Letters - 02 February 2024
From Brought to book to Sensitivity required
Brought to book
I write to assure Anne Wade (Letters, 18 January) that I share her distaste for banning books, and to correct factual inaccuracies in her letter.
The Quaker Bookshop has never been threatened by or pandered to ‘gangs of masked, hooded, black-clad transactivist men’, nor have we had to involve the police or deal with situations where staff have felt unsafe. Sadly this is a trope which seeks to provoke fear.
Anne mentions a planned event which was cancelled ‘without reason’ in 2018. It was indeed cancelled, but only after careful discernment that it could not go ahead without causing damage to the delicate process of dialogue some Quakers were engaged in around trans inclusion. These reasons were communicated in full to the organiser at the time.
We have not banned any books. The Bookshop exists so Quakers and others can buy literature which furthers concerns identified by Yearly Meeting, and stocks titles on climate justice, anti-racism and gender inclusion, as well as Quaker history and faith generally. The Bookshop cannot afford to stock books which will not generate income, so does not routinely stock other books written by Quakers unless staff are confident they will sell at a price which covers the cost of sales. We can order any book for Friends who wish to purchase it.
In 2021, our Yearly Meeting committed to welcoming and affirming trans and gender non-conforming people. The Yearly Meeting did not minute that men and women no longer exist, but recognised that Quaker communities are ‘made up of people with a diverse range of gender expressions’.
Printing incorrect statements and spreading fear does not make trans people feel more welcome in the Quaker community. Many Friends are working hard to find spaces where we can develop a respectful understanding of the varied, nuanced positions and experiences Friends have of this issue. I very much hope this will continue.
Paul Parker
Recording clerk, Britain Yearly Meeting
Listening
The subject on which the traditions of British Quakers are being questioned, could be any of our testimonies that any political ideology has in its sights.
It happens just now to be a sensitive, not well understood syndrome, deeply affecting a tiny number of people. The nature of this syndrome has been the subject of discussion within our Society for decades, with concerns asked and answered many times.
In 2021, following some singling out at children and young people events of some of their peer group, the wider Quaker movement in Britain was asked to reassure its members that their Friends would be protected by the faith in which they had been raised, and to whose future they would be expected to contribute.
Just as the young people of 2009 Britain Yearly Meeting reminded us that marriage equality spoke to the future integrity of our testimonies, so in 2021 we were called to a similar discernment. What does more damage to a young person, a disruption of a gendered space, or the witnessing of exclusion and discrimination by leadership role models?
Adherents of an alternative political and religious framework are now actively disrespecting us by challenging both minutes, claiming their point of view was silenced. Was it? Not in my experience, and I’ve spent hours in explanation.
It is the right ordering of our discernment processes that is under question. Those of us whose faith leads us to read modern alt-right Christian theology on the internet are aware of how widespread this disingenuous disrespect towards Quakerism has become.
So I ask all my Friends: is what you are saying a point of view you have reached through your own lived experience in the Spirit among Friends, or is that a notion you have come to via the media? Have you spoken among knowledgeable Friends of your questions or are you wishful to disrupt the work of our Society?
Our beliefs, that patient listening to the Spirit that moves us ahead of our times to light the way, might trouble the faith of those genuinely resistant to change.
The phobic stories of potential violence are now being repeated in our Meetings and on this page. We are being asked to listen to questions already answered at length over many years, in a way that is deeply painful and sometimes deliberately pointed.
The patient listening to the Spirit, and the active demonstration of its loving kindness to the world’s people on a discerned point of theology, is vital work. To question its validity in one area is to question our faithful tradition in general.
It is the prompting of love and truth in our hearts, not the tedious amplification of the propaganda of the alt-right and its tropes, to which we should be listening.
Sarah Dodgson
