Wilmington Yearly Meeting 2018: The Schism Begins Anew

Sara &amp; Isaac HarveyFollowing the 2017 yearly meeting sessions, I expressed the hope that “perhaps in this one sleepy corner of the Quaker world, we can plant the seeds of peace” and that “the yearly meeting … continue intact, that we continue to engage each other with compassion and respect, and that we hold our disagreements in our hearts, fully acknowledging them, but refusing to disengage, knowing that God will be with us.”  At the time, I still thought it possible that that the yearly meeting would keep together.  This is a lovely sentiment, but it is not to be.  Five meetings have now officially disaffiliated with Wilmington Yearly Meeting, and more will do so in the year to come.

The reality is that the differences among us are significant enough to justify the separation.  As stated in the yearly meeting’s Epistle:

the long years in which we have waited but withheld trust, waited but avoided facing our disagreements, has drained life from our body, both in our individual congregations and corporately as the Yearly Meeting.

The immediate cause, which one side calls marriage equality and the other, an abomination before the Lord, is but the sharp edge of a far deeper conflict, manifest in disagreements over the authority of the yearly meeting and the autonomy of the local meeting, but fundamentally rooted in the approach to scripture. 

One side is expressed in a draft “Minute of the Fairfield Quarter Regarding the Issue of Same Sex Marriage”, a minute strongly disapproved by Fairview Friends, but signed separately by several monthly meetings.  It declared the Bible is “the inspired and unerring Word of God,”  that  same gender marriage is “in direct conflict with Biblical teachings,” and concludes that it is “impossible to remain in meaningful fellowship with those Meetings who try to define God’s word as an outdated historical novel.”

I was sitting beside a pastor at a Miami Center Quarterly Meeting session when an earlier version of this document was read.  At the words “outdated novel”, I could almost see the gaskets exploding in his head.  “I preach from the Bible every week!” he responded.

Regardless of what you think of the theology underlying the Fairfield Minute, you can have some empathy for the situation that the these meetings find themselves in.  They have remained steadfast in their beliefs, as the culture around them has changed with astonishing speed.  It was not that long ago when no meeting in the yearly meeting would have even considered taking the marriage of a same gender couple under its care.  Now, all around them, gays and lesbians have come out of the closet and demanded their place in the sun.  To maintain a credible witness to the world, these meetings need to make a clear stand.  Although nobody is disciplining them, or forcing them to leave, they believe they have no choice.  They feel victimized.

It is important to acknowledge the depth of the emotions, the source of the anger that is sometimes expressed.  I have heard references to Jezebel:

But I have this against you, that you tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess and is teaching and seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality .…  (Revelation 2:20, ESV )

I have heard people testify about what they might face on Judgement Day if they have not been steadfast in teaching Truth.  This is not a matter for discussion or compromise; it is a matter of the sanctity of the immortal soul.

In July, Friendsville Quarterly Meeting (in Tennessee) considered withdrawing from the yearly meeting as a body.  One meeting, Maryville, disapproved.  Almost immediately after the meeting failed to reach unity on this action, Rafter Chapel Friends Church withdrew from both the quarterly and yearly meetings, followed closely by Friends Church of Nashville (a preparatory meeting) and Friendsville Friends Meeting.  Three other meetings had not come prepared to act if the whole quarter did not secede, but they will probably follow suit.  Only Maryville expressed the intention to remain with the yearly meeting.  The quarter discussed a possible arrangement which would have allowed Maryville a dual affiliation of some sort, tethered to both Wilmington Yearly Meeting and whatever organization the other meetings in Tennessee form.  This was rejected.  The meetings that are withdrawing do not want to be tied in any way to a meeting that does not condemn same sex marriage.


Bill Medlin speaking in business session. Photo: Dan Kasztelan.

