NCYM’s Future: Conversation With A Younger Friend
A Young Adult Friend named Cassidy Cloer posted a substantial response to the last blog post on the Young Adult Friends Facebook group.
It’s good to hear from younger Friends, and Cassidy Cloer’s points deserve to be taken seriously. Which is what I’ve tried to do in the following response. Cassidy Cloer’s post is here in full, in the reddish typeface. My comments are mixed in, in black type.
<<Cassidy Cloer I’m a young adult member of NCYM and I have to say it is not fair to those not familiar with the situation in NCYM to only hear one person’s opinion. >>
I completely agree. That’s why I blogged about the way Kevin Rollins, one of the chief purger preachers, harangued Western Quarter last week in a setting designed to avoid hearing any opinion but his. That kind of thing is all too common in these times.
It’s also why in my blog posts I try to quote from and link to as many other sources as is practical. In my last post, there were seven such other sources cited and quoted.
<< I will admit that I am a lifelong member of one of the meetings who has considered separation. I’ve sat through many Rep Body meetings, monthly meetings, quarterly meetings, and the totality of the last yearly meeting. I want to say first and foremost that leaving the YM is the last thing anyone wants. But we have been in a yearly meeting for many years that, believe it or not, is already deeply divided by differences in beliefs. Not questions of should you mow your yard on Sunday, but core beliefs like is Jesus the only way to Heaven, is the Bible infallible and the earthly authority on truth, and must a person make a conscious decision to follow Jesus, rather than being universally saved. >>
Here’s something to consider: one person’s “core beliefs” are another person’s incidentals. There are Friends and dedicated Christians who think that accepting doctrinal points is not at all the “core” of Christianity.
And one of those Christians was the first: Take another look at Jesus’ description of the last judgment in Matthew 25 — you know, about the sheep and the goats. There’s not a word there (no, not even ONE) about how the sheep will get into the kingdom because they accepted the “right” doctrinal notions about him, or that the goats are excluded because they didn’t.
What happened — did it just slip Jesus’ mind? I don’t think so. He meant what he said. (And what he didn’t say.)
Or Matthew 7:21, where Jesus makes it plain that crying “Lord, Lord” (i.e., insisting on “correct” theological notions) is not what is central for salvation.
You don’t have to agree with this. But I didn’t make it up. It’s a different way of looking at it, which is not new, and is just as legitimate as the views of those who are stuck on doctrinal correctness.
<< Many in the YM have been praying for years about this matter, myself included, and we feel that no one in the Yearly Meeting is able to minister effectively because our Yearly Meeting is being pulled in different directions. >>
Hang on a minute.
Do you really know what’s been going on in ALL the NCYM meetings? Are you so sure that NO ONE in any of them has been able to “minister effectively” because there is a variety of doctrinal views?
My observation is quite different. While nobody’s perfect, I see some folks in some meetings doing just fine in a range of ministries. Friends Disaster Service is one excellent example. It makes a point of not making a point about doctrinal correctness; it’s about walking the walk, swinging the hammer, cleaning up the mess.
To be plain about it, I think that the statement that “no one is able to “minister effectively” really means that those who want everyone in the YM to minister in THEIR particular way haven’t been able to make that happen.
Which of course is true: people in the YM differ; meetings differ; ministries differ. Have you heard the expression about how working with Quakers is like herding cats? (I admit it: I mostly like cats.)
Some find that fact an intolerable scandal. I say thank heaven for it.
<< Some monthly meetings have stuck with the stated purpose of the yearly meeting, to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Others apparently have a different mission. The Yearly Meeting itself, which has so much potential for ministry and support of meetings, is crippled because not all meetings fully support it monetarily or with their service. Those who have been giving faithful support have realized that it isn’t growing the ministries the way it should be, and we’re tired of arguing instead of ministering. >>
See above. There are a lot of ways to understand the gospel, and to speak about it and practice it and “spread” it. “The way they should be” sounds to me like another way of saying : “They’re not all doing what WE (or I) want them to do”.
Which is true. But –and hear this well: your way is NOT the only way.
<< I would also like to say that in the meetings I’ve sat in, I’ve not heard abuse, harassment, or bullying from anyone. >>
No doubt. But you say you were at the last YM. Did you miss the part where the YM Clerk was driven from his post by abusive character assassination? And the Clerk of the Executive Committee as well? Were you in on the phone calls and other harassment that drove a highly-qualified YAF from accepting a RE job offer? Were you at Western Quarter last week when members had to sit as a captive audience through a long harangue from a purger preacher about how they were worshipping false gods and other abusive baloney?
Were you in the session where I was called an Anti-Christ (which, BTW is way above my pay grade) and where the meeting I attend was accused of turning into clones of the mass murderers and child killers Jim Jones and David Koresh? (Actually, this last was repeated in two open sessions.)
So I’m thinking, perhaps there were some meetings you missed, or maybe weren’t fully paying attention in. Or were the four recent open letters calling out the abuse, that I cited and posted, all works of fiction? (Nope. They weren’t.)
