Friends in North Pacific Yearly Meeting are considering affiliation with Friends General Conference. To do so it would be the first time that this yearly meeting has identified itself with one or another of the existing domains into which the Society is divided.
The fascinating history of how it came to be a defining characteristic of this yearly meeting to be non-affiliated is too complicated to go into, here. It is enough here to say that this came to be and that there was a reason for this that should be considered in this process.
The forerunner of North Pacific Yearly Meeting, the College Park Association of San Jose, California, was intentionally organized not as a meeting but as a California corporation. Setting themselves aside from the recently created divisions and domains within in the Society, and describing themselves as an independent and unified body, Joel and Hanna Bean, and those gathered with them, intentionally refused to recognize the legitimacy of these divisions. They lived in the hope (in the sense of that word that is a synonym with "expectation") that these divisions, bitterly pried open among Friends over less than 100 years by remarkably "un-Quakerly" behavior one to the other, would be closed and Friends would again be united in a single Society. Open to correspondence with all domains, they identified themselves with none of these above any of the others.
At least at first, College Park had no members, as I understand it, but was a gathering of those whose membership in the Society was grounded in monthly (or quarterly) meetings in those other domains. Those who attended, whether by conviction or by the necessity occasioned by the spiritual isolation consequential to their westward migration, did not jeopardize their standing in their Orthodox, Conservative, Hicksite or Evangelical Friends meetings by worshiping at College Park--all were welcome in a gathering that was not a part of any of these domains.
Eschewing organizational affiliation (while maintaining individual affiliations) was part of the re-unifying vision of those who founded College Park Association of Friends and it remains a part of that same vision to some in North Pacific Yearly Meeting, today. Any single domain pursuing re-unification is seen as trying to displace the others and absorb them, trying to "win" the doctrinal struggle rather than overcome it, entirely.
That complicates the question of affiliation, today, for some in North Pacific Yearly Meeting.
Some believe that the connections that have forged, gradually, patiently, with some Friends in other domains of the Society, who were similarly led to reach beyond their own hedges, will be strained if, by affiliation, our yearly meeting lays down it's "neutrality" and appears to settle, officially, into one domain or another. It is that stated independence, these Friends believe, that makes it possible to straddle the divides, so to speak, until they close beneath our feet.
Perhaps these Friends are mistaken. Perhaps affiliation will not change the actually identity of this yearly meeting, in its own eyes or those of the Society, at large.
After all, it my impression that, charitably, fewer that 1 in 10 among us has any idea of why North Pacific Yearly Meeting is unaffiliated today and how this lack of affiliation is (or was) an intentional "peculiarity" (in the sense of "being set aside for a particular purpose") of this gathering. It cannot be said that standing aside from identification and the vision of a re-unified Society is uppermost (or anywhere, for that matter) in the minds of Friends today.
Those among us anxious to affiliate believe, insofar as they are even aware of this historical peculiarity, that North Pacific Yearly Meeting has already settled firmly into what is called the "Liberal" domain and that the vision of a reunified Society is as unimportant as it is un-understood among us. Frankly, many in this yearly meeting are not at all inclined to find unity with Friends in (at least some) of the other domains of which they have a rather dim understanding, one at least as dim as that of those in those other domains have of us. Many of us are as self satisfied in our divided condition as most other Quakers seem to be.
Then, too, development of College Park Association of Friends, and of the congregations that grew up in the West and associated with it, into Pacific Yearly Meeting and then into North Pacific and Inter Mountain Yearly Meetings may well have gradually amounted to the establishing of a whole new domain within the Society. Holding to waiting worship--as opposed to the programmed worship that predominated on this side of the Continental Divide at the close of the 19th Century--those of us who came after Joel and Hanna Bean have definitely morphed into gatherings made up of Friends difficult to distinguish from some of those in the East identified as Liberal. I attend meetings in the East frequently enough to know how similar we are and many among us, here, are surprised to learn, if ever they do, that those at the roots of our yearly meeting actually held an Orthodox, not a Hicksite, faith and practice.
If all that is so, is the "independent" and "unified" nature of our yearly meeting little more than a largely un understood fiction?
Did the very act of becoming a yearly meeting (something those we claim as our "founders" intentionally did not do) actually amount to stepping off of the "neutral" ground upon which they stood?
Does North Pacific Yearly Meeting still carry the Beanite leading to welcome all Friends, regardless of their doctrinal beliefs, and in so doing keep alive the expectation of a re-unified Society? Or are we open to only Liberals, now--whatever the many things that label appears to mean among us. Are we uninterested in the challenges involved in coming to terms with our history of bitter division and are we satisfied with our prospects within an exclusivistic future? It does appear that for us, like so many Friends today, the direct transforming experience of Christ/Spirit/Light is not a strong enough commonality to hold us together in the face of differing rationalistic, propositional beliefs and doctrines.
