oppose Christian evangelism programs and other forms of religious proselytizing

(6) Quaker Theology Group

Nathan Shroyer shared a post.

28 December 2019 at 02:07

How to become a non mission driven universality

Marginal Mennonite Society

27 December 2019 at 04:07

The monthly posting of the Declaration of Mennonites for the Preservation of Religious Diversity:

We are Mennonites who oppose Christian evangelism programs and other forms of religious proselytizing. Sharing one’s journey with an interested inquirer is fine, as long as the initiative comes from the inquirer and efforts to proselytize are off the table. But it is unethical, in our view, to approach folks who haven’t solicited your input and try to get them to trade in their religion for yours. We ask missionaries this question: How would you feel if people from other religions moved into your neighborhoods and tried to convert you and your children?

We love human diversity and seek to preserve it. We think the world would be poorer if all adherents of other religions were converted to Christianity. Therefore, we reject mission boards and mission agencies, no matter how well-meaning they claim to be. “Charity work” performed under the banner of “missions” always has proselytization as part of its agenda, and therefore is not true charity at all. “Mission work” under the banner of “charity” is more insidious, because it amounts to proselytization by subterfuge. Sending “teachers” to Asia who are really missionaries-in-disguise is shady churchwork.

We contend that proselytizing non-Christians was not part of the original Anabaptist program. When the Anabaptists went out and invited people to join their movement, they were addressing fellow members of the Catholic community. Their goal was to radicalize fellow Christians, not to convert Jews or Turks or other outsiders. Most Anabaptists were advocates of religious liberty for everyone. Felix Manz, for example, said people of other faiths should be left undisturbed to practice as they saw fit. While Anabaptists were seeking freedom of belief and freedom of association for themselves, they believed non-Christians should be able to enjoy those freedoms as well.

We are universalists. In our view, everyone who has ever lived gets a seat at the celestial banquet table. We reject the notion of a vengeful deity. We do so using the reasoning powers that God gave us. For us the concept of eternal punishment is irrational. How can pacifists believe in a God who would torture her own children? How could any empathetic person enjoy the afterlife knowing friends and family are in torment? We assert, with Anabaptist leader Hans Denck, that compassion and mercy are God’s defining attributes. Any teachings or texts that contradict these attributes carry no weight with us.

We reject the authenticity of the so-called “Great Commission.” We just don’t think Jesus said it, because:

1. Statements attributed to the post-crucifixion Jesus must be called into question, for obvious reasons. Every version of the Commission in the gospels was supposedly uttered by him after coming back from the dead.
2. The global scope of the Commission is contradicted by Jesus’s instructions in Matthew 10:5-6 to steer clear of Gentiles. The activities of the historical Jesus did not extend beyond Israel.
3. In Mark, the Commission is found in the “Marcan appendix” (16:9-20), which wasn’t part of the original version of Mark. In other words, the earliest version of the earliest gospel did not contain the Commission.
4. Jesus’s brother James (head of the Jesus community in Jerusalem) didn’t know about a mandate to reach Gentiles. If Jesus told the disciples to “make followers of all nations,” wouldn’t his brother know about it? Sure he would. Thus, the impulse behind the Commission didn’t come from Jesus, but from the early churches.

We are people who’ve come to know and love folks from many paths: Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Jain, Sufi, Native American, and more. We recognize the common qualities that make religions more alike than different: compassion, mercy, empathy, humility, forgiveness, generosity, etc. These qualities, no matter where they’re found, emanate from the same place: The Source of All Truth and Beauty in the Universe.

Therefore, we call on Christian missionaries to:

1. Renounce the doctrine of eternal punishment as inconsistent with God’s mercy and compassion.

2. Change their mandate from “conversion of the masses” to “the preservation of mass diversity.”
3. Make amends to people harmed by missionizing practices, including “missionary kids.”
4. Send representatives around the globe to investigate the truth and beauty in other religions, and bring new insights back for the edification of folks at home. Without proselytizing.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

A publication of the Marginal Mennonite Society Tract & Propaganda Department. Last revised December 25, 2019. Written by Charlie Kraybill, MMS Page Administrator.


