Faith not charity
Bob Johnson says that the Quaker way is vulnerable at the hands of charity legislation
‘Startlingly powerful’ and ‘gloriously vibrant’ are not terms you normally expect to hear applied to a Quaker Business Meeting but they understate what happened the other month in our Area Meeting. I have lived through Preparative Meetings and Monthly Meetings where watching paint dry would have been a welcome diversion – but that day banished the lot. It was a privilege to attend Hampshire & Islands Area Meeting on 10 July 2010, a privilege I shall not soon forget.
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As an Area Meeting trustee (and previous member of the Property and Finance Committee), I am not so worried. There is a lot of “spade work” (this is close to being literal, where buildings are gardens are concerned) - to be done between Area Meetings and to prepare recommendations for Area Meeting. It is in right ordering for the trustees to do the detailed work but to communicate with AM and to take instructions on fundamental issues. The trustee body can operate like any committee of the AM (eg Nominations). It is up to non-trustee Friends to take an interest and to hold the trustee body (“charitably”) to account. Moreover, the triennium principle should apply to all appointments.
I am afraid that I find DavidH’s comment very worrying.
Bob Johnson is right. The aim of the legislation is to make the “trustees” the _sole_ arbiters of acceptable practice.
Unlike Hampshire and Islands Area Meeting, Meeting for Sufferings has been moving, during the past eighteen years or so, away from a religious-based Quaker decision-making process towards a much more managerial format with fewer and fewer Friends taking decisions for the whole Society. Small committees take decisions and MfS is now allowed only a very broad overview.
For me, the writing on the wall happened in 1992 when Meeting for Sufferings started to break up into groups to discuss items but no plenary session took place to learn the results of those discussions. Then MfS had to have a committee and Meeting for Sufferings became a “talking shop” while a few Friends made the important decisions.
The Society needs to return the previous situation where Meeting for Sufferings as a whole acted for the Yearly Meeting between its sessions. The Society needs to resist Government policy as described by Bon Johnson and re-assert the principle of the Quaker decision-making process by ensuring that Meeting for Sufferings reverts to being the executive body of the Society of Friends.
No one was listening when I claimed fifteen years ago that BYM should refuse charitable status under the new regime. The law is intended - rightly - to protect the public from unscrupulous use of the “charity” label. Any activity of BYM which seeks contibutions from the public should be registered as a charity. But the contributions of members, given for mutual support, does not fall into the same class.
Sadly, Friends were blinded by the thought of loosing tax benefits. We had our prophets but no-one was listening.
It is no good encouraging Friends to “listen to the Spirit” if we can’t heed the words of our fellows.