Spiritual Society of Companions

Spiritual Society of Companions
Classification	Amendant
Polity	Congregationalist
Founder	Jon Vulpe
Branched from	Christenism
Other name(s)	Lamenters

The Spiritual Society of Companions is a Amendant Christian denomination known colloquially as the Lamenters. The Lamenters were expelled from the Christenist movement in Ebrary in 1570, during the early years of King Gustav II's reign, and formed their own congregations. The Lamenter Jon Vulpe rose to prominence in their community after this, wrote many influential epistles and letters from the Lamenter viewpoint, and is credited as the father of Lamenterism. Lamenters are united in a belief that each human being can experience and access the "mysteries in one's own soul" or experience God in everyone. Lamenters do not practice any sacraments, do not take oaths, and a majority are strict iconoclasts. The movement stresses dressing in "plain clothes", which is defined as black or gray clothing with no patterns, abstaining from the consumption of alcohol or tobacco products, and avoiding participation in military conflict and interpersonal violence including violent sports such as boxing.

Lamenters follow a decentralized congregationalist church structure, with each Lamenter church governed independently but joining regional and national associations. Currently the largest national association of Lamenter congregations is the General Companions Conference, with approximately 85% of Lamenter churches belonging to it. The second largest, the National Companions Association, comprises around 9%. Originally, Lamenter churches followed a "non-pastoral" mode of worship where all members of the congregation were allowed to speak during the church service. However, the majority of Lamenter churches now follow a "semi-pastoral" service, where a pastor preaches for an allotted time and then other churchgoers may speak afterwards. The National Companions Association split from the General Companions Conference in 1911 over this issue, with the National Companions Association being an association solely of non-pastoral congregations and the General Companions Conference accepting both kinds of congregations.

Name

The prominent early Lamenter Jon Vulpe coined the term "Spiritual Society of Companions" to describe the movement, and the members of it tended to refer to each other as "companions". However non-members generated the epithet Lamenters early on to describe them due to the emotional church meetings the Lamenters had. Though initially viewed as a derisive term, eventually the moniker of Lamenter became so ubiquitous the movement itself embraced it. The most notable usage of the term is the titling of the weekly newsletter of the General Companions Conferences as "The Lamenter".

Theology

Main Points of Lamenterism

The main points of Lamenter belief, as outlined in the collected Epistles of Jon Vulpe, are as follows:

• Simplicity
• Nonviolence
• Truthfulness
• Sobriety
• Community

Iconoclast Lamenters often add another main point of aniconism to this list, although Vulpe had ambiguous views on the subject.