Faith in the workplace
Raymond Mgadzah explores the experience of some Quakers
Friends are prompted to ‘live their faith’ through their actions in the world. One important area in which many Quakers do this is in the workplace. It is a challenge that individual Friends approach in a variety of ways. These encompass not only the careers they choose, but how they pursue them on a day-to-day basis.
Craig Barnett, of Sheffield and Balby Area Meeting, is a good example of such faith in action when it comes to choosing a career or a job. He said: ‘I have never followed a sensible career path. Instead, I have changed jobs and areas of work quite drastically in response to a sense of calling or inward necessity.’
‘This has included working with young people in care, in the L’Arche community with people with learning disabilities and with refugees through the City of Sanctuary movement. It also led me to respond to a job advert in the Friend for a director of the Hlekweni Friends Training Centre and to move with my family to Zimbabwe in 2010. Luckily, my wife Kate also has a sense of adventure and a commitment to following where the Spirit leads us.’
He added: ‘I have often had to cope with a lack of security from failing to conform to the typical middle class career pattern. It has usually been difficult to see where my work life was going. Most recently, after returning from Zimbabwe, I found myself unable to face doing another job that involved offices and meetings and was drawn, instead, to learning to work in the open air as organic food grower for a city farm.
‘This is not something any careers advisor would suggest starting from scratch in your forties!’ Craig explained. However, he said: ‘It has been tremendously challenging, both physically and emotionally, to be outside my previous area of expertise at an age when most people are highly experienced in their work role.’
Honesty and truth
Alastair Cook, a Friend from Craven and Keighley Area Meeting who trained as a professional chemist, is now a farmer with a smallholding and raises livestock. He said: ‘As a professional chemist I thoroughly enjoyed practicing what some might consider to be the black arts. But I was not following a Quaker value system. I was an employee charged with a wide range of responsibilities. I like to think I was honest and truthful and relatively successful in what I did but was this because I was being paid for it or… Some of my work might strike a chord with present Quaker preoccupations. For example, I was responsible for environmental compliance but this was more a legal necessity than the result of some Quaker insight.’
He adds: ‘I do farm in a way I think other Friends may approve of, although that’s not why I do it in a particular way. I carry with me a belief system – perhaps even a Quaker belief system – which requires me to use the resources available to me, causing as little damage as possible to my fellow citizens, the animals I care for and the land which I occupy.
‘It does make for a rather old fashioned way of farming, which arouses considerable amusement in my farming neighbours. I also do most of it single-handed, which satisfies my engineering soul, devising ways of doing things. Sadly, I am approaching an age where decrepitude will defeat ingenuity. None of this is uniquely Quaker. It’s what I consider a rational response to the circumstances in which I have chosen to live. We form part of a rural community, which is a joy, even if at times it makes GCHQ look like mere spectators. Quakerism is itself a way of life – a whole life experience. So is farming and combining the two is an ongoing challenge and delight.’
Quaker values
The experience of Jennifer Kavanagh, of Westminster Meeting in London, is another example of how career paths are affected by a Friend’s faith. Jennifer, who was a literary agent, said: ‘I changed my entire career as a result of faith. Letting go of a career without any idea of what I would do but knowing that I would be shown, as indeed I have been.’ She now works as a teacher and writer, usually on the subject of faith, for Friends and others.
Another Friend, Chris Evans, of North East London Area Meeting said: ‘I am at a point in my career where I have had a long period off work due to ill health and am in the process of changing jobs, both of which promote reflection.’
Being a Quaker ‘definitely’ affects the way that he works. Chris explained: ‘I am a social worker, therapist, and manager. While my choice of career path predates me becoming a Quaker my current practice is certainly influenced.
‘The organisation I am moving to has values which include “valuing the unique worth of every individual”. That does not seem very far from Quaker values, and the organisation’s value base has certainly influenced my decision to move.’
Constant challenges
Having chosen a career according to their faith, Friends have the challenge of working in a manner that is in line with that faith. MEP Jude Kirton-Darling, of Hexham Meeting, says that being a Quaker is an intrinsic part of herself and affects everything she does.
Jude said: ‘As a new MEP in a very politically diverse parliament, in a volatile time in our region’s history, there are many ways that I feel my faith is a support and also a challenge – sometimes speaking truth to power is not the easiest thing in reality. Sometimes fundamental values can be in direct conflict with political imperatives. It means that there are constant challenges.’
Jude says it’s very difficult to say how her faith affects her work. ‘Our shared office team operates in a fairly egalitarian manner with everyone equally valued and engaged – from interns to MEPs. I think in parliamentary business Quaker business methods, although not directly transferable, influence the way in which I chair meetings and try to build consensus and address conflicts. I take time out every day to reflect on what is going on – this might sound trite but in a hectic parliamentary environment it’s not always easy.’
The support of Friends
In living their faith in action Friends often draw on support from other Quakers whose example they follow. Jennifer said she admires: ‘Those who work within the mainstream, who have to uphold their values in a context that is sometimes hostile.’
Chris said: ‘A Friend who inspired me (and other social workers and community workers) for his reflection of Quaker values worked as a community worker with refugees and asylum seekers in Newham and is a Friend at Wanstead.’
Jude says she admires: ‘So many in many different workplaces. I remain constantly inspired by mum’s work on conflict resolution in schools in Teeside and with the CAB [Citizens Advice Bureau]. A member of my Meeting in Hexham, professor Jenny Cozens’ work on compassion in healthcare is inspiring. Then there are Quakers working inside the EU institutions valiantly defending peacebuilding and human rights.’
Craig said: ‘I have been encouraged and supported by Friends from my Local Meeting, who have supported me and my family with discerning our direction, and providing crucial early support to City of Sanctuary, and faithful friendship during our time in Zimbabwe.
‘I have also been inspired by the example of Huw Evans from Sheffield Meeting, who has built up a twelve-acre market gardening site called “Sheffield Organic Growers”, where I was able to gain valuable experience as a novice grower. I am now working with another Friend, Heather Hunt, to develop a similar market gardening project on the edge of Sheffield called “Friends’ Field”.’
Friends, in 2016, continue living their ‘faith in action’ in the workplace despite the numerous challenges that they face.
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