North Carolina Yearly Meeting: On The Brink

North Carolina Yearly Meeting: On The Brink

Do you know that old saying?

“There are TWO kinds of people: Those who divide people into two kinds. And those who don’t.”

Keep it in mind. It’s a key to understanding the current Purge & Plunder campaign in North Carolina Yearly Meeting-FUM (NCYM).

This is how it works: in one camp, you have those aligned with, say, Holly Spring Meeting, which recently issued another in the spate of “Doomsday” letters regarding NCYM.  Here’s the money quote, which repeats the effort’s main theme since its emergence a year ago, that:

 “North Carolina Friends Yearly Meeting is not in unity and . . . the issues that divide us are beyond the reach of compromise.  As a result, trying to thrive and grow under the same organizational umbrella is apt to prove impossible.  As it now stands, neither side is able to vigorously pursue their respective ministries…The persistent, irreconcilable and growing division in NCYM saps us of our spiritual vitality, our emotional strength, and weakens our ability to do effective ministry on behalf of Jesus Christ. None of us benefit.” 

See? Two sides, two kinds. Never the twain shall meet. Irreconcilable. Beyond compromise. Everybody loses. Etc.

If you buy that “two-kinds” frame, then Holly Spring’s proposed solution, “a complete and total separation including finances” seems to make sense.

If you buy it.
But what if, as a description of NCYM’s reality, this frame is bogus? What if it’s a stacked deck; loaded dice. What if it’s — propaganda baloney?

Then you might want to look at the other side of the coin:
What about those in NCYM who do NOT look around and see two irreconcilable forces battling to the death? Those who have NOT divided Carolina Friends into two kinds?

Well, actually there are lots of them. And they have spoken up too.
Consider the statement by Deep River Meeting:

“We recognize there is diversity of belief and practice within the Yearly Meeting but we view this as a positive that adds to the life and strength of the Yearly Meeting.“

Or New Garden Meeting, the YM’s largest:
[W]e remain committed both to our vital presence in North Carolina Yearly Meeting of Friends (FUM) in its current or somewhat modified form and our fellowship among the worldwide community of Friends. As the host of NCYM for all but a few years from the 1790s into the late 20th century, our ties are deep and meaningful, and we will maintain them to the best of our ability. We will do so, not with a feeling of being “unequally yoked,” but as a member of a team, sharing our distinctive talents and abilities for a common purpose.

Or High Point Friends:
“We remind Friends that North Carolina Yearly Meeting and its work belong to God; we are simply His stewards. . . . God is the one who joined this body together, although imperfect and diverse, to reflect His glory and achieve His purposes. The opportunity is now before us to reflect God’s power of love and spirit of reconciliation by how we tend to the differences and conflicts among us.”

Or Spring Meeting:
“Regardless of the efforts by some to enforce either strict conformity or separation­­– which only serves to divide, to ostracize, to cast out­­– our meeting chooses instead to continue to remain a member of this yearly meeting, to seek harmony, not division. We do not consider differences of beliefs among us as threats, but as opportunities for spiritual growth in a world full of God­-created diversity. We shall remain. We seek to speak Truth to Power, and to act by the Golden Rule, after the example of Jesus Christ.”

See what I mean?

So, another quite vocal constituency in NCYM doesn’t see any “irreconcilable” conflict or “impossible”  impasse; but rather an opportunity for Christian community building.

So what’s happening in NCYM depends on who you ask, and how they frame the situation.

It’s curious, to the point of hilarity, that some of the ‘irreconcilable” partisans refuse even to believe that there is any other perspective on the NCYM horizon. The fact that several substantial meetings have stated forcefully on the record that they want to stay and work toward Christian community within NCYM’s diversity seems only to reinforce their conviction that they are locked in a prequel to Armageddon.

Furthermore,  the “diversity/community” alternative is not the only one. Yes, there’s not just “two kinds” in NCYM; there’s at least one more.

This third, previously overlooked NCYM constituency was noted by the Clerk, Michael Fulp, at the June 6 Representative Meeting. It was then the largest, namely: those who had taken no part at all in this extended kerfuffle. Moreover, it then encompassed more than half the monthly meetings.

Why the silence? We can’t be sure. But this much can be said with confidence: you don’t have to ask many NCYM Friends about all this to find more than a few who consider it all a lot of foolishness, an unedifying waste of time, and an infernal mess they don’t want to be bothered with. even without poll numbers, the sentiment is definitely out there.

So: irreconcilable versus diversity/community versus “Shut up and let us be, for Christ’s sake.”

Where does this range of sentiment leave Carolina Friends?

Where it ought to leave them is adjusting to the reality that there’s nothing like a “sense of the meeting” to bust up the body.

