This Saturday, June 4, another tense scene will unfold in North Carolina’s ongoing Quaker soap opera: NC Yearly Meeting-FUM (NCYM) will hold its spring Representative Body session.
For the past two years, these Seventh Day (Saturday) assemblies have staged one melodrama after another, all focused on a single burning (well, smoldering) question: Will NCYM purge the handful of liberal meetings?
While much of the rest of the U.S. population is involved in or watching Memorial Day events centered on those killed in our wars, I hope Quakers will make room for a different approach to this observance.
To be sure, Friends have much to remember, and many to memorialize in regard to war also. For one thing, there were many Quakers who, despite what is called the Peace testimony, felt obliged to take up arms in one war or another; their number is large, and we are best advised not to deceive ourselves about that.
At the same time, in all these wars, where Quakers were present, significant numbers of them have stuck to the testimony and declined involvement in combat. The specifics vary with the wars, and personalities; the stories are quite varied. But many underwent awful ordeals, and not a few paid for their testimony with their lives.
Reflecting on what I know of this, my thoughts turned to the most lethal of U.S. wars (so far), the Civil War of 1861-1865.
A Unique Quaker Drama: “Pathway To Freedom” Resistance to slavery in North Carolina is a story that has not been fully told. The compelling original play Pathway to Freedom opens the door to more awareness and better understanding of this epic history.
Today, though, there are voices that claim that “religious liberty” should compel the state to preserve public space or approval for such dubious ventures as:
— demeaning treatment of persons or groups who are marginalized and stigmatized;
— propagating false and injurious slurs to create fear and panic, especially for political purposes;
— propping up systems of unearned advantage and power;
— denying access to justice for those who have been mistreated — even to deprive them of the ability to earn more for their honest labor.
Is that what Quakers in England suffered and lobbied for, through almost thirty years of perfection in England?
Maintaining religious liberty within the Religious Society of Friends has not always been easy. For instance, contrary to popular Quaker legend, work in the abolitionist movement was very unpopular among Friends, and especially repugnant to the entrenched power structure of recorded ministers and elder. They thought it was “creaturely,” needlessly dangerous — and many highly-placed Friends, while not own slaves, yet had extensive business interests connected to the slave economy. These were threatened by connections with abolition “agitation.
The result was what I have called “The Great Purge”; many Friends were forced out of the Society, and others resigned, to uphold their antislavery principles. Even some meetings were laid down by “executive action” for being tainted by the reforming virus.
Some Friends did not wait for the Overseers and elders to show up to apply this “discipline.”