Time for change?

Michael Long asks whether it is time for some shape shifting

In Manchester Quaker Meeting House, which was the venue recently for Meeting for Sufferings, there is a striking image: a tapestry panel that depicts a major event in the history of nineteenth century Quakerism. The panel celebrates the Manchester Conference held in 1895 when some thousand Friends gathered in the city.

Our Society, at that time, faced the challenges of falling membership, changing demographics and generational divide. It was middle class through and through.

The Society was insular, fixed in its beliefs, sticking to scriptural and not spiritual revelation. Friends were sceptical of science. The Society was looking too much inwardly and not enough outwardly.

The Manchester Conference challenged the old thinking, and this caused a certain amount of distress to some Friends.

John Wilhelm Rowntree, who was twenty-seven years old at the time, said: ‘Friends are not bound by a heritage of creeds, and need not break with their great past to put themselves in touch with the present.’

John Rowntree envisioned a revitalised faith ‘deeper in its basis, clearer in its vision, broader in its charity… and as warm in its love’ rising out of the ‘seeming chaos’ of the modern world. Sadly, he died ten years later at the age of just thirty-six.

Frances Thompson also spoke at the Manchester Conference. She said: ‘God’s Truth is given for every age and it is our duty to welcome the Light which may just be reaching us.’

A fuller quote, which is recorded in American Quaker Chuck Fager’s excellent retelling of the Manchester Conference, is interesting:

Friends, of all people, should hail with joy the thought that knowledge of all kinds is progressive, that the Divine revelation to man is not finished, but ever unfolding, that for every age the manna of God’s truth is given, and that it is our inestimable privilege to, as well as our duty to, welcome the Light which may just be reaching us, as from some till now unseen, though none the less fixed star of Heaven. Nay more, we are guilty if we shut our eyes to it, and prefer to live by the Light vouchsafed to an earlier age.

Is our Society today challenged as Friends in the 1890s were challenged?

There was a seminal shift in our structures out of the RECAST report (Representation, Communications and Accountability in our Structures), which went before Yearly Meeting in 2005. Memorable changes included the requirement to register as charities, the introduction of trustees and the laying down of General Meetings in England.

Less well-remembered, RECAST also advocated the amalgamation or dividing of Area Meetings, freedom for Friends to make flexible arrangements for business and social contacts between different Local and Area Meetings, and an emphasis on Meetings as communities and families of Friends.

A recent event at Woodbrooke, the Quaker study centre in Birmingham, brought together Friends from many different areas of activity. The Quaker Life Representative Council is made up from seventy Area Meetings, and they were joined at this gathering by Quaker Life Central Committee, Quaker Life staff and a veritable rookery of clerks: the recording clerk, Yearly Meeting clerk, the trustees clerk, the Meeting for Sufferings clerk and the co-clerks of Quaker Life Central Committee.

During the gathering Friends tested how we practice our 360 years of Quaker heritage and how we could sustain our Society through the twenty-first century. Our central committee framework guides the practical services from Friends House to ourselves and to the outside world that our Society has discerned it is able to provide. Are we confident that framework is fit for its purpose today and is it sustainable into the next century?

Do we still need to ‘see each other’s faces’ for every meeting? Can we sustain the cost of serving about forty-five Yearly Meeting committees to which Friends are appointed? Are we future-proofing our structures by making more creative and dynamic use of the opportunities which current and future cost-effective communication technologies offer? Do our Central Committees and their separate strategies join up into an effective oneness?

Do our Area and Local Meeting structures support our beliefs, our concerns and our purpose? Or are we serving our structures at the expense of what we could be experiencing and what we could be doing? What gets in the way?

How creative can we be in how we do our business? Do we burden ourselves with responsibilities we could manage better without, or by sharing roles between Local Meetings or with neighbouring Area Meetings? Could Area Meetings become partners or combine with neighbouring Area Meetings?

What can we let go? Are we liberated enough to be able to change? What new Light can we learn from other Local and Area Meetings in our Yearly Meeting? What can we discover in the ways and means of other Yearly Meetings and their pathways to spiritual growth, Quaker practice and community service?

By sharing and listening to our stories we might yet know that we can be open for transformation – shape shifting – and that our experiential life as Quakers and Meetings can be fulfilling and sustainable.

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