I presented this material twice in January, 2024: to the winter gathering of Wilmington Yearly Meeting (Orthodox), and to Miami Quarterly Meeting of Ohio Valley Yearly Meeting, (Hicksite). Several Friends asked for a copy of the presentation.I have modified it slightly for publication in this blog.
“Brothers and sisters of the Faith!”
“¡Hermanos y hermanas de la Fe!”
I thank God for this opportunity to share with you my experience at world gatherings of Friends,
Doy gracias a Dios por esta oportunidad de compartir con ustedes mi experiencia en los encuentros mundiales de Amigos,
where Quakers from around the globe,
donde cuáqueros de todo el mundo,
Quakers from almost all parts of theological spectrum that we have wandered into since the schisms began almost two centuries ago,
Cuáqueros de casi todas las partes del espectro teológico en el que hemos deambulado desde que comenzaron los cismas hace casi dos siglos,
come together to share their Light with one another.
se reúnen para compartir su Luz unos con otros.
We come together to speak of our own experiences, to listen to others speak of theirs, and to be transformed.
Nos reunimos para hablar de nuestras propias experiencias, para escuchar a otros hablar de las suyas y para ser transformados.
After the gathering in 1991, I reported back to my yearly meeting:
Después de la reunión de 1991, informé a mi reunión anual:
“Never before have I found it so easy to walk cheerfully over the earth greeting that of God in everyone I met;
Nunca antes me había resultado tan fácil caminar alegremente sobre la tierra saludando la de Dios en todos los que encontraba;
never before has the light been so apparent in everyone around me.”
Nunca antes la luz había sido tan evidente en todos los que me rodeaban”.
I learned this salutation, “Brothers and Sisters of the Faith”, from the Latin American Friends, who used it often in the session in Tela, Honduras. Of course, it was in Spanish, followed by the English interpretation I wanted to give you a taste of the consecutive interpretation which characterized all of the plenary speeches at that 1991 gathering. Even unprogrammed worship came with interpretation. All this was organized under the leadership of Christine Snyder.
I have grown fond of the slower pace that consecutive interpretation imposes. You have a chance to reflect on what was said as you hear the music of the interpretation.
At more recent events, those of us who could not understand the language of the plenary speaker were given earphones that so that we could hear the simultaneous translation, like at the United Nations, but with slightly less reliable technology.
I have had the privilege of participating in two World Conferences: one in 1991, where I attended the session in Tela, Honduras, and one in 2012, which was held at Kabarak University in Kenya. I have also attended shorter plenary gatherings of the world body, one in Ireland, and one in Pisac, Peru, which you will see a video of little bit of later. In between, I have attended meetings of the Section of the Americas . And, of course, I have served on various committees, where the details of the necessary business gets done.
For the most part, committee work in the Section of the Americas has transitioned away from being conducted completely in English toward one which allows the Spanish speakers to participate more fully. Usually, there is a least one bilingual member on the committee who can provide interpretation. Though monolingual myself, I have distributed committee minutes in multiple languages, aided by Google Translate.
I realize that I haven’t really described what the Friends World Committee for Consultation is, except that is world-wide. In order to understand that, you have to know a little about the breadth of the Quaker world, and I presume some of you are unfamiliar with that. I don’t want this to be a history lesson, but a bit of history is necessary.
The Religious Society of Friends, with no prescribed creed to unite behind,
separated by an ocean, by war and by revolution, stayed together for roughly 170 years.
We even revised their testimony concerning slavery, without dividing.
However, in the late 1820s, Quakers started to schism. The real reasons for the split are complex, but to simplify: “Orthodox” Friends emphasized Biblical sources while “Hicksite” Friends believed the inward light was more important than scriptural authority. The split reached Indiana Yearly Meeting in 1828, resulting in two separate organizations, both of which retained the name Indiana Yearly Meeting. After almost 150 years, the Hicksite branch grew tired of the confusion and renamed themselves Ohio Valley Yearly Meeting.
