Quaker diversity

Diana Francis considers what ‘welcome’ and ‘inclusive’ mean

Those of us who were lucky enough to be at Yearly Meeting Gathering were rightly and repeatedly challenged to look at ourselves and our lack of diversity and its causes, and to become a more welcoming and inclusive Society – not only numerically, but also in terms of responsibility and influence in our structures.

At the moment we are overwhelmingly white and middle-aged-to-old. In our Local Meetings we are also predominantly female, and this was not mentioned at Yearly Meeting Gathering. By and large, we also come largely from the white middle classes and most (though not all) of us are ‘comfortably off’, or in global terms rich, as the Yearly Meeting Epistle has it.

We were asked how we could be more welcoming to the kinds of people who are currently so seriously under-represented in our Society and urged to do everything in our power to become more diverse in every way.

This is an important and positive challenge and I have pondered it much since I came home. The vision of a truly diverse and inclusive community of Friends, reflecting all the richness of our country’s population – in terms of age, ethnicity, gender and sexuality, and capacities and gifts – is a moving and inspiring one.

Then I turn my mind to welcome and think how truly welcoming and open my own Local Meeting is (and I feel pretty sure the others in our Area Meeting are the same): how in our Meeting house we display, for all those who use our rooms to see, posters of Friends of different ages, colours and occupations, and of a gay couple (though I’ve seen none yet of a Friend in a wheelchair); how taken for granted is the equal worth of different sexual and gender identities in my Meeting and others I know; and how the one black member of my own Meeting is just one of us (though I’d love it for her if there were others).

During the many years when we had no children or young people in our number, we welcomed annual school parties to our Meeting house and told them about Friends, held outdoor events with grandchildren and their parents to signal (in a somewhat disingenuous way) that we were a Meeting for all ages, and kept people at the ready every week to ‘take the children’ (or child), should any appear. When one young couple gave up on us because they were the only ones in anything like their age group we kept in touch with them and they became personal friends.

When, at last, we were blessed by the arrival of one young couple and then their child, and were able to show them all the love that had been waiting for them, and then another young family arrived who had already found Friends, we were away. They brought in others, including the young couple who had earlier come and gone, now with a baby, too. Our children’s Meeting is growing, along with the number of younger adults. We couldn’t make any of that happen, though we longed for it, but we were open and ready for it.

New possibilities

In a small country town whose population is almost entirely white, it is hard for us to alter the ethnic mix of our Meeting. Until that changes we are likely to be stuck with our generally pale version of Britishness, and even when it does change we will have to be patient as we were in waiting for young people and children to join us. Maybe the small number of refugees, who are arriving in the area and will get to know Friends through local support networks, could open up new possibilities.

However, it would be wrong to turn open-hearted support into a bid to generate greater ethnic diversity for ourselves by turning friends into Friends. There is no reason to suppose that people whose misfortunes and needs have wrenched them out of their own countries and brought them to ours, for whom keeping their own roots alive is likely to be particularly important, are going to be eager to abandon key elements of those roots to enter into an obscure subculture in the place where they have arrived and find a new spiritual home.

Within white British culture there is a general fading of religion. It is only in the charismatic churches (and Catholic churches in areas with a large Polish population) where Christianity seems to be thriving, and our tiny faith community and subculture is hard to replenish.

In an increasingly secular society it seems that people, especially those from less comfortable and well-educated backgrounds, are more likely to feel safe and be drawn in by simple and unequivocal messages, losing themselves in services where they can easily join in the lively and fervent singing and lose their vulnerability, than to want to step into something quiet, contemplative and doctrinally vague. (We do have doctrine, of course, but it is not packaged or preached as such, and is not always clearly defined or agreed. For us that may be by and large an advantage and a freedom, but not for everyone.)

We cannot and should not make easy generalisations, or prejudge what is likely to suit any individual, but we can try to think realistically and honestly about who we currently are and what we offer in order to relate that to our thinking about diversifying our Quaker community. We can go on offering service in different ways in the places where we live, and let people know that we are part of a Local Quaker Meeting.

Making changes

We can make variations in our worship: hold all ages Meetings for Worship, for instance, worship in public places and offer different days and times. We can choose topics and forms of outreach that will be of interest to a wide range of local people and invite members of different groups to come and tell us about themselves, valuing them for who they are. If they want to get to know us better and test the Quaker water, we can be welcoming but not pressing, and not smothering in our embrace.

We can use our Meeting houses as places of welcome for a wide range of groups in our locality: toddler groups, Alcoholics Anonymous, people with disabilities, for instance, and those with different ways of worshipping. Some Friends live in areas that are already ethnically diverse, which gives them an even richer set of connections. If in such an area there is as yet no Meeting maybe some enterprising Friends will feel led to rent a room there and establish one.

Perhaps a new world of rapid, global and social communication may help us to become more readily known and available. Projecting a message of welcome and inclusivity will be vital. We can even be explicit in saying that we really want to refresh and diversify our Society.

What matters, I think, is that a light has been shone on us, and that we use that light to take a careful and honest look at ourselves and our possibilities, and then follow our leadings. In the meantime we can ‘let our lives speak’ in every way open to us, value all those we worship with, and keep the door of welcome open to all-comers.

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