Drawing Lines, Crossing Lines: Separations Among Friends, and Particularly in Indiana. Or: It Couldn’t Happen Here, Right?  Right??

I

boundaries-drawing linesSeveral years ago, two plain Friends from Ohio Conservative Yearly Meeting (OYM) visited North Carolina Yearly Meeting Conservative (NCYMC). I believe one of them was Seth Hinshaw, who is now their YM Clerk, along with a woman companion.

They came bearing a proposal that they wished NCYMC to receive and endorse. In it was a strong condemnation of any acceptance of homosexuality.

Based on an Adult Ed Presentation
Durham Friends Meeting 2-24-2013
Chuck Fager

Had NCYMC endorsed the proposal, the position of Durham Meeting (and not only Durham) as part of this yearly meeting would have become very difficult. Based on those views, for instance, Cleveland Meeting had already been forced out of OYM.

But nothing like that happened here. North Carolina’s Clerk rather deftly sidestepped it, in what I recall as a kind of Quaker Aikido move: the visitors were greeted and politely thanked. Their proposal was “received.” But it was not considered or even discussed; it disappeared pretty much without a trace. The two plain Friends got the message, and soon left, looking sorely chagrined and disappointed.

What those Ohio Friends were engaged in was defining and enforcing boundaries. Their YM’s boundaries excluded any favorable dealing with LGBT persons and issues, and they wanted their North Carolina brethren to do the same. But NCYMC had different boundaries, which were distinctly fuzzy, regarding gender; and this fuzziness made a place for some of their larger monthly meetings, which were quite friendly to LGBT persons and same sex unions. The North Carolina Clerk was not about to enable any demand to redraw their fuzzy boundaries in a homophobic manner, and there was no objection to her deft derailing of the Ohio proposal.

Setting and enforcing boundaries is a basic group function. As this example illustrates, Quakers do it, but not all in the same way, or along the same lines. And in our history, the way boundaries of thought and action get drawn and enforced have not only varied, they have often clashed. In some cases (too many) in our 360-year history, the outcome has been division, separation, and schism. That’s happened in many places, including North Carolina. And it is not only something from “The Olden Days”; it is also happening now.

In particular, I was recently asked by a local meeting’s Adult Ed Committee to talk about a current schism, in Indiana Yearly Meeting (IYM), a pastoral body. The conflict that produced it surfaced in 2008, after West Richmond IN Friends Meeting (near Earlham College) adopted a “Welcoming and Affirming” minute, which stated, in part: “We affirm and welcome all persons whatever their race, religious affiliation, age, socio-economic status, nationality, ethnic background, gender, sexual orientation or mental/physical ability. We offer all individuals and families, with or without children, our spiritual and practical support.” The complete minute is here: http://www.westrichmondfriends.org/affirming.htm

Some officers and pastors of Indiana Yearly Meeting, along with Friends from various other IYM Meetings, felt this statement was unacceptable for an IYM member body; in 1982, IYM (Like Ohio YM) had adopted a very negative minute about homosexuality. Thus the demand was raised that West Richmond should either withdraw the Welcoming minute or be obliged to leave Indiana YM.

West Richmond Friends declined to alter or rescind the Welcoming minute. And Last November, after four years of struggle, they along with a dozen other Meetings that were either sympathetic to or willing to tolerate West Richmond’s stance, were all forced out of IYM. Several other meetings are also leaving IYM as a result: a total of about 18 meetings of 64 in total; almost 30 per cent of the total.

Perhaps needless to say, many Friends in West Richmond and the other now-“outcast” meetings have found this four-year purge effort quite traumatic, and struggled long and hard to prevent it.

There are two questions about this conflict I want to consider. One, why were some in IYM so determined to force out West Richmond and the others? And two, can this schism in Indiana yield any insights about the wider Quaker world of today?

And maybe a third one could be shoe-horned in: Could it happen in YOUR meeting??

II

To answer the first query (why were some in Indiana Yearly Meeting so determined to force out West Richmond Meeting for welcoming LGBT folks?) let me offer a proposition, or thesis, which is this: the IYM schism is clear evidence that most American Friends groups have serious difficulty managing real diversity. Because that’s what Indiana faced leading up to this rupture. It is also what has been pretty well banished with the division.

By “real diversity,” I’m talking about diversity of culture, theology, and politics, rather than what liberal Friends usually seem to mean by the term, which is to get more “people of color” to attend and join their meetings. The latter is a worthy goal, but in my experience usually carries with it the unspoken expectation that these people of color will be pretty much like “the rest of us” culturally and religiously.

