Speak as you find: Marigold Bentley gets people talking

‘The sessions were extremely illuminating.’

During the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity in January, I asked the minister of a local active church why that church had refused to allow the local Palestine Group to meet there. He went pale, took a few steps back, and said well, it is too political. In further conversations during that week, other clergy admitted to me that their congregations were split on the issue, and they couldn’t identify a way forward. Most of them simply didn’t address the issue in their churches at all, as they found it too divisive and difficult.

I decided to go to the Churches Together meeting to offer some facilitated sessions to the clergy, to assist with the strain they were under. I made it clear that I had no vested interest in the outcome – apart from the fact that I came from a peace church tradition – and nor was I paid for what I was offering. I said I was simply offering to help, using my previous professional experience. They expressed interest, identifying the offer as potentially an opportunity to ‘upskill’. Finding suitable dates was difficult, but eventually we settled on some.

The sessions I did manage to run were extremely illuminating. They were held on the premises of a hosting church – not in the Quaker Meeting house. In other words, I went to them in the hope that they might feel more comfortable in their own space.

First, everyone had to recognise that what they were saying was confidential. Each attendee had to agree not to share information on their social media platforms (this is clearly a challenge for younger ministers, who actively report on everything). We spent careful time on ground rules, and on listening to one another in relation to what we were all seeing on the news. We named our feelings. We explored the accounts from those who had visited ‘The Holy Land’. I used a number of peace stories from my personal experience, in order to ensure that peace as a realisable possibility was part of the conversation, drawing on the examples of how and why the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme for Palestine and Israel (EAPPI) was designed. Using small group and shared consensus building, we built up a set of statements that we all felt that we could use. After one session a participant shared a sermon he had delivered, using what we had agreed. 

I must admit that this was a tough challenge. Emotions were, and remain, high on this topic. Church teaching varies widely on the issue of the Holy Land, and the propensity for people to adopt binary positions is powerful. But we Quakers are well placed to offer such assistance to churches in our localities, and I encourage Friends to offer something similar if they can.

On 22 July Marigold will be running a session on this subject with Woodbrooke.

---

Comments

Please login to add a comment