Criticism
Some Quakers have a negative view of the Richmond Declaration. For example, Chuck Fager argues that, among other problems, the Declaration never represented most Friends and that it has prompted an unfortunate division in the Society.
Though it was primarily written by a British Friend, Joseph Bevan Braithwaite, Britain Yearly Meeting (then called London Yearly Meeting) rejected the proposal that it be adopted. The Richmond Declaration was one factor leading to a sharp doctrinal turn for London Yearly Meeting in 1895.
The Declaration is not accepted as a statement of faith by Friends General Conference or Beanite Quakerism in North America, or by most "unprogrammed" Friends in the rest of the world.
Read more about this topic: Richmond Declaration
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“The critic lives at second hand. He writes about. The poem, the novel, or the play must be given to him; criticism exists by the grace of other men’s genius. By virtue of style, criticism can itself become literature. But usually this occurs only when the writer is acting as critic of his own work or as outrider to his own poetics, when the criticism of Coleridge is work in progress or that of T.S. Eliot propaganda.”
—George Steiner (b. 1929)
“When you overpay small people you frighten them. They know that their merits or activities entitle them to no such sums as they are receiving. As a result their boss soars out of economic into magic significance. He becomes a source of blessings rather than wages. Criticism is sacrilege, doubt is heresy.”
—Ben Hecht (1893–1964)
“I, with other Americans, have perhaps unduly resented the stream of criticism of American life ... more particularly have I resented the sneers at Main Street. For I have known that in the cottages that lay behind the street rested the strength of our national character.”
—Herbert Hoover (1874–1964)