For most liberal Meetings I’m familiar with, let’s say in North Carolina, that’s a very different kind of diversity than, for instance, facing large number of newcomers who were technically “white,” but who, say, voted en masse for Romney (or Palin), love NASCAR, country & western, fervent Gospel preachers, and something called “praise music.” And who “support the troops,” the flag, the recent wars, and prefer Fox News to NPR. And who feel called to persuade all of us to accept Christ as our saviour so we won’t burn in hell. Oh — and who believe homosexuality is an abomination, because the Bible says something like that somewhere.

All these features are characteristic of a great many “white” people in North Carolina (who voted overwhelmingly in favor of a state anti-same sex constitutional amendment less than a year ago); yet my sense is that they are quite rare in the unprogrammed liberal Meetings in the state.

Amendment One supporter --- NC

But this kind of diversity is what Indiana YM had, and it gave rise to episodes of what I call “Quaker Culture Shock,” which can be very disorienting. I’ve been through it myself, and here’s part of an account by a member of West Richmond Friends, Stephanie Crumley-Effinger, who became very active in the pre-schism struggle:

“As a seeker in my early 20’s, in 1976 I discovered in West Richmond Friends a Meeting that was both clear in its Quaker Christian identity and widely welcoming of my spiritual searching, questions, and the deepening connection to Friends that had been nurtured through my years at Earlham College as a student. . . .

“I first attended annual sessions of Indiana YM in the summer of 1978. Despite my having had almost two years of involvement with West Richmond Meeting, this reunion of its extended family was foreign territory. It was fascinating, exciting, terrifying. I experienced huge theological culture shock, finding myself in a minority, feeling at sea amid the conservative majority. They resoundingly espoused evangelism and altar calls, holiness living and revival services – practices almost completely unknown to me. There were significant differences in language for religious experience, approaches to the Bible, worship style, hymns, and norms. People were expected to have a vivid testimony to a distinct salvation experience: to be able to name the place and date of their conversion to Christianity, the evangelist who was leading the service, the circumstances of becoming convicted of their sinfulness, and details of their experience of release from guilt and shame that came through their acceptance of Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.”

There’s more, but you can read it for yourself, in the current issue (#22) of the journal, “Quaker Theology,” which is available on the web.

(Quaker Culture Shock happens to evangelicals too, by the way.)

What could be called “diversity fatigue” accounts in my judgment for much of the pressure to split Indiana. It seems to break out like a fever among pastoral Friends every twenty years or so. The specific issues vary; but reading about past outbreaks often feels like deja vu.

Such schismatic drives don’t always succeed. But this time, those who wanted the purge were determined and relentless, while the West Richmond folks, more or less liberals, and accustomed to liberal passive aggressive ways including chronic conflict avoidance, stalled but didn’t really push back with any comparable resolve. I can’t hold back an editorial comment here: I think the liberals were wimps, who let themselves be pushed around, and then pushed out.

The way it happened is too long to summarize here (details are in “Quaker Theology”), but among other things it involved playing fast and loose with what many of us would think of as “Quaker process.”

And yet, even here there is real diversity. Liberals tend to think of “the sense of the meeting” as something approaching unanimity reached after the broadest possible discussion. In Indiana, the evangelical advocates held to an older view of authority in Quaker church governance, which is that the Society of Friends is really a two-tier body: Elders, recorded ministers, and pastors are the “shepherds” of the Quaker “flock” or rank and file. This “inside” group, many of whose members serve for life, holds its own meetings, and carries most if not all of the real weight in decisionmaking. In addition, local meetings are “subordinate” to yearly meetings, in a real hierarchy of power. Indiana YM retains a version of this structure, which has been strengthened by the current purge.

If this older approach sounds authoritarian and contrary to ideas of equality, it is. But it is also much, much older among Friends than the modern notion of a “Testimony of Equality,” which in fact only began appearing in our books of Faith & Practice a couple decades ago. For the first two hundred years of the Society, the two-tier hierarchical structure was the status quo.

Weight of htge Meeting - an 1828 view
What the traditional method of Quaker decisionmaking looked like to some in 1828.