But where it seems to leave them is at the brink of being shoved into the pit that engulfed Indiana Yearly Meeting a few years ago.

Those who came out on top in Indiana will tell you that the division there was a triumph of Quaker peacemaking.

Do not believe it.

The course of the Indiana debacle was followed carefully in the journal Quaker Theology, which I edit; there is no fuller, more detailed account.  You can find the reports, in chronological order in issues #18-#24. They comprise a unique, substantial and dispassionate body of work extending over four years, done by Stephen Angell, Professor of Quaker Studies at Earlham School of Religion.

That struggle began (and ended) with the determination of the Indiana Superintendent and Clerk to stop one meeting, West Richmond Friends, from openly recognizing and affirming LGBT people — to stop it, or expel West Richmond for insubordination.

Indiana’s Faith & Practice gives the YM authority over monthly meetings, the tool the Superintendent-Clerk combination needed. They used it with resolve, pressing an almost identical kind of “death-grip embrace” frame of the situation.

And that time, both their target and the sympathetic meetings responded with near pristine examples of Doormat Quakerism, passively permitting themselves to be bulldozed into a choice none wanted or voluntarily consented to.

When the dust settled, though, the Indiana victors faced unintended consequences. They had aimed to stop or expel one meeting; but their flagrant travesty of Quaker process ended in the departure of eighteen meetings, and with them, much of the remaining support the YM depended on.

Indiana YM once boasted a membership of over 20,000. After its “purification,” the numbers were down to less than 2000 and are still dropping.

Down 90%. What an accomplishment.

Fortunately, there are several crucial differences between Indiana and NCYM.

First, the Carolina Faith & Practice gives the YM no such power over Meetings.

Second, NCYM’s clerk and Superintendent have thus far behaved professionally and responsibly, in keeping with Quaker practice.
And thirdly, in NCYM the “strangling death-grip” frame has been vigorously and repeatedly rebutted; the Doormats have stood up.  Not only in eloquent letters, but in person. In fact, at the June Representative meeting, there was nothing like a majority, never mind any sense of the body, in favor of any of the purge proposals offered. None.

What will happen when the Representatives gather again this Saturday?

We’ll soon find out. In the meantime, here’s a frame that fits its actual situation much better:

NCYM is NOT a “hopelessly divided YM.” Rather, it is a body that currently includes a handful of discontented meetings.

The spokespeople for the discontented meetings say that some other meetings, whose views they dislike, must be purged. Failing that, the discontented ones have vowed to leave (but haven’t, despite setting various deadlines, which passed silently and without the purge they demanded).

The Doomsday Deadlines were thus exposed as an all-too familiar Quaker bullying tactic — one which just succeeded in Northwest Yearly Meeting.

But the course is not so clear for it in Carolina. The targeted meetings, and several others, have declared that they intend to stay, and have rejected a purge.  I don’t know the future, but I doubt the targeted meetings will suddenly just roll over on Saturday and let themselves be purged after all.

So if the purge doesn’t come to pass, the discontented meetings have a decision to make: do they finally make good on their threats/promises, and go out on their own?  The withdrawal option is readily available; they need nobody’s permission. An outline for a new YM was floated by one of them some months ago.

Or will they stay and continue the disruptive barrages, perhaps hoping that continued harassment and bullying will wear down the targeted meetings til they leave? Maybe set another Dilly-Dally Doomsday Deadline (or two)?  Ignore the fact that the campaign of bullying and abusive behavior has been roundly denounced?

Or might their leaders decide to follow Jesus’ call in Mark 1:15 to “Repent!” that is, change their thinking and their mind, and decide to follow Jesus’ other command from John 13:35, by showing the world how Christians are supposed to act toward other Christians. (Hint: purges don’t fit.)

And then they might take another look at Galatians 6:2, about bearing one another’s burdens, and facing up to the work of bearing the mutual burden of religious diversity which has been the condition of NCYM not only for the past few years, but many times in its 330 year history. Or even Jesus’ Parable of the Wheat & The Tares (Matthew 13:24-30); or the “Caution against Bigotry” in Mark 9:38-39, on which John Wesley based his memorable sermon of that title.

Pardon the sermonette. But as much as it may surprise some of the purgers, others in the YM know how to read, interpret, and preach from the Bible too.

A turn away from the Indiana quicksand and the purge plan would not only bring relief to the targeted meetings. It would likely be good news to the “leave us be” constituency; because they obviously have other and better things to do.

And, for that matter, so do the rest of us in NCYM.

“There are TWO kinds of people:
Those who divide people into two kinds.
And those who don’t.”

Which kind will NCYM turn out to be?