Letters - 27 September 2024

Members and attenders

I have recently, very reluctantly, agreed to have my name put forward to become a trustee of my Area Meeting. 

I had previously made a firm decision that I would not agree to join any committee ever again – not just Quaker committees, but any sort. I feel I’ve ‘done that/been there’.   

 But there was a very real danger that our Area Meeting would become illegal if there were not enough trustees to fulfil the Charity Commission’s regulations. This would mean that all our Meeting houses would have to close. I felt I couldn’t let that happen.

I simply cannot understand why the Religious Society of Friends insists that trustees must be ‘in membership’. Why this discrimination against attenders? 

Like so many Area Meetings we have very many fully committed attenders. They have their own reasons for not wishing to become a ‘member’ but they are as committed to Quakers as those in membership. 

Who are we (members) to doubt their commitment? Why are we so ‘suspicious’ of their reasons? 

We are supposed to be a tolerant organisation – can we not tolerate different opinions on this matter while making a pragmatic decision to allow attenders to become trustees?

I am baffled.

Kim Hope

Spiritual commitment

I thank Matt Rosen for his article of the 6 September.

In doctoral research I completed this year (see http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/...) eleven out of twelve of those I interviewed in depth would, I think, agree with Matt Rosen’s argument. 

Given the profound spiritual commitment of many Quakers, I also had to ask why the Society is in numerical decline. The annual Tabular Statement indicates attenders stop attending and members give up their membership. 

My answer was because of internal secularisation within the Society in relation to its religious culture, its governance and its promotion. 

That is a defensive response to societal pressures to conform to a secular way of thinking, and to the hegemony of a form of materialistic scientific thinking in Britain and advanced capitalist societies in ways of understanding the world, and, especially, ourselves. 

John Shinebourne

A riddle without an answer

I would like to say how much I enjoy reading the many inspirational and helpful articles published in the Friend. They are often so much more focussed and grounded in the really important and urgent matters of this world than articles in the Church Times, which I also read every week. I also appreciate and am encouraged by the open sharing of people’s personal faith journeys and theological reflections. 

But may I ask contributors not to assume that readers will always be knowledgeable Friends, nor indeed Quakers at all. The use of acronyms is sometimes like a riddle without an answer. 

And there have been articles that challenge the reader to puzzle out what the article is about. For example, I didn’t know the topic of the Swarthmore Lecture and we weren’t told specifically what it was about until two thirds of the way through the article.

If these issues could be addressed in the editing process I feel our reading experience would be much enhanced. But thank you for a great read already!

Kevin Skippon

A capital affair

The recent comment about using an upper case ‘D’ for the Deaf community (20 September) has reminded me of something Geoffrey Bowes said, with a smile, many years ago: ‘I discourage my staff (at Friends House) from using capitals for anything other than God and Recording Clerk’.

Times change; it is good to hear about different ways that we can express ourselves through the written word.

John Geale

Peace News

I am one of the board members of Peace News Trustees (PNT) that have had to deal with the devious and manipulative behaviour of the former staff of Peace News (PN) for more years than I care to remember (‘Staff at Peace News resign’, 20 September). The tension between PNT and PN staff has been ongoing for over a decade – it is not ‘a tidal wave’ that suddenly manifested itself. 

At its core, the dispute has been about the refusal of PN staff and their board to share any insight with PNT regarding their plans for the future of the publication.

As trustees we came to the reluctant conclusion that we could not continue to fund a subsidiary company whose members refused to share even the most basic info about their future plans. 

We placed the choice before the staff and their board: agree to an appropriate level of accountability or we will cut the funding. They made their choice. They resigned their posts.

It should be made clear that, by resigning, the staff forfeited their redundancy rights. While working their agreed period of notice they proceeded to break a shared understanding that the dispute should be kept ‘in-house’, and published what I consider to be a scurrilous and dishonest narrative full of unfounded personal attacks on the integrity and motivation of trustees who have all spent a lifetime as committed pacifist pursuers of peace.

I would implore anyone who has been reading about this dispute to have a look at the other side of the story at https://peacenewstrustees.my.c....

Andrew Rigby 

Evangelicals

With regard to Clive Ashwin’s article comparing Quaker and ‘evangelical’ worship (13 September), I would say that for the majority of Friends around the world, Quaker worship is evangelical worship, and they would call themselves evangelicals. The tiny little disclaimer in the fifth paragraph that things are different ‘elsewhere in the world’ hardly seems sufficient. 

I’m also not sure that modern British Quaker worship is the unaltered continuation of ‘traditional’ Quaker worship that the author seems to think it is!

Tim Rouse

Early shores

My thanks for this hugely open-hearted, thoughtful and attentive review of The Shores of Vaikus (13 September). It offered the kind of engaged reading any book of poetry would hope for.

I ought to add, apologetically, that the book won’t actually be published until 21 November, though if Dana Littlepage Smith’s fine review sparks an urge to impulse-buy, I’m sure Bloodaxe Books will take advanced orders online.

Philip Gross

Use of Meeting houses

In Bridgend we are selling our much-loved Meeting house, after nearly sixty years of worship, because of the great burden of maintenance work that falls to a few Friends, who are ageing. We shall meet in a local church hall instead. 

We have provided meeting places for worthy groups, and indeed tenancies, in our spare rooms. 

But I fear that, with regard to lettings, the ‘tail’ can ‘wag the dog’. Our first responsibility is to ourselves. 

David Harries

Quaker Tapestry

Nick Tyldesley’s article in the Friend (13 September) raises interesting questions about the Quaker Tapestry and about where we as Friends now sit with many of the subjects illustrated in it. 

Kendal & Sedbergh Area Meeting is holding an exhibition at Kendal Meeting House alongside some relevant panels from the tapestry to try to do just that – where are we now? 

How do we see our Quaker theology and lives in the twenty-first century? 

It will take place from Thursday 3 October to Saturday 5 October. Rex Ambler will speak on the theme ‘George Fox after 400 years’ at 2pm on the Saturday. 

All welcome! 

Meg Hill