<< Those who have been called “purgers” have only asked that all meetings be in alignment with our Faith and Practice, not because anyone is “threatened” by differing beliefs but because we can’t reach our full potential when our purpose is not the same. >>
Well, again, let’s be precise here: they “only” want everyone to be “in alignment” with THEIR specific (and, in my view, very narrow and largely mistaken) view of Faith and Practice. Have you, for instance, noted the four places in Faith and Practice where it says it is NOT a creed? Are you “in alignment” with those? (Not being a creed means, among other things, that everyone does NOT have to be “in alignment” with it, and especially not with one particular version of it.) And one group’s idea of “full potential” is someone else’s nightmare of enforced doctrinal conformity, like in a cult.
<< If a meeting has a different purpose, by all means, pursue that. Just find an organization that shares your beliefs (which some have done and are happy with). >>
Yes indeed; and if your meeting’s purpose is to make all the other meetings believe and do exactly what you believe and do, then it’s probably time to “pursue that.” Because, actually, fostering “different purposes” in ministry is something that NCYM is currently designed for; that’s why many meetings don’t think they need to put up with being run out, or stand by while the YM is busted up.
Why is that degree of openness so troublesome to the purgers? I mean, who was it that said “In my father’s house, there are many rooms”? (John 14:2) And who rebuked the disciples who stopped someone from doing Jesus’ work but wasn’t with their crowd? (Mark 9:38-40)
<< No meeting has set deadlines to leave. One meeting announced last year that they would cease paying askings in March of this year, and they did. No meeting has announced that they’re leaving because, believe it or not, we don’t want to. We have history, too. We belong too. >>
Well, the dates I cited in an earlier post were real, and there was more than one. And the documents I posted that had a structural outline for a breakaway YM, and a sketch of a Faith & Practice, and the basics of a new creed, which were on a large meeting’s letterhead, those were all real too.
And the shouts in meetings I have been in about how this or that meeting was “ready to walk out” unless certain other meetings were purged were also very real (except they were very real, abusive baloney). So you may be right that there hasn’t been an official “deadline” for leaving. But there’s just no doubt that plans are being made, and talk about it has been all over the place for months.
<< It breaks our hearts that this is even in discussion. For those who foresee separation, I will include myself in this also, we hope and pray we are wrong. I would love to be wrong. I want us to reconcile. I want us to be unified. >>
Well, I’d like to see reconciliation too. But there are some prerequisites. So listen up, because here they are. It’s not a long list.
1. Give up all talk or plans to purge “liberal” meetings. Let it go. Stop. That may be hard, but it’s basic. (“Bear one another’s burdens, for in that you fulfill the law of Christ.” Galatians 6:2) Hasn’t it yet occurred to some of you that NCYM’s diversity is part of the “burden” we have to bear in our day? (Well, it is.)
2. Learn how to live and let live, especially about doctrinal matters. The notion that somehow diverse views about the Bible (which is not infallible BTW) only snuck into NCYM or Quakerism in the past 20 or 30 years is just silly. I’ve shown how there were struggles over “core beliefs” in NCYM going back almost 300 years. And if that’s too much to handle, well, then it is. (Here’s the list again, as a reminder.)
3. Own up to, and stop, abusive behavior. This will require disciplining some preachers and others. And it’s overdue.
<< But I also want the full Gospel of my Lord Jesus Christ to be preached to the people in this world who are broken like me. I want to tell them where to find love, healing, and salvation like I found it. >>
So tell them. Has anybody busted into your church while you were preaching and made you shut up?
Didn’t think so. But if preaching “the full gospel” means getting rid of or silencing everybody whose views about that are different from yours, or those of your favorite preacher, well, then that’s a problem. Because it isn’t going to happen. (That’s also not the “full” gospel.)
<< And if that’s without the Yearly Meeting, so be it. That’s what this whole thing is about. Our Yearly Meeting is already divided. It’s just a matter of what our mission is. Can we share it, or do we need to pursue different missions separately? What we’re doing now is clearly not working. >>
NCYM may not be “working” for those who can only see “mission” as meaning everyone else doing and believing the same thing they do and believe. It’s definitely not “working” for them. But it is working for lots of others; some of you just can’t seem to see it, or can’t bear what you see.
That about covers it. So thanks for writing in, and I hope there can be a peaceable resolution of the current difficulty. I’d sure like to turn to blogging about something else for a change.
Such twisted misconceptions concerning a. what’s going in this situation and who the instigators are here and b. the essential nature and tenants of our faith. It makes my heart heavy.
Hang in there, Dude.
As someone outside looking with even limited awareness, this all looks clearly as a take-over. And all in the name of a Jesus – that seems rather limited to the sky and pie when you die. Until then – obey the pastor.
Frankly, yet again the Richmond ‘creed’ serves for power take over dreams. Even if a creed had a place here – why not a real one – like the Nicene Creed. At least, it is broader than Richmond.
No – one may hope for the best. However, the troubles in NCYM- FUM still comes down to a power take over in the name of Jesus, and only makes one wish that he come to take the followers to the great pie party above.
