Quakers Always Among Friends: A Lesson from Friends Central Debacle

Last updated on: February 22, 2017 at 3:19 pm by Molly Wingate

Quakers Always Among Friends: A Lesson from Friends Central Debacle 2017-02-22T15:19:57-06:00 Molly Wingate

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

family-1921637_640 Quakers work, learn and worship together. The full and formal name for our faith is the Religious Society of Friends. The name Quaker came about as a derogatory description of early Quaker preachers who spoke in public squares and interrupted church services; they literally quaked as they spoke. As Friends, we emphasize that everyone can receive Divine guidance, and we also provide methods for discerning that guidance. Remembering this fact, keeps me out of trouble, and it might have helped Friends Central School in Philadelphia when they cancelled a speaker earlier this month.

Discerning Together

In my current role as clerk of Intermountain Yearly Meeting, I regularly speak with committee clerks about our business, my concerns, their concerns, and we hold the Yearly Meeting in the Light. I would not be as useful a clerk if I tried to go it alone. I would also really dislike being clerk if I didn’t have a clerks’ group to work with and my own anchor committee to call on when needed. The work of the Yearly Meeting would suffer, I would make avoidable mistakes, and then there would be the messes to clean up.

When I labor with other Friends on difficult issues, I learn new perspectives and long term concerns, and we tend to come to insights none of us would have had alone. What I like best is that I have fewer messes to clean up, my life is Spirit led and the work of the Yearly Meeting goes forward without too much interruption.

You can use Quaker discernment for the most mundane of issues. What color to paint the meetinghouse? How do we want to spend our money? Do we want to hire a grounds keeper? You learn a lot about how much and why people care about some of these issues so very much. Practicing discernment on the small stuff makes it easier to do when the big stuff arrives – such as when a Palestinian speaker was told not to come speak to students at Friends Central earlier this month.

Supporting Friends and Friends Central

And now that there is a brouhaha at Friends Central, I bet some of the people affected by the decision to cancel the speaker could really use a clearness committee to discern their way forward, a group of Friends to listen to them, help them find God in everyone and Light in this event. Teachers were affected (especially the two one administrative leave), the students who walked out of meeting for worship and those who stayed are affected, their families and friends. The administration of the school, the alumnae, its donors and its fellow Friends School are all impacted by this rather cataclysmic event.

This rather instructive event.

I hope that Friends in the Philadelphia area will discern how they can support those affected. I hope that those teachers, students and administrators who are Quakers will ask their meetings to form clearness committees for them to labor together with Friends to discern a Spirit-led way forward.

We are Friends; we do the hard work together.

Previous Post

February 17, 2017

Quakers in Name Only? Palestinian Speaker Cancelled at Friends Central

Next Post

February 24, 2017 John Stafford's Poem Called "Poetry" Makes Us See

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category faith fighting guns lessons Light Politics prisons queries racism Uncategorized women youth

Select a Month November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 August 2016

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz