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Friends United Meeting |
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November 1999
Among Friends:
A Consultation with Friends about the Condition of Quakers in the U.S.
Today:
an Earlham School of Religion Report
By Douglas Bennett
Doug Bennett has been president of Earlham College since 1997. Earlham includes Earlham College, the Earlham School of Religion—both in Richmond, Indiana—and Conner Prairie Museum, just north of Indianapolis.
“Friend by Friend, these ‘Valiant Many’ are not only making a difference: they’re quite capable—if fully galvanized—of making a world.” This assessment of the Religious Society of Friends today is one strong and heartening conclusion from Among Friends, the report of a National Consultation with U.S. Quakers carried out on behalf of the Earlham School of Religion. The project was conducted by CRANE Consultants and overseen by ESR’s Board of Advisors.
Other conclusions are not so cheerful, however. Friends in the U.S. are also “polarized and equivocal,” the report says. All “the various forks and branches” of “our weathered family tree...staunchly bear the family name, even while regretting or even actively disparaging the divergent leanings of their more distant kin.” Moreover, the report says, “in the speech of people not given to exaggeration, recurring words like stagnant, stale, stuck and moribund land with a thud of finality.”
A complex picture of U.S. Quakerism emerges in Among Friends: weaknesses and strengths, obstacles and opportunities. Leadership is a central concern: the need for it, the difficulties of providing it, the possibilities for nurturing it. This article is a brief summary of some of the report’s major findings and an overview of how the consultation was carried through. (Who Was consulted?) We believe the study is the most comprehensive look at Quakers in the United States ever conducted. And we are eager to share the results with all who are interested.
The Among Friends report, including a thematically organized compilation of quotations drawn from focus groups and interviews, is available for $11.50 (plus $3.50 for shipping and handling if ordered by mail) from the Earlham Bookstore, (765) 983-1310.
The publication of the report is definitely not the final step in the consultation. At ESR we will be using the report as the beginning point of a planning process to make sure ESR’s programs are responsive to the needs of Friends. In addition, we will be sponsoring some gatherings around the country over the next few months (and encouraging other discussions) to consider the report and discern how we might make the most of our strengths and opportunities.
The Questions
These are the questions around which we have framed the center of the national consultation:
(1) What is the current situation of the Religious Society of Friends? What are the main strengths, and what are the main challenges before us at the present time?
(2) More specifically, what is the situation with regard to leadership? Are we finding the leaders we need, and are they being prepared for leadership roles as well as they might be?
Following from these two, we also asked a more specific question about the Earlham School of Religion:
(3) What are the potential contributions that the Earlham School of Religion can make to meet these needs and challenges in the preparation of leaders?
Our consultants found that Friends had a great deal to say about these matters. “All joined eagerly in the discussions and offered observations noteworthy for both thoughtfulness and candor,” they reported. I am very grateful to all who participated.
The report outlines where we think we are and where we may be going. The report was prepared by an independent (if sympathetic) group of consultants, but it doesn’t contain their external, “objective” assessment of our strengths and weaknesses. Instead, it artfully draws together what we think of ourselves and what we have to say to one another. It is a mirror held up to the Quakers in the United States at the end of the 20th century. What do we see when we look in the mirror?
Our Worries
The report taps into several interwoven, perhaps even knotted, strands of worry. These worries are broadly shared among us.
One worry is that we don’t know who we are. We appear confused and indistinct. “Friends hesitate to declare their faith; we think too much,” one focus group participant said. “We need to get out of our heads and into raw spirit.” Said another: “As a Society, we’ve lost our identity. We’re not training people about what Friends believe, so new people bring their own ‘baggage’ and then want to change us.” Said a third: “One group of Friends are hardly Christians anymore; the other have lost much of the Quaker identity by identifying with evangelical churches that grow faster than ours do.” A related worry is that we are reluctant to tell others about Friends. Said one participant, “We hide whatever modest light we possess under a large bushel basket.”
At the same time we worry that we are declining in strength. We no longer seem to have the vitality or numbers we did even a generation ago. “We have been shrinking in numbers and influence for a long time and I believe that’s a direct function of our loss of spiritual center,” said one. “In so many ways we have bent to be like the church and culture around us. We want to accommodate everyone and at times this rings as shallow or untrue,” said another. We worry about the loss of our “elders.” We worry about being swamped by materialistic culture. We worry that we no longer challenge our members or hold one another accountable.
Yet another strand of worry—and no surprise—is that we have trouble getting along with one another. “The branches of Friends have grown so far apart,” said one participant. “We don’t respect one another.” Said another, “I fear the extremes on either end will pull us apart; on both sides there’s a fear of contamination.” And a third: “In our diverse and fragmented condition, contemporary Quakerism hardly makes credible witness to the testimonies, and thus their power and influence both within the Quaker family and in society is largely dissipated.”
This is quite a load of worry, but threaded through these our consultants also heard a promise of renewal among Friends and an urgent awareness that we had much to say to the world. They also heard frequently voiced hopes that we could find our way soon to greater unity.
