Category Archives: Quaker Theology

Breaking: Split Plan for NC Quakers Drawn Up By “Gang of 9” Pastors

Meeting secretly since early April, a self-appointed group of nine pastors in North Carolina Yearly Meeting (FUM) has been negotiating a proposal to break up the YM, and sent an approved draft to the NCYM Executive Committee early last month.
The group reportedly regarded itself as representative of three “wings” of NCYM, the liberal meetings, “centrists,” and evangelical. Yearly Meeting officials and staff were also present at the meetings.
The full text of the proposal is below. Note that it was signed only by seven of the group; two participants strongly objected to the plan and “stood aside” from its approval.
A participant in the sessions stated that for the most part they proceeded amicably, but with differences clearly drawn. It was also said that letters were sent to pastors in other meetings about the sessions; but how widely these notices actually circulated is in question. . . .

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North Carolina Quakers: Another Sad Saturday Surprise?

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?

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The Original Quaker On (Authentic) Religious Liberty Day!

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?

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Women’s History: Angelina Grimké, Breaking Taboos, & Gaining Religious Liberty

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.”

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