46You, Margaret Bywater, Hank Fay and 43 others
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Barbara Richardson-Todd Me too. I am a quaker but find much in these too



Doug Hamilton This is Quakerly in its way and very profound. Thanks for sharing this.
“We are Mennonites who oppose Christian evangelism programs and other forms of religious proselytizing.”




Nathan Shroyer We just may consider sharing how Way has been opened for our faith when we were invited and interchanged with our testimony of community and equality. If we also are truly in Simplicity, Integrity, and Peaceful existence it’s true that a creation based in Christ may rise from these good ideas and right sharing

Jesus, the Christ, and I | Through the Flaming Sword

Jesus, the Christ, and I | Through the Flaming Sword

Jesus, the Christ, and I

May 26, 2017 § 4 Comments

Why a thread on Jesus, the Christ, and I?

This series is my testimony regarding Jesus, the Christ, and Jesus Christ, what I know from my own experience, what I choose as a matter of experimental faith, and how I choose to act in my religious life based on my experience. I separate Jesus, the Christ, and Jesus Christ because for me they are separate. I have experienced them differently and thus I think of them differently.

I have been struggling with these relationships since my freshmen year at college in 1965. My struggle has both intensified and clarified since I started writing this blog. Writing has always been an integral and dominant aspect of my spiritual life: I find myself writing about what’s going on for me spiritually and I find myself turned back toward the Light by what it reveals as I write.

More specifically, though, in this blog I find that almost every thread I follow leads me in to the Christ. Almost every Quaker problem or concern I consider seems to have our relationship with the Christ at its heart, or at least, as a radiating epicenter of pressing unanswered questions. I have come to believe that, for liberal, post-Christian Friends, at least, these relationships—with Jesus, the Christ, and Jesus Christ—deserve a level of attention, discernment, and integrity that we do not give them, and that this negligence has become a stumbling block.

Maybe I’m just projecting. I know that I need to sort these relationships out, so here I am in this blog. I feel this need because I believe that the Religious Society of Friends is a Christian movement, and I am not a Christian by any of the five definitions I’ve felt compelled to identify, save perhaps one. So what am I doing here?

As a matter of integrity, I feel I must conduct myself as a guest in the house that Christ built. I am so grateful that I have a place here, but I am clear that Christ belongs in the master bedroom, not out on the living room couch, or in some outbuilding, where so many meetings have put him.

I feel we are a Christian movement for a lot of reasons—historical, demographic, in terms of Quaker discernment—which I won’t go into here. But the most important reason is that, according to the testimony of Friends who were there, we were gathered as a people of God by Jesus Christ. I cannot in good faith, or with integrity, gainsay their testimony. For me, that changes everything. I accept their testimony as truth.

So I feel led to offer my own testimony.

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• Forrest Curo

  May 26, 2017 at 12:06 pm

  There’s one chair-there in dark or light, sat-in or looked-at or crashed-into — all the various ways of experiencing and thinking about it.

  We can sort such differences fairly easily in the case of physical things.

  With the transcendent realities we can only grope through Grace and metaphor, still the urge gets overwhelming to wrestle those metaphors into coherence. & sometimes, as with simple mathematics, we can identify some of the problems with this as solved, not-solveable, or dunno types.

  I really want to know what you’ll come up with, but it may just be ‘best-approximation-for-us’ — and utterly requires the Grace in working things out. Practical question: How much do we need to re-sort in the interest of keeping us-Friends honest?

  Reply
• Steven Davison

  May 26, 2017 at 10:57 am

  I’m not really sure you know who my crowd is, William.

