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Friends United Meeting |
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March 1998
Can Friends Make Friends Be Honest?
By Michael Crook
Friends scamming Friends out of six figure sums?
The very idea cuts against the grain. For almost four centuries, Quakers have been known to the world as people of integrity. Bankers who could be trusted with your money. Merchants who could be counted on for a square deal. Plain-spoken. Stubborn about taking the gospel dead-seriously, especially the part about yeas being yeas, nays being nays.
"When people came to have an experience of Friends' honesty and truthfulness, and found that their Yea was yea, and their Nay was nay; that they kept to a word in their dealings, and that they would not cozen [defraud] and cheat them; but that if they sent a child to their shops for anything, they were as well used as if they had come themselves; the lives and conversations of Friends did preach." So said George Fox, founder of Quakerism, in his Journal.
The Quaker reputation put that name on what is now the world's best-selling brand of oats. As the story goes, an upstart cereal company needed a good name to compete with the most popular brand of its time: Mother's Oats. What label could be as wholesome as Mother's on a box of oats? Quaker Oats.
Successful labeling? It was a marketing miracle. Try to find a package of Mother's Oats down at the grocery today. Just as difficult might be trying to catalog all the Quaker products. There's the Quaker State motor oil on aisle 10; the Quaker Maid breakfast sausages over near the dairy products. At least a dozen kinds of cereals and snacks scattered around the store.
But thank goodness they've stopped bottling whiskey under the name, Old Quaker. That just cuts against the grain.
Since we believe that all people are the children of God, we cannot take advantage of others by any form of dishonesty, whether in buying or selling goods, in business or privately, or as employees by failing to give an honest return in labour for the pay we receive. When we have received goods or services, we shall be punctual in making payment of the price agreed on, and we shall not attempt to evade our proper obligations to the community by way of taxation.
-from the 1995 edition of Quaker Faith & Practice of Britain Yearly Meeting.
Isn't that just like a Quaker, to take a principle to the far end of its logical extension. To move from Point A, the belief that all people are the children of God, to Point Z, a declaration against cheating on income taxes. This brand of hard-headed extremism among Friends in the line of duty toward God is a thread that can be followed back to the founder himself, George Fox.
"I was sorely exercised in going to their courts to cry for justiceand in markets, I was made to declare against their deceitful merchandising, cheating, and cozening [committing fraud]; warning all to deal justly, to speak truth, to let their yea be yea, their nay be nay." (Fox's Journal, quoted in 1985 printing of North Carolina Yearly Meeting [FUM] Faith and Practice).
Modern Friends have written and spoken of standards every inch as high as those advanced by the ancient Friends of Truth.
In Holy Obedience, Thomas R. Kelly proclaimed that, "No average goodness will do, no measuring our lives by our fellows, but only a relentless, inexorable divine standard. No relatives suffice; only absolutes satisfy the soul committed to holy obedience. Absolute honesty, absolute gentleness, absolute self-control, unwearied patience and thoughtfulness in the midst of the ravelling friction of home and office and school and shop."
His words are quoted in the 1995 edition of New York Yearly Meeting's Book of Discipline. A survey of these guides to faith and practice across the Quaker spectrum reveals that the principles of integrity, honesty and simplicity are still printed in plain, legible type. Most common are the Queries, those searching questions, freighted with the moral and spiritual significance of biblical teaching and Friends' testimonies. They "should be read frequently in private devotions and at special intervals in the Local Church," Southwest Yearly Meeting advises in its Faith & Practice. Nearly extinct, however, is the historic practice of requiring members and Meetings to answer the Queries openly.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, conformity was enforced by threat of disownment, "a measure often carried out," according to Baltimore Yearly Meeting's Faith and Practice. "At the same time, rather than creedal statements to which members were required to assent, 'Queries,' (a set of penetrating questions) were used to remind Friends of the tenets of their faith. In the 20th century there has been considerable variation in the use of the Queries."
Here is Query No. 15 from Canadian Yearly Meeting's book of Organization & Procedure:
"Are you honest and truthful in word and deed? Do you maintain strict integrity in your business transactions and in your relations with individuals and organizations? Are you personally scrupulous and responsible in the use of money entrusted to you, and are you careful not to defraud the public revenue?"
Many Friends could argue persuasively that no set of words, no creed, no affidavit nor notarized contract could guarantee, absolutely, the honesty and integrity of fallible human beings. Scandals happen. People get greedy. They lie, they steal from each other and tell more lies to cover their tracks. Only Christ, who taught us to pray for deliverance from temptation and evil, can save us from our own fallenness.
Many others argue for safeguards and standards on paper, for watchdogs and public accountability.
"In the 1970s, there was growing public and political concern over an increase of questionable fund raising practices in the nonprofit sector," according to the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA). "Donors had nowhere to turn to obtain an objective assessment of the financial integrity of Christian organizations desiring their support."
In the late 70s, U.S. Sen. Mark Hatfield challenged a group of Christian leaders to police their own mission agencies as a "Christian Better Business Bureau," or else they might face government intervention in their financial affairs. In 1979, the ECFA was formed "to help Christ-centered evangelical nonprofit organizations earn the public's trust through their ethical practices and financial accountability."
The ECFA helps member organizations to publicly disclose their financial practices and accomplishments, and in 1989 began an on-site field review program to confirm compliance with ECFA membership standards. If the standards were boiled down to 19 words, they could be found in 2 Cor. 8:21: "For we intend to do what is right in the Lord's sight but also in the sight of others."
The existence of the ECFA and its enforcement of standards, like the stringent moral code of the Religious Society of Friends, have not swept the Church clean of corruption. What can we learn from the scandals that have robbed Friends of life savings, of health insurance, of trust in old familiar faces?
Perhaps the lesson is this: Although we trust in God to finally deliver us from evil, we cannot unconditionally extend that trust to each other in financial affairs. Safeguards, audits, tough questions and sound accounting practices can protect investors and customers from corrupt business people. They can also protect honest business people who might otherwise succumb to temptation.
This dual responsibility is expressed well in the Book of Discipline of Ohio Valley Yearly Meeting: "Owners of property, whether in the form of land, stocks or securities, are counseled to be mindful of the responsibility which their ownership imposes for the management and uses of their property. Investors of money should keep in mind not only the security and rate of interest, but the conditions under which the income is produced."
In other words, keep a sharp eye out for anything that goes against the grain.
Michael Crook is editor of Green Cross magazine and is currently attending Earlham School of Religion.
Copyright (c) 1998 Friends United Meeting
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