So, are we easy that our character and orientation in North Pacific Yearly Meeting, as individuals and a gathering, is today fundamentally different from those of our dimly understood "founders" in that it does not hold up unity among Friends as a vision? Are we confident going forward with our sense that the Beans were heroes of "toleration" (which many tend to translate as "anything goes" so long as it comes in the guise of our own image) and that the fractured condition of the Society presents no problem for us?
By affiliating with Friends General Conference (or any of the "umbrella groups" or "gospel orders" that exist in the Society) are we endorsing and validating the divisions among Friends and settling into a home in one of those domains, or have we already done that such that affiliation would be little more than a recognition of the reality of our condition?
This is, as we discuss and seek the leading of the Light about the benefits and costs of affiliation, something we should at least listen for in our seeking. Notwithstanding the possibility that the vision of independence and unity that we inherited, and the policy based on it, might seem "obsolete," it is also possible that this vision is actually just stuck away in the attic of our Quaker consciousness where few of us have ever come across it, let alone been contended with as to its implications for our integrity, our community, or sense of equality and harmony--as well as the future of the Society.
There was a reason, then, that those who came before us recognized in this independence a leading the Light had for them. Rachel Hicks--although not among them--expressed their mourning and their motivation. She eloquently lamented the way Friends had rendered themselves largely impotent to affect the condition of the world because of the outcomes of the bickering over belief that would take, from the time of her writing, two decades run itself out and leave Friends divided and alienated from one another.
"And now, as I write this, after years of reflection and observation of the effect of promulgating opinions and doctrines not essential in themselves, especially on the mission of Christ in that prepared body, I am confirmed in the belief that it tends to unprofitable discussion and controversy, and often to alienation of love for one another...and [that] we should have remained a united people of great influence in the gathering of nations to the peaceable kingdom of Him who was ushered into the world with the anthem, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will to men!
Rachel Hicks
"Memoir"
(New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1880) p. 39
How long will the Society of Friends last in this divided condition? Can any claim that, except where it exists as a certain strain of Protestantism (and lives by the credo on the mast head of a 19th Century newspaper, "Christian First, Quaker Second"), the Society has a dynamic a presence in the world? (Actually, of course, that masthead meant "Protestant First, Quaker Second.")
Are we comfortably living out, in our self satisfied way, the legacy of, as it is written, those who divided a house and maintain it in such a condition?
Perhaps our general ignorance of what "independence" and "unified" was about is an indication that the Light is not showing Friends that leading toward unity, any more--new light and all that.
Perhaps, on the other hand, the endurance of that leading toward unity in the hearts of some (in and outside our yearly meeting) is an indication that darkness, as it is also written, may temporarily blot out much of the Light, but never completely displaces it.
It seems unlikely to me that Friends in North Pacific Yearly Meeting share the vision of unity that independence was intended to foster. I would just ask whether, in laying that vision down, we might at least mention it in passing, understanding it and intentionally leave it behind.
It is sometimes difficult for me to understand how the process of spiritual transformation that almost every Quaker I meet says is at the heart of our faith and practice could really lead a gathered people into such a fractured and inconsequential condition.
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Thursday, December 09, 2010
Marginalizing Myself Even More
I have recently been in correspondence with a Friend that was begun with some comments I made to a group that penned a proposed Minute on Overpopulation for the consideration of North Pacific Yearly Meeting. This is an excerpt of that correspondence:
I did not forget your note, I have been thinking about it and bringing it to my worship, not having, until now, time to respond. Your note has given me an opportunity to go pretty deep into my own heart about not only this particular issue but the issue of issues, in the first place. Something has been working in me about all this for a good long time and I am beginning to be able to articulate some of that in a manner that is less reactionary.
So, this is not an answer to your note, so much, and certainly not a refutation of what you wrote, so much as it is thoughts it has brought to me in its contemplation.
Perhaps what I mean by all that will be made more clear by what I write below. Perhaps it will not. I don't have a conclusion, here, and it may be time for me to be quiet--aside from sharing thoughts (as opposed to conclusions) and listening to others on this deeper question (rather than trying to guide).
I do question dubbing "restoring the earth and establishing just societies" as a "Quaker vision." I suspect I am even questioning the whole idea of a "Quaker vision," frankly, and what we do with those things we so identify. All that may be the aquifer to which this particular spring of dissent of mine can be traced.
