Over on my design blog I’ve just posted an article, Banking on reputations, which looks at how the websites for high-profile cultural institutions are often built without regard to natural web publicity – there’s no focus on net culture or search engine visibility. The sites do get visited, but only because of the reputation of the institution itself. My guess is that people go to them for very specific functions (looking up a phone number, ordering tickets, etc.). I finish by asking the question, “Are the audiences of high brow institutions so full of hip young audiences that they can steer clear of web-centric marketing?”
I won’t belabor the point, but I wonder if something similar is happening within Friends. It’s kind of weird that only two people have commented on Johan Maurer’s blog post about Baltimore Yearly Meeting’s report on Friends United Meeting. Johan’s post may well be the only place where online discussion about this particular report is available. I gave a plug for it and it was the most popular link from QuakerQuaker, so I know people are seeing it. The larger issue is dealt with elsewhere (Bill Samuel has a particularly useful resource page) but Johan’s piece seems to be getting a big yawn.
It’s been superseded as the most popular QuakerQuaker link by a lighthearted call for an International Talk Like a Quaker Day put up by a Livejournal blogger. It’s fun but it’s about as serious as you might expect. It’s getting picked up on a number of blogs, has more links than Johan’s piece and at current count has thirteen commenters. I think it’s a great way to poke a little fun of ourselves and think about outreach and I’m happy to link to it but I have to think there’s a lesson in its popularity vis-a-vis Johan’s post.
Here’s the inevitable question: do most Quakers just not care about Friends United Meeting or Baltimore Yearly Meeting, about a modern day culture clash that is but a few degrees from boiling over into full-scale institutional schism? For all my bravado I’m as much an institutional Quaker as anyone else. I care about our denominational politics but do others, and do they really?
Yearly meeting sessions and more entertainment-focused Quaker gatherings are lucky if they get three to five percent attendance. The governing body of my yearly meeting is made up of about one percent of its membership; add a percent or two or three and you have how many people actually pay any kind of attention to it or to yearly meeting politics. A few years ago a Quaker publisher commissioned a prominent Friend to write an update to liberal Friends’ most widely read introductory book and she mangled the whole thing (down to a totally made-up acronym for FWCC) and no one noticed till after publication – even insiders don’t care about most of this!
Are the bulk of most contemporary Friends post-institutional? The percentage of Friends involved in the work of our religious bodies has perhaps always been small, but the divide seems more striking now that the internet is providing competition. The big Quaker institutions skate on being recognized as official bodies but if their participation rate is low, their recognition factor small, and their ability to influence the Quaker culture therefore minimal, then are they really so important? After six years of marriage I can hear my wife’s question as a Quaker-turned-Catholic: where does the religious authority of these bodies come from? As someone who sees the world through a sociological/historical perspective, my question is complementary but somewhat different: if so few people care, then is there authority? The only time I see Friends close to tears over any of this is when
a schism might mean the loss of control over a beloved school or campground – factor out
the sentimental factor and what’s left?
I don’t think a diminishing influence is a positive trend, but it won’t go away if we bury our heads in the sand (or in committees). How are today’s generation of Friends going to deal with changing cultural forces that are threatening to undermine our current practices? And how might we use the new opportunities to advance the Quaker message and Christ’s agenda?
I read Johan’s piece and the report from the BYM representatives, one of whom I’ve even met before. I was glad to read it, one of the things I appreciate about Quaker blogs is the window into other Quaker institutions, the points of view that I might never have heard from before. But I didn’t have anything helpful to add to the discussion. I’m conscious of not being a member of any of the institutions under consideration. It felt more right to just read and listen and learn. BECAUSE this is serious business.
My own yearly meeting sessions get about 1/4 of the membership in attendance. Which is still a minority, but it’s a significant portion. If you got 1/4 of the Catholics in our region together, it would be enormous, because they start with a way bigger pool. What percentage of Catholics are involved in the leadership of their religion? Just to be feisty.