  But who says I can’t listen with my heart AND think with my brain? I’m not saying this is what you’re saying, but I have encountered quite often a subtle (and often not so subtle) anti-intellectualism among Friends, which seems to think that the life of the mind cannot be a dimension of the life of the spirit, even though many of the great mystics in history have been writers, as well.

  This impulse seems akin to the one that is eager to claim that we have no creed, by which some Friends seem to mean that we have no doctrine (a word that, like discipline, has only four letters, it seems). We do, in fact, have something to say (doctrine); we just don’t make a belief system a condition of membership, which is the function of a creed, or have a formally codified set of beliefs, which is the content of a creed. Our non-creedalism is a matter of practice, not of faith.

  But I am a Quaker theologian, unapologetically. And thus definitions matter to me. I’m not trying to force my definitions on anyone else. But I do feel led to share them, sometimes. Moreover, I try very hard to ground my definitions in my experience rather than in some legacy belief system or even on scripture. My definition of God, for instance, is the Mystery Reality behind our religious experience, whatever that experience is.

  I do appreciate your reminder to stay centered in the heart, though. This whole thread will be a revealing of my heart.

  Reply
• John Jeremiah Edminster

  May 26, 2017 at 10:02 am

  Thank you for this, Steve! May His light guide your explorations and make them helpful to many of your readers, including, I hope, myself.

  Just yesterday I found a copy of Maurice A. Creasey’s 1956 doctoral dissertation, _Early Quaker Christology, with Special Reference to the Teaching and Significance of Isaac Penington, 1616-1679_, where I found an early Quaker statement that just stopped me cold. George Bishop, writing in 1665 about the Light of Christ in our conscience that shows us our “fallen” (ignorant, selfish passion-driven, unforgiving, fearful, sin-prone) state, argues that it can’t be part of our own natural reason, because “…Nor can nature that is in the fall, shew nature that is in the fall…. For darkness cannot shew darkness.”

  I would add: Neither can this guilt-wracked soul persuade itself that its sins are forgiven, and that it has been healed of what drove it to sin in the first place. I can, of course, call it my Higher Power, or the Buddha-mind, that saw my darkness and washed me clean, but _why not_ Christ Jesus?

  Reply
• William F Rushby

  May 26, 2017 at 8:56 am

  Steven: you hang out with a very cerebral crowd. My advice; stop worrying about definitions, and listen more to the witness of your heart!!

  Reply
• 
  

The Sociology of Collective Religious Experience | Through the Flaming Sword

The Sociology of Collective Religious Experience | Through the Flaming Sword
The Sociology of Collective Religious Experience

November 4, 2017 § 5 Comments

Jesus, the Christ, and I—Part 9

In a previous post, written quite awhile ago now, I gave the first of four reasons why I think we should name our collective religious experience as the spirit of Christ. That was a negative reason: that the more diverse theologically and the more uncomfortable we have become with our traditional Christian identity, the more diluted our worship has become.

I have more to say about this, about whether our worship really has become more shallow and how theological diversity might have that effect, but it’s not seasoned enough yet. In this post, I want to explore the sociology of our collective religious experience. For collective religious experience is intensely social even while it is ineffably transcendental.

By “collective religious experience”, I mean the gathered meeting, primarily, plus those instances of profound vocal ministry that brings a meeting into divine communion, and the other extraordinary psychic experiences that arise in the practice of the Quaker way. I believe that coherence in our collective understanding, a shared framework for understanding and a shared vocabulary—or lack of it—has a real effect on the quality of our worship.

The group dynamics and psychology of a religious community act both as “drivers” behind its experience and as part of the discernment by which the community seeks to understand the experience that it does have.

The chain of our tradition is long and the links are strong. In Christian scripture, Jesus promised to send the Holy Spirit (in several places in the gospel of John) and to be present whenever two or three are gathered (Matthew 18). Then, according to the testimony of our forbears, the promise was fulfilled in the experience of the early Friends, beginning 1600 years after those promises and continuing as revelation for another three centuries and more of our history as a people of God. Jesus’ promise and fulfillment established a foundation of faith upon which many Friends have built their religious lives. That faith, and its fulfillment in continuing revelation, fosters what we now call continuing revelation.

