In late Jan­u­ary 2004, I went to a gath­er­ing on “Quak­er Faith and Prac­tice: The Wit­ness of Our Lives and Words,” co-sponsored by the Chris­t­ian Friends Con­fer­ence and the New Foun­da­tion Fel­low­ship. Here are some thoughts about the meeting.

I heard about this con­fer­ence almost by acci­dent, from a list­ing on Quak­er­in­fo’s Chris­t­ian Renew­al page. It was hard to get details about it, as my emails to the orga­niz­ers kept get­ting lost, but final­ly I did hear back. Ses­sions included:

• The Sim­plic­i­ty of Our Wit­ness to That Which We Know Within
• The Wit­ness of Our Meet­ings, Our Lives, and Our Words
• Being a Wit­ness to Christ’s Pres­ence and Pow­er in a Time of Strife
• Liv­ing Our Wit­ness in a Sec­u­lar Age. 
• Our Wit­ness in Scrip­ture and Friends Writing

So what did I think of the conference?

I liked meet­ing the work­shop lead­ers and fel­low par­tic­i­pants. There are very sin­cere, devote Friends who are aware of the need to have the Soci­ety of Friends look more close­ly at our roots. The New Foun­da­tion Fel­low­ship has been around since the mid-70s and gath­ered around a series of Lewis Ben­son’s talks about George Fox and ear­ly Friends. They pub­lish a num­ber of inter­est­ing books and pam­phlets. The Chris­t­ian Friends Con­fer­ence is rel­a­tive­ly new and I nev­er found how quite how it dif­fered from NFF: there was so much over­lap between the two groups that that it was hard for this out­sider to fig­ure out the difference. 

I felt very wel­comed, espe­cial­ly by the event orga­niz­er (who went out of her way to attend to my strange veg­an diet). The week­end’s agen­da was upend­ed at the last moment by the absence of NFF orga­niz­er Ter­ry Wal­lace, who was too ill to come.

Many of the ses­sions were on the intel­lec­tu­al side – pre­pared speech­es read from notes. I sus­pect this is the lega­cy of Lewis Ben­son, who was very much a pres­ence at the con­fer­ence even though he died over fif­teen years ago. I missed the kind of mys­ti­cal, don’t-speak-unless-led spir­it of old qui­etist con­ser­v­a­tives and the extend­ed wor­ship ses­sions that are becom­ing pop­u­lar with post-liberal con­ser­v­a­tive Friends. Some­where between these extremes there’s a bal­ance and I won­dered if NFF could reach the larg­er audi­ence it deserves with just this lec­ture format.

Size, aka there are more Chris­t­ian Friends than this:
The first impres­sion was how small the gath­er­ing was. I sus­pect­ed this would be the case when I saw so lit­tle pub­lic­i­ty. As the week­end came near, I men­tioned it to a few Philadelphia-area Chris­t­ian Friends, who were sur­prised to hear that such an event was hap­pen­ing. Most ses­sions had about eight peo­ple and maybe two dozen or so Friends cir­cu­lat­ed through dur­ing the week­end. Most of the par­tic­i­pants already knew each oth­er and were mem­bers of New Foun­da­tion Fel­low­ship and/or Ohio Year­ly Meet­ing (Con­ser­v­a­tive).

This was kind of a shame. With almost 12,000 mem­bers, there are cer­tain­ly more Chris­tians embed­ded in Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing than there are in New Foun­da­tion Fel­low­ship and Ohio Year­ly Meet­ing com­bined. This kind of a con­fer­ence could have eas­i­ly attract­ed more peo­ple than this. Many small Quak­er orga­ni­za­tions act more as sup­port groups for a core group of peo­ple who share inter­ests and a desire to see each oth­er reg­u­lar­ly (I’ve joined these kinds of groups in the past, mis­tak­en­ly think­ing they would get excit­ed if they real­ized how many peo­ple they could attract with only a lit­tle out­reach). I don’t know if this was the dynam­ic with NFF/CFC but no one seemed to be too con­cerned at the small turnout or lim­it­ed pub­lic­i­ty in Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing. The NFF nev­er put this event up on their web­site cal­en­dar and the CFC does­n’t even have a web­site, which has become a cru­cial out­reach tool for any small, geographically-dispersed new ini­tia­tive that wants to reach its intend­ed audience.