Once Quakers began to splinter, they continued to do so, and it is still going on.
Today there are at least five distinct branches of Friends.
- the Hicksites, unprogrammed, sometimes referred to as liberal Quakers.
- the Orthodox, which are mostly pastored and semi-programmed.
- Central Yearly Meeting is part of the Conservative Holiness movement.
- Evangelical Friends Church International is part of the evangelical Protestant movement.
- Conservative Friends, the branch of Orthodox Friends who remain unprogrammed.
All of these are represented in Ohio. In addition, there are Friends Meetings in Ohio that are not formally associated with any of these branches, having broken away from their yearly meeting, and not (yet) affiliated with one of the larger bodies.
One can wonder how all of these could consider themselves Friends.
The answer lies in the writings of George Fox. George was a bright beacon shining in all directions. He was not a systematic thinker. Each of the branches can find inspiration in Fox’s writings, and if George Fox were somehow to come back to life and see what has become of the Society of Friends, I believe he would find reason to chastise each of the branches. None of us have a monopoly on the true Quaker tradition.
Friends World Committee for Consultation brings all of the branches together. We consult with one another.
However, my main goal here is not to give you an overview of the Quaker world or of FWCC as an organization, but to tell you of the impact of this consultation on my own spiritual journey. In order to do that, I need to tell you a little about myself.
The first Quaker meeting that I attended was right here in Yellow Springs. I and my family joined the Friends meeting which later became Eastern Hills a few years later in the mid 80s, after we had attended an annual session of Ohio Valley Yearly Meeting for the first time. Although my home meeting was a bridge meeting, with membership in both Orthodox and Hicksite yearly meetings, I was firmly on the Hicksite side of that divide. In many ways, I was a typical un-programmed Quaker, comfortable with silent, waiting worship, but possessing only I a cursory knowledge of the tradition that I had joined. I was surprised and honored when I was offered the chance to represent Ohio Valley at the upcoming World Conference. I accepted without any idea of what I was in for.
In preparation for the conference, Tom Hill took me to a pre-conference event at First Friends of Canton, Ohio, home of what was then called Evangelical Friends International. I attended their worship, and some less formal presentations. I felt totally out of place.
The steeple house, the red carpet, the alter, the approach to worship, the constant references to Jesus, none of these seemed Quaker to me.
What struck me most was the conviction, their absolute assurance that they had the Truth. Their mission was to spread that Truth around the world. I realized that I was being asked to represent Friends, Friends as I knew them in Ohio Valley Yearly Meeting, in the face of such assurance, and I felt anything but assured.
So, it was with quite a bit of trepidation that got on the plane for that conference in 1991. I lingered at the gate for a tender good bye with my family. I was one of the last to board the plane.
I had a window seat, facing west, and it was late afternoon. As we flew south, I looked out the window and soon something caught my attention. Little surfaces below, swimming pools, ponds, sometimes rooftops, occasionally a river, would glow orange reflecting light from the sun.
And then, when the angle was just right, the surface would explode in a brilliant flash of light. This happened over and over, almost all the way from Cincinnati to New Orleans. This filled me with a sense of wonder, and when I stepped off the plane, I was brimming with confidence.
This became a metaphor for my experience at the conference. Over and over again, I would encounter these brilliant flashes of insight, of appreciation for the Light within the people I met. This occurred not only because of who I was meeting, but because I was in a place to perceive the Light in them.
I shared this experience with my Home Group, a small worship sharing group that met each day, on the second full day in Honduras. As I spoke, each phrase was interpreted into Spanish. I ended by saying that had tried to come up with a way to convey what this experience was like, but I had not found any that fully convinced me. The evangelical Friend who was interpreting chose not to translate these words but to give an interpretation of the vision. The interpretation itself was quite beautiful, (“the light reflected not just by pools of water, but by the living water…”), but , for me, that expansive sense of wonder beyond all understanding was enclosed inside a didactic framework.
