You Quakers are so lucky
John Marsh issues a call to 'alms' as he looks at the things that we don't need to pay for and wonders why we don't pay for what is needed
I had not been a Quaker for many years when my Dad said to me: ‘You Quakers are so lucky.’ Despite his being married to a Quaker it had not struck me that someone who trained candidates for ordination in another denomination would say such a thing, so I asked him what he meant.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘you don’t have ministers to pay, their manses to provide, their retirement to fund and you have, compared to the average church, very simple buildings to maintain. It follows that you can spend all the money we Congregationalists spend on those things on Quaker work.’ If only this were the case, but it palpably is not, to our great detriment.
There are several things that occur to me now, all to do with our responsibility for the stewardship of our resources and property, and all deeply depressing.
As an ordinary Friend I am only too aware of the dreadful financial state in which the Society finds itself.
We are dependent on legacies and a large degree of grant aid to keep ourselves afloat at the moment.
Many Local Meetings rely to a considerable extent, or completely, on lettings to pay for the running costs of their Meeting houses.
The amount that my Area Meeting asks each Local Meeting to pay annually per active Friend or contributing attender is only £5 per month towards the Area Meeting funds.
I am encouraged to pay what I think I should to British Yearly Meeting directly and not see this as part of what I should give via my Local Meeting as a responsible Friend who takes the matter of stewardship seriously. (This has only recently been explained to me and may only apply to my own Local Meeting).
Quakers choose to call donations to core funding – the maintenance of Friends House and the Central work of the Society – fundraising, as if there was some choice about giving to these areas of Quaker work. In almost every other walk of life this phrase implies that there is a choice because it usually refers to one-off projects and not core funding. I think it would be better to call the support of the core work stewardship, and describe raising money for special causes, such as extending a Meeting house or a one off project in Africa – fundraising.
Tom, bishop of Southwark, in his Thought for the Day on BBC Radio 4 the other week, talked of money as having a spiritual dimension and about how often Jesus talked about money according to the Bible. What seems to be evident is that the lack of money has a negative spiritual effect. At the end of his message the bishop said you can tell what people care about by looking at their bank statements. How would we as individual Friends appear in such an examination?
Why does all this matter? I have met Friends who say that if the time for Quakerism to die out has come then so be it. I am totally incapable of being so phlegmatic about it. I firmly believe that what we have to offer the world is so important. Our way of worship, our testimonies, our acceptance of people as they are and not as we might wish them to be, our ability to change and our emphasis on an experiential approach to God are all worth celebrating, valuing and continuing.
It has been said to me that Friends support other worthwhile causes, some large such as Amnesty and Oxfam, others small and personal. Indeed proof of this is the desire among non-Quaker charities to have their inserts put into the Friend because they receive such a good return. This generosity is all well and good but maybe we need to be a little selfish about supporting our own Society as a priority. After all, Quakerism supports and is active in many of the causes that are also covered by special interest charities so giving to Quaker work does not mean that a wide variety of causes are ignored.
And the significant fact is that, as far as the central core work is concerned, it will not take much to correct when measured ‘per head of Quakers’ in Britain. This is an ugly way of approaching the problem as it puts pressure on those less well off and gives others an excuse to those in affluence for not giving more than the average. But we are Friends and as such must be expected to be responsible, as it was explained to me when I was visited by the two Friends who were to determine whether I was to become a Quaker. They set out firmly but gracefully what my responsibilities would be when I had completed my education and was earning a wage.
So why are we unable to face these responsibilities and pay what our Society costs to run?
Furthermore, why can we not give sufficient so that the running costs of every Meeting house is covered by our contributions and use any money we earn from them by way of lettings to fund new initiatives, whether local, national or international?
In this connection I dream of the day when every meeting has at least one activity each week where they connect as a group of Quakers with the community that contains them so that others get to know us and what we stand for. Letting our lives speak without communicating our Quaker motivation is not, on its own, enough.
At a seminar at the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust about ethical investment, Tony Stoller, the keynote speaker, had as the last bullet point on each slide of his power point presentation the sentence ‘Quakers don’t like talking about money’.
Let us change. Let us show we value Quakerism. Let us become again a voice, small but powerful, in the nation. If we do not, and if we do not change our attitude to money soon, we will not be around to even think about money or anything else, I fear.
By saying all this I am rejecting ‘palliative care’. By this I mean that I do not think that trying to find ways to make things come right by realising assets, closing Meeting houses, increasing rental incomes and so forth will cure the problem. We must recognise that like any other faith group, we have a responsibility to our past as well as to our future. This may require sacrificial commitment of time and money for a while and if that is the case then that is the challenge.
We must pay our way. It is as simple as that.
John Marsh
John Marsh is an architect who spends quite a lot of his time working with other churches on their buildings and so sees from first hand their attitudes to stewardship and fundraising.
