Rally ‘Round The Flag: Carolina Quaker Divorce, Part 1
I have to leave for Meeting shortly. So this is only a beginning report; it will be updated & expanded soon, likely later today.
Saturday, June 4, as expected, the Executive Committee of North Carolina Yearly Meeting-FUM presented a Recommendation to the YM’s Representative Body session, meeting at Forbush Friends Meeting in East Bend NC. The recommendation was to divide NCYM into two yearly meetings. (Full text below.)
(The flags above fly in front of the Forbush meetinghouse; both are also inside, flanking the pulpit. The “Christian Flag” below the U.S. flag was introduced in 1907. It was designed by a Methodist youth leader for his organization, and has spread widely since. In some churches a “Pledge of Allegiance” to this flag is also recited.)
After hearing many questions, the group authorized the Executive Committee to study ways of further discussing how the division might proceed, and to bring a plan for those discussions to the NCYM annual sessions, in August.
Let me repeat this, for clarity: NCYM yesterday approved development of a plan for discussing how to divide the YM. It did not agree to a plan to divide.
There is much more to be said about this, and additional documents, including some which throw startling new light on the proposal, and its background. Interested readers should check back for updates.
Here’s the text:
Executive Committee Recommendation to the
Representative Body of the North Carolina Yearly Meeting
June 4, 2016 [Approved]The Executive Committee of the North Carolina Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends met in special sessions on the 9th and 31st days of the Fifth Month, 2016, in the spirit of love and prayerful discernment and in focused attention on matters of both faith and practice that have caused labored discussions among North Carolina Friends for many years.
The Executive Committee acknowledges the differences among Friends in the North Carolina Yearly Meeting that are continuous and unabating regarding the use of Scripture and the freedom available to interpret Scripture through leadings of the Holy Spirit; the autonomy of individuals and individual meetings within the broader authority of the Yearly Meeting4
3; and whether the Yearly Meeting has or should have authority to discipline meetings for what are determined to be departures from Faith and Practice.
And while being dutifully mindful of our origins in the traveling ministries of George Fox and William Edmundson, who visited this colony in 1672, and of the proud history and accomplishments of early Friends who settled here in the 1600s and who later formed the North Carolina Yearly Meeting to bind together the growing communities of Friends across this state and beyond, the Committee listened again to the many voices of concern or discontent expressed in the missives and letters from individuals, Meetings, and Quarterly Meetings that have accumulated in recent months, and recounted the meetings that have elected to depart from the Yearly Meeting within the past year.
Determining that our differences are insurmountable and will impede the future growth and detract from the ministries of the Yearly Meeting, the Executive Committee recommends to the Representative Body assembled that the member meetings of North Carolina Yearly Meeting patiently commit to an orderly, deliberate, compassionate, and mutually respectful plan of separation into two yearly meetings, and in that plan of separation, allow each meeting, if it chooses, to join either of the two new yearly meetings, however organized, which can be life giving for all of our monthly meetings.
We further recognize that, if the Committee’s recommendation is approved by the Representative Body, a carefully structured discussion must occur that would consider matters of (1) faith (2) organization (3) property, and (4) law, and that this discussion must include multiple voices and viewpoints within the Yearly Meeting.
Given the complexity of questions to be asked and matters to consider, the Executive Committee further recommends that the Executive Committee shall be delegated the limited task of identifying and organizing the components of the deliberate discussion that would necessarily follow, and to return to Annual Session with recommendations for consideration by the Yearly Meeting that pertain to process only, with substantive discussions to occur in carefully selected committees to follow Annual Session.
We do not propose a timeline or a deadline. We only propose that the process should commence, and that it should occur with due care and in the spirit of Christ’s love and mutual respect one to another. Our recommendation is not complete without the notation that three members of the Executive Committee expressed their decision to “stand aside” if the rest of the Committee proceeded with this recommendation.
Respectfully submitted this 4th day of the Sixth Month, 2016.
D. Brent McKinney, Clerk
[Note: One of the three members who “stood aside” in dissent from this proposal, also resigned from the Executive Committee.]
This post is updated here.