Divides and Reach­ing Across:
I also felt sort of sad for the self-imposed divide going on here. In between ses­sions, Seth Hin­shaw, clerk of Ohio Year­ly Meet­ing, asked me about FGC and then asked each of the oth­er peo­ple there at the time if they had ever been to the FGC Gath­er­ing. Almost none had. I know the Gath­er­ing can be a depress­ing place for a Chris­t­ian Friend, but if you want to go fish­ing for new dis­ci­ples, there’s noth­ing like it. Just the pres­ence of ground­ed tra­di­tion­al­ist Friends at the Gath­er­ing does a lot to dis­pel stereo­types and gen­er­ate good will. 

When Jack Smith (Ohio YM, CFC) gave his spiel on the Chris­t­ian Friends Con­fer­ence, it sound­ed very much in the same spir­it as FGC’s Trav­el­ing Min­istries Pro­gram. There’s a shared impulse to look anew at tra­di­tions and to make the time to tell sto­ries with one anoth­er, one on one, in an authen­tic shar­ing sprit. Call this the spirt of the age and label it post-liberal, emer­gent church, what­ev­er – there is a lot more kin­ship here than we think and a lot of oppor­tu­ni­ties to go beyond our cir­cles to con­nect with others.

Geo­graph­i­cal­ly Scat­tered Meetings:
From con­ver­sa­tions and read­ing the Ohio Year­ly Meet­ing minute book I learned more about a very geo­graph­i­cal­ly diverse meet­ing–Rock­ing­ham Friends. Although there’s a phys­i­cal town in Vir­ginia after which it’s named, only a few mem­bers of the meet­ing actu­al­ly live near­by. The great major­i­ty live across the coun­try and around the world, made up of Quak­er Chris­t­ian Friends hold­ing dual mem­ber­ship in a local year­ly meet­ing and in Rock­ing­ham. I’ve had won­der­ful fel­low­ship in the Spir­it with the Rock­ing­ham Friends I’ve met (I spent some time with the Lon­don cohort last Spring). While many meet­ings have long-distance mem­bers on the books (it’s not uncom­mon to find a Philadelphia-area meet­ing that claims hun­dreds of mem­bers but only has a few dozen peo­ple on First Day), Rock­ing­ham Friends out­side Vir­ginia seem to val­ue and affirm their “affil­i­ate membership”:http://www.ohioyearlymeeting.org/discipline.htm#Affiliate (link to the Ohio book of dis­ci­pline). It would be fas­ci­nat­ing to hear more about how busi­ness meet­ing works and to under­stand the impulse and ben­e­fits of being part of a geographically-diverse meet­ing like this.

I find it fas­ci­nat­ing that the most socially-conservative year­ly meet­ing in the U.S. would have one of the most ground-breaking con­cept of mem­ber­ship. Per­haps it’s part of an evolv­ing twenty-first cen­tu­ry mod­el. Many peo­ple with­in the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends and in the larg­er reli­gious world have a clos­er sense of iden­ti­ty with an intentionally-defined iden­ti­ty group than they do with their local meet­ing. Per­haps the most live­ly, spirit-led exam­ple in the Quak­er world had its mid-winter gath­er­ing in the same Burling­ton meet­ing­house a few weeks lat­er: FLGBTQC, Friends for Les­bian, Gay, Bisex­u­al, Trans­gen­der, and Queer Con­cerns. I did­n’t attend but all reports were that it was a much big­ger gath­er­ing. (I can also guar­an­tee that there were more Chris­t­ian Quak­ers in the meet­ing­house that week­end, an irony that deserves some chew­ing over some­time in the future).

Final Thoughts:
I’d cer­tain­ly go again. There was some very good, thought-provoking con­ver­sa­tions there. Is this the spring­board of a Chris­t­ian renew­al that will sweep through­out all branch­es of the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends? Well, prob­a­bly not. But it is anoth­er rivulet mak­ing its way into the future and a inter­est­ing group to go pad­dling down­stream with on a week­end in January.