Meeting for Sufferings: Non-members in Quaker service
'One Friend agreed that MfS had come to a very clear decision in October, but that there were still what seemed like contradictory responses.'
October’s Meeting for Sufferings (MfS) agreed in principle that appointment to Britain Yearly Meeting’s central committees ‘need not be dependent on formal membership as it currently exists’. Membership was indeed an expression of a ‘reciprocal commitment’, said the minute, but this relationship could exist outside Area Meeting affiliation, within any community that ‘commits to supporting those who participate, and the participating individuals commit to observing the discipline, including education, of the community’. This relationship was a ‘necessary’ one, but ‘may not be best described by the word “membership”.’
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