I think this is a key difference between myself (not wanting to speak for other Friends) and many Evangelicals. Where I would leave that which is beyond explanation unexplained, they would fit the experience into an explicit framework. I don’t mean to belittle their approach: I think it a source of strength, of that assurance I spoke of earlier. It is also easier to teach. But I am more comfortable with the open sense of wonder. My approach might not be any closer to the original Quakers than their’s is, but it is a more authentic expression of my actual experience.
This also points to another problem of translation, one that happens among people who ostensibly speak the same language. How do you handle a heart felt message that is couched in a theology you do not share? It is unfair, constricting, to ask someone to avoid speaking in the terms that are most natural to them. So the onus is on the listener.
One approach is for you as listener to translate the message into terms that have meaning to you, and Friends in these diverse gatherings are often encouraged to that. It is a way to keep the peace, but it results in minimizing, might I say, disrespecting, a real difference rather than acknowledging and affirming the other person’s actual experience. PersonalIy, I try not to justify someone else’s world view into my own, but to appreciate what someone says on its own terms. I admit this task is sometimes extremely difficult. However, it is much easier in a multi-cultural setting. You are already reaching across so many differences, the differences in theology seem easier to bridge. It is easier for me to have a meaningful dialog with an Evangelical Friend from Canton, Ohio when a Bolivian is in the room.
For me, the worship sharing group was the key organized event of the conference, for it was here that we had the explicit opportunity to share the core of our faith and our experience. The group was small enough to get to know everyone, and since the group stayed together, meeting daily,
there was a continuity that enabled us to go deeper. The organizers did their best to make each group a microcosm of the cultural diversity in the conference. My group in Tela Honduras had several from North America, but also from Central and South America, Africa, Europe and the far East. Except for the language problem, these differences were not barriers: we all shared the heritage of Friends.
We acknowledged the validity of others’ experiences while affirming our own. In this way, we ministered to each other.
Of course, there is also formal daily worship, attended by the whole body. Each style of worship among contemporary Friends was given an opportunity to organize the worship, Sometimes these styles were identified by the branch of Friends: Conservative, Hicksite, Orthodox, or Evangelical. Often the style was more cultural, particularly Latin American or African.
The un-programmed worship posed a bit of a challenge for many of the Friends present. In the first un-programmed worship that I attended in Tela, there were no messages. However, by the end of the conference, there were an abundance of messages expressing the energy and joy of the experience.
In Kabarak, twenty years later, the plenary un-programmed worship was filled with messages, one after the other. I sometimes had the sense that the room held too many pastors, people used to speaking rather than listening. Of course, many were so inspired by the energy of the conference that they wanted to share the joy in their heart. However, I, and many others longed for a little space between messages. In one worship organized by Conservative Friends, the one who had introduced the worship pleaded with the worshippers to allow some silence between speaking, to no avail. In another open worship, a Friend accepted the microphone and said nothing for as long as they would let her. The microphone was soon wrestled away from her, and the pop corn meeting resumed.
However, i was one particularly memorable meeting for worship, held in the manner of Conservative Friends, in one of the classrooms at Kabarak. I entered fretful about my luggage which had still not arrived, feeling tired, worn down. Although people continued to trickle in throughout the meeting, jostling into the already full room, the worshipers maintained a sense of reverence and devotion. With the support of these weighty Friends, my jangled, fretful mind quickly settled down. There were several messages, many of them Christ centered, as one would expect from Conservative Friends. Each message was allowed to resonate fully, with enough space to be savored, to reach the heart. I found the meeting so nourishing, so refreshing! This meeting embodied what I hope to bring to waiting worship: a devotion to the divine present, and an openness to the leading of the spirit.
In any event like this, the planned activities are only part of the picture. In the cracks between events, at meals. walking from one place to another, there were casual exchanges that sometimes reach astonishing depth.
One evening over dinner in Tela Honduras, I sat across from a Kenyan Friend. We talked about all manner of things; our families, my occupation, his studies. Eventually, we began talking about our local meetings, and he asked me about outreach. I mumbled something vague.
