Letters - 15 November 2024

Outdoor Meetings

Thank you to Craig Barnett for his most useful report (1 November) of the much-awaited conference on the Future of British Quakerism.

He mentions so many ideas for unconventional Meetings for Worship. One idea, which our Meeting has explored for a while now, is gathering out of doors. We walk to a clearing in the woodland, which has a fireplace and a large old parachute covering, which mostly keeps out the rain. We build a fire in the middle and sit round on logs for our Meeting for Worship. It always seems to result in a deeply spiritual time that encompasses all of us present. It is a precious gift which we look forward to each month.

Sally Hartog

Future of British Quakerism

It was encouraging to read the articles about the Future of British Quakerism conference, especially the one by Craig Barnett saying that ‘what we are experiencing is not death, but transformation’. And I agree that in the future there will be a greater diversity of different kinds of Quaker community, especially online. 

I liked his suggestion that ‘it will look much more like a movement than a monolithic organisation’. However, if that is to happen, we need to be much better at reorganising ourselves and our existing structures, and this will be hard for many older Quakers. 

I attended part of Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) this year and was appalled at the amount of time spent on the proposed changes to Sufferings and BYM, at the expense of discussing some of the critical issues facing us in the world. Various young Friends were equally shocked. And this review is still ongoing. 

In my view, simplification needs to go a lot further and we need to change our labyrinthine structures if we are to become more of a movement. This will be a painful process for some but one which I am sure will be welcomed by many younger Friends. 

As a start why don’t we hand over at least one full day of next year’s BYM to a group of young Friends and see what they come up with, as happened in Germany’s Yearly Meeting this year? It was recommended in Maris Vigar’s letter to the Friend (1 November).

Gerald Conyngham

A timely call

I was encouraged by Craig Barnett’s observations following his attendance at the Future of British Quakerism conference. It is sobering to be invited to re-evaluate the life of our Meetings and to be called to rise to the challenge of being more open.

I have joined in some online sessions of ‘Discovering Quakers’ and it is disheartening to hear of Meetings declining to engage with the process or respond to enquirers. There is really no excuse, however small your Meeting (and ours at Liskeard is tiny), for failing to respond and share the spiritual path of Quakerism. 

Some years ago, I recall Gerald Priestland describing Quakers as a quiet side chapel in the cathedral of Christianity. There’s much, I find, that appeals in that image. The joy too is we can be ‘quiet side chapels’, as we are in Liskeard renting a room in the town hall. One of our number expressed thankfulness that our Meeting house burned down in 1899 and wasn’t rebuilt. Had we still got it, it would not have been a house of prayer but a depressing, restricting tomb. 

I recall being present at the twenty-fifth anniversary of the restructuring of an Anglican church destroyed by arson. The archdeacon present, tongue-in-cheek, observed that all dioceses could use the services of a friendly arsonist! A dreadfully ugly Victorian church building was now multi-use and not a crushing burden on worshippers. 

Our Area Meeting is faced with a cost of £40,000 or so for restoring walls of a burial ground. Perhaps what we need is a farmer with a mighty bulldozer? Revisioning what we are about is a timely call. 

Peter Bellenes

Language and dialogue

Anne Jones (1 November) speaks my mind.  

For many years I have been trying to talk about ethnic cleansing, occupation, genocide, ecocide, but it seems these words are forbidden. Apartheid? That’s something that only happens to black people, surely? Ethnic cleansing, I am told, is a term employed by anti-semites. Occupation, I learn, is a word that does not exist, genocide overstates the event and diminishes the real Holocaust. Ecocide is a term which has not been invented yet.

So how can I describe the indescribable? How do I tell about whole families wiped out, that there are no safe zones for civilians, that everything and anything that moves is a legitimate target for robots to exterminate? 

How do I describe that every person – man, woman, child or baby – being a terrorist can be murdered without a qualm; every hospital, school, university, being a hiding place for terrorists, can be wiped out and reduced to a pile of dust; all putative leaders of so-called terrorist groups being thought monsters can be taken out without a court of law in sight; and every attack, being a defensive move, can result in starvation and destruction of agriculture? 

Allowable too, it seems, is the prevention of movement of medicine or food or water as being part of the war effort and not a subject of conversation. 

Any type of weapon, however cruel, is not up for discussion for security reasons, and certainly there must be no mention of blood and the thousands of mutilated corpses under the rubble if you want to be patriotic and polite. It’s not nice. 

Above all it’s best to keep journalists out of the area, or kill them, as they may have more words than the average and may notice what is happening.

As for Hannibal, he is just history, why go into that?

So, how in the name of Jesus, Mary and the wee donkey, does dialogue ever come about? And what on earth are we to call this affair happening on our watch as we look away and close our eyes? The mysterious disappearance of a population?

Jennifer Bell

New ways of belonging

The proposal, as set out in the report of Meeting for Sufferings (11 October), is that recognised groups within Britain Yearly Meeting should be authorised to grant formal membership to those whose connection with Friends is through belonging to those groups. 

At present the usual route into membership is through application to the Friend’s Area Meeting. There is then a process of discernment, which involves elders of the Friend’s Local Meeting expressing a view as to whether they support the application. Two Friends would then normally be appointed to visit the applicant to discuss their reasons for wanting to join the Religious Society of Friends. 

The Area Meeting would then consider the report of the visit, with a view to discerning whether Quakerism really is the applicant’s spiritual home.

The process of discernment should, I suggest, be grounded in the guidance set out in Quaker faith & practice (11.01) which states (in part) that membership is ‘a way of saying to the meeting that you accept at least the fundamental elements of being a Quaker’. 

These are listed as ‘the understanding of divine guidance, the manner of corporate worship and the ordering of the meeting’s business, the practical expression of inward convictions and the equality of all before God’.

How is the process of discernment going to be facilitated under the new proposals, which seem to be based on the assumption that participation in a recognised group is sufficient to justify the granting of membership, irrespective of whether the applicant has any understanding of or commitment to the fundamental elements of Quakerism?

Richard Pashley

Candle of hope

I am writing to thank you for your publication, and to shine a light on the Quaker community here. We meet fortnightly and it is a great source of hope and support. We had a great World Quaker Day with many Friends coming in. 

I am ashamed to admit my past is filled with violence, gang activity and sadly death, but I now don’t just attend Meeting, I thrive living in the Quaker way of life. So, thank you to all the Friends who have or will have contributed to lighting the candle of hope.

Pablo Hood