The position of Maryville Friends Church illustrates the complexity of the theological space.  They oppose same sex marriage.  However, they also reject breaking the fellowship over this issue.  Bill Medlin, pastor at Jamestown (in Ohio), expounded the point of view during the yearly meeting session, referencing the experience of the early church as described in Acts.  These ideas made were summarized in the Epistle: 

we were challenged several times to remember that disunity and division are tools of the Accuser of the Brethren.

From a practical standpoint, the complex arrangements that took years to work out in Indiana and North Carolina appear not to be an issue for Wilmington Yearly Meeting.  Any entanglements between the property of the local meetings and the yearly meeting have been resolved; the local meetings own their property free and clear.  There is a camp, Quaker Knoll, owned by the yearly meeting.  There are also some funds managed by the yearly and quarterly meetings.  However, for the local meetings that are withdrawing, “It’s not about the money.”  Working out equitable management of these resources will be left in the hands of those who remain.

We tend to simplify things, preferring a simple binary choice over the complex reality.  There are significant differences among the meetings in Tennessee that are considering disaffiliation, differences that could easily impede them getting together.  Meetings that agree on same sex marriage have very different views on the importance of the distinctively Quaker aspects of their Christian witness, and even on their approach to scripture.  I can imagine disagreements over water baptism, which is practiced by Rafter Chapel, or “young earth creationism”, which I have heard mentioned informally, driving a wedge between these meetings.  As history has shown, once you try to establish an orthodoxy, it is difficult to stop making it ever more narrow.  The danger that I see is that those meetings which leave Wilmington Yearly Meeting do not successfully establish a relationship with another Friends organization.  These meetings would then lose both the fellowship and the accountability that Friends’ traditional structures provide. 

As the rising clerk, I have offered to do whatever I could to assist those meetings succeed in what they want to do.  However, so far, these disaffiliating meetings have expressed a desire to be entirely rid of the yearly meeting.  I suspect they will not want any interference in their affairs, however well intentioned it might be.

The Wilmington Yearly Meeting that emerges will be smaller.  It will still be diverse, including a range of views on same gender marriage and Biblical authority.  It will consist of meetings that have chosen Christian fellowship over dogma, the Gospel of Love over the letter of the law. 

I need to conclude with a blessing:





Wilmington Yearly Meeting 2017 Session: A Personal View

Jones Meetinghouse

T. Canby Jones Meetinghouse

Many years ago, I was bit of a purist.  That rather stifling position was shaken out of me in 1991 as I was confronted by Friends of vastly different perspectives at the Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC) gathering in Honduras.  There, I was opened up, particularly by my encounters with Evangelical Friends whose lives had been transformed by welcoming Jesus into their hearts.  I remained fixed in my essentially universalist point of view, but my understanding was both broadened and deepened by new perspectives that I had not taken seriously before.  Now, Quakers purists, whether liberal or conservative, might read me out of the meeting because of my participation in a Magadi, a Tswana tradition that is absolutely out of step with Friends testimony of equality.

It is one thing to encounter differences in the context of a multi-cultural  FWCC event, where people come ready to recognize and respect foreign ideas.  Welcoming such differences into your yearly meeting, your home, is something else.  How do you even define who you are if you embrace such differences?  Those who yearn for uniformity and purity cannot make a comfortable home is such a setting.

The yearly meeting epistle beautifully articulates the controversies expressed in the yearly meeting session:

We disagree about the nature of the authority of Scripture. We disagree about how to balance the witness of Scripture with the witness of the inward experience of God. We disagree about the authority of the Yearly Meeting over Monthly Meetings. We disagree about the continuing nature of revelation.

However, what this does not capture is the broader cultural context in which we live.  In this context, both sides in the yearly meeting controversy are profoundly conservative:

  • We care about the institutions in our society.  We want to preserve them, strengthen them, and make them meaningful to the present and the future. Otherwise, we would not even bother with Wilmington Yearly Meeting.
  • We want to pass on to the next generations the ethical and moral codes that guided our forefathers.  Moreover, we want to transmit to our children the spiritual inspiration that underlies these codes, so that they become not a mere collection of rules, but the foundation for a full and vibrant life.
  • We read and study the Bible with an intensity that we accord no other book.
  • We look to the writings of early Friends for inspiration and understanding.
  • In particular, we care about marriage.  We think that human sexuality is best expressed within a covenant relationship, which, with Divine assistance, will last a lifetime.  Our meetings take seriously the opportunity to celebrate the beginning of such a relationship  and the responsibility of bringing it under our care.

