Paul Parker at Friends House, London. Photo: Photo: Quaker Communications.
Interview: Paul Parker (Part Two) - Engagement and communication
Paul Parker, recording clerk of Britain Yearly Meeting, continues his conversation with the Friend about his faith and work
You said that the testimony to equality is a foundation value for you? The testimony to equality is the basis of the peace testimony – because anything other than a peaceful co-existence with each other ends up not recognising that fundamental equality – and, if you start from that premise, you also end up with a commitment to live simply and to share resources; because if we don’t take positive action there simply isn’t enough to go round.
A lot of Friends are not very clear about the role of recording clerk. How would you describe it?
There are three main facets to it. The first is that I am the senior staff member for the 138 staff who are employed by Quakers in Britain – including some staff who work at Swarthmoor Hall and some who work remotely. So there is a management function.
I am also the secretary to Britain Yearly Meeting, to Meeting for Sufferings and to BYM Trustees. I am responsible, as their staff member, for making sure that the decisions they agree are implemented in the work. So that, in a sense, is a chief executive role.
The other element is the role of clerk. That is very important to me. What clerks do is listen for unity. You have to go out and listen and really take a sounding and a feeling of, and be interested in, what is going on and you have to listen for things on which Friends can unite. I go out and represent Quakers – sometimes to other churches, sometimes government – for instance, on the current equal marriage consultation in England and Wales I would be the one who represents Quakers. So it is kind of three jobs rolled into one.
What about the subject of membership?
I think any membership organisation has to look at its membership and make sure that it hasn’t designed itself so that it only suits people who are already heavily involved in it. I do not think this happens deliberately. I think it happens by accident over a period of time. I think we have to keep asking people: what can we do to make sure it is possible for you to belong to this?
Membership is a challenging issue?
Membership is declining but attending is staying the same or going slightly up. This reflects patterns in the wider society. It is not just an issue for Quakers.
We have got to a point where membership clearly doesn’t mean what it did to people and we are also seeing some Meetings being very experimental with what they allow members and attenders to be involved in at different levels in the way Meetings are run. Sometimes out of necessity but sometimes because it is the right thing to do.
But what is it that makes people want to belong? What is it, in our Meetings, that makes some move from being an enquirer to someone who belongs?
Our membership process is very different from that of other organisations. We need to know why that is and we need to make it easier without endangering the essence of who we are.
Engagement and communication are both important issues for you?
I think it is very interesting to look at the levels of engagement that we have in different areas with what is going on centrally. Are we reaching the whole country? Are we really making everyone feel part of what goes on at Yearly Meeting? Or has it got a bit narrow? And I think we always need to look at that.
I think, as well, that we are moving, demographically, from a position where Friends learnt Quakerism at their mother’s knee and knew how everything worked and understood how the work arose to a position where a lot of Friends – a majority of Friends – are convinced and have come to Quakerism quite late in life. I don’t know that we are as good as we could be at passing on that knowledge and that experience.
If we communicate better and contributions income goes up then I will be reassured that we are doing the right work. If we communicate better and the contributions income goes down then clearly we would be in the wrong place. I hope that will not happen and I do not think that will happen. If all this Quaker work, which is what Friends say should be happening, is not being paid for by living Friends, then it is questionable whether it is really the right work. We need to look at that.
Is BYM living beyond its means?
I think, at the moment, we are being financially prudent. We have been protected to a certain extent by Friends who have gone before and left us money, as far as our reserves are concerned, and Friends in 1926 who built Friends House, so we are protected to an extent but we cannot go on for ever with contributions at that level.
Lots of valuable pieces of work that Quakers used to do are now being done by other organisations. Some of these are things that Quakers used to do and have taken on a life of their own. There is competition for Friends’ pockets if you like – which is fine – but Friends do have to ask themselves – if it is discerned work then what is the right limit? I think we also have to recognise that the demographic has changed. Now lots of Quakers are the only Quaker in their household. If you look back a few hundred years most Quakers were in ‘all Quaker’ households. My wife is not a Quaker. How much, of our joint income, should I give if she is not a Friend?
If there is a question about Friends being engaged and being really committed about doing this work then we should not go on doing it if they are not committed to it. My feeling is that we need to have those conversations and see what the answers are.
We can raise more money from Friends House by letting conference space and through the restaurant and so on, but ultimately it is only one building, and it won’t generate unlimited income.
Is there a dilemma there?
I think we manage to do a colossal amount of work with quite limited resources. So there is a question whether we should make the work simpler and concentrate on fewer ares of work. We might have simpler, focused messages to communicate. The difficulty is that Quakers are very bad at laying things down. People get very attached to different pieces of work. We have this sense of being in it for the long haul and we do not know which of our projects are the ones that, in twenty years time, will ‘pay off’. There are all sorts of tricky questions in there.
On the question of same-sex marriage. Friends played a major role in getting change and reform on this issue. I have come across Quakers who felt there was a push and are now concerned that the momentum is getting lost.
That is not the case. I went to the Home Office several weeks ago, with other faith leaders, to talk about the current consultation in England and Wales, which is about same-sex civil marriage.
This still isn’t what we want. Our response to that consultation is very much along the lines that we think same-sex civil marriage is a good idea, because why wouldn’t we, but what we want is to be able to marry couples so that it is not just their legal status and their legal rights which are the same, whether they are the same sex or single sex or not. That is why I have recorded a message on our website at http://www.quaker.org.uk/take-action-equal-marriage encouraging Friends to respond to the government consultation. Equally, we have not stopped pushing for the abolition of Trident. We have to keep bashing away.