I was unaware that this phrase is a quotation from the FCNL mission statement, but knowing it now does not convince me that this imprimatur elevates it to the height it occupies in the minute. Does such a mission statement, or a confession of faith, or any such thing from any particular Quaker organization or individual define a vision as being "Quaker" for ideological or theological purposes? After all, in response to what Rachel Maddow calls the "Kill the Gays Bill," the clerk of Uganda Yearly Meeting made a statement about homosexuals deserving death, quoting the book of Romans, but that can hardly be said to be a Quaker vision. Yes, yes, he back-tracked on that, saying he meant spiritual death, but that doesn't make it better, does it? Throwing the Quaker blanket over this (or any other) horse and then mounting it to stalk the political landscape has become disquieting to me. This Ugandan statement--and even similar statements from some American Friends organizations and yearly meetings vis a vis same sex marriage and LGBTQ civil rights--is probably the most stark example of why I am so uncomfortable with political organizing done under the rubric of a Quaker vision or Christian vision or Islamic vision as I get older.
There are lots of "Quaker visions" that are really just visions of things/issues that some Quakers have quite apart from their "Quakerism." I am an Oregon Duck fan. A national championship in football: a Quaker vision? It's pretty hard sometimes, to keep thinking like that from slapping me around.
It is perhaps why I am so uncomfortable when, promoting current issues with which I am engaged, I am so quick to liken myself to the tiny minority of Friends it appears to me "made our bone" or "established our brand" for me when they tried to protect Native People against the swindling and violent incursions of Europeans, by helping slaves escape and bringing succor to starving Germans after the First World War. It is humbling to realize that I--and most of us--would not, my own thoughts to the contrary notwithstanding, have gone to these lengths I so admire. I--we--certainly are not going to those lengths in regard to most of the things about which we write minutes for the edification of Friends and those beyond our sparse hedge.
I think it's fine and wonderful to organize and engage in political activism (I do it frequently and, on the whole, find it edifying) but I am not sure, now, why it's important to play the Quaker Card in doing so. How different is this than people saying things like Jesus would oppose abortion or gay rights or outlawing plastic grocery bags?
If we live in a self governing republic, or a democracy for that matter, don't we make our political case on reason rather than appeals to authority, including the ultimate authority? Do we need to sit on the rhetorical phone book of "Quakerism" to make ourselves taller at the political round table? Is that consistent with the equality that eschewed titles of nobility and gave more weight to the interests of those of birth and wealth? How does saying a vision is a Quaker vision add to its legitimacy?
I am also troubled by the (almost?) universal outcome, through history and as I have seen events unfold in my own life, that when people haul their religions and their churches into the political arena the political process ends up having far more influence on those religions and those churches than these have upon the political process. How about the irony of those American flags in the corner of so many church sanctuaries? How much apostasy does it take to suggest that the "wall of separation" actually protects the church more than it protects the state?
I realize that I am almost completely turned around here, that my grousing over they years about our minutes looking like they came from the Democrats or the Greens instead of from a "Quaker" perspective seems, now, like a glass door into which, due its transparency, I have just walked--upon which my now bleeding nose has left a big smudge. That may be, or it might not be.
Perhaps by overstatement I can explain this uneasiness of mine: when I hear about "peace and social concerns" (especially recalling that once it was called "peace and social order") too often it seems to me that what I am hearing springs from political ideology someone has brought into the meeting house so as to rebrand it as a Quaker testimony and lend it whatever gloss the rebranding confers. Perhaps it's an uncharitable overstatement to imply that it's a conscious act of deception, calling it rebranding it. Perhaps I mean to say it's as I described above--the difficulty of separating what God has brought to me and what I am bringing to God for approval and legitimacy out there in the red and blue states.
Could it be that it's not the tone of these minutes, over the years, that has sounded discordant to me, but that the very fact of us writing them, the reasons we do it, makes me uncomfortable because it seems, to me, to be an abuse of our spirituality?
Friends did not begin by trying to make the world over--they began by trying to make themselves (or be made) over and to convince others to come along and be made over by Christ in the same way. They did not begin with the notion of ending war in the world but with the reality of keeping themselves out of wars (national and personal). They did not begin with trying to liberate the slaves, so much, from slavery as to liberate themselves from the corrosion of their own conditions caused by their part in it.
I pride myself (and I mean that term in the sense of the source of the haughty look that precedes a fall--as one of the 7 deadlies) on not evangelizing but I define that term to mean not exhorting others to copy my theological take. I do try to remake the world and the lives of others right and left in what I take (again, pridefully) to be my own image and somehow I think I are not evangelizing. Who says that this minute on over population is not evangelizing? Of course it is. By endorsing it I am urging people to come to the "Jesus" of recycling, limiting population growth and all the other things listed as conforming to the testimony of Earth Care. And this is a Jesus I don't even worship in a worthy way. This is especially true when I say that environmental activism is sacramental, that by recycling and all the rest I am being conformed to Christ by "restoring" the Earth. Beams? Motes?