Our Strengths
Among the many current strengths of the Religious Society of Friends, the participants talked particularly about these:
There are distinctive Quaker teachings, especially the very real possibility of an individual, direct and experiential relationship with God, and the very real possibility of a transformed life that bears witness to that relationship.
There are the Friends testimonies which connect religious faith and experience with how we behave in the world: peacemaking, concern for social justice, the equality of all persons, simplicity in living, and personal integrity.
There are distinctive Quaker practices such as waiting expectantly in silence, simplicity in worship, the gathered meeting, conducting business in a meeting for worship, clearness committees, all members seeing themselves as having a call to ministry.
We do have a message and a practice that we need to share with the world. This conviction came through in the consultation with even more strength than the worries that bedevil us.
“There’s a crying need out there for what Friends have to offer,” said one Friend, voicing the convictions of many. It is a message and a practice of experiential spirituality and transformed lives. These, in combination, form the strongest, most distinctive message Friends have to offer, the report says. This is the good news, and it is shared good news: we believe this together.
Dilemmas of leadership
The consultation explored in depth the question of leadership among Friends, a topic almost everyone acknowledged as important. Some things do seem clear. We agree that all leadership comes from God. We agree that all are called to be ministers. “Leadership is not just about technical skills. It’s about living obediently to the Holy Spirit,” one Friend put it. Nevertheless, we are concerned that we need more leadership, and agree that we are not doing a very good job of identifying or preparing leaders. But beyond these statements, what we have to say about leadership is complex, and the concerns are not wholly consistent with one another. Quickly summarized, the main lines of reflection appear to be roughly these:
We are still divided on the pastoral system. Many unprogrammed Friends “will never overcome their cultural inhibitions about having paid clergy,” said one. But Friends from pastoral meetings also acknowledged that the role of the pastor is far from clear. Said another: “I think we’ve failed. In looking for pastors, we’ve brought in preachers; what we needed was Christian educators.” Said a third, “Friends never really corporately approved the pastoral arrangement; it oozed in, meeting by meeting. And so a standard discipline was never developed—or a standard understanding of the pastor’s role.”
Moreover, many said, the work of a Quaker pastor isn’t very gratifying. Low pay, poor retirement benefits, and long hours were mentioned frequently. So were unclear expectations and stress. “When we do get good people in these roles, the tendency is for them to burn out or get cut down in a fairly short period of time,” concluded one Friend. “I know very few people who have managed to take on those kinds of roles and be effective for more than seven or eight years; and if you last three or four you have done well.”
Whether we have pastors or not, Friends from programmed and unprogrammed meetings agree that we need other leaders: clerks, teachers, elders, organizational heads, etc. A frequently voiced worry was that we are losing (or have already lost) a generation of elders, and have not found a younger cohort to replace them. And whether we are speaking of paid or unpaid leaders, we seem to have difficulty calling forth, nurturing and preparing such leaders to serve.
Finally (and frosting the cake) some Friends acknowledged that we don’t accept authority very well. “We’re anti-leader,” said one Friend. “We beg people to take positions, then undermine them. That’s serious.” “We’re very tough on our leaders, very critical,” said another. Seeing decision-making as a function of the whole group, we don’t allow our leaders to make decisions. “Leadership is a problematic word because it implies status,” suggested a third, and asked, “Could we call it something else?”
Urgings
The report urges that we try to develop a new model of leadership for Friends, one that finds a way to blend divine guidance, greater personal accountability and heightened commitment to follow through in doing what needs to be done. We cannot just bemoan the lack of leaders: we need to do better on what we expect from ourselves and from one another. It’s tempting to say we need to be better followers, but Among Friends suggests that ‘Friends don’t need to follow; they need to follow through.’ The need to develop a new model of leadership for Friends is one of the major challenges voiced in the report.
Another significant conclusion of Among Friends is that Friends find their way to unity together most easily when we are doing work together. When Friends from different backgrounds or perspectives find themselves drawn together to work on a significant project (rather than merely coming together for discussion) our most important commonalities rise to the surface. The experience of disparate Friends serving together as conscientious objectors in civilian public service during WWII is one striking example.
At the Earlham School of Religion, we will be using Among Friends to hear better what Friends have to say. We will be drawing insight from the national consultation to refocus our programs to serve the Religious Society of Friends and to prepare leaders as well as we possibly can. Our commitment is to serve all branches of Friends, to be a place where all learn from one another, seek together, and deepen faith together. We hope others will read the report and share their reactions with us and with one another.
Perhaps the earnest question of one Friend provides a good place to conclude, looking toward the future: “Where’s the openness in Friends to allow Christ’s Holy Spirit to expand us—and not just to renew us so that we can maintain, but to create something entirely new and fresh and different, and something that is still in the balance of remaining authentic and faithful to scripture, to the tradition of the church, and to one’s personal experience of the Christian faith? How can we begin to stop worrying about maintenance and survival and instead open ourselves to whatever good and new can emerge from us in the next hundred years?”
If we can answer that question, and answer it together, we can make a world of difference. We can be the “Valiant Many.”
This article is being simultaneously co-published by Friends Journal.
Copyright (c) 1999 Friends United Meeting
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