This eldering/oversight role was not simply a power trip. For about ten generations, Quakerism was conceived of as a separate, “peculiar” (which in George Fox’s time meant “chosen”) people, who have been divinely endowed with a distinct identity and mission that had to be protected from many outside (and some inside) threats of corruption. And far from enshrining the individualistic ethos of today, in these earlier times it was the body, the “peculiar people” and its divinely-mandated group identity which counted above all. The elders and ministers, who sat on elevated “facing benches” in meeting, were charged with that protective oversight mission.

But ultimately, in the 1840s and 1850s, this hierarchical Quaker church structure began to be feel oppressive to many, and was directly challenged. The rebels were a group called Progressive Friends, who are little known today, but whom I believe were the direct spiritual and organizational forebears of Meetings like Durham, and bodies like FGC. The Progressives in Pennsylvania published a stunning manifesto in 1853, which is now online, and still well worth reading.

PA Progressive Friends Minute Book

In it a group of liberals actually stood up on their hind legs and said, in effect, “We’re Mad As Hell About How Quakerism Is Structured And Run – And We’re Not Gonna Take It Anymore.” (That might be the first and last time so much plain speaking ever broke out among this branch.)

III

It took the Progressives and their spiritual descendants about seventy years of struggle, but they finally prevailed, at least in the liberal branches. This is a fascinating, important story, one as yet untold in our histories; but there’s no space to tell it here. (More on how this change happened is here.)

The identity and boundaries of these liberal Quaker groups are quite distinct and well-established. But they’re also mostly non-verbal, or confined to an oral tradition, with little awareness of how they came about. (I think this is a weakness, but it’s definitely part of the group style.) These boundaries are not necessarily permanent either; Meetings tinker with them, at least at the margins. But they’re also pretty culturally homogenous.

How would such liberal Meetings manage an influx of NASCAR fans who loved Fox News, Sarah Palin, and “born-again” personal evangelism? My guess: mainly by avoiding it, or turning it aside. In one way, this approach has worked pretty well so far for the liberal meetings in North Carolina: no schisms. But it also promotes parochialism and cultural isolation. (Pick your poison?)

Occasionally I hear talk in liberal Friends circles about how it would be good to bring back key elements of the old traditional structure: some say we need to have designated elders and recorded ministers, who meet to support each other, “hold each other accountable,” etc.

Personally I’m very skeptical of this agenda as a set of boundary changes. Why? Simply: the record. One of the old structure’s biggest drawbacks, as the Progressive Friends eloquently asserted, was that it nurtured power struggles and doctrinal witchhunts. And in the US, what came out of that combination was –

Purges. Splits. Schisms. Separations. And there have been dozens more such splits in the branches which retain versions of this church structure (like Indiana, and Ohio). If something similar was resurrected in liberal unprogrammed bodies, I predict the same troubles would soon re-surface there.

I started this reflection by recalling the two Friends from Ohio Conservative YM, which still has that structure, visiting North Carolina Conservative YM to urge it to join its denunciation of any affirmation of homosexuals; that is to say, to redraw our boundaries. Such a redrawing was certainly possible: on paper, at least, NCYMC still maintains the old two-tier structure. But as the Clerk’s response to the OYM incursion showed, NCYMC’s officials are much too prudent to go down that road– for which I say, thank goodness.

But there are definite rumblings along these lines in the other, larger North Carolina YM, the one with pastors and churches. Its membership is much more representative of the bulk of the state’s indigenous white majority, and I worry that the Indiana virus could spread there too.

I’ve been following the Indiana situation, and others like it, pretty closely for several years. In the journal “Quaker Theology,” we’ve already published five reports about the Indiana split, going back to 2010. All of them are online, at www.quaker.org/quest

What will be the outcome of the Indiana split? I don’t know the future, but the record of history marks a clear path: among the many similar schisms in the programmed groups, one outcome has been a steady decline in membership and attendance, which has been happening in Indiana as well. So it does not seem to work well as a “church growth strategy.” Similarly, over the past century, it has not proved to be an effective preventive of further splits, when the periodic fever rises again.

A California Friend, Geoff Kaiser, has produced a large chart that visually summarizes and comments on North American Quaker history in one large oversized page. In the chart’s 2011 edition, as part of the corner devoted to the evangelical branch, he has inserted a blank square which is marked as reserved to record future schisms there, which he fully expects to occur before 2020. And as if on cue, Indiana YM has corroborated his barbed prediction.

Kaiser: Saving space for future evangelical splits

It makes you wonder: who will be next?

“Quaker Theology” online: www.quaker.org/quest

Chuck Fager

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