Seekers (was Re: Death, where is thy victory? )

[houyhnhnm102]

No: HPFGUIDX 174779

Carol said:

> We might look at the other Seekers, too

houyhnhnm:

Seekers?  I love the Seekers. (There's a new world 
somewhere they call the promised land.)

Oh wait, not those seekers.  How about the English 
dissenting group known as the Seekers.  Roger Williams 
is supposed to have been associated with them and 
Wikipedia describes them as forerunners of the Quakers.  
They were anti-predestinarian (and since another name 
for them is Legatine-Arians, probably also anti-trinitarian). 
I haven't found anything about their beliefs on the afterlife.

I don't know how their beliefs differed from those of 
modern day Friends, but I found this at  
Meeting the Spirit - An Introduction to 
Quaker Beliefs and Practices
http://emes.quaker.eu.org/documents/files/meeting-the-spirit.html

"Friends do not dogmatise about what happens after death.  
There are Friends who are convinced that there is an 
after-life, and those who are convinced that there is not.

"There is always an element of mystery about love which 
people cannot fully penetrate, but Friends are convinced 
that it has a timeless quality. Love cannot be destroyed
by death and cannot be limited by time and space."

This ties in closely with the quotation from William Penn 
at the beginning of DH.  Adding to that the fact that 
Rowling also quoted Aeschylus makes me think that she 
was not going for a strictly orthodox Christian 
understanding of death and the afterlife, but only 
including Christian elements because that is what her
background is.  In other words, I don't think she 
is a doorbell ringer who pretended to be writing a 
secular story for six books just so she could sneak in her 
proselytizing pitch on us unawares.