spark, as this statement in that entry implies.

I edited this entry, which was a very interesting experience. It had been years since I tried to edit a Wikipedia entry, unsuccessfully. I was so glad that now I know HTML. In addition to changing the first sentence, I deleted the references to continuing revelation, because they do not have anything directly to do with the divine spark subject of the entry. They are an important element of Quaker faith, but if you wanted to unpack the implications of the light within or some presumed divine spark, you would unpack almost all of Quaker doctrine not just “continuing revelation”. Like Quaker ministry and the testimonial life. 

Here is a link to my revised entry. 

I bring this up here in Through the Flaming Sword for two reasons, having to do with the testimony of integrity and the need for a systematic search of Wikipedia for similar failures of care in presenting our history, faith, and practice.

First, while some “liberal” Friends consider“that of God in everyone” to be a divine spark inherent in everyone, the vast majority of Fiends worldwide, and even a large majority in North America, do not. We should be more careful when speaking for all Quakers, and we should be more rigorous in our thinking when ascribing this divine spark idea to George Fox; he had no such conception.

Secondly, Friends who edit Wikipedia entries should be very well informed about the subjects they enter on that platform. I believe we should review all entries that a search for “Quaker” delivers on that platform—and, for that matter, on other digital platforms, like Facebook.

Let’s start with the most important Wikipedia entry, that for Quakers. This entry begins with the very same wording as the divine spark entry. I imagine that it was written by the same person. Anyway, the very first sentence is this:

Quakers, known formally as the Religious Society of Friends, are generally united by a belief in each human’s ability to experience the light within or see “that of God in every one.”

While not a falsehood, this is a very vague representation of our beliefs that remains unpacked as far as I can tell, it implies something that isn’t true, and yet its position at the very beginning of the entry gives it undue importance. Furthermore, if it were to be unpacked, would it say that the phrase refers to a divine spark? The entry for the link “the light within” in that sentence is more circumspect and credits Lewis Benson and other theologians who disagree with Rufus Jones, who gave us the divine spark meaning of “that of God in everyone.” But the rest of this light within entry needs review, on principle, as well.

One more criticism of this sentence: we are not united by a belief in the Light so much as by the experience of the Light. Whatever unity we have as the result of a proposed shared belief is superficial compared to the true holy communion of the gathered meeting, in which we know God’s presence within and among us directly.

I invite my readers to join me in a review if this important entry, that of “the light within,” and whatever other entries we come across, and to a dialogue about possible edits. Maybe a series of Google docs hosted on this blog. Or better yet, hosted somehow by Friends Journal or Earlham School of Religion, some institution that has some weight, experience, and a wide network of qualified Friends. It’s a very long entry and a lot of it seems at first glance to be just fine. But I haven’t reviewed it in detail and maybe it has other problems. And maybe other Friends would find problems that I wouldn’t, given its considerable scope.

This raises a concern for me about how the Quaker movement might oversee this kind of public presentation of our faith and practice going forward. In the spirit of Wikipedia’s platform as a peer-to-peer project, and in keeping with the non-hierarchical governance structures so important to Friends, and, of course, with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, I propose a peer-to-peer process for the oversight of such presentations, a long-range project of review that would hopefully include Friends with real expertise in the many areas of Quaker history, faith, and practice covered in this entry and whatever other entries we find. I intend to explore what platform might serve us best in this way. But maybe some of my readers know more about the platform options. I’d love to hear from you. 

For many seekers, a Wikipedia entry is likely to be their first introduction to Quakerism. This platform might be the most important outreach organ we Quakers have. It should do the job with accuracy and integrity. And for that, it needs us.

Here’s the original Wikipedia entry on “Divine Spark” before I edited it:

The divine spark is a term used in various different religious traditions.

Gnosticism[edit source]

In Gnosticism, the divine spark is the portion of God that resides within each human being.^[1]

The purpose of life is to enable the Divine Spark to be released from its captivity in matter and reestablish its connection with, or simply return to, God, who is perceived as being the source of the Divine Light. In the Gnostic Christian tradition, Christ is seen as a wholly divine being which has taken human form in order to lead humanity back to the Light.^[2]

The Cathars of medieval Europe also shared the belief in the divine spark.^[3] They saw this idea expressed most powerfully in the opening words of the Gospel of St John.

Quakers[edit source]

Quakers, known formally as the Religious Society of Friends, are generally united by a belief in each human’s ability to experience the light within or see “that of God in every one”.^[4] Most Quakers believe in continuing revelation: that God continuously reveals truth directly to individuals. George Fox said, “Christ has come to teach His people Himself.”^[5] Friends often focus on feeling the presence of God. As Isaac Penington wrote in 1670, “It is not enough to hear of Christ, or read of Christ, but this is the thing – to feel him to be my root, my life, and my foundation…”^[6] Quakers reject the idea of priests, believing in the priesthood of all believers. Some express their concept of God using phrases such as “the inner light”, “inward light of Christ”, or “Holy Spirit”. Quakers first gathered around George Fox in the mid–17th century and belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations.