Category Archives: Signs of the Times

An Interview: Is North Carolina YM Out of the Woods? Or Not?

Q. Hmmm. So is there a bottom line here? Is NCYM “over the hump” now?

A. Well, I’m a believer in what the great prophet Yogi Berra said: “Predictions are hard, especially about the future.”
But today I’m ready to go out on a limb and say: I think it mostly is over. Or it could be.
Consider: at this point, at least six meetings have left NCYM. They include most of the most vocal pastors and others who demanded the purge. A number more may yet follow them; but each departure decreases the pressure for busting up NCYM.
If the NCYM leadership can see that this storm is well along toward clearing up, and grab the opportunity that opens up, I’m hopeful they could help change the atmosphere in the body away from, “Who do we have to get rid of to satisfy the extremists,” toward “How do we learn to follow the scriptural command to ‘bear one another’s burdens’ and act like a Christian community”?

Q. But you’re not sure about that?

A. I’m not. That’s because there’s this “Grand Plan” out there, hanging over NCYM. It’s really left over from early last summer, and was meant as one more try to please those who wanted a purge. But why the “Task Force” would still be wanting to mollify a group that has now mostly left NCYM behind is beyond me.
Yet that’s how the “Plan” reads and sounds. And if it’s pushed on the yearly meeting, NCYM could face another round of division and conflict, which would really be entirely unnecessary.

The Day I Didn’t Help Bury Bobby Kennedy

When the others came back, hours later, I felt no regrets. The photographers, they said, were crammed onto a platform, where the scene was like an ongoing brawl. The veterans pushed, shoved & swore nonstop, wielding the huge long lenses of their Nikons like weapons, weaving this way & that to get better views as the family & dignitaries sweated in the heat and sleepwalked through their steps and genuflections a few dozen yards away.

All my colleagues were disgusted by the whole scene, and repeated their stories for my tape recorder.

Then we turned on the music, not quite as loud, and I was ready to hear the records all again.

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.