We mentioned briefly in our first post about this that Friends United Meeting was likely on the list for a change of leadership.
The details of that are at the FUM website (scroll down to the link to the Memo from the Executive Committee), and applications are due by September 1.
FUM has been a troubled organization, about which much has been written online. My own analysis, called “Wrestling With A Roomful of Elephants,” was posted in 2007, and still seems largely on target. Perhaps the most extensive comments in recent years have come from Johan Maurer, a former FUM General Secretary, via his blog; here’s an archive.
I have often differed with Johan, but in his latest comment is a response that I can only second. He writes:
When I first saw the [FUM General Secretary job] announcement, I immediately thought of several people who should consider applying. I didn’t think about the details of the announcement; instead, the people who came to my mind were creative, energetic, visionary, expressive. I was still under the impression that being the general secretary of Friends United Meeting is the best job there is among Friends. I still want to believe that FUM is the strategic center of the Quaker world, the best place to catalyze the revival of the Quaker movement, if we can just shed the perennial jockeying over who will be the first to leave if the others don’t straighten out.
The very first person I encouraged to consider applying gave me a healthy reality check. Bottom line from this observer I respect highly: this is not an attractive organization to work for.
(Emphasis added.)
Somebody will fill the post, no doubt; and I hope he/she will do a good job. But if I were to make a list of Friends who seem to me, as Johan says, “creative, energetic, visionary, expressive” (and committed to peace and justice and serious Quakerism), I don’t think I would urge any of them to apply for it.
FUM is a mess. Maybe a terminal mess. I’m not at all sure it is the “strategic center of the Quaker world,” or if it ever was; indeed, I’m not sure there is such a “center” just now. Nor am I sure that’s a bad thing.
Can FUM be fixed? We’ll wait and see; but optimism is not in much supply on that front.
I pray FUM gets it together. And soon. Do you remember my asking you if FUM could “plant” a meeting here in Atlanta, GA?
We Friends here in Atlanta desperately need an FUM meeting so that our Christocentric Friends would have a place to “hunker down” and pretend that they are the “real” Quakers and not have to put up with us “Liberal” Friends.
We still will have Christians members and attenders, of course. My wife and best friend are Christians as is most of our meeting.
Its just that there are enough Christians who are Quakers who believe it is their role in life to “convert” all us sinners who don’t regard Rabbi Jesus as our “Lord and Saviour. I guess we need to love and accept as the gifts from God that we all are.
Blessings,
Free
“No one is Free until everyone is Free”
Chuck comments: I gotta say, Christian folks been starting their own congregations for 2000 years or so, and if FUM can’t help them, Atlanta Xtn Quakes should get off the dime and start their own “Christian” meeting. No real instruction manual needed, other than the four gospels.
Friends, the struggle in Friends United Meeting
is probably terminal. This is a tragedy, because
several important ministries abroad depend
on FUM. Nothing in the U.S.A. anymore except
Quaker Life magazine, an important exception.
The struggle in FUM began long before anyone
had conceived of united or dually affiliated
yearly meetings; they are simply the scapegoat.
The struggle in FUM was not the Hicksite-Orthodox
struggle at all. It was a struggle between two
Orthodox factions, beginning in 1902 when Five
Years Meeting formed and continuing ever since.
On one side were liberal Christian or “modernist”
Friends, led by Baltimore(Orthodox) and New
York (Orthodox) yearly meetings. These
Friends believed in studying not worshiping
the Bible. On the other side were highly
“evandelical”, even fundamentalist Friends,
led by Oregon (now Northwest Y.M.), which
departed from Five Years Meeting in 1926.
Other similar yearly meeings have departed
since then; but there are still many funda-
mentalists in FUM (and, ironically, many
liberal Christian Friends in the Evangelical
Friends International yearly meetings).
Friends outside FUM can only hope and pray’
that my prediction is wrong, and FUM will
remain, as it always was, a coalition of all
sorts of Quaker Christians. Jeremy Mott .
Friends, the struggle in Friends United Meeting
is probably terminal. This is a tragedy, because
several important ministries abroad depend
on FUM. Nothing in the U.S.A. anymore except
Quaker Life magazine, an important exception.
The struggle in FUM began long before anyone
had conceived of united or dually affiliated
yearly meetings; they are simply the scapegoat.
The struggle in FUM was not the Hicksite-Orthodox
struggle at all. It was a struggle between two
Orthodox factions, beginning in 1902 when Five
Years Meeting formed and continuing ever since.
On one side were liberal Christian or “modernist”
Friends, led by Baltimore(Orthodox) and New
York (Orthodox) yearly meetings. These
Friends believed in studying not worshiping
the Bible. On the other side were highly
“evandelical”, even fundamentalist Friends,
led by Oregon (now Northwest Y.M.), which
departed from Five Years Meeting in 1926.
Other similar yearly meeings have departed
since then; but there are still many funda-
mentalists in FUM (and, ironically, many
liberal Christian Friends in the Evangelical
Friends International yearly meetings).
Friends outside FUM can only hope and pray’
that my prediction is wrong, and FUM will
remain, as it always was, a coalition of all
sorts of Quaker Christians. Jeremy Mott .
Friends, please bear with me a bit longer.
The struggle in Five Years Meeting/Friends United
Meeting actually began long before 1902 when
Five Years Meeting was formed. It began in
1882 when the Richmond Declaration of
Faith was written, and even before that.
Baltimore Yearly Meeting (Orthodox), though
its representatives helped write this declaration,
never accepted it, never published it in their
book of discipline. I believe the same may
be true for New York Yearly Meeting (Orthodox);
if they did publish it, they no doubt stated that
Friends were not required or even expected to
accept it. Many Friends in many Orthodox
yearly meetngs, especially Friends who
taught in the Quaker colleges, felt the same
way. Ohio Y.M. (Damascus)—now Evangelical
Friends Church–Eastern Region—was not
even invited to take part in the Richmond
conference of 1882—because it was too far
to the theological right already, and the
outward sacraments were (and are) in use
in that yearly meeting.
Free, you can rest assured that most of
the liberal or “modernist” Christian Friends
in FYM/FUM would accept you, in 1902 or
today; but some of the fundamentalists
would not. For it takes only a slight amount
of Bible study to understand the roots of
the dreadful anti-Semitism to be found
in all four gospels. Jeremy Mott
There’s still another thing that I think
all North American Friends need to
keep in mind all the time:
In the South, Friends are still growing
in numbers. But in the rest of North
America, Friends—-all sorts of Friends
—-are rapidly shrinking, or at best
stable. Yet worldwide, the Religious
Society of Friends is a fast-growing
church indeed. There is a new yearly
meeting—usually but by no means
always evangelical—or an independent
monthly meeting (no yearly meeting)
in some corner or other of the world
every two or three years. There are
two or three times as many Friends in
the world as there were in 1970. It’s
quite obvious that God has a use for
the RSOF worldwide, even if the RSOF
in North America is reduced to a
pitiful remnant.
If you want evidence of this, study the
website of the Asia and West Pacific
Section of FWCC. Their newsletter is
now published in Hindi as well as
English. There are new yearly meetings
of Friends in the Phillippines, Nepal, and
Indonesia. Or take a look at the list
of yearly and monthly meetings and
worship groups around the world provided
for potential subscribers to The Friend.
Jeremy Mott