Talking and doing

Jane Mitchell reports on General Meeting for Scotland

What a pleasant city centre Dundee is to walk through! It is quite an eye-opener with its grand nineteenth-century buildings and recently improved streets. The nineteenth-century Quaker Meeting House is, however, not sufficiently accessible, so Dundee Friends had booked a modern church hall for us to hold the General Meeting for Scotland on 9 September. Just over thirty Friends were present.

The main feature of the day was a presentation by Ian Boa, assistant general secretary of Action of Churches Together in Scotland (ACTS), who talked about the work of the organisation. Friends have participated in ACTS for some years, and Ian Boa outlined the history of Christian ecumenism in Scotland. He explained that ACTS was a forum for national leaders of the churches to hold conversations on matters of common interest. However, he said, these discussions have largely failed to have an effect on the ‘grassroots’.

Bearing in mind Jesus’ prayer for Christian unity: ‘Holy Father, keep them in thy name, which thou hast given me, that they may be one, even as we are one’ (John 17:11), the emphasis is now on the churches’ travelling as on pilgrimage, encouraging ‘worship, study, service and proclamation’ together, even though we disagree on some things. ACTS publications include leaflets on education and human rights in Scotland as well as on more theological topics. Ian Boa mentioned the 2015 papal encyclical Laudato Si on the environment as a potential topic for study.

Friends said how good the ACTS events they attended had been, with everyone listening attentively. As always, there can be difficulty in passing on to others the experiences one has had.

There was a long lunch break, which was good for socialising, and some of us went out to enjoy the sunshine. A welcome piece of news was that funding from a legacy had been agreed (matched by funds from Britain Yearly Meeting) to allow the parliamentary engagement officer’s post to be extended from two-and-a-half days to three-and-a-half days a week, and her contract to be made permanent from the start of 2018.

Friends contributed their reactions to events at Yearly Meeting Gathering and, again, the need to move from finding common values to action was a theme.

The Parliamentary Engagement Working Group has been focusing on economic justice, and hopes to foster general debate on the idea of a Universal Basic Income.

There was a more difficult item concerning Interfaith Community Justice. Quakers have done a lot of work in this area, but our present representative is standing down and we need to consider what to do about this, or whether to leave the matter to Quaker Peace & Social Witness. It was ‘a friendly day’ and thanks are due to Dundee Friends for hosting it.

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