Does this mean I don't want to pursue these worthy ends? No.
But when I think about referring to all this as "sacramental" then I cannot escape the conclusion that is this the dreaded evangelism that I feel so smug about eschewing as I pass people on Pioneer Square asking where I will spend eternity. Samey-same. Face it, NPYM Friends, we evangelize.
Since the first time I heard the idea of a Testimony of Earth Care I have wondered whether everything it encompasses is not already included in the testimonies we hold up (be they four or five) in North Pacific Yearly Meeting. My own moss-backed view is that the movement to elevate environmentalism to this level might grow from a misunderstanding--or perhaps a simple redefinition (to be less inflammatory) of what a testimony is, or was. I know that the tide is running strongly to view testimonies as values toward which we ought to strive as opposed to outcomes that are apparent in our lives due to our transformation in the Light. I should probably just accept that and shut up (there are so many things I should probably just accept and shut up about) but to transform the meaning of testimonies in this way is one of the most obvious way in which Friends seem to be following the Unitarians into a "spirituality of rationality"--a worship of the human mind and of rationalism, a spirituality without spirit. (and I am not describing non-theism.) It's all just so...so...Protestant.
Sigh. I've done enough annoying rambling on for one morning. Please know I am not trying to hurt or make fun of you or of anyone or belittle anyone's efforts. Please. This all just comes from an uneasiness about all of these things that has grown in me over the years and now, for better or worse, seems to be pour out of me, unbidden and, frankly, unwelcome.
I did not forget your note, I have been thinking about it and bringing it to my worship, not having, until now, time to respond. Your note has given me an opportunity to go pretty deep into my own heart about not only this particular issue but the issue of issues, in the first place. Something has been working in me about all this for a good long time and I am beginning to be able to articulate some of that in a manner that is less reactionary.
So, this is not an answer to your note, so much, and certainly not a refutation of what you wrote, so much as it is thoughts it has brought to me in its contemplation.
Perhaps what I mean by all that will be made more clear by what I write below. Perhaps it will not. I don't have a conclusion, here, and it may be time for me to be quiet--aside from sharing thoughts (as opposed to conclusions) and listening to others on this deeper question (rather than trying to guide).
I do question dubbing "restoring the earth and establishing just societies" as a "Quaker vision." I suspect I am even questioning the whole idea of a "Quaker vision," frankly, and what we do with those things we so identify. All that may be the aquifer to which this particular spring of dissent of mine can be traced.
I was unaware that this phrase is a quotation from the FCNL mission statement, but knowing it now does not convince me that this imprimatur elevates it to the height it occupies in the minute. Does such a mission statement, or a confession of faith, or any such thing from any particular Quaker organization or individual define a vision as being "Quaker" for ideological or theological purposes? After all, in response to what Rachel Maddow calls the "Kill the Gays Bill," the clerk of Uganda Yearly Meeting made a statement about homosexuals deserving death, quoting the book of Romans, but that can hardly be said to be a Quaker vision. Yes, yes, he back-tracked on that, saying he meant spiritual death, but that doesn't make it better, does it? Throwing the Quaker blanket over this (or any other) horse and then mounting it to stalk the political landscape has become disquieting to me. This Ugandan statement--and even similar statements from some American Friends organizations and yearly meetings vis a vis same sex marriage and LGBTQ civil rights--is probably the most stark example of why I am so uncomfortable with political organizing done under the rubric of a Quaker vision or Christian vision or Islamic vision as I get older.
There are lots of "Quaker visions" that are really just visions of things/issues that some Quakers have quite apart from their "Quakerism." I am an Oregon Duck fan. A national championship in football: a Quaker vision? It's pretty hard sometimes, to keep thinking like that from slapping me around.
It is perhaps why I am so uncomfortable when, promoting current issues with which I am engaged, I am so quick to liken myself to the tiny minority of Friends it appears to me "made our bone" or "established our brand" for me when they tried to protect Native People against the swindling and violent incursions of Europeans, by helping slaves escape and bringing succor to starving Germans after the First World War. It is humbling to realize that I--and most of us--would not, my own thoughts to the contrary notwithstanding, have gone to these lengths I so admire. I--we--certainly are not going to those lengths in regard to most of the things about which we write minutes for the edification of Friends and those beyond our sparse hedge.
