Meeting for Sufferings: Book of Discipline Revision Committee
'MfS’s reponsibility to ensure that matters were proceeding well: that any outputs were consistent and coherent, and in plain and simple language that would be accessible to all.'
The day would mostly be spent hearing reports from various groups, the first of which was from the Book of Discipline Revision Committee (BDRC). Clerk Margaret Bryan reminded Friends that it was MfS’s reponsibility to ensure that matters were proceeding well: that any outputs were consistent and coherent, and in plain and simple language that would be accessible to all. Representatives were amused at the reminder that it was also their job to prevent the BDRC from ‘leading us into heresy’.
Rosie Carnall, co-clerk to BDRC, valued the connection to MfS and Area Meetings (AMs). It was important to stay connected, she said. Committee members were in good heart, and continuing to act on the Yearly Meeting’s instruction that they be ‘joyful, prayerful, creative and bold’.
But meeting online did leave them with ‘something missing’. On issues where there was a wide variety of opinion – such as ‘God language’ – she said members felt that they would need to meet in person to do a full ‘deep dive’.
There were other areas where the committee felt able to begin drafting new material, but the effects of the pandemic were felt here, too. When considering ‘community’, for example, Rosie noted that Friends were now meeting in different ways, including non-geographic ones. How this would all settle would require wider discernment in the Yearly Meeting.
Co-clerk Catherine Brewer reminded representatives that there were reviews happening within the Yearly Meeting (YM)that would also have an impact on the committee’s work. MfS itself, Yearly Meeting Gathering, and Simplification are all under discernment. Catherine said there had been a useful ‘joining the dots’ meeting with relevant people from review groups, and it had been exciting to get a sense of how these things might fit together. A new book of discipline would have to adequately describe these new sustainable structures, which would itself be a way of articulating Quaker identity.
The committee is not quite ready to share any draft material, but it does hope to reach this point soon. It’s likely that these drafts will be discussed in workshops held across the Yearly Meeting.
Representatives were grateful for the update, and had questions on some of the principles behind choices of language. Some were keen to hear more about a possible timeline for progress.
One of the key principles, said Rosie, was to recognise the diversity of expression in the Society. These were tender questions, but important ones. Catherine added that it would be critical to work out where the committee needed to be consistent amid this diversity.
Sometimes the book speaks with a corporate voice, she said, and discernment was needed as to how this would fit alongside those extracts or quotations that demonstrated wide opinion. The committee was also identifying areas for wider discernment in the YM, where at the moment there was perhaps a lack of clarity.
On the timeframe, assistant clerk Michael Phipps reminded Friends that the committee was still at an early stage. The last book took eight to ten years to complete. Members of BDRC had been appointed until the project was finished, and he asked Friends to be patient.
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