October is Visitation & Board meeting month for Friends United Meeting (FUM). Besides board members from FUM’s shrinking but scattered territories, notable Friends will be gathering in and around its home turf of Richmond Indiana.
Among the most notable of these visitors is Kenyan Friend John Muhanji, who heads FUM’s African ministries. Besides official sessions, he’ll be visiting several Friends meetings & churches in the Midwest during the next few weeks.
No doubt the official agendas in these sessions will be full, and discussions lively. But if FUM’s record is any guide, some issues may have a hard time getting heard.
One in particular (unless I miss my guess), despite the fact it’s been in the news, on my mind, and even the pope has talked about it. But neither the pope nor I will be in Indiana this month.
So maybe some reader will pass along the following questions, not only in Indiana but to any other FUM-connected meeting or concerned Quakers:
Also . . .
Also, about the gospel being preached . . .
One for all those with financial responsibilities:
Others are asking too:
In Closing: For John Muhanji & FUM:
I’ll be looking for the report on John Muhanji at FUM.
Thank you for bringing this issue up.
Doctrine has been at the heart of Quakerism from the founding days. As late as the late 1990’s, most unProgrammed Quakers I met described Quakerism as Christian.
There is no such thing as “a little bit of doctrine.”
Are we an experiential religion (we experience the movement of Spirit, while acknowledging there is no doctrine in which we can box up Spirit) or not?
A fight between “my doctrine” and “your doctrine” is one of hubris vs hubris, once the veil is lifted.
The Kill the Gays law is also the KILL THE QUAKERS LAW. Bulungi Tree Shade Friends Meeting, only unprogrammed, welcoming and affirming Friends Meeting in East Africa, is seriously under threat. They have had one worship group leader killed, nine members tortured, many fleeing from their homes and living in fear.
They are not members of or supported by FUM. They are not members of Ugandan Yearly Meeting (though the current clerk of UYM is supportive, and under attack by his own yearly meeting.) Bulungi Tree Shade will not join any organization which is not welcoming and affirming…which means they will not join Friends World Committee for Consultation, which is neither welcoming nor affirming.
The co-clerk of Bulungi Tree Shade Friends Meeting, Hellen Lunkuse Tanyinga, also director of the Rape Hurts Foundation (www.rapehurts.org ), is receiving a major award from Vital Voices in Washington, DC on October 25th for her courageous work. While fully informed, and with her visits being arranged as we speak, neither AFSC or FUM has expressed any interest in hearing from her. The Quaker silence is deafening.
P.S. Because persecution is now official government policy, dozens of nations have been stepping up and accepting refugee/asylum applications from LGBTQi folks. Among the 3,010 people that the Quaker-based Friends Ugandan Safe Transport (www.friendsugandansafetransport.org ), with assistance from more than 35 Friends Meetings and Churches, they can be found in countries around the world.
But not a single one in the United States, and Biden won’t budge. (or at least hasn’t)