All posts by Chuck Fager

Quakers & Membership: The Ifs, Ands, & Butts

Did you know?

American churchgoers lie about how often they go to church.

It’s a fact. Americans LIE about going to church. They (we) lie habitually; we lie ecumenically; we lie shamelessly; and we lie on the record.

In the classic studies, researchers first polled people from carefully selected churches, and 50 per cent said they attended church weekly. Then the pollsters compared this with actual Sunday head counts in the same churches, which showed that only 25 per cent of those who claimed to be there actually showed up. These results have been replicated numerous times.

Which means that for every “churchgoer” who was telling the truth, another was lying.

Let’s keep this result in mind when talking about Quaker membership statistics. Because some more needs to be said about them.

A few readers have pointed out that, in my 09/28/2015 post on how North Carolina YM-FUM has been losing members dramatically while Baltimore YM next door has been steadily growing, the measurements were not precisely equivalent.

The BYM total of “around 7000” cited by its interim General Secretary included both attenders and members, while NCYM’s 6500 numbers were supposedly members only.

The key term here, I think, is “precisely.” Recent Quaker membership statistics, in my experience as a reporter/researcher, are anything but precise.

Annals of Homophobia: Don’t Cry For Kim, Rowan County

In all his public, to-the-country statements repeatedly (& honestly) trashed the right wing Catholic political agenda, and the bishops’ alliance with them. If I was scoring all this, it would go: 20 for Francis’s good stuff, 1 (so far) for bad. In sports or politics, that would be a landslide or a rout. And in Vegas, betting on the pope saying progressive things while in the USA would have been a very big, loud winner.

Compare: the Davis meeting was held in private, with no papal aides or Davis’s lawyer; it lasted only a few minutes; the pope’s reported pleasantries were boilerplate; and when asked later, he did not seem well-briefed on her case.

Further, the fact of the meeting was embargoed until the pope was safely back in Rome. And late on September 30, the Vatican was still declining to comment on it, sounding embarrassed and blindsided. Some ballyhoo.

Of course, homophobic crusaders like Davis’s “Liberty Counsel” and the “Alliance Defending Freedom” were ecstatic at the news leak, and insisted that it showed that Francis was on board with their campaigns. They can’t be stopped for grabbing this patronizing shred of recognition.

Why is NC Quakerism Vanishing While Baltimore YM Flourishes?

What, Carolina Friends might be asking, do they know “up there” in Baltimore YM that NCYM doesn’t?

I’ve attended many BYM annual sessions, been on its committees; I’ve also attended several NCYM sessions.
And my expert explanation comes down to this:

I don’t know.

But I have a few suspicions.

Here’s the top one: in BYM, they haven’t had any doctrinal purges.

Well– that’s not completely accurate. There was this one big one, back in 1827; Hicksites and all that. Pretty ugly it was, too.

But after pondering the impact for about 110 years, they decided maybe it hadn’t really been such a good idea, and started a process of reconciliation that culminated in the late 1960s.

Then, while coming back together, they settled on a form of YM governance that’s strongly congregational. . . .

A third was that, even in strongly “Christ-centered” meetings, most skipped the pastoral system. Yes, several meetings did hire “secretaries” who (being men at first), were somewhat pastor-ish. A couple of larger BYM meetings still have them, but the pastoral features have devolved to committees.

This mainly non-pastoral culture is hardly perfect. But viewed from the Carolina side of the border, it has seemed to help avoid some major pitfalls, two in particular:

For one, it did see the pastorate fill up with non-Quakers (or what I call “Quakers by employment”), too many of whom decide their meetings should become just like the church back home.

And second, it did not nurture a network of mainly males with too much free time, some of whom are almost fated to start plotting to overthrow the established YM order. This is always explained as the way to become more Godly & Christian (tho I think it’s more about testosterone), and is guaranteed to pack the benches with eager converts, donating profusely for bigger buildings and, not incidentally, salaries.

Then too, without pastor’s pay and benefits to bedevil treasurers, BYM meetings are much more economical to maintain.

The “Savvy” “Apolitical” Pope & Dingbat “Experts”

Sure, both Merton & Day were devout Catholics. And neither were very “hip” (tho both had been Bohemians in their younger days.) But they were also blatant RADICALS. Social, political, economic radicals, and activists too –Merton practically invented his kind of monastic activism, and Dorothy Day got arrested numerous times for civil disobedience against the arms race, for farm workers unions, civil rights etc.

Safe, innocuous middle-of-the-roaders??? I don’t frackin think so; and what kind of “Catholic intellectual” in 2015 could say such blatantly ignorant stuff in public??
Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton. Not safe. innocuous, middle-of-the-road Catholics.
To be sure, lots of Americans today don’t know who either Merton or Day were; we live in an age of overwhelming ignorance.

But when the curious begin to find out, they will not find themselves being pushed toward the reactionary, anti-sex-obsessed, pro-war, plutocracy-loving, women-oppressing, pedophile protecting version of Catholic “religion” dominant among the current crop of U.S. Bishops.

Carolina Quakers: Is The Potboiler Season Over Yet?

A few weeks ago, NCYM was boiling over with the ruckus over proposals to break up (or chop up) the body; then steaming with fury at annual sessions after three meetings were unexpectedly expelled. Followed by worry over what to do about “The Way Forward,” the plan being developed to placate the urge to purge all meetings deemed “liberal.”

But that was then. News came today that two more meetings, pillars of the militant purge-faction, have left. And it felt like no big deal. There may be more exits. That’s too bad; but something has changed: the steam is dissipating. The smoke alarm is quiet.

Part of it was how one meeting, Plainfield, did it. Long gone is the bluster of their letter of a year ago, unfurling the battle flag of the purge-the-liberals crusade: they decried “severe Theological differences, integrity, stewardship, and the lack of Christ centeredness, among some of our Meetings and among some of the leadership within NCYM.”

They vowed to withhold their Askings after April 1 of this year (tho in fact they didn’t), unless by then their demands for a purge were not “dealt with”; except they said it DEALT with, using bigger type, bold and italicized, all caps and underlined, to give it fivefold emphasis and urgency. Boiling over.

Yet their good-bye letter sounds almost like a thank you card from a polite house guest who has had a great time; not a peep about grievances. Not with a bang but a goodbye kiss.