But our tradition does not just encourage our collective religious experience; it also explains it. It gives us a framework for understanding our experience and for talking about it, amongst ourselves, to our children, to newcomers. For more than 300 years we have said that we were gathered together in Christ. In fact, the tradition gave us our very identity: “You are my friends, if you do whatsoever I command you. . . I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard of the Father I have made known unto you.” (John 14:14, 15)

Or it used to explain our experience. Until sometime around the middle of the twentieth century. Now, we in the liberal tradition don’t really have an explanation. And I suspect we don’t have the support for such experience that the tradition used to give us, either.

Nothing illustrates how the tradition comes into play after collective transcendental experience more powerfully than the resurrection experiences recounted in Christian scripture, of which there are ten or so accounts, depending on how many stories you consider accounts of the same appearance by different evangelists.

In all but two of the resurrection stories, the people to whom the risen Christ appears do not recognize him or they have their doubts about what’s going on. Some cases are extremely challenging. How, for instance, could Mary Magdelene, Jesus’s closest disciple, fail to recognize him in the garden until he says her name (John’s gospel)? How could those two fellows on the road to Emmaus walk with Jesus himself for several hours while talking to him about his own crucifixion and the rumors of his appearances, and still only recognize him after they have arrived at their destination and broken bread together?

The answer is in the breaking of bread, that is, in the communal meal inaugurated at the Last Supper. We know that this meal was the central practice of Jesus’ movement. Jesus’s followers would gather at someone’s house, share a meal, hear catechetical teaching, pray and worship together, and distribute food and resources to the poor among them (Acts 2:42).

Here’s my point: Some of Jesus’ followers were having visions of Jesus after his death, but the meaning of those visions had to be worked out collectively over time, and this took place in the context of the “daily bread”, the daily meal. Put another way, Jesus did not come to these friends and disciples with his name tag on. It wasn’t obvious what they were experiencing. They had to discern together what was happening to them.

The resurrection experiences of the disciples are directly pertinent to my suggestion that we name the spirit of Christ as the center of our gathering. Even at the very roots of our religious tradition, doubt and confusion prevailed, and community discernment was needed to arrive at a conclusion.

Likewise, in our gathered meetings today, it is not immediately apparent what is going on; it is only obvious that something is going on. In the past, our collective discernment has concluded that we were being gathered in the spirit of Christ.

Now, however, the bathwater, the deep and rich tradition in which we have been steeped for three hundred and fifty years, has been thrown out the window. Is it any wonder that we now we look around and find that the baby is gone, also, that we wonder why we so seldom experience the gathered meeting?

Now, doubt, confusion, and most egregiously, disinterest dominate our collective (lack of) discernment about what is happening in the gathered meeting. When it happens, the worship has a center or we wouldn’t be gathered, but we have no way to articulate what that center is. We have no framework, no vocabulary with which to speak to each other, or to our children, or to newcomers about what we have experienced. As a result, we don’t speak about it much. Furthermore, we have no context, no cohesive religious ecosystem for nurturing the experience.

Now, as I’ve said in earlier posts, I myself have no direct experience of Jesus Christ at the center of the gathered meeting. In this I am like a lot of Friends in the liberal tradition. But I am not really talking about Jesus Christ as conventional Christianity understands him, that is, as a spiritual entity who was the Jesus of Christian scripture, who was crucified, dead, and buried and rose again according to the creed. I am speaking of the spirit of Christ—that mysterious experience of awakening, joy, comfort, and renewal that the two men on the road to Emmaus experienced—after they had been taught who had come into their midst.

