Cloudy Skies for Friends General Conference — Part II

Cloudy Skies for Friends General Conference — Part II

[Part I of this post is here.]  The Central Committee of Friends General Conference is gathering today, near Baltimore, for its annual meeting. To judge from the scene at its annual Gathering in St. Joseph Minnesota this summer, the skies over this autumn meeting ought to be cloudy.

In Minnesota, to the surprise of many, racial tensions, both external and internal, took up much attention. They were a surprise because the Gathering took place far away from the Deep South, the stereotypical locale for such. I expect they’ll be heavily discussed at the Central Committee sessions. Yet while it may be heretical to say so, I hope these don’t predominate, because FGC has other problems to worry about as well, some of which I suspect may be more serious. This too I learned more about at the Minnesota Gathering.

One other problem, which popped up in Minnesota with some energy behind it was a concern for FGC’s overall future. I ran into this inadvertently, following a reading session in one of the classrooms. Immediately after my reading, the seats refilled with a circle of those drawn, it turned out, by the next stated topic, “The Future of Friends.”

Usually, such discussions don’t interest me much. Worrying about whether Quakers and Quakerism are disappearing has been a recurring  trope for at least 150 years. The complaints are tediously familiar; the nostrums offered  have mostly turned out to be quackery, or variations on group self-immolation.

But this session held my attention, because the stated subject was quickly discarded by Friends who insisted on talking instead about the future of FGC.  And several of them made plain that they thought there were big problems facing FGC — beyond those involving race which were already stirring the pot. Indeed, one older Friend, who has attended many Gatherings, declared that it was time to replace FGC altogether.

Some of the other complaints raised seemed predictably vague, alleging a lack of deep feeling and commitment, an excess of individualism among FGC Friends, and the recent laying down of some FGC programs, such as Quaker Quest, and cutbacks in the FGC bookstore.

This latter at least had some substance: FGC’s budget has been cut significantly since 2015, and programs and staff have been cut as well. The Clerk, Frank Barch, gets points for speaking with considerable candor about this in FGC’s 2015 Annual Report:

“. . . We learned that FGC needed to be more clear about our core mission and tighten the focus of our programs and services in order to fulfill that mission. We needed to lay down good work in order not to be reliant on periodic special fundraising campaigns. This was not easy to hear, nor to implement.”

Even so, this statement needs some unpacking. Over the past two decades, FGC has conducted a series of multi-million dollar fundraising campaigns, and done so with much success.

In general, the way these campaigns come about is like this: a professional fundraising consultant quietly canvasses major donors (i.e., wealthy people or foundations) with some connection to the client group, and assesses their readiness to write big new checks for them. Then the consultant prepares a feasibility report, suggesting how much could be raised, and what themes or issues would be most effective in picking the Deep Pockets — err, I mean eliciting the potential major donor support.

I recall many years ago, as a member of the FGC Central Committee, watching the preliminary work on one of these campaigns take shape. It was aimed at bringing in several million dollars, and ultimately did so. Someone, in informal discussion, asked about it: “What will FGC do with all that money?” The general answer from the inner circles came down to a shrug: “Don’t worry; we’ll think of something.”

And they did. The Deep Pockets were generous, and FGC thought up new projects. And this happened again, repeatedly over the ensuing years.

But then in 2014, when FGC got ready to run yet another big fundraising effort, they found the Deep Pockets zipped up tight. The wind had changed. The feedback indicated the Deep Pockets felt FGC had been doing too much, with too little in the way of real direction and few lasting results to show for it.

This is a familiar pattern among nonprofits that have a plentiful supply of grant funding, and are devoted to “doing good” in a general way. And for sure, with a fat grant, it is not hard for intelligent people to think up many ways to spend it while apparently “doing good.” But like new business ventures, many new projects don’t work out: they run through their money, and when it is gone have little to show for it but a lot of paper, thick reports, and a well-padded staff payroll.

There are problems with this way of running an organization; we’ll get to a big one for FGC shortly. But it is not a pressing issue as long as the Deep Pockets stay open; one project can be “phased out” or “devolved,” and another can take its place.

But without warning, Deep Pockets can turn empty; lose interest; or get picky about results. The gravy train can sputter and even get derailed.

Then — whoops!—projects have to  be “re-evaluated;” belts are tightened, and supervisors’ talk soon includes ominous euphemisms about “new opportunities” for staff as the payroll faces the knife.

Been there, done that; had it done to me. (For further reference? Cf.  AFSC)

When those lean times come, an organization like FGC, if it’s wise,  finds its attention turning from all those exciting things they could Think of to do with new funding, to a more sober consideration of what the group actually does that brings in steady money — that is, what the group does that can be, or become, self-supporting.

And that’s a question I’ve heard being asked about FGC recently; in fact, I’ve been asking it myself. Another way to put it is: what does FGC do that Friends — that is, rank-and-file, not-poor-but-not-Deep-Pocket Friends— are actually willing to pay for — pay enough that it carries its own weight? And then be willing to pay for it again and again?

There’s one obvious answer for FGC: the Gathering. Year after year, many of us non-Deep Pocket Friends scrape together the fees, and the cash for gas or train or airfares, and go. Plus, many Friends further subsidize the Gathering by doing some of the work involved there as volunteers. Sometimes it even makes a profit — err, excuse me, yields a surplus, as I’m told it did in 2015, to help prepare for next year.

FGC does some other things, but most of them lose money. Their Bookstore is a sad example. It has shrunk and shrunk, til now it has been “merged” with the (likewise shriveled) bookshop at Pendle Hill; and it’s still teetering. Why is that?

I have no complaints about the bookstore’s staff or management. But I think the answer comes down to one hard, six-letter word: Amazon. And I don’t know how to fix that; indeed, I doubt it can be fixed. Further, Amazon’s radical disruption applies to book publishing as well as selling.

So it appears that FGC is now expected to transition from a grant-fundraising-windfall-guided programmatic path, to one in which its services to Friends are underwritten primarily by a large number of loyal non-Deep Pocket Friends with enough regular cash to keep them afloat. In that case it makes sense that FGC may focus increasingly on the Gathering. That’s because, to borrow a phrase from the tacky realm of commerce, it has long been FGC’s “cash cow”; indeed, as far as I can see, it’s their only one.

But having said that, I must add that this cow is in trouble. It’s sickly, not quite emaciated but anemic, and losing weight.

I’ve attended almost all the Gatherings since 1979, so I have some data to work with here. And just two numbers will illustrate what I mean:

I was on hand in Rochester, New York for FGC’s Centennial Gathering in 2000. Indeed, I was on various committees for it. I recall that the attendance target there was set at 2000; not only because of the symmetry, but because in those days that was not an outlandish number.  Indeed, I’ve seen figures from the fabled Golden Years of the Gathering –then still called a conference —  at Cape May, New Jersey, when it topped 3000; but who was really counting?

Well, we were, in truth. And in Rochester attendance came close, but did not quite make it to 2000.

The second number is from last summer in Minnesota: 900+. The year before I believe it was 1100. [Note: in 2019, the last pre-pandemic Gathering drew about 800.]

So the trend has not been continuous, but it has been chronic, and its direction is unmistakably down.

Why? What’s the problem? There has been hand-wringing, and some surveys, and FGC faithfully collects attenders’ evaluation feedback. But the trend is still down.

No doubt there are many factors: the Gathering fees have gone up (though it’s still on the thrifty end of summer conferences); the non-Deep Pockets middle class in which most FGC Friends live has, as we know, been squeezed steadily, and then there was the great crash. These are inescapable (pre-pandemic) facts.

Yet for me they don’t get to the heart of it.  In my experience two other related factors have made more of a difference.

Yes, while I did not join in the complain-orama about FGC at the noisy discussion in Minnesota, I too have become disenchanted. The thrill is mostly gone. Now why is that?

Here’s my thinking: first, the experience of big grants and Deep Pockets-support has “gone to the heads” of those in charge. It’s easy to think, with all this financial success, that one’s ideas and outlook are, well, above average. Considerably. As they say around the stock exchanges, in a rising bull market, every investor thinks they’re a genius.

Then add in this: a very large segment, likely a majority of FGC’s constituency, is either in or pretty close to American university culture. Look at our meetings: outside Philadelphia, the bulk of them could be mistaken for barnacles growing on the sides of the barques of academe.

Further, college culture in the U.S. is remarkably uniform, and, despite pretensions of cosmopolitanism (after all, every day on their flagship radio news show they Consider All Things, at least all that matter), this culture is very provincial. And in too many ways the attitudes about the masses outside those invisible walls are benevolent, well-intentioned, yet, in truth, often patronizing or even paternalistic.

