The importance of equality
News from Meeting for Sufferings
Do you agree with Quaker Life central committee that equality is better dealt with from hearts and minds as a spiritual matter, rather than simply as a compliance matter, asked Richard Summers, general secretary of Quaker Life, as he introduced the subject of equality. Richard explained that Quakers were generally doing okay but could be doing a lot more. Michael Booth, support for Meetings officer in Quaker Life, explained that Quaker Life was not planning to reinvent the wheel as such when other groups already had considered and detailed guidance (for example, the diocese of Oxford has guidelines on its website on welcoming those with autism and Asperger syndrome in our churches and communities) on a subject. Instead, Michael and Quaker Life would do their best to point Friends to those resources.
Friends shared their concerns about equality. One Meeting for Sufferings representative had been unable to take a taxi from the station to the venue because no one had the facility to take her wheelchair. The same Friend had to be let into the plenary room through a fire escape because the stair lift couldn’t take electric wheelchairs.
‘We’re not as equal as we think we are’, said one representative.
Other issues about inclusion came to the fore: ‘Friends have a long standing commitment to equality. But we are a sea of white middle class people’, said one Friend, continuing that it wasn’t George Fox or Jesus that were putting people off, so perhaps we have to work out what the issues are. Acknowledging another Friend who appreciated that her visual impairment was not a barrier to her involvement in Quakers, one woman explained: ‘I realise that a lot of people have obvious disabilities and we rush in and find them interesting but they’re not to the person who has them.’
