Meeting for Sufferings: QCCIR report
The Quaker Committee for Christian and Interfaith Relations reported to Meeting for Sufferings
The Quaker Committee for Christian and Interfaith Relations (QCCIR) terms of reference ask it to keep Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) ‘informed of the various movements towards inter-church cooperation and opportunities for interfaith dialogue, and for responding on behalf of the Yearly Meeting so that Friends’ views on issues of faith and order are represented to other churches and communities of faith’. Andrew Williams and John Myhill introduced QCCIR’s report at Meeting for Sufferings (MfS). In his introduction, John Myhill said that other churches feel that ‘God is the essence of what is important to them and they want reassurance that we have some of that essence’. He continued: ‘If we focus on words, they are blocks.’
The report listed questions for MfS to consider, including:
- What are the main challenges which BYM Friends face in inter-church and interfaith work today and are they more than matters of language?
- Given the very broad and increasing diversity within the Religious Society of Friends in Britain, do Friends still regard themselves as part of a church?
MfS was reminded that ‘recent activities by BYM have tested relationships between Quakers in Britain and other churches’. This has required QCCIR to respond and report Friends’ views on issues of faith and order.
The World Council of Churches (WCC) ‘Statement on the Way of Just Peace’ was attached to the QCCIR report. In the discussion of both the report and the WCC statement the importance of words was highlighted. A Friend commented that they welcomed the questioning by QCCIR and said: ‘Words are important, but we shouldn’t let words get in the way of the statement.’
The report reminded Friends that the QCCIR conference, ‘Faith, what’s God got to do with it?’, also ‘demonstrated that although the Spirit behind our words is in union, the use of language is building barriers’.
A Friend responded that he was delighted that QCCIR was spending time bridge-building and hopes that they will continue to do so. He continued: ‘Fear of isolation should never stop us from following a leading, but others make us stop to consider what we are doing.’ Another Friend commented that ‘we no longer have a shared language within the Society… Language is the thing that separates us.’ Continuing, she said that we ‘share our experience of being in silence. If we engage on that level, words don’t seem to be a barrier.’ Another Friend added that we are ‘far from being the only people who have the problem of words.’
QCCIR has recently published a series of ‘frequently asked questions’ in relation to the 2009 discernment on same sex marriage. The document attempts to explain the decision to those both inside and outside the Society. It is available from www.quaker.org.uk/same-sex-marriage-key-questions
