Yearly Meeting 2024 - part three
The Friend reports from Yearly Meeting 2024, Friday to Sunday
After a Groups Fair showcasing a number of Quaker organisations, Saturday’s exploration sessions offered a range of activities for Friends. Bible study, a Black History Walk and even dance were on the optional agenda.
‘Enquiring into integrity in public life’ was led by Julia Smith, a trained facilitator who introduced a dozen Friends to the Philosophy for Communities (P4C) methodology, ‘to promote deep thinking on our important concern for integrity in public life’.
The online session began with a warm-up exercise, where Friends were invited to add contributions to the chat in response to the question: ‘What is a person with integrity like?’ Among the responses Friends offered were: ‘They say what they believe’, ‘Their actions match their beliefs and words,’ ‘Truthful’, ‘Clear,’ ‘Careful,’ ‘Trustworthy’’ ‘Stick with difficulty’, ‘Hold ambiguity’, ‘Prepared to challenge’, and ‘Not afraid of speaking out when necessary, but don’t feel the need to always speak, but make space for others to lead’.
The main activity began with the sharing of a video, entitled ‘Birds aren’t real’, in which a person is arguing in a television interview that there was a genocide of twelve billion birds and they were all replaced with surveillance drones in disguise. Friends were invited to consider: ‘What questions does the video pose?’
The group was split into breakout groups to reflect on this and devise one philosophical question; a question that has a concept, is connected to real life, and is contestable.
When Friends came back together, the resulting questions were shared: ‘What is truth a multimedia world?’; ‘When is evidence enough to reject a view and how do we do so respectfully?;’ and ‘What truths might we find in others’ perspectives?’. The third was selected to be explored in greater detail.
In the rich and thoughtful discussion that followed, Friends reflected on how people recall the same events differently, on the challenge of knowing someone as a sensible and lovely person but with radically different political views, and the conflation of opinion and truth.
The reality that two different truths can be accurate at the same time – for example, from one perspective a pen is a circle (when viewed from the end), but from another it is a line (when viewed from the side) – led one Friend to recall the parable of the blind men and the elephant, which demonstrates that nobody has the whole truth, but everyone has a part of it.
Julia described the P4C process as very Quakerly and shared that courses are available via Woodbrooke for those who are interested to learn more.
In ‘Truth seekers: what can we trust in a digital disinformation age?’, a thought’-provoking session, Friends were provided tools and techniques to help examine them critically and guard against being misled online.
Over thirty Friends gathered to listen to Hazel Baker share her experience, having spent sixteen years as a digital journalist, including time as a fact-checker for Reuters. False information is ‘any information that does not accurately reflect reality, and can have significant consequences for individuals and society’, she said. Misinformation is ‘false information that is spread, but not necessarily intentionally’. Disinformation is ‘false information that is deliberately created and spread to deceive people’. Malinformation is ‘truthful information used to inflict harm, such as revealing private information or inciting violence’.
Hazel highlighted that the speed and ease with which information can now be spread online, and then bleed into other media such as television reports and printed publications, has made this a pressing concern. She shared an illustrative example with Friends, and demonstrated a number of tools that could be used to get to the truth behind an inflammatory headline. Then Friends went into breakout groups with three further examples and were asked to consider where the information was coming from, what could be red flags to be aware of, and what next steps could be.
In ‘Exploring truth and integrity in government’, Jonathan Lingham, the clerk of Quaker Peace & Social Witness Central Committee, facilitated a panel of Friends who work in the civil service. Ellie Harding, Emily Miles and Catherine Hodgson discussed how, while there has been a recent shift in government, the civil service ensures continuity, with a commitment to being objective. Each of them reflected on how their Quakerism has influenced and informed their experience of working in government, but also how their civil service affects their Quakerism.
Friends wanted to know about the challenges they faced, assuming that working among politicians with whom one might disagree might be difficult. It turned out, however, that the Friends relished their ability to make a difference while close to power. If they had to swallow some Quaker tenets and use titles in order to be heard, for example, so be it. They were rightly proud of the influence they’d been able to have to affect policy on issues like migration or climate.
Over forty Friends gathered online for ‘Gender diversity and 2021 Minute 31 – listening and searching together’, an exploration session hosted by London Quakers on Sunday.
London Quakers have been engaged in a process of providing space for reconciliation and acknowledging that of God in everyone in relation to apparent conflicts regarding the embedding of 2021 Yearly Meeting’s minute 31, acknowledging and affirming trans and gender diverse Friends.
The session saw Friends share the discernment and discussions they went through: ‘We’re describing the process that we undertook in responding to a Yearly Meeting minutes’ (see ‘Open door policy: Fred Ashmore on how London Quakers created a safe space for conversation’, 7 June).
The process aimed to allow Friends to speak and be heard – ‘But we do that all the time, don’t we?’ – this is something that has often not been the case in this area.
The background, from 2010 onwards, of the wider societal awakening to transgender and nonbinary issues was set out, as were concerns that had been raised and how these had manifested in Quaker communities and venues.
Discussions between a trans Quaker and a gender-critical Quaker began in 2019, and led to the organisation of an online gathering in 2021. ‘The group that planned it recognised the challenging potential for opposing views in every aspect of gender diversity… We thought our purpose should be to recognise and respect each other’s experience and humanity, to see what brings us together and can help us towards Quaker unity’, with the understanding that unity ‘does not mean general agreement, it means we agree to go further together in our search for the leading of the Spirit’.
Eventually the group felt led to try to reflect the sharing and reflections in writing. ‘Is it exactly right? No… but it is a positive step.’ The epistle has been sent to Quaker Life Central Committee.
One of the Friends involved reflected: ‘There is great tension and dissent, great love and great hurt, feelings of being silenced, and pain at what is being said… we found these dialogues to be difficult, but we’ve also found that our Quaker worshiping has upheld us in navigating these conversations’.
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