My name for that spirit in which we are gathered in our collective religious experience as Friends is the spirit of Christ. For me, the relation of that spirit to the man who walked the roads of Galilee is a matter for speculation rather than one of direct revelation. And that’s enough for me, though I love the study, thought, and imagination that such speculation requires.

For me, the spirit of Christ is more than just a placeholder for whatever might be going on in our collective religious experience, though it is that. It is another link, made of faith, in the chain of our tradition, one that I refuse to break simply because I am still on the road to Emmaus and have not yet broken bread with Jesus as the Christ.

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Tagged: liberal Quakerism, sociology, The gathered meeting, worship
§ 5 Responses to The Sociology of Collective Religious Experience
patradallmann
November 8, 2017 at 10:34 am

Steve, I laud your desire to put Christ back into the center of Quaker faith, but without Christ present among us (or at least a deep, Seekers-like hunger for a foundation for life, manifesting as fervent love of truth) our meetings could at best be an environment in which an individual’s inward discovery of Christ could be confirmed, and, in that case, our meetings would not be much different from what now’s available in any other “Christian” church. You left out the essential phrase in Mt. 18:20: “For where two or three are gathered together IN MY NAME, there am I in the midst of them.” A gathering that is not in Jesus’s name, that is to say, not in Jesus’s power and life, is not a gathering in which he is in the midst of them.

I say your theory of the need for communal discernment in order to recognize Jesus in these stories isn’t a valid one. Most clearly, the theory is undermined by the story in John 21 of Mary Magdalene, alone at the tomb, exclaiming “Rabboni” in recognition. Each story in which disciples fail to recognize Christ has a particular lesson; they aren’t all the same. In the same chapter, the disciples only recognize Jesus when they see his wounds. My essay “The Gift of Scriptures” looks at these recognition stories, each having its own lesson. https://patradallmann.wordpress.com/2016/04/20/the-gift-of-scriptures/ And the road to Emmaus story gives yet a different lesson, which I’ve not written about.

The common thread throughout these failure-to-recognize stories is that recognition, when it comes, is strong and immediate, not mulled over and put together by communal effort, as you have said. Recognition is immediate and individual, as for the ones at Emmaus: “And their eyes were opened, and they knew him” (Lk. 24:31). Each having his own eyes opened, each knew him; it’s individual.

The following passage from Matthew 24 denies that conferring with others about where Christ is to be found is a useful activity. Instead, the recognition is immediate, the Son of man is seen, i.e., recognized, like one sees a lightening flash.

Wherefore if they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in the desert; go not forth: behold, he is in the secret chambers; believe it not. For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be (26-27).
Reply
treegestalt
November 8, 2017 at 1:01 pm

If “in my name” means in his spirit (Steve’s usage — ‘under his influence’ perhaps) then all branches of Friends, within our human limitations, should quality.

If the appearance stories (symbolic afterthoughts as they seem to me*) are any guide, it wasn’t only among people particularly inclined to expect or recognize him that he’d appear.

———–
* Given the fact of: “He’s back alive and showing up among us”, then as long as such appearances keep happening, “Where, when and who saw him do what?” become pretty secondary. Details become more important in their own right when people start needing to ‘prove’ it to others with doubts.
Reply
Ellis Hein
November 4, 2017 at 11:30 pm

“Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.” (John 6:53) “This is my body, which is given for you…” (Luke 22:19) “The flesh profits nothing, the words I have spoken/am speaking to you, these are breath, these are life.” (My rendition of John 6:63) Are you thirsty, come to the water of life. But you cannot buy a drink. Are you hungry, come to the living bread. But it is not for sale. These are to be had for no money or price. “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread and for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me and eat that which is good. Delight your soul in fatness” of listening to every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord. (See Isaiah 55:1-3, and Deut. 8:3)

