Letters - 03 January 2025
From QCEA to Quaker testimonies
QCEA
The Quaker Council for European Affairs (QCEA) continues its unique mission to reflect Quaker values in its work with European Union institutions, ‘to support them in building a better world’.
This is illustrated by the approach in their three core areas. Firstly, ‘Climate sensitivity’ whereby QCEA stresses that proposals and actions must take account of the needs and situations of those worst affected by the climate crisis, by promoting a ‘socially just transition’ from fossil fuels. These populations shouldn’t bear the brunt of difficult adaptations that don’t work in their favour.
The second area, also highlighting lived experience, is migration. With the onward march of surveillance technology, including ‘digital border management systems’, the human dimension is disappearing. QCEA also stresses the growing risk of deportation to counties which disregard human rights.
The final strand is described as ‘Enabling dialogue across differences, supporting people to listen deeply and gain new perspectives on issues that are stuck or highly polarised’. QCEA is well known for its quiet diplomacy and reputation as a facilitator.
QCEA’s newsletters always contain a round-up of developments and priorities in the European parliament. Unfortunately defence and militarism remain ‘at the forefront of the EU’s agenda’ with Green parties less prominent and more far-right governments.
It is good to read how the Quaker United Nations Office and QCEA are now working together more closely. Both these shining examples of Quaker witness are largely reliant on donations from Friends. Let’s consider whether we could support them financially. Donations to QCEA via
www.qcea.org.
Andrew and Melanie Jameson
X-Twitter
On 16 December, Friends House announced that, along with a raft of other Quaker organisations, it is ‘disengaging’ from X-Twitter. This, because ‘the disinformation and hate on this platform mean that it is no longer a useful communication tool for us’.
X-Twitter has between 400 million users and 600 million. Bluesky has twenty-five million, a difference of at least sixteen-fold. Might we not maintain a foothold on both platforms? Might we not be mindful of the Jungian ‘shadow’, if we filter for purity?
Christ was on both Bluesky and X-Twitter. Witness the tweet-length beatitudes! We too are called to presence in a broken world and not to sit in silos in a holy huddle.
As our Nobel Peace Prize citation quoted it in 1947: the Quaker way is ‘to build up in a spirit of love what has been destroyed in a spirit of hatred’.
God has angels enough in heaven. As Saint Silouan of Mount Athos put it: ‘Keep thy mind in hell, and despair not.’
Alastair McIntosh
Renewal
Juliet Morton (13 December 2024) asks older Friends to stand back and let younger ones discern the way ahead. This view is based on a number of misconceptions. It implies that older Friends are part of a passing era and that younger Friends look at the world with fresh eyes.
These assumptions feed into an oversimplified understanding of the process of change, especially in the Quaker context. We have always been open to change and new light, it is woven through Advices & queries and is an essential part of our Quaker faith. My experience of older Friends is that they retain a genuine openness to new ideas and a willingness to listen. They are likely to raise questions and look for unintended consequences, but this is not being closed to change.
My experience of younger Friends is that they can bring a vigorous passion to bear, and can keenly question hidden assumptions. They can bring an energy that can be invigorating for all.
For good discernment and decision making, we need everyone. Older Friends can be over-influenced by caution. Young Friends can be over-influenced by the pervasive influence of social media leading to a modern form of groupthink. We need to be talking to each other across generations.
I have a real concern that there is an increasing disconnect between us. There is no forum where Friends in their Local Meetings and younger Friends who may be active in Young Friends General Meeting have real engagement. And there is some disturbing evidence of growing conflict between these groups.
Friends, we need each other. We need energy and clarity and appropriate caution. We need to talk, without fear of strong emotion. We need to find wisdom in discerning sustainable ways forward and understanding each other. Wisdom is not the monopoly of any generation.
Robin Waterston
Poetry
Greetings from Australia! I offer a poem for the new year:
Positive peace
Positive peace is our common goal
Positive peace includes everyone
Positive peace is work for everyone
Positive peace takes time to realise
Positive peace needs maintenance
Forever.
David Evans
‘How should we live?’
Is Quakerism worth saving? What do we have that could not be found elsewhere?
Most religions have a sacred text, in which they find God. Mostly these texts are from an era of slavery and barbarism (or slavery and civilisation in the case of the New Testament).
And for most of recorded history, we have had slavery. In every country, in every continent. No ancient religion said slavery was wrong.