He admonished me. He said that we did was not enough. “You are selfish. We are commanded to go forth and preach. If you do not do that, you are not a real church. People are out there, dying in sin.”
Now, I have trouble with the phrase “dying in sin.” But what do we see around us in here in America? We soak up the world’s resources at a breathtaking pace, yet we never seem to have enough. Marriages falling apart, almost casually. Drug addiction. Dysfunctional politics. And on and on. Perhaps “dying in sin” is a bit harsh, but we are far from the blessed community we dream of.
As you have gathered by now, an important part of my FWCC experience has been my contact with evangelists, whether of not they were associated with the Evangelical Friends.
I met one Friend my age who described himself as an Evangelical Unprogrammed Friend. He had travelled to India to find his perfect master, only to discover that it was Jesus Christ.
Before I attended the FWCC conference, I had thought of evangelism as a kind of spiritual imperialism. The colonial powers, often marching with the cross going on before, conquered not only the military, but also the heart, the minds, the very souls of the people whose land they stole. Oh the road to Tela, I saw this imperial attitude displayed for all to see in the giant billboard depicting Jesus as a White European, a historically inaccuracy that I find particularly galling in the midst of a brown skinned population.
However, these FWCC conferences have opened me to a different viewpoint.
A missionary working in Guatemala spoke in our worship sharing of the fear that gripped many of the people in that country during the eclipse. Here was a miraculous celestial event that occurs only a few times in one’s lifetime, and people were afraid to go out of their houses.
Ellen Jones, an eskimo, talked over lunch about how there used to be a lot of fear among her people, and how the shamans used that fear to control people. She spoke of this as ancient history. She was born into a Friends meeting. The woman who came north to preach to them, to liberate them form the fear, is revered.
When I visited Cuba, as part of the FUM Living Letters program, I saw a similar reverence expressed for the Quaker missionaries who first came to their island around 1900, some from this part of Ohio.
Thus, there is a different way to see evangelism, one that is more in keeping with the spirit of the early Quakers. We Quakers have a precious gift: it is our obligation to share this gift with others. Our task is to open hearts and minds to the divine light already within them.
The evangelical impulse can be an expression of Love, rather than domination.
After the conference in Tela, I continued my journey with a study tour of Costa Rica led by Roy Joe and Ruth Stuckey. They introduced me to the Friends settlement in Montiverdi.
Here I found an entirely different approach to spreading the Kingdom of God. These Friends were refugees from the racist, militarist society of Alabama in the early 1950s. They escaped to a country that had recently abolished its military. They came as pioneers, to make a life for themselves and their community. Being dairy farmers, they needed a way to preserve their produce to get it o market, so they started a cheese factory, making the first pasteurized cheese in Costa Rica. Local farmers wanted to sell milk to the factory, so the Friends taught them how to produce milk that met the sanitary standards required for milk to be used safely in this industrial setting. The Friends saw a need to protect their watershed, so they set aside land toward the top of the mountain. This land is now the Monteverdi Could Forest, a major tourist attraction. The Friends’ attitude toward care for the environment permeated the local culture. This, along with the reputation of the cloud forest, enabled them to get a good price for their coffee. The Friends did not attempt to convert everyone to their way of worship, but you can see the infusion of Quaker values on the local community. They led by example, by acting justly, showing kindness, and walking humbly with God.
Perhaps I have romanticized these Friends, as I am sure the messy reality was much more nuanced. Nevertheless, if you are concerned about becoming the Quakers that the world needs,I think the Friends in Monteverdi provide a good example.
Of course, there were many memorable events.
One day in Tela, I heard some people singing. Intrigued, I followed the sound until I was outside the room. The Aymara were practicing for the evening’s presentation where they were planning to sing a setting of the eighth psalm in their native tongue. They invited me in. They gave me an English translation of the psalm so that I would know what they were singing. We could not speak each other’s language, but we communicated well enough.