These scripture passages have come running through my head. They are a call to life that only comes by hearing the voice of Jesus, the Christ, who is the Word of God. Do you stumble at the door? They are a call to partake of the sustenance that sustains life. You cannot listen while words of argument fill your mind. These words are a call to lay aside all the garments you have stitched together to hide your nakedness. Come and receive the garment of the breath of the living God. Will you remain in hiding, oh children of Adam and Eve? Turn from the broken cisterns you have dug and come to the spring of living water that bubbles up. Come to the teacher who will instruct you in the way of righteousness, that you may be cleansed from dead works to serve the living God in the newness of life.
Reply
treegestalt
November 4, 2017 at 5:15 pm

The word ‘spirit’ gets used for at least two related things: as the Spirit that lives as our consciousness/awareness and as a mood/style/personality-flavor/way characteristic of a particular person, group, organization, piece-of-music, place, artwork, etc…

So I generally find Friends’ Meetings to be typically ‘in the spirit of Christ’ in that second sense. Whether or not members itch when they hear the word “Christian”, they tend to be drawn toward, and to exemplify, that mode of being.

But “the Spirit of Christ” in that first sense refers to “the Spirit of God” as a consciousness embodied (imperfectly) in us all, “our” consciousness (only utterly transcending our local embodiment of it) — “the image of God” aka “the breath of God” as I’ve felt for a long time.

That’s what puts the juice in that nice Quaker flavoring… and we don’t get to tell ‘That’ when or how to come or go. It’s always ‘here’ for each-and-every-here; but the challenge (how to put this?!) is to let ourselves be knowingly ‘with’ it — not just to experience a meal but to let ourselves be nourished by the food that “is” the Whole Holy, regardless of what we and That are bringing to each other at the time.

What we have to contribute will be changed by this. But as R.B. put it, that’s not the object. For us and That to be with each other, that matters.
Reply
Sam Kennet
November 4, 2017 at 2:45 pm

Amen. Your last paragraph would make a good summary of your blog and is certainly the reason I come here to read your words. Solidarity on that road… Thank you.
Reply

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Membership — in a Yearly Meeting? | Through the Flaming Sword

Membership — in a Yearly Meeting? | Through the Flaming Sword

Membership — in a Yearly Meeting?

July 31, 2018 § 6 Comments

A young adult f/Friend that I know and some of her friends (not sure how many of them have the capital F) are considering asking New York Yearly Meeting to give them membership. (Technically in my friend’s case, I suppose, she would be asking for a transfer of membership, since she’s already a member of a monthly meeting by birth.)

My initial reaction was negative. But then I began thinking about it and now I’m not so sure.

From the point of view of her monthly meeting, on the surface it looks like a loss. But in fact, they have already lost her. So that’s a “0”.

From the point of view of the yearly meeting, it would essentially be recording what is already a reality, that she treats the yearly meeting as a surrogate meeting already, and is quite active in its life. In addition, it would theoretically cement deeper relationships with the other young adult friends in her cohort and support an aspect of yearly meeting life that it’s always struggled with, the place and engagement of its young adults. So I’ll call that a “+1”.

On the other hand, the yearly meeting is ill equipped to provide her with most of the “services” that monthly meetings provide. This gets to the third part of the relationship, benefits and costs to the Friend herself. So far, she has apparently not yet felt the need for the monthly meeting services I am referring to, by which I mean:

• pastoral care, including the care of a meeting for marriage, the conduct of a memorial meeting when she dies, and conduct of a clearness committee for solving a personal problem;
• spiritual formation and support, including regular worship, regular religious education, and discernment and support for a leading or ministry; and finally,
• the unique fellowship one gets from the more intimate community life of a local meeting.

To be fair, the yearly meeting does dedicate some time at each of its sessions to memorialize deceased members who have been an important part of the life of the yearly meeting, so I bet she would get that; and anyway, she won’t be around to know. And the yearly meeting does enjoy truly deep fellowship—lots of Friends who know each other well and love each other well. This, I suspect, is the reason she thinks of the yearly meeting as her surrogate meeting. So that’s a “+1”.

