A sunset over Glasgow. Photo: Jack Donaghy / flickr CC.
Building bridges
Joyce Taylor reports on the recent General Meeting for Scotland
Hope for the future, joy in the present, enjoyment in the company of friends…
These words were spoken by one Friend in worship at the end of an energetic and engaging General Meeting for Scotland held in Glasgow on 15 September.
Ten young people who attended the Northern Young Friends’ Summer Shindig, a residential camp for young Quakers aged between eleven and sixteen, shared their thoughts, insights and observations. We heard about activities, worship and the feeling of being part of a different kind of family from the loving homes they come from. The effect of the Shindig experience was described thus:
It grows confidence
You learn a lot about yourself and your friends
Meeting for Worship helps me get my thoughts in order
It makes us excited to grow up as Quakers
– it solidifies my faith
There is no pressure to be what you are not
You can just be a kid
Staff are supportive, kind and helpful
We look up to the staff and want to be them
At the end you are just buzzing to be back
The theme this year was ‘Building Bridges’ and young Friends learned about people across the world, about borders and how they developed over time, about reaching out and conflict resolution.
The Parliamentary Engagement Working Group (PEWG) gave an update on the different strands of their work. The Petitions Committee has produced a report on the evidence heard during the progress of the petition calling for transparency about military visits to schools.
The report has produced what has been described as a rather weak response from John Swinney, the Scottish government’s cabinet secretary for education and skills, but the PEWG has been invited to come back on this.
Peace education
Meanwhile, the group is looking at where peace education can find a place in the Curriculum for Excellence (the national curriculum for Scottish schools for learners from the ages of three to fifteen), and has a meeting soon with Education Scotland (the executive agency of the Scottish government tasked with improving the quality of the country’s education system). Ellis Brooks, from Quaker Peace & Social Witness (QPSW) at Friends House in London, who has been involved in this kind of work in England, will also attend.
The Scottish government are consulting on their plan to put the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child at the heart of government policy. This is an international agreement setting out the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of every child, regardless of race, religion or abilities. It felt right that the Quaker response should reflect what children think, so Mairi Campbell-Jack, Scottish parliamentary engagement officer, led the young people in their own session looking at the consultation questions. Their reflections will be included in the PEWG response.
We then came to the consideration of where the advocacy work in Scotland should be directed in relation to the concern about economic justice, which came out of Britain Yearly Meeting in 2015 and which was discerned as a priority by General Meeting for Scotland when the PEWG was set up.
It is an area that could go in many possible directions. Through a process of looking at different aspects of inequality and ways of addressing this, the PEWG felt that one focus could be around land reform. They felt strongly that they needed Scottish Friends to be engaged in discerning if this was the right focus for their work and being clear about what Quakers might bring from a faith perspective that would be different from political parties or lobbying groups.
Land reform
The PEWG invited Alastair McIntosh, author of Soil and Soul and Poacher’s Pilgrimage, the land reform activist and Quaker to speak to the meeting. He spoke eloquently about there being two aspects in the approach to land reform – the practical and the spiritual, and that the two cannot be separated. He suggested caution in the pursuit of the practical and suggested that the Quaker focus may be greater on the spiritual.
There is a possible platform with other churches to speak about the theology of land reform, and we should speak to the highest level of government as Quakers about the spiritual underpinnings in advocating land reform. Alastair McIntosh spoke of his experiences of land buyout and how bringing land into community ownership can open up painful conflicts among local inhabitants.
Do Quakers have a role here with their understanding of discernment, their experience of Meetings for Clearness and their work in conflict resolution? What bridges can we build? Friends felt both energised and challenged by what Alastair McIntosh had to say and it was agreed that further discernment at the next General Meeting for Scotland in Perth would be the right way forward.
Churches together
The afternoon began with a report from Huw Lloyd Richards, our representative on Action of Churches Together in Scotland (ACTS). ACTS has been through difficult times in recent years and following a report by consultants from the Theos think tank, a working group was set up to find a way forward. Huw Lloyd Richards is a member of this group.
Their proposal that ACTS evolves to become the Scottish Christian Forum was the subject of a recent two-day meeting, with constituent and invited churches looking to reach agreement on the principles and practicalities. Further work is needed to clarify financial and constitutional questions. Having a Quaker presence in ACTS appeared to have helped enable churches to work in new ways, tackle difficult issues and come to agreement. The meeting was grateful for this bridge building work.
Later in the afternoon we welcomed members of the Friends World Committee for Consultation’s Europe and Middle East Section (FWCC-EMES) who were holding their Executive Committee meeting in Glasgow. As they each introduced themselves we could hear the rich variety of nationalities and countries represented: the Friend working in Cambridge but originally from Italy; the Friend in Oslo who is originally English; and the Friend in Germany who is originally from Croatia. Their work is to connect different Yearly Meetings, different Quaker worshipping groups, and Friends of all ages – in other words, building bridges. We welcomed their affirmation that – Brexit or no Brexit – we will remain in Europe.
The day ended in worship together with our European friends and our young people. We reflected that the theme of bridge building with which we had started the day had resonated in so many ways with Quaker work throughout the meeting.
