Meeting for Sufferings: Friends reflect on Yearly Meeting
‘This is urgent. We are asking people to wait for justice.’
Friends started the afternoon session reflecting on Yearly Meeting (YM) 2022, particularly its decision to make reparations for Quaker involvement in the transatlantic slave trade, and other exploitation.
After clearing nominations and appointments, trustees said that YM Minutes 25, 27, 31 and 33 were in need of particular consideration. The latter asks how BYM trustees, Meeting for Sufferings and Area Meetings (AM) can practically move forward with this reparation work.
Ministry started with some Friends sharing how much they valued the blended and ‘incredibly inclusive’ nature of YM. Discernment then followed, with clerk Margaret Byran asking the room: ‘What do these minutes ask us to do?’
Despite one Quaker saying that she was ‘alarmed’ by the ‘wildfire way’ in which the concern took off at YM ‘without very little factual grounding in the room’, the majority of Friends were in support of the aims. A Yorkshire Friend reported from her AM that while they were pleased to see the commitment to reparations in writing, they also ‘gulped’ and felt that ‘it was going to take a lot of learning and unpicking’. She urged Friends to do it slowly (‘it scares me how easy it is to get wrong and not sound privileged’). She also questioned the use of the word ‘reparation’ as ‘it suggests equivalence to the original sin’. Do we really mean that or do we want to say sorry, and show it with action – ‘which is a slightly different thing’.
This was countered by the plea that ‘This is urgent. We are asking people to wait for justice. And to ask people to wait for justice so we don’t get too upset concerns me’.
The work may be ‘uncomfortable’ but we should take ‘courage’ from previous work and build on its foundations, said another Quaker. In terms of moving forwards, one Friend in Scotland said: ‘The minutes ask us to make meaningful reparations. We can’t make it meaningful without considering what the people we’re making reparations for actually want, and it seems to me we should be considering how we go about that.’
The minute noted that ‘discernment on reparations is still at an early stage’ and ‘we still may not fully understand the implications’. However, we are empowered and required to act ‘uncomfortable though this is bound to be for many’.
