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Hello Friends!!! We are a Quaker fellowship located in Fancy Gap,VA in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains. This is a picture of us at a recent gathering. And no, it’s not a church picnic, its a regular worship service. We meet at someone’s house or public place like a park because a church is not a building, its people who are committed to loving God and loving one another. Someone asked Jesus once what the greatest commandment was, and this was his answer, ” love God and love your fellow man. If we could all learn to do that, most of the problems in the world today would be solved. Again, welcome. Wander around as much as you like. We hope that you find something here that brightens your day or brings you a little closer to the loving Father who created us all. Shalom.
Food For Thought… A PLEA FOR UNITY
Several months ago the superintendents of five member meetings of Friends United Meeting sent a letter to the clerk stating that there was basically too much diversity among FUM member meetings, and that they were finding it increasingly difficult to do the work required of them as FUM board members due to the ongoing discussions about issues around which they could not find unity. Some of these issues have been around for a very long time such as the authority of Scripture versus the leading of the Spirit, or the idea of the continuing revelation of God versus the idea that there is no further revelation other than what has already been revealed through the Scriptures.
Quakers have lived with these differences and tensions for a long time. A new one that seems to be at the heart of the current struggles has to do with the hiring policy of Friends United Meeting. While the policy clearly says the organization does not discriminate based on sexual orientation, it also says that FUM only hires individuals in monogamous, hetrosexual relationships. No matter which side of this issue people find themselves on, we need to be constantly aware that the love of God and his plans for the Society of Friends are bigger than any controversy we have faced in the past, are facing now, or will face in the future. In unity with that belief, we have drafted the following response which we would invited Friends everywhere to carefully and prayerfully consider.
Our Response to the letter from Five Superintendents to Friends United Meeting
A Plea for Unity
While we appreciate the frustration some of our superintendents are feeling that was expressed very clearly in their letter to Friends United Meeting, we have a somewhat different perspective on the situation. Although those involved are saying this letter was not intended as a call for further division among Friends, we are already hearing rumors that one of the Yearly Meetings whose superintendent signed this letter is on the verge of breaking up and dividing. In addition to our concerns over the content of this letter, we are also disturbed by the representation it appears to be making. While everyone is entitled to their own beliefs or convictions, there is a difference in signing a letter as the superintendent of an organization and as an individual. The use of the title seems to imply that the individual is speaking for the organization rather than expressing his or her personal views. We were most appreciative of John Porter’s (North Carolina Yearly Meeting -FUM superintendent) addressing this issue during Yearly Meeting sessions and stating that he signed the letter personally and that it was not intended and should not be taken as being representative of North Carolina Yearly Meeting. We wonder whether or not the other signers of the letter have clearly made the same distinction.
We do not feel that this letter represents a direction in which Friends should be moving, and believe very strongly that this is a time when all Friends should renew their efforts for unity and reconciliation, not just in our own Yearly Meetings, or among the member meetings of Friends United Meeting, but throughout all the various branches of the Society. There are a number of valid reasons why we believe this is the most prudent course of action at this time.
For a religious group that is supposed to be about peace and reconciliation, we have a very clouded history, marked with bitter divisions and splits. And each time this has happened, we have lost something of who we are. We have become evangelical/social justice or programmed/unprogrammed, and then had the audacity to act like our particular group is the only one upon whom the mantle of early Quakerism fell, that we are the “real Quakers” and all other groups who claim the same name are something less than that. The truth is all of us together are the bearers of that mantle, but none of us in pure whether we come at it from the left or the right. All our various branches have incorporated ideas and practices into our own faith tradition that we have borrowed from others. And we have all found the place under the mantle that is most comfortable for us, whether it is working for peace and social justice or feeding the hungry or preaching the gospel message. All of these are part of the message and ministry of Friends. We often fail to see the good groups other than our own are doing because we tend to focus on one part of the Quaker message, sometimes to the point of ignoring the others. But that does not makes us more right, or better Quakers than another group who has a different emphasis. As Paul told the church at Corinth, the body has many parts, the foot and the hand both belong to that body but they function in different ways. So it is with the Society of Friends.
Along side this come two other issues, integrity and credibility. It is very difficult for people outside the Society of Friends to accept all our talk about the possibilities for peace and reconciliation throughout the world when we are not been able to practice it effectively with our own fellow Quakers. No matter how “right” someone believes they are, when it leads to drawing lines in the sand and further division, the entire Society of Friends suffers as does our witness to the world as reconcilers and peace makers.
There is also the very practical consideration of finances. Due to the current economic crisis, Quaker organizations everywhere are cutting staff and diminishing both the number and scope of the programs they offer. We are already acutely aware of FUM’s inability to provide adequate financial resources and support to ministries around the world with its present membership. If there is indeed another split, how will we continue to support those ministries that are dependent upon us? How many once strong Quaker organizations will become victims of our inability to work together?
In the last two or three years, there have been folks from all across Quakerism who have been very actively involved with convergent/emergent Friends. Last year during the FUM sessions in High Point, almost 50 Quakers from seven or eight Yearly Meetings gathered for an afternoon discussion about convergent Friends. These Friends were from a variety of Yearly Meetings -Baltimore, North Carolina, Iowa, New England, Wilmington, and Great Britain to name some of them. There was even a couple who were affiliated with Evangelical Friends. All these folks gathered for one reason. They were tired of hearing about our differences and all the things that separate us and wanted instead to explore how our common heritage as Quakers might provide opportunities for us to learn from one another, to celebrate those beliefs and practices around which we can unite, and develop mutual respect and appreciation for one another’s differences. This was of course the same triennial session in which one of our speakers, a highly respected and weighty Friend with many years of knowledge and experience with Friends, said point blank that Friends United Meeting and Friends General Conference should plan some joint sessions.
We were very encouraged by this group as well as the gathering of Young Adults that took place at Deep River last November. Once again, a group of Friends from a variety of backgrounds and places came together for a weekend of worship and sharing their faith journeys with one another. They were all there, FUM, FGC, Conservative Friends, even Beanites. A number of folks made a point of not saying from which tradition they came, feeling that their voices might be more clearly heard if they were not immediately stereotyped by a label. During the past year, even folks from our little meeting in Fancy Gap have had the chance to visit a Friends General Conference gathering and participate in a convergent workshop there as well. We have also had the opportunity to be in dialogue with Friends in Baltimore and Philadelphia and other places who are involved in worship groups like ours and have felt very supported and encouraged by these folks. We truly feel these folks are our brothers and sisters in the faith and have no reason or desire to be separated from them.
We feel very strongly that there have already been too many separations in Friends’ history. Rather than laying the groundwork for another one (as this letter from the superintendents seems to be doing, we believe the time has come for us all to follow the example of convergent Friends and focus on those things around which we can find unity rather than those which divide us. We still believe there is a great work in the world to be done by Friends, and that we can accomplish more working together than any one group of us can on our own. We would therefore ask all our Friends United Meeting representatives to commit themselves to working for unity, tolerance, and mutual respect and understanding among all our constituent Yearly Meetings.
Fancy Gap Friends Fellowship