Letters - 05 May 2023
From Membership to Population issues
Editor’s note: An incorrect version of the below letter was published in our 28 April edition. Somehow, in the blur of editing, wording from a letter published in the previous week’s edition was carried over and used as an additional sentence. Our profound apologies. Here is the letter as it should have appeared.
Some Friends have found it a difficult letter to read, and we know that our republishing exacerbates that. Many apologies here, too.
Membership
I admire those attenders who are devoted to our Religious Society, who serve it in many ways, but who refrain from applying for membership because in all honesty they cannot accede to our God-centred religious basis. I deplore the fact that our procedures are such that avowed and even evangelical atheists can be and are admitted into membership.
I consider that far too many attenders are permitted to attend Yearly Meeting. Once there, our decision-making process gives them as much weight as members. This will be particularly incongruous when the subject matter is in effect the fundamental basis of our form of Quakerism, or the basis of our membership. These topics will be inherent when we seek to approve a new version of our book of discipline.
We have gone too far in accommodating ‘refugees from Christianity’. For at least thirty years we have refrained from using religious language for fear of upsetting them. Any expression of our religious basis is now so unusual as to seem almost offensive.
In the 1990s we almost entirely dropped ‘Jesus’ from Quaker faith & practice. If we now drop ‘God’ shall we still be able to present ourselves to Churches Together and to the interfaith community as ‘Religious’? Must we adhere to our Testimony to Truth by renaming ourselves ‘The Spiritual Society of Friends’?
Stephen Petter
Darlington Quakers
In response to the nickname of our local football team, ‘The Quakers’, which was founded in 1883, as far as I can tell there is no connection with the Society of Friends. The name perhaps recognises the importance of local Quaker business families at the time.
The term ‘Quaker’ is very much used as a demonym for people from Darlington. Not far from our early nineteenth century Meeting house was the Quaker distillery. Not far from the Quaker house pub, and due to refurbishments, we see the sign ‘Quaker Scaffolding’ outside our front door.
Many years ago, our warden went through the phone book and wrote to all the companies using the name Quaker to tell a little of our history and suggesting a small donation. The minutes do not record any success.
David Simpson
Darlington FC
Following from the letter by Bernie Kennedy (14 April), although I am not myself a fan of Darlington FC I was aware of their nickname ‘The Quakers’, and a while back I had a look at their online gift shop.
There I found that one may purchase all manner of memorabilia, including drinking mugs, badges and stickers, all emblazoned with the motto ‘The Quakers’ and with illustrations including a tall black seventeen-century-style hat – though it is a hat of the type normally associated more with the Puritans rather than the familiar wide-brimmed ‘Quaker’ style. (Should somebody tell them?)
Incidentally, regarding another point that arose in the same issue of the Friend, may I be (probably) the ninety-fourth person to point out that the expression ‘darkest Africa’ had nothing to do with the colour of its inhabitants? It referred to the fact that sub-Saharan Africa was largely unexplored and unknown and therefore somewhat mysterious.
The period in western European history immediately prior to the early Middle Ages was known as ‘the Dark Ages’ for precisely the same reason – despite most of its inhabitants being white!
Peter Bolwell
War in Ukraine
I was more than glad to read the letter from John Boulton (14 April) under the heading ‘The Peace Testimony’. It brought instant clarity. The analogy with Czechoslovakia in 1968 is entirely pertinent.
I was in Prague in the spring of 1989. The people I spoke with thought that the Russian occupation would last indefinitely, but their spirit was uncrushed, and they were ready for the revolution when it came later that year.
Armies and armaments cannot defeat a people’s spirit. Look at the Poles; look at the ancient Israelites, exiled to Babylon but never forgetting Jerusalem.
We and NATO have no business to be fighting a proxy war in Ukraine, paid for in blood and misery in Russia and in Ukraine. Let us uphold the Peace Testimony and the peoples of both countries!
Joanna Dales
Quaker success
Andy Fincham makes the point well (24 March), that early Friends found our Meetings, Area Meetings and business method very useful to their commercial success, writing: ‘Quakers were disproportionately successful because they saw participation in a trade would ensure a prosperity that would enable the Society to thrive’.
Of course, we already have our Quakers and Business network, but is there also an opportunity for our larger Meetings to create local business networks that can attract and support entrepreneurs, helping them recognise that a purpose beyond profit builds organisational resilience and so long term shareholder value? It might just also enable our Society to thrive!
Robert Ashton
Changing from within
I was interested in the news story about Vanguard investments (3 March), as this is where our grandchildrens’ investments are located. I looked it up on the internet, where Quakers suggest it is better to stay with the company in order to change things from within.
Do other Friends have any advice regarding their thinking on this?
Christine Hayes
Woodbrooke
Stephen Deas and also Rosemary Wells, in recent letters (14 April), speak my mind with regard to the tragedy for the Society of Friends at the decision to close Woodbrooke.
I ask: was this really inevitable? Do we realise what we are losing?
So many Friends have been helped by physically meeting together to deepen their Quaker faith over the years in this iconic Quaker place. I have a heartfelt fear that we are throwing cherished ways of rooting ourselves together in the divine by the rush towards a contact-free world.
Simon Ewart
Population issues
In view of the ongoing dispute about the rights and wrongs of population issues, may I invite Friends to view the website of Quaker Concern Over Population. This is on qcop.org.uk.
Population activists (generally, not specifically Quakers) have been decried, in a Woodbrooke course handbook, as being racist, eugenicist and fascist. The authors seem not to have made any effort to find out what activists are actually advocating, and the view expressed is in my view a prime example of a ‘straw man’ argument.
No approach to us had been made by the group before publishing. I think that this use of abusive language is not the Quaker way of doing things.
So I hope Friends can look at this site with an open mind. If they can find anything that justifies the criticisms of us (or indeed any errors) we will of course remove it. I particularly recommend the sections ‘The Case’, ‘Evidence for the Case’, and ‘Around the World’.
The minute of Gloucester Area Meeting ,which recognised our concern, is also on the site. Also on the site is a precis of a talk given to Friends at Yearly Meeting by Jonathan Porritt, the well-known advocate of environmentalism, on the subject of population. He is the current president of the charity Population Matters.
Please take this subject seriously, Friends. Population growth is too serious to have anything but a proper debate devoted to it. Any response will be welcomed.
Roger Plenty
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