But I think you’re right to worry that the large institutions don’t have much authority. Our YM is wrestling with that. What is the point of having a YM? What are the benefits? And how do they compare to the costs? And WE’RE NOT COMING UP WITH ANY REAL ANSWERS! This is scary to me.
Is the leadership weak because the institutions are weak, or vice versa? I don’t know which came first. But it’s been a long time in the making, and in the next generation or so, we either have to fish or cut bait.
(On reading this over, I especially like the subtle christian reference to fishing of ‘men’.)
At the same time that I write this, I believe that the urge to “cut bait” and start over, elsewhere, to give up on Quakerism, is a temptation of evil in our hearts. Is that too dramatic a way to say it? It is not where God is leading me, and it would be wrong.
“It’s kind of weird that only two people have commented on Johan Maurer’s blog post about Baltimore Yearly Meeting’s report on Friends United Meeting.”
Make that three people, Martin. I just added a comment of my own to it.
But I take your point. I, too, have been musing on the popularity of the link to Johan’s blog contrasted with the paucity of comment.
However, I’m wondering if the dearth of comment might be due to the fact that only two FUM board members are also active members of the Quaker blogging community – Will T and myself. And it’s the BYM reps’ fellow board members who can speak to their report.
In general, I have been unclear what my role is in commenting on the blogs as a current board member. When am I (1) Carol, when am I (2) one of the three people representing New York Yearly Meeting, and when am I (3) a member of the FUM governing board? (Never mind. We are all three Ranters now.)
However, in this case I was prepared to supply information that would correct an error of fact in the BYM representatives’ report.
Well, I read Johan’s post with interest. I’m not qualified to comment — my Yearly Meeting doesn’t belong to FGC let alone FUM. So, it’s kinda like eavesdropping.
And, Johan is in a far better position than I to explain and review anything to do with FUM. Lacking firsthand perspective to make informed comments, I just lurk!
Martin,
I didn’t comment on the FUM schism because we are not members of FUM. But your point is well taken. There are lots of Friends who read Quakerquaker who are in YM associated with FUM. Perhaps they don’t care.
If they don’t care then those larger bodies really don’t have any authority. They might have a little power over budgets and such, but whatever authority they have depends on people caring about what they say.
Traditionally the structure of Quakerism is local. Individual members are members of monthly meetings. In those monthly meetings some Friends are recognized as weighty and their views are respected. Ideally the weightiness of a Friend is solely a function of what they say and do in the monthly meeting. Less than ideally it is a function of how many Quaker relatives they have, the committees they have served on, their education, how liberal their politics etc. But when the meeting is in gospel order individuals can recognize real spiritual depth. Ideally the weighty Friends faithfully attend the Yearly Meeting sessions and participate in the business. They then serve as the communication link between the monthly and yearly meeting levels.
I do feel that NCYM‑C operates this way generally and for the most part. We can do so because the YM is small – just eight monthly meetings and a couple worship groups. Perhaps some of the Yearly Meetings are just too large for gospel order to be maintained. I have never been part of another YM so I can’t say from personal experience, but some of the stories that I hear from other Friends suggests to me that most YM are just too large to be spiritually responsive and responsible. With size comes bureaucracy and that is often a bad thing.
I am fairly new to quakerism and based in the UK have a different view. I read a number of quaker blogs and the debates and arguments are helpful to me to see the different perspectives of quakers but feel distant from the passion that some people express about the disputes — I guess other people might feel the same. So I will continue to read but am unlikely to comment.
Love the day idea — am off to set up a facebook group for it!
do most Quakers just not care about Friends United Meeting or Baltimore Yearly Meeting, about a modern day culture clash that is but a few degrees from boiling over into full-scale institution schism?
I am writing article for Friends Journal I close with these words…
“My experience is many new seekers are searching for a faith community that is practical and prophetic and not separate form living and religion in life.
A faith of radical hospitality that welcomes all God’s people,
rooted in shared values and nourish in a common heritage”.
Maybe we could start a big organization to fix this?
