thread: 2005-08-09 : The New Open House 2: Religion
On 2005-08-10, Brennan Taylor wrote:
I'm a Quaker, or the Religious Society of Friends. I was raised in a family of Friends, and when I turned 18 I could have automatically taken a full adult membership in my meeting. I decided not to do this, because I wanted to find what was right for me at the time. I did a lot of thinking, and looked into other faiths, and in the end decided that I was, indeed, a Quaker. I went through the whole process of joining the meeting, just as if I had come to it as an adult, because this was important to me.
In my personal philosophy, I am very Deist, and I have a lot of respect for Daoism, which I have incorporated into my own philosophy. The nice thing about being a Quaker is that these beliefs are totally legitimate, and there is no barrier for me to reconcile this with my membership of a Quaker meeting. Quakers believe that every person can be in direct communication with the divine (and is, even if they don't realize it). That means that I can look inside myself and find what is right, which suits my strong independent streak. I could never be a member of a more organized church that grants authority to someone over me.
The basic Quaker values of pacifism, honesty, and equality are all things I can really get behind. I looked around, and decided I liked where I was.