In one workshop, we were playing a trust game in which one person is blindfolded and led around by another. I was leading someone who was much taller than me. We went through a doorway that turned out to be not high enough for him. Ouch!. Fortunately, It was someone I had known before.
On the last evening in our stay at Tela, the chefs insisted on preparing something special: chicken cordon bleu. All week, at the insistence of the organizers, they had been feeding us the ordinary local cuisine (I remember a a lot of well done, rather tough beef), and they wanted to show us that they could do something fancy. So we had a meal such as we might get from a caterer in the states: it was ok.
What made the evening memorable was what happened after the meal was done. Led be the Mexicans, Friends sang a traditional song used to thank the cooks, with trills, and yells, and lots of un-quakerly jubilation. It was received with such enthusiasm, that we sang another verse, for the waiters, and then one for the maids, and one for the dishwashers, one for the janitors, and one for any other job that someone could dream up a name for. Every worker who was present got to come out and receive our thanks, sometimes doing a little dance as we celebrated their service. They loved it. The next day, as we were leaving, all of the staff knew what had happened, and I heard from many sources how grateful they were. They had never been recognized in such a public way. They felt honored, and said the the Friends would always be remembered.
At the conference at Kabarak, the home groups were asked to respond to queries, such as “How did you come to Quakerism”, or “Describe a moment when you felt particularly close to God.”
In response to this latter questions, the Africans were remarkably consistent: over and over, they spoke of being close to death, usually because of the political situation in their area. In several cases, their home was invaded by a different ethnic group. One saw her spouse beat up; another had everything that they owned taken from them or destroyed. In each case, they prayed to God, and somehow their life was spared.
A similar story was shared by a young Guatemalan pastor in a plenary talk. She witnessed a gang style execution of one of the patrons in a restaurant where the was eating. She hid under a table and prayed. This story is one that she had not even told her church, fearing that if it became known that she was a witness, she too, and perhaps even her church, would become a target of these thugs.
At these moments of grave danger, when the social fabric had failed, faith played a very particular role in the lives of these Friends: faith in God gave them hope and strength in a moment of ultimate peril. I question whether the mystical abstraction that is the core of my own faith would have sufficed in such a moment.
A Friend who had served as a doctor in Kenya reported that he would occasionally be asked to deliver the message, (that is, preach a sermon). However, the summons usually came with the proviso to not talk about the Peace Testimony, which seems to be all you un-programmed Quakers care about. He reported that this resistance to the Peace Testimony has changed.
After the genocide in neighboring Rwanda, and the widespread ethnic violence in Kenya, the Africans have taken the Quaker Peace Testimony to heart. They have adapted the Alternatives to Violence workshops that was developed in the states to their culture, renaming the program HROC (Healing and Rebuilding Our Communities). In a post conference event, I participated in such a workshop, organized by David Zaremka. It was remarkable. We sat in a little tin shack used to teach kindergarten. Most of the time, it was conducted in two languages, Kiswahili and English; with consecutive interpretation, but on the last day, when people talked of the trauma they had experienced, they were not interrupted by the interpreter. It was not hard to tell where the words came from.
Healing these communities after what has occurred is a real challenge, and the wounds are not going away quickly. But African Friends are working on it.
For the last home group session in Kabarak, Friends were asked what they would take home from the conference. One African Friend responded to this query: “There was no high table.” At first, I was totally perplexed by this. It turned out that he was surprised that the General Secretary and other FWCC officials stood in the same line, ate the same food, at the same tables, as everyone else. He discovered that at any time he might be speaking with the pastor or the clerk and not know it. The equality among the participants, which I had not even noticed, was for him a revelation.
There was a moment when our testimony of equality was given a particular challenge. On that day, new decorations, full of royal purple, appeared on the table on the stage of the auditorium where the plenary assemblies were held. The business sent on for a while, and then was interrupted.
After a pause, Daniel Arap Moi, former president of Kenya, and Chancellor of Kabarak University, entered with a retinue of about a dozen people. Then the clerk introduced someone who introduced Daniel Arap Moi. The Kenyans immediately stood. I looked at a Friend sitting next to me, and we both stood, somewhat reluctantly. We did not want to embarrass the Africans.
