Quaker Studies Online: Getting Rooted

tuition $37.50

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Course expectations:

90 minutes to 2 hours of work per week (reading and forum posts.)
Online interaction is part of the course. You support the learning of everyone else by your participation. You will be expected to contribute something to the discussion forums at least twice a week.
Sometimes people post too much and too often. The course leader may ask you to post less.
If you will be absent for more than 3 days or must drop the course, you are expected to post a message in the community forum letting the other course members know.

About the online environment:
We use Moodle, an online program that organizes information and your responses to make it easy to learn. For the full experience, you will need: a speedy internet connection and a recent browser - Firefox 3 or later; Safari 3 or later; Google Chrome 4 or later; Opera 9 or later; MS Internet Explorer 7.

Are you already involved in the ministry given to Friends in our way? Or are you feeling a draw to a life lived more in accord with your Quaker faith? You will want to be part of this study of the Way, as described by Pendle Hill Pamphlet #391, "Getting Rooted: Living in the Cross, a Path to Joy and Liberation" by Brian Drayton.

We will read this together in five weeks, each week considering one section of the pamphlet in a cumulative process.
Week One: Why it is necessary to “Live in the Cross” in order to live and maintain an authentic Quaker life. Backsliding and Progress. What does “living in the Cross” mean, anyway?
Week Two: The practice of “Living in the Cross,” how it comes to us and what it means to Practice in our day. Christian language as normative (useful and accurate to describe the reality), but metaphorical rather than prescriptive.
Week Three: In the pamphlet the title of this section is "The Test of Practice". It includes how one knows while remaining incomplete, foolish, unsuccessful. Why one stays on the Way.
Week Four: What of the Community of Practitioners that includes Friends (and followers of the Spirit)? In what sense is this a “Community?”
Week Five: What is our share in the Life, the Way. Why this is necessarily a practical mysticism.

the bookstore at Pendle Hill

Eric will pose= questions, clarify the readings, lead us in online discussion forums with emphasis on seeing how the work applies to our own spiritual lives. Your participation will mainly be through forums where you type in your own responses and can respond to other students' posts through the course's online website. Expect 2 or more hours of reading and online interaction per week.

Eric Edwards is interested in finding a way to revive a Primitive Quakerism without dreaming of the seventeenth century. How do we make Fox’s vision our contemporary vision? Eric has taught classes in Quaker history, the Bible, and Quaker Governance and led a Quaker Studies workshop on Faith and Practice. His gifts in ministry have been recorded by Sandwich Monthly Meeting.