Seriously, the “influence” of any organization depends on affiliation with & agreement with its position by individuals. If we aren’t going to devote excessive effort to the propaganda game – which is both corrupt and stacked against us – the value of larger bodies is mainly in collecting a critical spiritual mass for mutual education & inspiration. We connect with individual humans mainly at a local level; that’s where we’ll reach people if we’re going to. Everything we do online, while it can reach people intellectually, even move them, will mainly be seen by people in the context of entertainment. (Not an intrinsic problem with medium, but certainly a widespread problem with the culture.)
I think what you’re calling “more entertainment-focused Quaker gatherings” may be closer to our most essential “business” than the Biggest Possible Meeting’s passage of any number of fine “minutes.” Because the movement is first of all about connecting to the Spirit we need to guide our efforts – or to even let us see the need for them. And that’s right down at member-level!
I care about schism.
I care about schism because we were called to be a people, “which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God,” 1 Peter 2:10, whom George Fox and other early Friends referred to as “the people of God in scorn called Quakers,” called to be “of one mind, having compassion of one another” (1 Peter 3:8). By the way, I use these scripture quotes not because I think scripture per se bears any authority among Friends today, but because these passages speak for the witness in my own heart, and I’m hoping for the witness in my readers’ hearts also. But we’ve failed to live up to our calling and be a people. No, we don’t shoot at each other with bullets, like Catholics and Protestants have done, or Sunnis and Shiites are doing in Iraq today, but something in us has failed — love? faith? mutual interest? truthfulness? — and our backs are now turned on one another. I’m not angry with anyone in particular about this; I’m just deeply sorrowful. I guess I wanted to believe in our calling to be a people, and our collective will to be one.
“It is by your love for one another that everyone will recognize you as my disciples,” Jesus is recorded as saying (John 13:35, NJB). Turn that around and you’ll see that by our lack of love for one another we’ll be recognized as no Religious Society of Friends at all, but just a bunch of subtly competing splinter groups that each like to trade on the name “Quaker.” Unless we can turn that degenerative process around. And I think we can.
The saddest thing I saw in the BYM document about FUM was the statement “we’re not a united yearly meeting, but a consolidated one.” Well, my own yearly meeting, NYYM, is one of those consolidated ones, too, but God has lately enabled us to unite on some very precious things — notably a “Minute on Eco-Spirituality and Action” that finally, at last, calls humanity’s war against the earth a war against the earth and calls on Friends to disengage from it. There’s no good reason why a consolidated meeting can’t also be a united meeting!
I’m praying that North America’s consolidated meetings will stay at the FUM table long enough for the anti-homosexual Friends from Africa and elsewhere to get to know and love some of the gay, lesbian, etc. Quaker saints I know and love, and also for them, and more liberal Friends generally, to get to know and love the more socially conservative African Friends — who also include saints. There’s no telling what kinds of understandings can be reached when we care enough about the pain felt by the other side.
I tend to lump this question with the broader question of how do we pass what’s important to us to the next generation?
The institutions we identify with are collections of the connections we’ve made and the values we try to live by. It’s the “Society” in the Religious Society of Friends. When people realized they weren’t the last generation on earth, they made it important to pass along what insights and advantages they had collected, so they built these organizations to carry it along.
Personally, I’m interested in how that process continues from generation to generation, how freedoms and radical insights have been maintained in the “autonomous space” that Friends found for themselves. So I do care about the schisms, even 8 – 10 generations ago. I assume that each side had their own insights and advantages that were important to them, and the organizations they supported were unable to accommodate everyone together.
A favorite bible passage comes to mind: “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” (Matthew 6:19 – 21)
In practice it’s not easy. We don’t want to deprive our children of what we have found important.
I think there’s a cultural shift, however, which makes it harder overall to maintain institutional continuity, and that’s part of what you’re pointing to. It’s not just the “next” generation that’s asleep at the wheel, but our own.
I am person of few words usually…all that comes to mind in regards to uniting is ‘hate the sin, not the sinner’…