Wittgensteinian Investigations of Contemporary Quaker Religious Language
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CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by White Rose E-theses Online Wittgensteinian Investigations of Contemporary Quaker Religious Language Rhiannon Emma Louise Grant Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Leeds, School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science September 2014 2 The candidate confirms that the work submitted is her own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. © 2014 The University of Leeds and Rhiannon Emma Louise Grant 3 Acknowledgements It would have been impossible to write this thesis without the help and support of my supervisors, Rachel Muers and Mikel Burley. I am grateful to have received assistance from several funding sources: the University of Leeds University Research Scholarship, the Friends Adult Higher Education Grants, the Matilda Rickman Gift Fund and the David Adshead Award given jointly by the Quaker Studies Research Association and the Centre for Postgraduate Quaker Studies at Woodbrooke. Many thanks are also due to my colleagues, family, friends, and Friends, especially those who read and commented on a draft of the work: Helen Meades, Myfanwy Reynolds and Susan Robson. 4 Abstract This thesis uses ideas from the thought of Ludwig Wittgenstein and a variety of Wittgensteinian thinkers to shed light on the ways in which religious language functions in contemporary British Quakerism. It does this by looking in detail at examples from published British Quaker literature. In the process of considering genuine modern examples of religious language within their community context, I uncover assumptions which enable these ways of speaking to make sense within that community. These include ideas about how language works, such as an assumption that it follows on from (rather than being prior to) religious experience, and beliefs about the relationship between other religions and Quakerism. The complexities of these examples and the multiple relevant contextual factors enable me to refine the philosophical and theological claims which I draw from Wittgenstein and others. These incude the understanding of meaning as use in context and the model of religion as like a language or culture. In the first part of the thesis, a series of tools – philosophical perspectives which can be applied to examples in order to gain insights – are developed, then used to illuminate a set of examples. In the second half of the thesis, factors discovered to be underlying the patterns of use found in British Quaker religious language are explored in more detail and finally considered in relation to some further examples. As a whole, the thesis explains the community processes which create and maintain some central patterns of Quaker speech, and demonstrates the usefulness of Wittgensteinian ideas and methods. In particular, it utilises the turn towards observing the ways in which religious language is used rather than focusing on the truth-value of claims abstracted from their roles in religious life. I conclude that patterns of Quaker speech not only make sense within a community where certain assumptions are held, but also that they fulfil a role in the maintenance of the community as a single theologically diverse and inclusive Religious Society. 5 Contents list Introduction .................................................................................................... 7 Method ..................................................................................................... 11 Location.................................................................................................... 17 Contents ................................................................................................... 20 Chapter 1: Quakers and their Theəlogies ..................................................... 25 Quaker history: Development of today's Quakerism ............................... 29 Quakers and their language today ............................................................ 33 Initial exploration of these assumptions ................................................... 43 Chapter 2: Tools from Wittgenstein ............................................................. 50 Formation of meaning .............................................................................. 51 Private language problems ....................................................................... 64 Irreplaceability ......................................................................................... 76 Conclusion ............................................................................................... 86 Chapter 3: The cultural-linguistic model of religion.................................... 89 Lindbeck's The Nature of Doctrine .......................................................... 90 Exploring the other positions 1: cognitive-propositionalist ..................... 99 2: Experiential-expressivist .................................................................... 105 3: Lindbeck's proposal, the cultural-linguistic ....................................... 111 Importance of the three models .............................................................. 120 Chapter 4: Worked Examples 1, or, Using the Tools ................................ 124 Example 1: Quality and Depth of Worship and Ministry ...................... 126 Example 2: Rose Ketterer, quoted in Quaker Faith and Practice ......... 134 Example 3: Journeying the Heartlands.................................................. 142 Conclusion ............................................................................................. 148 Chapter 5: Pluralisms ................................................................................. 152 Part 1: Three Pluralisms ......................................................................... 154 1A: Hick (and Armstrong) ..................................................................... 154 1B: Cupitt ............................................................................................... 164 1C: Quaker Universalists ....................................................................... 171 Part 2: Critiques of pluralism(s) ............................................................. 180 Part 3: Responses ................................................................................... 187 Conclusion ............................................................................................. 190 Chapter 6: Multiple Religious Belonging .................................................. 192 The existence of multiple religious belonging ....................................... 193 6 Literature on multiple religious belonging ............................................. 196 Criteria for belonging ............................................................................. 200 Desirability of multiple religious belonging .......................................... 204 Effects of multiple religious belonging on religious language use ........ 222 Does multiple religious belonging help a community make multi-theəlogy remarks? ................................................................................................. 227 Chapter 7: Further worked examples ......................................................... 232 Example 1: The Pure Principle .............................................................. 234 Example 2: New Light ............................................................................ 242 Example 3: Soil and Soul ....................................................................... 249 Overview of examples............................................................................ 254 Conclusions ................................................................................................ 259 Quaker questions .................................................................................... 259 Quaker Question 1.................................................................................. 260 Quaker Question 2.................................................................................. 264 Quaker Question 3.................................................................................. 267 Quaker Question 4.................................................................................. 268 Reflections on the philosophical and theological tools used ................. 269 The thesis considered as part of Quaker Studies .................................... 280 Glossary of British Quaker Terms ............................................................. 283 Bibliography ............................................................................................... 291 7 Introduction In this thesis, I examine Quaker ways of speaking about "God or whatever we may choose to call it"1 in order to show how these ways of speaking make sense within the community which uses them and for the people who struggle with the issues which produced them. This examination is undertaken using approaches drawn from Ludwig Wittgenstein and George Lindbeck. In the process, some features of the Quaker2 case study will point to improvements which can be made in the Wittgensteinian and Lindbeckian methods. This innovative approach contributes to our understanding of religious language as