Quaker Life at the Extremes: Steve Spyker's Yearly Meeting Report

I have a lot to learn about Quakerism, but I’ve been around a little while and so had some idea what I was getting myself into when I volunteered to represent ESR at two yearly meetings this summer. I expected, indeed I intended, to visit the lunatic fringes of Quakerism. I mean that in all good humor of course, but I suspect some Quakers who would identify themselves as “evangelical” would expect to see and hear some pretty far out things at a gathering of unprogrammed self-identified “liberal” Friends in western Ohio, and some unprogrammed liberal Friends would expect a gathering of folks in Oregon who make a point of calling themselves “Evangelical” with a capital E to be up to some pretty far out things themselves. Expectations are chains that bind our minds, but they’re hard to let go of sometimes, and so I visited Lake Erie and Northwest Yearly Meetings this summer lugging a bag full of them.

Lake Erie Yearly Meeting was at first pretty much what I expected it to be. A lot of people walking around in shorts and sandals, some of them looking like old hippies (I blended), a few of them, like me and my daughter, sleeping in tents, a lot of bumper stickers and lapel pins spouting liberal views on the usual issues, a minimum of organization, a careful avoidance of male pronouns with reference to God, not a lot of Jesus talk, generous periods of silence, you know, what you’d expect from a bunch of liberal Quakers.

What I didn’t expect was to feel so completely welcome. For all their talk about inclusiveness, unprogrammed Friends can be pretty unapproachable to one who, like me walking into just about any gathering of relative strangers, is already feeling like an outsider. That was not the case here. These people immediately adopted me and my gregarious seven-year-old personal ambassador as two of their own. Once I got over some of my “outsider’s” anxiety I began to notice an easy-going openness that I didn’t expect. I also didn’t expect a yearly meeting business session of unprogrammed friends seem so, well, friendly.

What was even more surprising was the nature of some of the issues being discussed. I don’t recall anyone talking about “evangelism” per se, but what I did hear gave witness to some unmistakable works of the Spirit going on within the yearly meeting, especially with regard to youth ministry and outreach. One intriguing phenomenon I heard described was a small meeting that decided to forgo the expense and hassle of a meeting house, deciding instead to pay a very small rental fee for classroom space in a local school, space that would otherwise sit empty on a First Day morning. I thought of all the time I’ve spent in business sessions at various Quaker meetings dealing with issues of building maintenance, repairs, and improvements, not to mention the small meetings where a vast proportion of the budget goes toward utilities and maintaining the building. (Not to mention paying their part-time pastor a pittance.) I bet a lot of those meetings could sell their meeting houses, invest the profits, and let the endowment income cover the rent on a modest space that would fit their real needs, maybe at place like a school that would be full the rest of the week, and where the small rental income would be appreciated and put to good use.

Imagine a meeting where you could throw a fifty in the collection plate and be virtually assured that 100% of it would go directly toward the missions of the church and helping the poor, instead of new carpet or siding or heating an empty building so the pipes don’t freeze. Sounds a lot like a church in Acts. I hope I’m not insulting anyone, but it feels pretty evangelical to me!

I had the same outsider anxiety in spades going to Northwestern Yearly Meeting. I knew I wouldn’t pass their orthodoxy test, and I was terrified my heresies would become exposed and reflect badly on ESR. At first here too I saw what I expected. A highly organized event-filled schedule, people behaving with “appropriate” Christian decorum, generous use of “Christianese” in conversation where the deity being acknowledged is clearly Jesus and only rarely is the Holy Sprit (never “the spirit”) or “the Father” mentioned. The first worship service was a noisy boisterous affair with a big crowd, four projection screens, rousing testimony, and a topnotch praise band that had me singing like I was on American Idol. I enjoyed myself immensely, and it’s been a long time since I’ve felt so “tuned in” to a programmed worship service, but when it was over it finally occurred to me to ask: Was there anything remotely Quaker in any of that? Probably not.

But my judgment was premature. As the week wore on I started noticing more and more unmistakable Quaker influences both on the worship and on the business of the meeting. For one thing there was very little distinction between business and worship. Every Quaker organization claims to blur the distinction between business and worship, but I’ve never seen it modeled with greater integrity than it was at Northwest. More than once when partisan sentiments were threatening to disturb the discerning nature of the meeting an attendee would rise and gently elder the meeting in a way that was both loving and effective.

Most surprising to me was the theme that emerged from the various sessions. The stated theme of the gathering was “The Body of Christ,” but what I kept hearing was a message of inclusiveness. Again and again I heard speakers stress the biblical message that being together in the body of Christ was not about looking and sounding alike to one another; indeed the differences between us are bound to be extreme if we are truly a living body of Christ and not just a bloody pile of parts.

By the time I left I had heard two very clear messages. The first I pretty much expected. The second I did not. The first was that I was not like most of these people. Their Christology and ecclesiology is not one I could easily share. The second message was that they were OK with that. I probably flunked their orthodoxy test, but the test was self-administered and no one busted my chops about it, or even asked about my score. I was treated with grace and kindness and I was able to worship with them as part of the wider body of Christ. I hope I can do it again some day.