But as Quakers we revise our book of discipline for every generation. We continually seek to make ourselves more fit to meet the challenges of the new era. And we find God in ourselves and each other. Does any other religion do this?
Those of you who find talk of God difficult may prefer to think of ‘people at their best’. This definition works for me. Those of you who are worried by the idea of going beyond the Bible may remember that George Fox once said: ‘You will say Christ saith this, and the apostles say this, but what canst thou say? Art thou a child of Light and hast thou walked in the Light, and what thou speakest is it inwardly from the God?’
Our freedom to do better has led us to several exciting firsts. We accepted women as priests from our earliest days, hundreds of years before the Church of England. We were the first to oppose slavery as an evil under any circumstances. First just a few individuals, then as a campaign and finally as a Society.
We also (in Towards a Quaker view of Sex) pointed out that loving respect for your partner mattered far more than exactly what people did with their genitals. In each case these views have become the generally accepted standard for all but a few extremists stuck in the past with an outdated book.
So this is what we have: in our silent worship there is a method for experimental morality; for generating and testing new and better answers to the question ‘How should we live?’
Paul Seed
Quaker testimonies
Most Quaker testimonies can be paired with each other. Truth with integrity, equality with justice, peace with mediation, and sustainability with simplicity. Each one of each pair cannot exist without the other. Truth cannot exist without integrity nor integrity without truth, and so on.
But the testimony of community stands alone. It is self-evident that its pair is family and that neither can exist without the other also.
The Quaker founding fathers would never have thought that families could be so compromised as to need a supporting testimony, but they have been.
Searching Quaker faith & practice for the word ‘family’. I find that it is used only thirteen times.
In the stillness of the night and in your quietest moments I ask that you place families in the Light. It is where love is first found. I invite you to share my concern that family is of sufficient importance to become a testimony and that it is essential for community to function. Quakers would be well placed to show the way.
Bill Summers
Comments
Alastair McIntosh speaks my mind.
Further, any Quaker who thinks that Bluesky is a haven of kindness is badly in need of a wake-up call. The site has a serious problem with death threats towards those offend the Bluesky mob (and yes, there is such a thing). I have observed this for myself. I would also draw attention to the following article:
https://www.thefp.com/p/jesse-singal-bluesky-has-a-death-threat-problem
Individual Quakers must of course make their own decision as to whether they wish to be on social media, and if so where. Our corporate accounts should be on X, Bluesky, and other places besides. But we should not delude ourselves about these sites: we will encounter hatred and incitements to violence on all of these sites.
By tpittpayne on 2nd January 2025 - 10:38
Robin Waterston speaks my mind.
Friends of every age can have something useful to contribute.
By Moyra Carlyle on 2nd January 2025 - 17:53
Tim Pitt-Payne links to an article by an anti-trans campaigner, whose platform includes The Economist and The Atlantic, complaining that his anti-trans campaigning was not welcome on Bluesky. Trans people on twitter are surrounded with hate and violence. The simple word “cis” is banned there, so trans people cannot talk about trans and cis people without censorship.
Singal claims that his position on youth gender medicine is “the mainstream liberal position”. It is too tedious to explain how the Cass report, which supports Singal’s view, has been widely discredited, but Ruth Pierce has a good summary, which she keeps updated: https://ruthpearce.net/2024/04/16/whats-wrong-with-the-cass-review-a-round-up-of-commentary-and-evidence/
Anti-trans campaigners in BYM should read YM minutes 2021/31 and 2024/27, and reflect that their allies in their campaign against trans people include Tommy Robinson, Rupert Murdoch, Liz Truss and Kemi Badenoch. Then they should stop making a fuss about trans in Quaker circles, and come together with trans Quakers to see our Light.
The threat on Twitter comes from its owners. The threat on Bluesky comes from some of its users, who may be blocked. I looked at some of the abuse in replies to the Quakers in Britain site, and it includes accusations we are anti-semitic, discriminatory against disabled people, and a claim that the solution to climate change “has been used to terrorize, regulate and tax the normal people to oblivion”. And that’s just two of our tweets.
By Abigail Maxwell on 3rd January 2025 - 9:30
That abuse was on Twitter. The Bluesky account, while at the moment it may have fewer followers, has no abuse.
https://bsky.app/profile/britishquakers.bsky.social
On Twitter, engagement with perceived left-wing posters is suppressed by the algorithm, which directs people to Musk himself and to right wing trolls.
By Abigail Maxwell on 3rd January 2025 - 9:38
Please login to add a comment