Furthermore, the yearly meeting could take on many of these other roles. But its resources—especially its human resources—are already stretched almost to the breaking point. I imagine that it would decline to take them on, and rightly so, in my opinion. But apparently, this Friend does not want or need those things.

For my part, without meaningful pastoral care, regular worship, spiritual nurture, and a fellowship that goes deeper than just three annual meetings could provide, what does “membership” mean? All that’s left is Quaker identity and a sense of belonging to the unique spiritual community that is New York Yearly Meeting. To me, that’s a half-baked Quaker life.

On the other hand, all the renewal movements in Quaker history have been youth movements, and their innovations have been resisted by their elders every time, and usually wrong-headedly. Fox and his cohort were themselves young adults when they got started. So were the Friends who began experimenting with programmed worship. So were the Friends who gave birth to the liberal Quaker movement around the turn of the twentieth century.

Those were all resistance movements. Those young people were unsatisfied with the status quo, couldn’t get a meaningful response to their concerns from their elders, and took matters into their own hands.

So in my next post, I want to look more carefully at what today’s young adult Friends might find so unsatisfying, think about whether this membership in a yearly meeting solves the problem, and whether something else might. Now it’s extremely presumptuous for me to speak for them, so this will just be speculation on my part, and I expect I’ll be wrong about some of it. But maybe it will spark a conversation.

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Comments on PYM Annual SessionsWith 7 comments

• Evelyn Schmitz-Hertzberg

  August 1, 2018 at 3:12 pm

  YF’s in Canada tried to have membership in Camp NeeKauNis. That did not fly. CYM however, might be an idea though it is already difficult to find people to serve on CYM

  Reply
• Janaki

  August 1, 2018 at 12:54 pm

  Have you spoken with young adult Friends in your yearly meeting? The YAFs of PYM wrote an 8-page minute of concern to the yearly meeting last year (that PYM had still not officially “received”) that might be a good starting place. I don’t get a sense of whether you’re reporting on a conversation already in progress or wanting to start a conversation; if the latter, I’d invite you to join the conversation we’ve been having.

  Reply
  • Steven Davison

    August 1, 2018 at 4:46 pm

    I’m reporting on a conversation that I think is already taking place. I’m not sure that these young adult Friends have approached the yearly meeting yet—that yearly meeting is New York Yearly Meeting.

    I would love to see the minute from PhYM YAFs. I’m not really plugged in to PhYM yet.

    Reply
    • quiestistquaker

      August 1, 2018 at 10:10 pm

      http://www.pym.org/pym-young-adult-friends-minute-concern/ is the URL for the PhYM YAF’s minute of concern from last year. I posted a bit of followup on my blog, quietistquaker.wordpress.com.

      I’ve heard a number of young adult Friends lament the ways in which we are marginalized in meetings, and that on the yearly meeting level is where we really experience beloved community. Sometimes there is capacity for pastoral care, etc; at times, there has been in PhYM, and having a dedicated coordinator really helps make that happen. When I was in Baltimore Yearly Meeting, there really wasn’t that capacity. It depends on the Friends. I know a number of YAFs who struggled to connect with a meeting but would have appreciated being able to be members of the YAF community itself. It’s interesting to me that another group that found themselves routinely marginalized in PhYM, Friends of color, have created a meeting; a number of people are members both of a PhYM meeting and of Ujima Friends Peace Center.
• Carl Abbott, Portland, OR

  August 1, 2018 at 10:55 am

  YM membership can be a point of attachment for individuals who are too mobile to sink roots deeply into a single monthly meeting. As one moves around in young adulthood, some local meetings resonate better than others, and YM affiliation can be an anchor in shifting seas.

  Reply
• Membership — in a Yearly Meeting?

  July 31, 2018 at 9:27 pm

  […] Mem­ber­ship — in a Year­ly Meet­ing? […]

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