We love conflict!
Marian Liebmann, Zélie Gross and Roger Cullen say that division is not necessarily divisive
Ajoint initiative between Quaker Life, the recording clerk’s office, the Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre and the Living with Conflict project brought together twelve people for two days at Woodbrooke for a ‘Conflict Consultation’. We came with a variety of experiences in conflict resolution: the Alternatives to Violence Project, Community Mediation, Family Mediation, Quaker Conflict Resolution Advisory Groups, Conflict in Meetings and more.
Our brief was to:
- Find ways of accepting and working positively with conflict in our Meetings and the Quaker community generally.
- Identify the support needed by Quakers.
- Consider who should provide this support and how Quakers can find and access it.
We were clear from the outset that conflict in itself is not necessarily harmful – it is part of life and can be positive. It is the escalation into destructive conflict that can damage relationships in a meeting, and for which we need appropriate tools and processes.
After introducing ourselves, we did an exercise taken from the new Bridgebuilders manual for working with church conflict, Growing Bridgebuilders.
We were asked to line up across the room, with ‘open expression of feelings’ at one end, and ‘no expression of feelings’ at the other. Members of rumbustious households of children or shouting parents contrasted with quiet families where everything was ‘under wraps’. We felt we had learnt to express our feelings more appropriately through experiences of marriage, friendships, work and Quaker Meetings.
We listed possible topics for exploration, including theological conflicts, money and property dilemmas, dealing with hurts, and conflicts between Local and Area Meetings. From this we focused on two main areas: root causes and patterns of conflict. The latter led to a discussion of the stages of escalation of a conflict, from denial to aggressive argument, shouting and people withdrawing or leaving the Meeting. Crucial stages seemed to be when things became personal, or when other issues and people got dragged in and the Meeting polarised into different camps. Then extra help from outside the Meeting may be needed.
Quakers already have many processes that can help with conflict: the Quaker business method, eldership and oversight, threshing meetings, meetings for clearness, worship sharing, and creative listening. These are listed in the excellent Eldership and Oversight handbook Conflict in Meetings. We identified issues that needed extra work: Power and Processes, Confidentiality and openness, Personalising and Polarising, Flag-waving and Whistleblowing. We also identified a need for ‘Meetings for Listening’, to help Meetings to be clearer about their issues.
A challenging area was long-held grievances and personal hurts. We shared experiences of reconciliation and what we needed to get there – willingness to resolve, commitment, courage, opportunity, respect for the other person, listening support, information, advice, possibly a third person or a facilitator. We need to develop more resources for such situations.
We identified action points, such as updating existing resources, and working on areas needing more attention. Woodbrooke and Quaker Life will both focus on these. We reflected on the way Quakers avoid addressing conflict. Is it because we resist change? Because we fear our differences are incompatible? Because it feels safer to sweep things under the carpet? We challenged these observations by reminding ourselves that we should expect conflict – it shows we are alive and it can be a tool of growth.
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