Friendly unity
David Parlett reports on a successful gathering of Friends at Woodbrooke
A key question addressed at a conference organised by the Nontheist Friends Network (NFN) and held at Woodbrooke on 9-11 March was the future of Quakerism in Britain:
In 2005 Quaker Studies analysed the trends of falling membership of the Society of Friends as dwindling to zero by 2032, when British Quakerism would become history. We are more optimistic today. But what will our Society look like in 2032? How will it change socially, theologically, and influentially?
Over sixty participants – more than half of them attending an NFN conference for the first time – heard presentations by four keynote speakers and divided into discussion groups to explore their individual responses before coming together at the end for a plenary session and a closing Meeting for Worship. Friends had been asked to read, or at least be aware of, the book God, words and us edited by Helen Rowlands and produced, in response to a request from Meeting for Sufferings, ‘to help Friends explore the ways we speak about our deepest religious and spiritual experiences’.
The first speaker was Linda Murgatroyd, of Kingston & Wandsworth Area Meeting and co-clerk of the Quaker Arts Network, well-known to Friends for her prize-winning essay The future of Quakers in Britain: holding spaces for the spirit to act (2010). Linda adopted a metaphorical approach and considered ways we could work towards a desirable position in 2032 by following the twelve principles of permaculture, defined as ‘thinking tools that when used together allow us to creatively re-design our environment and our behaviour in a world of less energy and resources’. She also drew attention to statistics on trends in religion in Britain and Jennifer Hampton’s British Quaker Survey: Examining religious beliefs and practices in the twenty-first century.
On Saturday morning the second speaker, David Boulton, a member of the NFN steering group, changed direction by asking us to imagine that his talk was being given in 2032 and was an account of Quaker history from 1652 to the imagined present. He noted the way in which key turning points – the descent into Quietism, the lurch towards evangelicalism, the revolt of the 1895 Manchester Conference against the 1887 Richmond Declaration, and the rediscovery of universalism – all followed historical changes in the world around us and our response to them. By 2032, in this vision, a rapprochement had relieved the tensions between those holding to ‘theist’ and ‘nontheist’ vocabulary, and we were ready to continue engaging with the world without letting words get in the way.
Later, delegates were stimulated – one might say enraptured – by Harvey Gillman. Harvey declared himself to be an ‘un-structured’ thinker and speaker, and proved the value of this style in suggesting that our future will be the eventual outcome of living always in the here and now. The most important element in our spiritual life should be the ‘WOW factor’; the truly sacred is always ‘this moment, this place, these people’.
On Sunday Michael Wright returned to the essentials of God, words and us and emphasised once again the relevance of these paragraphs to our future development:
The Quaker community needs to engage in open dialogue on a continual basis – it is important to share experience and beliefs, and when this is done well we can be enriched by our diversity. The kind of language we use is also important. Words can be used to divide and to hurt, and they can create false oppositions. We should try too to avoid destructive aspects of difference.
Delegates separated into small groups to explore how best to meet these ideals. Finally, in drawing together the threads of the conference, David Boulton emphasised our continuing need to embrace change and diversity by listening to each other as well as talking. The closing Meeting for Worship was notable for its depth and sense of Friendly unity.