Yes, there is a cultural divide in this country, and it is evident within Wilmington Yearly Meeting.  However, this reality is not just a problem to be solved: it is an opportunity.  Can we build on the love and respect for each other that we have gained over the years? Can we build on all that we have in common to bridge this divide?  What is the significance of the Peace Testimony if we cannot even deal with our first world problems with love and respect?

Clearly, some within the yearly meeting want their old meeting back.  However, even if they were to prevail, it would not be the same.  Those few Conservative Friends who adhere to plain speech and plain dress in the this century are very different from those in the 18th century whose tradition they are preserving.  The cultural context matters.  We cannot avoid it; we can only choose how we address it.

My own vision for the yearly meeting is that it continue intact, that we continue to engage each other with compassion and respect, and that we hold our disagreements in our hearts, fully acknowledging them, but refusing to disengage, knowing that God will be with us.  It’s a tall order.

Wilmington Yearly Meeting 2017 Session: The Context


The parking lot during annual session of Wilmington Yearly Meeting, some time ago.

F/or  those unfamiliar with the loose structure of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), let me begin with an orientation.  Local Quaker meetings gather for worship every Sunday and for business roughly every month; they are called monthly meetings.  These are organized into yearly meetings. regional groups which assemble every year for worship, fellowship and business.  Yearly meetings are generally dividedinto smaller groups that meet four times a year, called quarterly meetings.  Thus, Friends organized themselves using time and geography.  There are national and international organizations as well, but to the extent that there is any authority outside the local meeting, it resides in the the yearly meeting.  Most yearly meetings have their own statements of faith and practice, sometimes called the discipline, which describe both spiritual testimonies and practical procedures.  Most Friends do not have a creed.

As the Religious Society of Friends in the United States began to fracture in the late 1820s, things became more confusing.  There are now four main branches of Quakers and a number of independent yearly meetings as well.  When the schisms began, the outside world would have had difficulty telling the branches apart.  Over the years, different branches absorbed different outside influences, and now you might have trouble seeing what they have in common.

The meeting that I belong to, Eastern Hills, is a bridge meeting, affiliated with both Ohio Valley Yearly Meeting and with Wilmington Yearly Meeting.  Ohio Valley traces its roots to the Hicksite side of the schism that reached Indiana Yearly Meeting in about 1830.   Its local meetings meet in open, waiting worship, usually with long periods of silence broken with a few short messages, spoken from the heart by anyone present.  Wilmington Yearly Meeting lies on the Orthodox side of that schism.  Most of its meetings for worship have a pastor, who brings a prepared message every week.  Most have at least a period of open worship.  When the meeting now known as Eastern Hills decided to formally organize, it looked at the Faith and Practices of the two yearly meetings and decided that it was feasible to affiliate with both.

Wilmington Yearly Meeting consists of 28 local meetings scattered among two quarterly meetings in southwest Ohio, a quarterly meeting in east Tennessee, and nothing in Kentucky.  When the underground railroad was active, the association between the meetings in the Tennessee foothills and the free state of Ohio made good sense.  In the current day, it seems awkward.

However, the geography is not the main problem.  This yearly meeting barely functions.  One of the Ohio quarters does not meet, and quite a few meetings do not participate in yearly meeting activities, apparently having no need for the yearly meeting.  Like other volunteer organizations, most of the work is done by committees, and in this yearly meeting, most of the committees do not work.  One exception is the Quaker Knoll Camp, which is owned by the yearly meeting; this facility is being well cared for.   Elsewhere, there is a serious question as to whether there is enough energy in the yearly meeting to make anything happen.