At each point in the history of the Society of Friends since the 19th century – it has been always a take-over attempt of those using Jesus for ‘other’ purposes…
I am sorry that I have not had time to read all of these posts when they first came out. For this reason, events in Indiana are better known to me than the ones in NCYM. Turning to NCYM, I was especially struck by the suggestion of one Meeting to recommend expulsion based on an 80 per cent majority. Do Friends in NCYM have a history of voting? My apologies in advance for obtuseness on this point. I am a non-resident member of New England Yearly Meeting (joint FCG and FUM) who attends a Meeting in another FGC/FUM joint YM (Canadian). In the past I have also participated in unprogrammed Meetings in two other Yearly Meetings (Lake Erie and Britain) which do not use majority decision-making. Now, leaving that point aside, I am glad that our Young Friend has written to Chuck Fager. I would like to hear more Young Friends’ voices, especially on the social issues of the day. What is the range of views of NCYM young Friends on issues of regional and national importance? Do young Friends differ from their elders on these subjects? Is there greater or less theological diversity among younger Friends in NCYM? How will young Friends be affected by the various proposals and suggestions that Chuck has written about?
Hi Antonia– I do not personally know of NCYM using voting or a numerical majority for decision making. They’re not supposed to do that. Sometimes, tho, a Clerk will add up the views for and against something, and call for a sense of the meeting that sounds suspiciously like an unofficial majority “vote.” There is a body based in Ohio, the Evangelical Friends Church-Eastern Region, that has “Voting Member” as its main adult membership category,l and does take votes when decisions don’t easily produce a “sense.”
As for younger voices in NCYM, I’d like to hear from more of them too.
I will get the citation for you, Chuck, later this evening. In the interim, the “herding cats” metaphor is certainly vivid enough for this Friend — the “Antonia” on the email address I used is a cat who died in 2002.
I very much appreciate Chuck’s fine journalism on the developments within NCYM, but I would like to put the dispute into a larger context. I am reading a fine book on religion and American foreign policy, Andrew Pearson’s and came across a quotation during the World War I period from the rather well-known Baptist fundamentalist, John Roach Stratton, as he discussed what Pearson calls the fundamentalist creed: “We will never get together on minimums of faith but only on maximums of faith (p. 288).”
It strikes me that Chuck is plumping for minimums of faith while those he aptly denominates as “purgers” are arguing for maximums of faith. There’s a gigantic, perhaps unbridgeable, distance between those two.
Thanks, Larry. Could we have the exact title of that Pearson book? I might need to add it to my stack.
The book title, which I tried to put in my earlier posting following the HTML guidelines below, is Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy.
Thanks, Larry!
I felt led to drive down to Holly Spring Friends Meeting today, to hold and pray for folks in our sister YM. So sad to listen to Friends who want to drive away those who differ on fine points of theology.
I was struck by the sense that the NCYM FUM YM appears to have completely lost touch with Quaker process… as far as I can tell, the clerk was entering the responses of the monthly Meetings into a *spreadsheet*… after each representative spoke, he would say “so, Blah-blah Meeting chooses Option x, right?”
Sounds like voting to this Friend.
I was also struck by the relative lack of time spent in worship. Oddly, it seems that “liberal” Friends rely more on the guidance of the Inward Teacher during times of difficult discernment than do “orthodox” Friends.
We were granted a few minutes of open Worship at the end of the the session, thankfully. And the messages were consistent: “Dear God, help us to let go of our small human desires, and instead to be open to the Your leadings.”
Keep praying…
Hi Toby,
I was traveling intensively for the week after your comment was submitted, and then busy much the time since, and I regret the delay in posting it. Yet I felt it needed some response as I did so, and here we are.
There is much background to fill in around the “slice of life” you saw at Holly Spring on 08/1. Absent that, I can understand why what you saw may have looked like a secular “vote” rather than anything recognizably Quaker.
However, it really was not a “voting” tally. The most important indication of this is that it did not result in a decision, and was not intended to. Rather it was a canvass, an effort to have all the meetings (as many as showed up, which was almost all) speak for themselves regarding the various options before the yearly meeting.
This had not been done before, and came in the context of some very vocal factions claiming to speak for the large majority the yearly meeting, and demanding that its good order as laid out in the YM Faith and Practice be disregarded so that some very drastic decisions could be rushed through.
Thus the canvass was very helpful in clearing the air. It showed that the most drastic proposals (e.g., a purge and expulsion of “unsound” meetings, or a complete breakup of the YM) had nothing like majority support, never mind representing a “consensus” or sense of the meeting. Indeed, there was no majority for any of the existing proposals. And while the reporting may have occasionally sounded routine, some of the meeting statements I found quite eloquent and even moving.
The work of sorting through this data and moving toward some action proposals is expected to take many months, and the task force charged with initiating that has not yet been formed.
Will its work constitute a decent approximation of “Quaker process”? It’s way too soon to tell, but I hope so. And as way opens I plan to follow and report on it the best I can.
It was no surprise that there was little time for anything but the reporting. With almost 70 meetings due to speak, some briefly and others at length, the canvass took up the entire afternoon. (And many of us had been there since 9 AM as well.)
I expect there will be much more discussion and seeking as this work continues.
Thanks for clarifying, Chuck.
Toby