‘Birthright’ Quakers

For quite some time, Quakers have found it worthwhile – or at least traditional – to have an idea of who is formally part of our Religious Society. Quite naturally, we refer to people who have such formal status members; in Britain, we refer to those who have some degree of relationship with a Meeting but are not in membership as attenders. Membership has formally existed for some time, and while there are naturally voices who wish to see it abolished – and even more who wish to see it reformed – it has persisted. In Britain Yearly Meeting, we (supposedly) require that people in certain roles be members, though the only role that this seems to be universally applied to is that of trustee, a restriction that has sound legal basis. Quaker faith & practice recommends that clerks of meetings, elders, overseers, treasurers, registering officers and members of nominations committees should be in membership (Qf&p 3.24).

Nowadays, people principally come into membership in Britain Yearly Meeting by applying for it, and going through some sort of process. This usually involves a visit from seasoned members who talk about the application with the applicant, and produce a report, which is generally a sort of spiritual biography, though it can take many forms, and largely serves to help the Area Meeting as a whole to better know the new member. There are also provisions for a child to be brought into membership on the application of a parent or guardian, and I consider both the adult and child processes below.

Membership, Convincement & Belonging

There are many ways of belonging to the Quaker family. There are those who are part of our community without identifying with our faith, fellow-travellers who participate in some, even all of our activities but do not consider themselves Quakers. There are those of fervent religious belief in the spirit of the early Friends. There are those who call themselves Quakers but deny the religious nature of the experience, or who recognise it as religious but are still patiently waiting for a direct experience of the Divine that they recognise. There is, of course, the division between member and attender, and other terms we throw around – newcomer and enquirer being quite popular ones.

We don't seem to have a coherent view, however, of these different dimensions of belonging, of being part of the Quaker community, of being a Quaker. In this post, I will be exploring some elements of this “belonging space”, to borrow mathematical terminology.

The Spiritual and Moral Imperative of Outreach

It is not enough for the door to be open. People
need to know it is there, and have some idea
about where it might lead.

I have often bemoaned the tepid attitude to outreach among many liberal Quaker Meetings, especially here in my home Yearly Meeting in Britain. There is, perhaps, more enthusiasm centrally, but in many Local and Area Meetings, it is not something that people put a great deal of thought or energy into. There are those Meetings that do go at it wholeheartedly, of course, and I applaud them for it.

Some of the arguments for greater outreach that I see – in fact, if I'm honest, most of them – focus on the fact our numbers are dwindling, and that there is a practical need to get more people involved in our Meetings. I feel there should be more attention given to the spiritual imperative for outreach, and so that is what I will be presenting in this post.

For the many denominations commonly considered evangelical, there is a clear justification for their work to bring others to their faith, and the insistent persuasion, sometimes veering into badgering, that they tend to employ. The Great Commission of Matthew 26, for those who do not believe it to have been fulfilled (preterism being a fascinating subject that I might return to on an occasion that I feel like doing more research into Christian stuff), is a clear injunction that does not seem unreasonable to consider to have been passed on to the whole Church. From that point of view, attempting to cause as many people as possible to become Christians is perfectly logical, however irritating some might find it. Some Christian or Christian-derived groups even hold the conversion of others to give one some sort of credit with God, to ensure a better result in the afterlife.

For that matter, in any faith – whether Christian or not – in which there is an idea of “salvation”, of a good or bad outcome after death that is largely determined by right belief (and perhaps right action as well), there is a clear moral imperative to at least give as many people as possible the opportunity to come to that right belief and to understand how they should act, and why. Repugnant as some of the acts it was used to justify over history might have been, there is a logic of compassion in trying to bring people “to God” in such a framework.

My Convincement Experience

The meeting room at Pardshaw, site of some of my early
Quaker experiences. Photo by Andrew Rendle.

There's something that I think can be a really revealing, insight-provoking part of each of our personal experiences to share, and that we don't really share that much – how each of us that considers ourselves a Quaker came to do so. I don't mean simply how we came into contact with Friends, or when and why we started going to Meeting for Worship, or otherwise became involved in Quaker organisations. I don't mean how we got to know some Quakers at a peace camp, or on a political campaign, or at a demonstration, or at Pride.

I'm talking about the experience that made each Quaker realise that this was their spiritual path – the experience of what we have called, from our earliest years, convincement. My spellchecker doesn't like that word, probably because it's not really used much outside of Quaker discourse, and perhaps not that much even among Quakers. Online dictionaries give a perfectly good definition, though – in this sense, it refers to the action or state of being convinced. If you're new to Quaker discussion, it's worth pointing out that this might be similar to what other faiths refer to as conversion. We speak of Friends becoming convinced, rather than being converted, a difference that has a number of reasons feeding into it, and really beyond the scope of this post; perhaps I will return to it in another. If it makes it easier for you to think about, feel free to read “convince” as “convert”, but do be aware that you are missing some shading of meaning when you do so.