Category Archives: Hard-Core Quaker

Max Carter Speaks Out for Expelled New Garden Meeting

Image August 26, 2015 Chuck Fager 9 Comments

Max Carter Speaks Out for Expelled New Garden Meeting

We just interviewed Max Carter, a newly retired former faculty member and Director of the Friends Center at Guilford College. Max is also a member of New Garden Friends Meeting (NGFM), recently pronounced “released” [i.e., expelled] by the North Carolina Yearly Meeting (NCYM) Executive Committee.

Max-Carter-for-NGFM (We have also offered to let an informed member of the other two “released” NCYM Meetings, Holly Spring & Poplar Ridge, make their case against the Executive Committee action here. No takers yet.)

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Northwest Appeal Drama: Why Did Spokane Meeting’s Letter Vanish?

[I]t’s too bad that a document which challenges so well a process that is shrouded and “self-sequestered,” lacking transparency and “openheartedness,” doesn’t stay open to those interested, inside and outside the yearly meeting.

Challenging the secretive and arbitrary “leadership culture” in NWYM is a recurrent theme of the appeals. From outside at least, it looks much better when the challengers to that culture walk the talk.

Eight-Plus Appeals of Northwest Welcoming Meeting’s Expulsion

Procedurally, the course is straightforward: the appeals will be considered and acted on by the NWYm Administrative Council.

But on what timetable? Here the response of YM officials has also been straightforward: No Comment. No timetable has been acknowledged. So it could take a month — it could take a year.

This stonewalling reinforces a complaint heard in most of the appeals, about a lack of transparency and accountability by NWYM’s top councils. For those below, a strict deadline was imposed and requests for flexibility denied.

But for those above? They will act when they are good and ready, and those subject to it will take the decision, when it comes, and that will be that.

This corporate attitude also echoes the way the expulsion of West Hills was handled: announced just after the end of its annual sessions, when Friends were scattered and enroute home.

Most of the internal appeals couched their complaints about this “lack of transparency” and accountability at the top in very euphemized terms.

But this outsider can be more blunt: as Quaker process, it stinks.

“We Expelled Nobody!” Says Carolina Executive Committee. Really?

“Under our Faith and Practice, the Executive Committee has the ability to make any decision not inconsistent with its described authority. Although its described authority is vague, my years of service on the Executive Committee have, if anything, taught me that the widely accepted exercise of the Executive Committee’s authority is much broader. A decision of the Executive Committee, though, is “subordinate to” the Representative Body.”

To which I say, Whoa, Nelly!

This “vaguely described” authority is too “vague” and sweeping for me. And letting the committee take unto itself the prerogative of deciding that this or that meeting has forfeited its membership in the yearly meeting, with no warrant, no notice, no standards and no procedural guides, is a recipe for big trouble.

Appeal! Groundswell in Northwest Over A Welcoming Meeting’s Ouster

“When dealing with disciplinary actions involving individuals or regarding a crisis within a local meeting, confidentiality makes sense. However, when dealing with conflict and disagreement that has arisen between whole churches and that is likely to affect the whole of the Yearly Meeting, confidentiality can serve as a hindrance, leading to speculation and accusations that spread through a wildfire of whispers and rumors and leave us with an onslaught of unanswerable questions that only serve to fuel the fire further. The lack of transparency in this process has contributed greatly to the “shattering” experience for all and has created a growing mistrust not only of leadership but of each other—meeting to meeting, individual to individual. West Hills Friends Church was open and public with their lengthy discernment process and subsequent conclusion. Because of this, absolute confidentiality was not warranted, and we believe a different outcome was entirely possible had this process between the elders and West Hills been more open. . . .”