Showing the way: Geoffrey Durham on ‘Discovering Quakers’

‘There may be good news just around the corner’

In his recent letter to this magazine (29 March) Gerard Bane asked some questions that matter to me. ‘Why are Quakers in decline?’, he writes. ‘Is it their aging population?… Are apparent outsiders put off by Quaker activism?… Are people put off because of Quaker beliefs? Or are people put off by the apparent lack of beliefs?’

I sympathise with Gerard’s anxiety, which seems to me to be realistic and urgent. And, as an activist who has been working for over twenty years on public engagement with Quakerism, my experience tells me there is one simple, unfortunate answer to all his concerns: most British people haven’t discovered enough about us even to be put off. The vast majority know nothing of our beliefs, nothing of our ageing population, nothing about us at all.

Fifteen years ago I was one of a small group who undertook a survey of a representative sample of 1,000 British adults, to discover how Quakers were seen by the general public. We were led by David Smith, a professor of Market Research at Hertfordshire University, and supported financially by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. Being part of the process was an unforgettable experience for me, and I found the resulting snapshot of the public’s beliefs about Quakers to be profoundly instructive.

The findings that most interested me came from the people who said they had already known something about us before the survey began. And, of those, it was the ‘Don’t Knows’ who most conspicuously caught my eye: forty-eight per cent didn’t know we were involved with social action; thirty-eight per cent didn’t know we allowed people from outside into our communities; thirty-three per cent didn’t know we were involved with peacemaking. Yet, on the other hand, two people in one hundred claimed that Quakers had ‘considerable’ relevance to their lives. That percentage represented approximately 400,000 people in the UK and it gave us hope.

We don’t seem to have been doing much to encourage those 400,000 people since, however. Our last tabular statement (published at Yearly Meeting in 2023) put the total number of members, attenders and children at 22,863, down 618 on the year before. And a closer look at the figures revealed that there were 3,158 fewer of us than there had been just five years earlier. So it seems to me that Gerard Bane has good reason to be worried.

But I am a natural optimist. I refuse to despair – and there may be good news just around the corner. I am a member of a new initiative, Discovering Quakers (DQ), which enables members of the public to learn about Quakerism by talking directly to us without necessarily committing themselves to attending, and helps them into their Local Meetings whenever they feel ready to experience Quaker worship. It has come about primarily through the generosity of one anonymous person who gave us the money to start, but we must also acknowledge the welcome support of Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) in helping us to set it up, and also recognise the particular skills of one of our number, Joe McRoberts, who has a deep understanding of the vagaries of social media.

That term, ‘social media’, has the capacity to send many Friends running for cover with their fingers in their ears – and until recently I numbered myself among them. But Joe, a committed Quaker attender, earns his living by digital advertising and has opened my eyes to the immense range of possibilities that social media can offer. I am now not the sceptic that I was.

Through Joe’s skilled supervision, 3,907 people have so far signed up to receive our emails, 1,171 people have completed an online quiz to discover how our values chime with theirs, and 1,400 unique visitors come to our website every month. There (www.discoveringquakers.org.uk) they find over sixty blog posts and video recordings, as well as a worldwide calendar of online Meetings, so they can experience Quaker stillness wherever they are, even if there isn’t a Meeting house close by.

Every Tuesday evening since January 2023, we have held an hour-long online session called Quaker Lives, in which an experienced Friend talks for around fifteen minutes about their life as a Quaker and then opens a discussion with the guests based on what they have just heard. The questions and comments are as valuable to us at Discovering Quakers as they are to the newcomers taking part. It is a two-way process: we learn as much from the questioners as they learn from us. Talking about Quakerism to newcomers doesn’t only mean ‘giving out’ – it is just as important for us to listen creatively to the experience of others.

Each of these Quaker Lives sessions ends with a short period of worship, followed by any further discussion and feedback that may ensue. For most of our guests, it has been their first ever experience of a silence lasting more than two minutes. And every week, at the end of the evening, at least one person writes on their evaluation form: ‘I expect to try a Quaker Meeting soon.’ We can only hope that they find it fulfilling when they get there.

And that brings me to the latest DQ initiative, which some readers may already know about from their Local Meeting clerk. We have written to every Quaker group, asking if they are willing to take part in a new scheme that will connect potential enquirers directly with their local Quaker community. The idea is simple: a newcomer lets us know which Meeting they would like to visit and we inform that Meeting’s contact person, who immediately gets in touch with them for a chat. So newcomers will be given the opportunity to talk to a local Friend in as much detail as they wish before first crossing the threshold of their chosen Meeting house.

The scheme is not yet in operation, because we’re reluctant to initiate it until about half of the Local Meetings in Britain have signed up. At the time of writing, the response has been slower than we expected, with fifty meetings committing to it so far. They represent fifteen per cent of the Quaker community, and we’re hopeful that many of the others are perhaps still in the process of getting it agreed.

It’s early days for us, and there’s much more that we want to achieve. As things stand, there are just seven people in the DQ team and we would welcome new recruits. We are already a registered charity and we are pleased to know that BYM is behind our efforts. We aim shortly to become a Quaker Recognised Body and at some point in the near future to begin campaigning for donations, because becoming known on social media can be costly. But, as Gerard Bane implies, it is precisely that – becoming known – that has eluded British Quakers for far too long.

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