I think it's fine and wonderful to organize and engage in political activism (I do it frequently and, on the whole, find it edifying) but I am not sure, now, why it's important to play the Quaker Card in doing so. How different is this than people saying things like Jesus would oppose abortion or gay rights or outlawing plastic grocery bags?
If we live in a self governing republic, or a democracy for that matter, don't we make our political case on reason rather than appeals to authority, including the ultimate authority? Do we need to sit on the rhetorical phone book of "Quakerism" to make ourselves taller at the political round table? Is that consistent with the equality that eschewed titles of nobility and gave more weight to the interests of those of birth and wealth? How does saying a vision is a Quaker vision add to its legitimacy?
I am also troubled by the (almost?) universal outcome, through history and as I have seen events unfold in my own life, that when people haul their religions and their churches into the political arena the political process ends up having far more influence on those religions and those churches than these have upon the political process. How about the irony of those American flags in the corner of so many church sanctuaries? How much apostasy does it take to suggest that the "wall of separation" actually protects the church more than it protects the state?
I realize that I am almost completely turned around here, that my grousing over they years about our minutes looking like they came from the Democrats or the Greens instead of from a "Quaker" perspective seems, now, like a glass door into which, due its transparency, I have just walked--upon which my now bleeding nose has left a big smudge. That may be, or it might not be.
Perhaps by overstatement I can explain this uneasiness of mine: when I hear about "peace and social concerns" (especially recalling that once it was called "peace and social order") too often it seems to me that what I am hearing springs from political ideology someone has brought into the meeting house so as to rebrand it as a Quaker testimony and lend it whatever gloss the rebranding confers. Perhaps it's an uncharitable overstatement to imply that it's a conscious act of deception, calling it rebranding it. Perhaps I mean to say it's as I described above--the difficulty of separating what God has brought to me and what I am bringing to God for approval and legitimacy out there in the red and blue states.
Could it be that it's not the tone of these minutes, over the years, that has sounded discordant to me, but that the very fact of us writing them, the reasons we do it, makes me uncomfortable because it seems, to me, to be an abuse of our spirituality?
Friends did not begin by trying to make the world over--they began by trying to make themselves (or be made) over and to convince others to come along and be made over by Christ in the same way. They did not begin with the notion of ending war in the world but with the reality of keeping themselves out of wars (national and personal). They did not begin with trying to liberate the slaves, so much, from slavery as to liberate themselves from the corrosion of their own conditions caused by their part in it.
I pride myself (and I mean that term in the sense of the source of the haughty look that precedes a fall--as one of the 7 deadlies) on not evangelizing but I define that term to mean not exhorting others to copy my theological take. I do try to remake the world and the lives of others right and left in what I take (again, pridefully) to be my own image and somehow I think I are not evangelizing. Who says that this minute on over population is not evangelizing? Of course it is. By endorsing it I am urging people to come to the "Jesus" of recycling, limiting population growth and all the other things listed as conforming to the testimony of Earth Care. And this is a Jesus I don't even worship in a worthy way. This is especially true when I say that environmental activism is sacramental, that by recycling and all the rest I am being conformed to Christ by "restoring" the Earth. Beams? Motes?
Does this mean I don't want to pursue these worthy ends? No.
But when I think about referring to all this as "sacramental" then I cannot escape the conclusion that is this the dreaded evangelism that I feel so smug about eschewing as I pass people on Pioneer Square asking where I will spend eternity. Samey-same. Face it, NPYM Friends, we evangelize.
Since the first time I heard the idea of a Testimony of Earth Care I have wondered whether everything it encompasses is not already included in the testimonies we hold up (be they four or five) in North Pacific Yearly Meeting. My own moss-backed view is that the movement to elevate environmentalism to this level might grow from a misunderstanding--or perhaps a simple redefinition (to be less inflammatory) of what a testimony is, or was. I know that the tide is running strongly to view testimonies as values toward which we ought to strive as opposed to outcomes that are apparent in our lives due to our transformation in the Light. I should probably just accept that and shut up (there are so many things I should probably just accept and shut up about) but to transform the meaning of testimonies in this way is one of the most obvious way in which Friends seem to be following the Unitarians into a "spirituality of rationality"--a worship of the human mind and of rationalism, a spirituality without spirit. (and I am not describing non-theism.) It's all just so...so...Protestant.
Sigh. I've done enough annoying rambling on for one morning. Please know I am not trying to hurt or make fun of you or of anyone or belittle anyone's efforts. Please. This all just comes from an uneasiness about all of these things that has grown in me over the years and now, for better or worse, seems to be pour out of me, unbidden and, frankly, unwelcome.
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