Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) Richmond, VA

BYM Faith & Practice review: ad hoc Committee report to RFM

by WebPost | Dec 17, 2014 | Adult Spiritual Education, Baltimore Yearly Meeting, Minuted Decisions, Worship

Editor’s Note: The following report was accepted at business meeting on 16 November, 2014.

Following 2013 Baltimore Yearly Meeting (BYM) annual session, Richmond Friends Meeting (RFM) learned that the BYM Faith & Practice draft was not approved and the committee was laid down until a new committee could be formed.  RFM felt a responsibility to look at the 2013 Faith & Practice draft and provide feedback to BYM.  The Clerk of Meeting, Barbara Hulburt, created an ad hoc committee in First Month 2014, to look deeply at F&P and report back to business meeting.  The committee met five times over the year.

The committee felt the reading and reflection on F&P was spiritually deep and rewarding. We read each section of Faith and Practice with the following queries as our guides: How does this speak to me?  How do I think this speaks to my meeting?

Overall, we feel a deep respect and gratitude to the Friends who worked for 10 years to bring this draft to us all.  We appreciate the breadth and depth of the undertaking.  There is much that resonates with us as a group, we felt the Vision Statement’s use of the many metaphors for Quaker Spirituality inclusive and welcoming.  We also liked several sections: Simplicity, Aging, Integrity and Listening.  We liked the inclusive wording and appreciated the diversity in the Voices sections.  The queries that are deeper and open-ended engaged our hearts and minds (versus the yes-no queries).

It reads as if different sections have different authors with different perspectives. Careful editing might smooth out these differences while not eliminating the varying thoughts and experiences. We also found some sections, like Education, were too wordy and too theistic.

We were particularly sensitive to the discussions and the advices and queries that speak of “God’s will” and “worshipping God together,” and “Quaker beliefs.”   As these wordings embrace a spiritual perspective that implies an exterior God directing things and a Christo-centric creed, non-theists experience discomfort and may be led to feel like second-class Quakers.  For guidance in re-writing and editorial work, we would refer to page 149 which states: “Baltimore Yearly Meeting is without binding creed.  Its beliefs are based on its Judeo-Christian heritage and adherence to the Spirit of Christ, the inward Light, the Divine Seed, and That of God in everyone.

At this point of our exploration we recommend the continued editing of the F&P.  We do not want the essence of Quakerism diluted, but ask for language that is authentic and meaningful to the diverse spectrum of Quakers today. We feel there are many expressions that are satisfying to theists and nontheists alike, such as Inner Light, Inner Teacher, that of God in everyone, Spirit-led, and others. We feel that inclusive language does not require the removal of God, Christo-centric voices and Biblical passages from F&P, but we do feel that it should not contain language that makes some Friends feel excluded. When these terms are used, the context should be that of the inward teacher, the inner light, etc. When used that way, they become interpretable to all of us.

We provide the following examples to show our thought process. A section that troubled the RFM ad-hoc committee was the marriage section and BYM’s definition of marriage, “Marriage, as understood by Friends, is a relationship involving two individuals, God, and the religious community that witnesses, recognizes and supports it.”  We offer this in its stead, “Marriage, as understood by Friends, is a Spirit-led relationship involving two individuals and the Friends’ community that witnesses, recognizes, and supports it.”

We understand that Faith and Practice becomes a snap-shot of a time & place of our corporate spiritual journey, and that it will never be perfect or finished.  We ask that as the new committee convenes, they hold the following query, found in the Diversity section on page, 71, as its guide: “Are we willing to be in communion with each other, open to our differences yet secure in the one Spirit that calls us all to be Friends?”  We are confident that the Friends of BYM can create a document of greater integrity and right relationship.

Richmond Friends Meeting

BYM Faith & Practice ad hoc Committee

Bob Alexander

Diane Bowden

Tracey Cain

Bronwyn Hughes

Don Miller

Elizabeth Smith