In another context, would have I stood for the President of the United States, should he speak at a Quaker event. What about for Obama? or Trump?
I personally think Daniel Arap Moi was a corrupt politician who suppressed his people and enriched himself at their expense. But I stood.
I was most worried about how long he speak, having visions of politicians speaking for hours to their devoted followers. I became alarmed when he sort to touch on the theme of the conference, “Salt and Light.” With al of the pre-conference events, and all of the plenary speeches at the conference touching on this theme, I had heard more then enough of this topic. Mercifully, the speech ended after about 10 minutes.
After the chancellor left, a young Friend stood and decried our behavior. He thought it inappropriate for Friends, whose forebears had refused to doff their hats for the king, to stand in honor of someone and to refer to him as “his excellency.” Some of the Africans took offense at this, saying the in Kenya, people showed respect for their leaders.
Eventually, the clerk, Duduzile Mishazo, defused the situation with some apologetic remarks, and we got back to the business at hand.
I have a long essay on my trials and tribulations dealing with lost luggage. Let’s just say that practiced simplicity, surviving by doing daily laundry, with only one pair of pants, which at one point went missing. But that story is really too long for my remaining time.
I want to conclude with the minute that was approved at the conference. Generally, FWCC does not try to publish minutes like this, because the emphasis is on maintaining unity across a broad range of political, cultural, and theological differences. However, at Kabarak, we did unite on this statement. I was involved in the last edits before it was sent to the floor of the whole meeting, where, of course, there were a few more changes.
The Kabarak Call for Peace and Ecojustice
https://www.quaker.org.uk/documents/kabarak-call
In past times God’s Creation restored itself. Now humanity dominates, our growing population consuming more resources than nature can replace. We must change, we must become careful stewards of all life. Earthcare unites traditional Quaker testimonies: peace, equality, simplicity, love, integrity, and justice. Jesus said, “As you have done unto the least… you have done unto me”. We are called to work for the peaceable Kingdom of God on the whole earth, in right sharing with all peoples. However few our numbers, we are called to be the salt that flavours and preserves, to be a light in the darkness of greed and destruction.
We have heard of the disappearing snows of Kilimanjaro and glaciers of Bolivia, from which come life-giving waters. We have heard appeals from peoples of the Arctic, Asia and Pacific. We have heard of forests cut down, seasons disrupted, wildlife dying, of land hunger in Africa, of new diseases, droughts, floods, fires, famine and desperate migrations – this climatic chaos is now worsening. There are wars and rumors of war, job loss, inequality and violence. We fear our neighbors. We waste our children’s heritage.
All of these are driven by our dominant economic systems – by greed not need, by worship of the market, by Mammon and Caesar.
Is this how Jesus showed us to live?
* We are called to see what love can do: to love our neighbor as ourselves, to aid the widow and orphan, to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, to appeal to consciences and bind the wounds.
* We are called to teach our children right relationship, to live in harmony with each other and all living beings in the earth, waters and sky of our Creator, who asks, “Where were your when I laid the foundations of the world?” (Job 38:4)
* We are called to do justice to all and walk humbly with our God, to cooperate lovingly with all who share our hopes for the future of the earth.
* We are called to be patterns and examples in a 21st century campaign for peace and ecojustice, as difficult and decisive as the 18th and 19th century drive to abolish slavery.
We dedicate ourselves to let the living waters flow through us – where we live, regionally, and in wider world fellowship. We dedicate ourselves to building the peace that passeth all understanding, to the repair of the world, opening our lives to the Light to guide us in each small step.
Bwana asifiwe. A pu Dios Awqui. Gracias Jesús. Jubilé. Salaam aleikum. Migwetch. Tikkun olam. Alleluia!
I ended the formal presentation by playing the video FWCC Epistle from 2016 plenary meeting in Pisac, Peru by Rachel and Ben Guaraldi.
jplund 