The vision of a truly inclusive and diverse community of Friends is inspiring. Photo: Rufino Hermandad / flickr CC
Quaker diversity
Diana Francis considers what ‘welcome’ and ‘inclusive’ mean
Those of us who were lucky enough to be at Yearly Meeting Gathering were rightly and repeatedly challenged to look at ourselves and our lack of diversity and its causes, and to become a more welcoming and inclusive Society – not only numerically, but also in terms of responsibility and influence in our structures.
At the moment we are overwhelmingly white and middle-aged-to-old. In our Local Meetings we are also predominantly female, and this was not mentioned at Yearly Meeting Gathering. By and large, we also come largely from the white middle classes and most (though not all) of us are ‘comfortably off’, or in global terms rich, as the Yearly Meeting Epistle has it.
