Why should NPYM affiliate with FGC?

The first time I went to FGC was when I was 22.  I went every year for the next 13 years until my daughter was born after which I went more irregularly. I think I have been 22 times.  In my twenties like many Young Friends I moved around the country until I finally landed in Seattle at 26.  My membership remained in the Meeting I grew up in until at 36 I knew I was going to stay somewhere and transferred.  So between 18 when I left home and 36 the constant in my Quaker experience was my annual attendance at FGC.  Some of my deepest most profound experiences have happened at FGC.  Thus I would say from personal experience FGC helps keeps young people attached to Quakerism.


What was so important to me at FGC?  The format of FGC is different than a Yearly Meeting.  No business is done at the national level – that is properly left to the Yearly Meetings.  It is Sat to Sat affair.  There is 5 whole days of the mornings spent in workshop- you choose one topic from a smorgasbord of topics and immerse yourself for 3 hours a day in that topic.  The topics are on a range of spiritual and Quaker Practice topics (with a few purely recreational topics).  Most attendees rank the workshops as the highlight of their week. Children attend a very fun children’s program during the same time and also in the evening while parents are at Plenary.  The Plenaries are talks or performances given by well known Quakers or one prominent none Friend (Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke at FGC during this lifetime.)  The “free time” in the afternoon is jam packed full of opportunities to go on local field trips, hear speakers from Quaker organizations or meet in any number of interest groups or support groups (Women’s Center, Men’s Center, Family Center, Friends of Color, AA, etc.)  This is why my ex-husband used to say:  “You go there every year like a dead battery and you come back renewed.”


I’m not a native Northwestern, although on my next birthday I will have lived in Seattle longer than my Midwestern origins.  I do understand the intentions of the founders of this Yearly Meeting to remain separate from the divisions in Quakerism – to perhaps be an assistance to the healing.  This is a very worthy goal. I also know that currently the Yearly Meeting is made up of unprogrammed Meetings – just as FGC is.  In fact, FGC has two United Yearly Meetings affiliated, it has Meetings that are programmed and also affiliated with FUM in its midst.  I know that when Friends move out to the west from FGC affiliated Yearly Meetings, they look up our Meetings and attend them, and they never notice the difference.   I traveled broadly among Unprogrammed Friends, and honestly I cannot tell you one difference I have been able to notice in Independent Meetings vs  Unprogrammed Friends.  For me it feels far less divisive to stop talking about Beanites and Hicksites and instead just talk about unprogrammed Friends.

This is not to sweep away the importance of the issue of what should we do about the divisions in Quakerism?  I simply would say if we want to focus on that, then we ought to focus on that, and figure out something to actually do.  Not affiliating is a non-action.  It is a not doing anything.  Given that there are other Yearly Meetings in the NW that are affiliated with FUM and with Evangelical Friends – I fail to see how our Independence has healed anything.  If those Yearly Meetings would be upset by our affiliation I would have to ask them why they affiliated long ago?

In the meantime if we look at the programs of FGC:
The Bookstore and its publications
The Annual Gathering of FGC held in July each year
Small conferences and workshops
The interfaith committee
Traveling Ministries programs
Friends Meeting House Fund
Committee on Ministry for racism
Youth Ministries Committee

There is much we already benefit from here and much more we could benefit from.  Most Meetings in this yearly Meeting have purchased books or First Day curriculum from FGC bookstore and many Meetings have benefited from the Meeting House Fund.  Many Friends scattered throughout our Yearly Meeting have on occasion (a few regularly) attended the Gathering.  Traveling Ministries offers to send Seasoned Friends to help a Meeting solve a problem or deepen its spiritual life.  Not unlike M&O of our Yearly Meeting does – but it is another resource, sometimes more neutral.  We could benefit from more exposure to the Committee on Ministry for Racism’s gentle nudges to see the racism we maybe unaware of.  The Youth Ministries Committee while new is hard at work trying to figure out how to nurture Young Friends- they are seeing to the future of Quakerism.  FGC offers all these services to any Meeting in the US or Canada regardless of whether they are affiliated which is why we have been able to make use of many of these programs.  However, I feel we need to apply the NPR standard here. I listen to NPR and because I do, I choose to pay an annual membership to it.  I could just listen- but I don’t think that is fair.

Friends rightly are concerned about whether paying for our affiliation, finding representatives and paying for their flight will be a burden to the Yearly Meeting.  For myself I wonder if we need all 4 representatives we are allowed.  I think we could get by just fine with two- its not like in consensus there is some numerical advantage to having more representatives.  I think like our other representatives some who serve will combine their service with visits to friends or family that they intend to take anyway and will not therefore ask to be reimbursed for travel.  I also think all Quaker organizations are being pressed to look in this area of declining oil and increasing carbon pollution at how we can to our business in more environmentally friendly ways.  I think Friends are increasingly trying to use technology: conference calls, skype, etc to do our business.   FGC is actively looking at how to reduce the number of committee meetings.  In fact FGC may have to look at creating a West Coast and an East Coast Gathering because of the travel cost.  If there was a Gathering of OK Friends, Intermountain Yearly Meeting, Pacific Yearly Meeting,  Alaska Yearly Meeting, and NPYM would that be something that would make you glad to be part of FGC?

I have noticed among some of my lifelong NWYM folks a sort of suspiciousness or distrust of those “East coast Philly folks”.   (Kind of like the joking maps of the US – the ones on the east coast showing some detail till you get to the Mississippi and then after that a sort of misshapen expanse.  The ones drawn on the west coast showing detail to the Rockies and then misshapen expanse with Chicago, NYC and DC drawn in.)  I’m not sure this kind of world view moves any of us forward.   We shake our heads when Americans make gross characterizations of people from other countries they have never visited.  It would be good if we could not do that about other Quakers because they come from other parts of the country.   We have things to learn from them and they have things to learn from us.  For those who feel this uneasiness about affiliating I think we must look closely and figure out is the easiness about real issues, or about a sort of unconscious distrust of the unfamiliar?

I asked my daughter, age 14 who has been to FGC most of her life what role it plays in her close identification with Quakerism.  She said:  I saw there that Quakerism is big.  (Gatherings held on college campuses tend to be about 1500 to 2000.) and the workshops I went to (children’s gathering) we did worship sharing and that’s the only place I have done that ,and I had spiritual experiences there.  I made friends with Quakers my age.”  (She stays in touch with them all year via email and Facebook.)  Like many young friends there are not enough young people her age to have that experience in our Meeting or even really in Yearly Meeting.

My greatest reason why I wish our Yearly Meeting would affiliate with FGC is the concern that I have carried for decades: the concern for the survival of unprogrammed Friends.  All my adult life I have been waiting to not be one of the youngest Friends in the room.  Sadly at 51 I’m usually still one of the youngest in the room.  There is something very wrong with that picture!   Since FGC’s whole mission is about nurturing the spiritual life of unprogrammed Friends – I feel it’s mission is something that is really, really important.  A Yearly Meeting simply does not have the resources to do the kind of nurturing that a national organization does.  I’m not sure how we will heal the splits of Quakerism by simply witnessing the slow decline decade by decade of unprogrammed Friends.