All posts by Chuck Fager

Is North Carolina Yearly Meeting Giving Peace A Chance?

But as we have seen, NCYM is not the same. In August, when it rejected the split-in-two plan, the YM agreed to “reorganize” around two distinct sub-associations, with the NCYM structure as a kind of skeletal holding company managing common assets and property and not much more. So the other significant item presented to the body on Saturday was a tentative list of meetings under the two new provisional headings of the “Authority” group and the “Autonomy” group.

There were approximately a dozen meetings in the “Autonomy” grouping, and 37 in the “Authority” section. (I say “approximately,” because there are a few meetings which don’t wish to be put in either group, and their status is still to be worked out.)

The “Authority” group will function under the pending revision of NCYM’s Faith & Practice, which had inserted into it a year ago a provision making the yearly meeting supreme over the meetings.

The “autonomy” group members will decide what Faith & Practice they want, if any, but most seem inclined to go with the yearly meeting document minus the “supreme authority” insertion.
Within each group, funds, committees & programs will be handled separately .

How will these groups function?

The Spirit of the Klan Haunts the 2016 Election

All these images, as should be evident, feature and celebrate the Ku Klux Klan, in its second mass incarnation, from the 1920s. Yes, including the anti-immigration wall.

In that decade, the Klan recruited several million members, and became politically powerful for some years in many states, and even took over the state government of Indiana, and ruled in many cities.

But our concern here is less the history of this mass upsurge (fascinating and horrifying as it is!) than some of the movement’s key themes, because they have much current echoes and resonance.

I researched these themes and the images last summer. And a key to their resilience came in an obscure editorial in one of the few Indiana newspapers to challenge the Klan. In 1923 when the order was riding high in the state, an unnamed, beleaguered editor in South Bend, called it out as “Klanism”:

“Klanism”; it’s a clumsy term, but then the Klan specialized in ungainly verbiage. And the editor was right: the Indiana Klan, followed by other Klan groups, collapsed from internal corruption and scandal by the late 1920s. Yet the attitudes evoked in these images and its standard rhetoric not only survived, they have even flourished in other guises.

After all, many Klan sympathizers were prevented from officially joining by work rules or other constraints. But this didn’t prevent them from sharing the Klan’s signature issues — or from sticking with them when the Klan itself receded.

At its height, the 1920s Klan attracted hundreds of thousands of “respectable” folks: professionals, successful business people, prominent matrons, church leaders. (In fact, its leaders made special efforts to recruit ministers and pastors, waiving fees and other requirements, and not shrinking from offering outright bribes.)

One such beneficiary was the famously pugilistic evangelist Billy Sunday (1862-1935), one of whose mottoes was “fighting the devil & sin.”

Billy Sunday, ready to rumble. One of his more memorable quotes was: “A sinner can always repent, but stupid is forever.” Amen.
Once in 1922, Sunday was about to launch into a sermon in Richmond, Indiana (home of Earlham, a Quaker college, and many Quaker Klan members) when, according to the Indianapolis Times, a dozen Klansmen came marching in, “clad in white robes and attended with much mystery.” They presented Sunday with a fifty dollar, um, contribution and a letter of endorsement. (Sunday did not fight them off.)

Memorandum from NCYM Trustees to Representative Session

M E M O R A N D U M TO: NCYM Membership FROM: Thomas E. Terrell, Jr., Chair, NCYM Trustees DATE: November 2, 2016 RE: Status of NCYM Reorganization of Assets Friends: I write to provide (I) a status report, in advance of the Representative Body Meeting on November 5, of the Committee’s discussions … Continue reading Memorandum from NCYM Trustees to Representative Session →

North Carolina Yearly Meeting: Zombie Apocalypse Coming?

Already the impact on the YM of all this struggle is evident, particularly in the latest news release from the YM office. For instance, staff slots are opening up: the staff at Quaker Lake Camp now needs to be replaced.

Further, the YM interim Superintendent, Don Farlow, is stepping down, and the notice for his successor is for another interim, and on a part-time basis. Further, the job description indicates as a major duty, to “Assist in the implementation of NCYM Procedural Plan for Reorganization”; and that as a part-timer, the new hire will “Work no more than 3 days per week with no speaking engagements on Sunday mornings (except to address the reorganization of NCYM).” Might this language give a hint about the YM leadership’s attitude toward the zombie split plan?

And not least, there’s the budget. A proposed 2017 budget is also online now, and the total for next year is $431,624, down by $53000 from the 2016 total of $484,654, a cut of 12 per cent. And the 2017 total will also be subject to further shrinkage if Hopewell and any other meetings jump ship.

Staff turnover, budget cuts, potential membership decline: all the signs of what we call the Blockbuster Video Effect are in evidence at NCYM. Confronting a zombie split plan will only add to the pressure. Sad.