From this combination, I believe, was loosed a ghost, a zombie, or maybe a slow-acting vampire that has been sapping the lifeblood from FGC’s central service. I speak of the burgeoning FGC Nanny State.

Yes, over the years the Gathering has become less and less an experience of fellowship, and more and more like one of the post- Civil War schools I read about, founded by high-minded and dedicated Quaker schoolmarms in the Deep South, not just for education, but also for the “moral uplift and enlightenment” of those who had so recently been freed from bondage.

I admire and even revere some of these projects, and those who devoted much of their lives to them. Yet I’m not so sure I’d want to attend one. After all, at least I’m literate.  Allegedly.

Nevertheless the Gathering has taken on, not only the work of facilitating fellowship and worship; but now includes, on practically every hand, an extensive experience of imposed improvement. Indeed, more than an Indian boarding school, it’s becoming like a week in rehab.

Let me count some of the ways this manifests: The Gathering tells me what kind of soap and shampoo to use, what kind of water not to drink. It repeatedly bids me to mind and shrink my carbon footprint, insists we take naps on Wednesday afternoon, and shames those who dare to stay awake to gather and talk instead. It instructs me on bathroom etiquette, and the hazards of proliferating pronouns.

And this is not to mention that it has shouldered the even heavier burden of curing all my (must be) deeply ingrained retrograde attitudes: racism, sexism, homo- and trans-phobia, cultural appropriation, plus the myriad ways I am personally destroying the planet, with classism on the rise but not quite on the list yet — along with the stern advisement that any demurral is a sure sign of guilt on one or more scores, from which there is no appeal.

Oh — and when someone raises their arm in the dining hall, I am to shut up and sink instantly into a “transforming” silence.

This increasingly oppressive  reform effort did not happen all at once; rather bit by bit. But now its  burgeoning has almost totally obscured the presence  among us of an older, much more sucessful alternative, namely that regarding diet.

In the cafeteria, FGC’s Food Committee has been doing  remarkably successful work at making available a wide range of dishes for the nearly infinite variety of Friendly food fetishists, and doing it conveniently, quietly, and non-intrusively.  As one of this multitude, I was silently grateful to them three times every day.

The calm, successful diversity of the food line points up one of the key problems with the rise of FGC Nannyism: FGC was created to be a service body, quietly helping its constituent Friends to fellowship and, as moved, work together.

It is not, and was never meant to be, the liberal Quaker denominational headquarters. It is not our leader, or moral/political/social guru. It has neither the warrant nor the competence for such a role. Adult FGC Friends are able to think and act for themselves, almost as much as other ordinary folks. Really. (I even buy my own shampoo.)

Once FGC knew this; it has by now largely forgotten, and the resulting hubris and “mission creep” are growing threats to it.

For me the shift from fellowship and worship to hectoring and paternalism has passed a key point: once I was a devotee of the Gathering and FGC; now I am but a customer. And not a very contented one. I’ve skipped a couple recent Gatherings. As for next summer — I’m not yet sure.

Maybe these complaints are no more than my personal crankiness. But even stipulating to that, I doubt I’m alone.  I’ve got those downward numbers in my corner. Friends tend to be passive aggressive; so they have walked away from the Gathering in ones and twos; but the attrition has been substantial, and continues. I say that sadly, because the Gathering was for a long time, the high point of my year.

Can it be fixed? I’m doubtful. But in the spirit of hope I’ll offer one suggestion, just one, in that regard.

I call it The Nag-Two Rule, and I don’t think it would cost any money. Here it is:

Each year, at the Central Committee sessions which are underway now, the various committees will consider a list of issues and concerns, such as those many “reforms” mentioned above, and mark on them two (2) that they feel are the top priorities for the coming year.

These preferences will be tallied, and the top two selected. Then these choices are the only two betterment- Nanny items that will be pushed at the coming year’s Gathering by FGC itself.

(All the others, and the many more that pop up each year, may of course be freely discussed by Friends informally; information about them can be made available by advocates; books and pamphlets in the Gathering bookstore; etc.)

Would this do the job? Probably not by itself. But it’s worth a try. And really, I bet I’m not the only one who’s had just about as much of the imposed uplift and rehab from the FGC Nanny minions as I can bear.

Mark 4:9: “Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.”

A Postscript: I’ve had this blog for several years.  Then in early 2015 I upgraded and re-launched it, and included a stats plug-in. This week the stats meter said the blog had passed 152000 hits. That feels like a lot.

[Update: as spring bloomed in 2022, the total was north of 460,000 hits.