Not a surprise: Wilmington Yearly Meeting (western Ohio and Tennessee) is splintering along familiar lines:
The separations stem from a disagreement over whether same-sex weddings are to be permitted in member churches, or as they are often called in the Quaker tradition, meetings. The churches leaving WYM regard same-sex marriage as against the will of God.
It looks like many of the more Evangelical churches are the ones pulling out of the yearly meeting. The lines of controversy are similar to recent separations in Indiana and North Carolina Yearly Meetings. The big-tent center of Midwestern FUM Friends seems to be pretty permanently fractured.
https://www.wnewsj.com/news/78939/several-churches-leave-wilmington-yearly-meeting-over-same-sex-marriage
Hi Martin ~
While the article focused on the division in WYM (which has taken more than 20 years to reach the point of separation), this year’s Wilmington yearly meeting was conducted in a spirit of love and poignant hope.
I would like to encourage those who read the newspaper article to also read the fine epistle written by Dan Kasztelan and Julie Rudd.
https://wilmingtonyearlymeeting.org/index.php/epistles/85 – 2018-epistle