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 visual is sorely undervalued in modern scholarship. Art history has attained only a fraction of the conceptual sophistication of literary criticism.... Drunk with self-love, criticism has hugely overestimated the centrality of language to western culture. It has failed to see the electrifying sign language of images.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
“A friend of mine spoke of books that are dedicated like this: “To my wife, by whose helpful criticism ...” and so on. He said the dedication should really read: “To my wife. If it had not been for her continual criticism and persistent nagging doubt as to my ability, this book would have appeared in Harper’s instead of The Hardware Age.””
—Brenda Ueland (1891–1985)
“However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but a spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you. When the play, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)