When Community Friends Meeting, another bridge meeting, took the marriage of two women under its care in the late 90’s, there was plenty of energy.  Suddenly, the session was overflowing with angry Friends, many demanding that Community be disciplined.  The clerk and some Friends tried to bring the session into right order, and referred to the yearly meeting’s discipline.  One pastor angrily threw the book of discipline across the room, saying that what he cared about was the Bible.

Later, the Permanent Board, essentially a representatives meeting, came to a resolution: they adopted a “working document” that states “We, as monthly meetings within Wilmington Yearly Meeting will not bless same gender unions.”

This gets into the subtleties of Quaker process.  Friends strive to conduct business in accord with God’s purpose. The goal is to reach unity, something beyond a secular consensus.  When a group of Friends adopts a minute, that statement represents everyone in the group, not just the majority.  Since we hold that the divine speaks through individuals, one person’s voice is taken seriously.  If someone in the meeting feels strongly that an action is in error, then the action is not taken.   By tradition, Friends can, it they wish, “stand aside”: in this case,  they are not convinced the action is right, but allow to the meeting to move forward.

Even with a number of Friends standing aside, the Permanent Board was unable to come to unity on the above statement.  Community Friends would not stand aside for a statement that said, in essence, that they had erred in marrying two members of their meeting.  The board ended up coming up with the term “working document”, so that they would be able to do something.  Nobody knows exactly what a working document is, but the term implies that it is a work in progress, subject to further revision.  However, having gotten to something vaguely resembling a resolution, they put a lid on it and did not bring it up again.

Several years later, Community Friends found that none of its members wanted to actively participate in Wilmington Yearly Meeting.  They quietly withdrew their affiliation with Wilmington.

Meanwhile, the cultural shift continued.  Gays and lesbians became more visible, even in relatively rural areas.  As one pastor said, “God started sending gay people!”  Meetings that had not been in unity on the issue of same gender unions came to clarity, and others shifted their position.

Inevitably, a meeting violated the 1997 working document.  Cincinnati Friends had an opportunity to bring two people together into a covenant relationship under its care.  This was God’s work.  There was no question of putting the yearly meeting’s working document first.

Fairview Friends responded to the controversy with a minute concluding:

Fairview supports the ability of each Monthly Meeting to chart its own course on sensitive and complex issues.

Fairview Monthly Meeting advises that the Yearly Meeting not discipline any Monthly Meeting for their stand on such issues.

Thus, there are two issues: marriage equality, and local autonomy.  Logically, this allows for four groups:

  1. Meetings that endorse marriage equality and insist that meetings in their faith community adhere to the same standard.  There are many Quaker meetings that would hold this position, but none  in Wilmington Yearly Meeting.
  2. Meetings that define marriage as between one man and one woman, that teach that homosexual activity is sinful, and that insist the meetings in their faith community do the same.   This is the position of the 1997 working document, and a plurality of monthly meetings support it.
  3. Meetings that have endorsed minutes supporting marriage equality, but wish to remain in fellowship with the yearly meeting despite the disagreement on this issue.  There are a handful of meetings in this group.
  4. Meetings that think marriage should be limited to one man and one woman, but do not want to break the yearly meeting apart over this issue.  This is the position of Fairview Friends, though its minute does not explicitly address its position on marriage equality.

Before the session, David Goff, clerk of the yearly meeting, asked the monthly meetings to come prepared to state their position vis a vis the Fairview minute.  Almost half of the monthly meetings support the Fairview minute to some extent.  Clearly, unity is not going to be achieved around any proposal to discipline Cincinnati Friends for violating the 1997 working document.

A substantial proportion of the yearly meeting is ready to split over this issue, following the example of North Carolina and Indiana.  However, my own prognostication (a silly word) is that the yearly meeting will stumble along for several years, though not quite as it has done in the past.

The lid has been blown off.  It might indeed lead to a schism, but it does not have to.