Quakers in Birmingham, Coventry, Warwick, the Black Country, Walsall, & Sutton Coldfield

Marriage, Committed Relationships, and Equality

For the right joining in marriage is the work of the Lord only, and not the priests’ or magistrates’; – for it is God’s ordinance and not man’s; – and therefore Friends cannot consent that they should join them together: for we marry none; – it is the Lord’s work, and we are but witnesses.

George Fox, 1669. Quaker Faith and Practice 16.01

The Quaker Lesbian and Gay Fellowship held a Gathering at Edgbaston Meeting
House at the end of April in preparation for Yearly Meeting Gathering. Yearly Meeting will be responding to work done by Quaker Life in 2008 on the “recognition of partnerships under the auspices of Britain Yearly Meeting”. Receiving Quaker Life’s report in November, Meeting for Sufferings recommended revisions to Quaker Faith and Practice to give equality to committed partnerships and ensure consistency in the use of terms such as marriage and partnership. QFP needs to establish right ordering for the conduct of all meetings for worship held to celebrate committed relationships, and to ensure that all of them are recorded.

Currently, there is wide variation in the acceptance of same sex relationships and, therefore, in practice across BYM. Sufferings, however, stopped short of recommending challenging the discriminatory nature of the law. Quaker Registering Officers can register a marriage but not a civil partnership, and a
civil partnership may not legally be registered in a religious building, and no religious language or symbolism may be included in the ceremony.

QLGF’s event was facilitated by Marion McNaughton and took the form of a
“threshing meeting”. The intention was to help Friends to think through their own positions and to better understand other points of view on the topic. QLGF also hoped to prepare lesbian, gay and bisexual Friends for dealing with difficult or homophobic statements made by other Friends in Britain Yearly Meeting.

The issues that emerged during the day included:

• Many people are not aware of the differences between marriage and civil partnership.
• Many people see religion as homophobic and homophobia adopts religious language. The Bible is used to justify inequality, yet in other contexts Quakers see the Bible as only one source of inspiration.
• Same-sex couples are made to marry ‘in front of the magistrate’ – Friends went to prison for rejecting this.
• The pain experienced by heterosexuals on these issues gets higher priority than that of the lesbian and gay community.
• Some Friends do not take lesbian and gay relationships seriously and they don’t recognise the pressures and rejections. Straight love is assumed to be more significant and meaningful than gay love – there is no equivalence.
• Some Friends think that the changes in the law mean that everything is all right now.
• This is about discrimination/ inequality – not about sex, or what people do in bed.
• We need a Quaker theology of marriage and committed relationships.
• We all need to remember that ignorance and fear lead to confrontation.
• Parity between Area Meetings is important, so that they all recognise lesbian and gay partnerships.

At Yearly Meeting Gathering, QLGF will…

• have a table at the Special Interest Groups Fair, from evening Wednesday 29 July to lunchtime Friday 30 July;
• run a Special Interest Group; and
• run a Workshop on Committed Partnerships: Connecting Communities.

Look out for a contact mobile phone on the message board, and for meeting times in the daily bulletin.

Gill Coffin, Co-clerk, QLGF; Hall Green Meeting

Quakers and Equality

Part of a talk given at Quaker Quest sessions in both Coventry and Bull Street,
Birmingham

Central to my Quaker faith are our testimonies. What inspires me about the Quaker way is that right at its heart there are these seemingly simple testimonies to truth, peace simplicity and equality. They provide me with a foundation, the bedrock of my Quaker belief and guide me with a way of living treating each other as equals.

Being equal doesn’t mean that we all agree on everything all the time, far from it. In my experience of Quaker communities we are a pretty varied mix of people, we have our ups and downs but what has kept Quakers together is our belief in our testimonies. I cherish the fact that we can celebrate our differences; we do not have to conform to dogma or creeds. We can be ourselves. Anyone can voice their faith in a Quaker meeting, however it comes to them. When I am searching for the words to express my feelings I often turn to Advices and Queries. On equality, we are asked to:

‘Respect the wide diversity among us in our lives and relationships. Refrain from making prejudiced judgments about the life journeys of others. Do you foster the spirit of mutual understanding and forgiveness which our discipleship asks of us? Remember that each one of us is unique, precious, a child of God.’

My earliest experience of the equality divide came not in a Quaker setting but in a
children’s hospital. As a young boy I lived in a rural community in Ghana and as a white child with curly blond hair. I was certainly the odd one out in a predominately black community. We all played together as children and my recollection of that time was one of genuine acceptance born out of a true connection between individuals. It was equality without preconceptions, without the baggage of grown-up life. Returning to the UK I went to school for a short time in Scotland. There I picked up a thick Scottish accent, as you do, and even won a poetry recital at the school for Walter Wingate’s ‘Sair finger’. Our family then relocated to Hampshire and at the local council estate school I once again became the odd one out, this time, the one with the strange accent. A miserable time followed, ending with a long period in hospital with psoriasis. But there a boy I hardly knew from school wrote to me and said ‘he wanted to be my friend’. That spontaneous gesture was and is, for me, what our testimony to equality is all about. Acting on our inner feelings towards one another without qualification.

Treating everyone as equal was hugely risky and open to persecution for early
Quakers especially at a time of civil unrest. It challenged the hierarchy of the
established church and undermined traditional power structures. Control from the top down. The structure of Quaker meetings today, as it was then, reflects our communal form of worship. Non hierarchical, treating everyone equally, valuing the humanity we each bring to meeting. Meetings run without paid staff, without a figure of authority, no vicar or priest guiding us. Instead volunteers to take on roles of responsibility. We work together respecting the gifts and talents that we each of us bring to our community.

I am lucky that I work in a small consultancy where I can practise and encourage
those I work with to follow the Quaker example. We have a similar horizontal management structure and I like to think that we treat each other as equals. The simplicity of our testimony to equality is I feel just as valid today as it was for early Quakers. The challenges we face personally are much the same. In our advices and queries we ask:

‘Bring into God’s light those emotions, attitudes and prejudices in
yourself which lie at the root of destructive conflict, acknowledging your need for forgiveness and grace. In what ways are you involved in the work of reconciliation between individuals, groups and nations?’

Looking back at my personal experience in Quaker meetings, befriending an ex-offender in my late teens was formative to my understanding of our testimony to equality. After an adult lifetime in and out of prison Ron came to our meeting one Sunday. Over lunch we found we had something in common, fixing cars. From that we established a friendship based on our mutual interest, working on our car projects together at weekends. For me Ron was always Ron. A real character, someone who, regardless of his past actions, was prepared to change and embrace a life outside the criminal world he knew. In doing so he showed me how, given the chance, we can respond to those around us, and work for a common good.

Paul Rutter, Warwick