Seminary convocation speaker urges all religions to hear common spirit

BANGOR – The spirit moved through a speaker from the Society of Friends and swept across those attending the opening session of Bangor Theological Seminary’s annual convocation Monday, leaving many in the audience in tears.

Deborah Saunders, a Quaker, gave an emotional sermon that emphasized the need for people of faith to shed their denominational differences, open up and hear the common spirit they all worship.

“I don’t believe, personally, that God has a denomination,” she said. “Religion has, unfortunately, divided us, but spirit unites us. Our day and time in society is a most scary time, but it is the most exciting time because I believe we, as people of faith, it is our time.

“What we’re going through in our society makes it a time that true believers have to step up to the plate,” she said. “We’re going to have to speak as God would have us speak. And when we do that, it may not make us popular with our congregations, with our community, with our family.”

Saunders is a member of a small group of the Society of Friends in Marlton, N.J., a suburb of Philadelphia. She worshiped at Episcopal and Pentecostal churches before be-coming a Quaker in the mid-1980s. Today, Saunders travels around the country speaking to members of her own denomination and interdenominational groups such as the one gathered Monday at Hammond Street Congregational Church.

Saunders was one of four speakers scheduled to speak this week at the seminary’s 99th convocation. Nearly 300 students, alumni, faculty and clergy attended the opening session of the three-day event, titled “Faith to Faith.”

Other speakers addressing the group include John B. Cobb Jr., a retired professor at Claremont School of Theology in California, Amy-Jill Levine, professor of New Testament studies at Vanderbilt University Divinity School in Nashville, Tenn., and Academy and Emmy award-winning filmmaker and writer Peter Davis of Castine.

Saunders’ emphasis on spirit is central to the belief held by Quakers that the saving knowledge and power of God are present as divine influences in each person through what has been called the “inner light.” There are no ordained ministers in the Society of Friends and its members do not celebrate outward Christian sacraments.

Many of the Quakers’ weekly meetings or worship services are unprogrammed and the congregation is silent except when individuals are moved by the spirit to speak. Saunders told her audience that she had prepared her seminary sermon the same way.

“I’m not one to write down message,” Saunders said Monday. “I wait until the spirit gives it to me. So I might be hearing this just like you’re hearing this. I’m getting this just like you’re getting it.

“It is so important that we trust the spirit and to hear it speak to each and every one of us, whether we be a Muslim or whether we be a Jew or whether be a Christian or whether we be a Sikh,” she said.

Davis, who traveled to Iraq in July with his wife, Bangor Daily News reporter Alicia Anstead, spoke Monday about the “Casualties of War” and delivered an anti-war message to the group.

“When we do go to war, we should know that God or a godhead itself is an ultimate casualty,” said Davis. “That may mean that our notion of divinity is at least among the wounded.”

After Davis’ speech, Bangor seminary student John Spruill of Auburn reminded the crowd that great strides had been made through nonviolent methods, especially in “the battle against racism.”

“We’ve forgotten how God fights a war,” he said.

Convocation will be held today and tomorrow at the Hammond Street Congregational Church in Bangor. For information, visit the seminary’s Web site at www.bts.edu.