BFM Adult Religious Education Report Concerning BYM's Relationship to Friends United Meeting (FUM)
After nearly four months of loving effort we seem almost—but not quite—mired in the matter of our recommendation to Baltimore Yearly Meeting in regard to future relations with Friends United Meeting. The fact-finding that enlightened us and moved us forward a bit is reaching its end. At this point, the polarities of our views on whether to labor with FUM or leave it are clearer than our course together. But that does not mean we can't find one.
It is not for want of trying. Large numbers of us – 40 or so – read, weighed and accepted the Quaker history that joins us to FUM. We studied FUM's governance and its management of foreign missions. We heard that FUM is committed to reform in both governance and foreign mission work but uncertain how to achieve either. Except for substantially shared faith, the Friends Schools in Ramallah, and possibly FUM's hospital in Kenya, we did not find a vital link between our meeting and FUM. Rather, we found that it was feasible to support FUM projects directly if we chose.
On what's proven the central concern, we confirmed that an FUM policy exists that actively discriminates against same-sex relationships and sexual relationships that are not between husband and wife when it comes to employment and leadership positions within FUM. From Friends who've labored with FUM's leaders we heard predictions that this policy will not change for a generation. We learned that our pressure to liberalize FUM is offset by socially conservative meetings. At the same time, we discovered that within some FUM meetings and missions, the same-sex policy is unenforced, cracking, actively opposed or has yielded to love.
More words on this dilemma would not say much. The sessions did open us to consideration of how well our meeting welcomes diversity, a spontaneous query that will engage us for a long time. But now it is time to consult our hearts and go where the spirit and the community of the meeting move us. To help with that, a meeting's set for April 13 at 9:30 in the music room. Its goal is to explore how gay Quakers and the majority Quaker culture experience and regard one another in this meeting and beyond it. The idea arose from the realization that the strongest voices among us for distancing ourselves from FUM are those of gay Quakers or their families. So it seemed time to explore whether others in the meeting understand gay life, including its pains and perils, or are perhaps out of touch and out of date with it.
At the April 13 session's end, ARE's work will likely be done. If so, the job of achieving discernment on FUM will return to the meeting.
To help those who missed some sessions and persons new to the issues who want to engage in future discerning, Jillaine Smith's put all the minutes on the BFM Web site. The writings we consulted already are there, along with an introductory guide to them. For the April 13 session you need only bring open hearts and minds.
The list of those deserving thanks for their work on the BYM-FUM sessions is as long as a movie's credits. In addition to the meeting clerks, ARE co-clerk Bob Nutter and ARE members Andrew Winter, Gail Thomas, Philip Bogdonoff and Barbara Fichman, help came from: Jillaine Smith, Susan Kaul, Liz and Ralph Hofmeister, Peirce Hammond, Carolyn Byerly and Kay McGraw, Ellie and Peter Szanton, Porter Dawson, Gail Kohanek, Gretchen Schafft, Howard Davis and others inadvertently forgotten. Thanks too to guest resource persons Jill Terrill, Anna Crumley-Effinger, Warren Brown, Martha Gay, John Smallwood and David Zarembka and Gladys Kamonya.
Frank Greve
Co-clerk, ARE
