Missing Ministry

 

mezzo-tint 1683-8 (c) The Trustees of the British Museum

Last week I picked up a book I haven't read for ages. It was George Gorman's 1973 The Amazing Fact of Quaker Worship. Flicking through its pages I came across a passage from Robert Barclay's 1676 explanation and defence of Quaker practices and beliefs, usually called his Apology. I've never read Barclay's Apology but two passages struck me. The first is also included in Quaker Faith and Practice:

" it is left to the free gift of God to choose any whom he sees meet thereunto, whether rich or poor, servant or master, young or old, yea male or female."

The words may not seems so dramatic in the present day but in the 17th century, during the Restoration period, the distinction between classes was sharply marked, In particular the subservience of servant to master and woman to man in the workplace, family and society was taken for granted and often strictly enforced. The idea that God might choose to address a master through a his servant of a man through a woman was revolutionary. It didn't just call into question the restored hierarchy headed by the king; it was akin to the levelling movements that had been suppressed during the Commonwealth period under Cromwell. 

But Barclay goes further in a passage I eventually found in Barclay's Apology online, and which I'm quoting here at greater length than George Gorman does:

"in our day God hath raised up witnesses for himself, as he did fishermen of old, many, yea most of whom are labouring and mechanic men, who, altogether without that learning, have by the power and Spirit of God struck at the very root and ground of Babylon, and in the strength and might of this power have gathered thousands, by reaching their consciences, into the same power and life; who, as to the outward part, have been far more knowing than they, yet not able to resist the virtue that proceeded from them. Of which I myself am a true witness, and can declare from a certain experience, because my heart hath been often greatly broken and tendered by that virtuous Life that proceeded from the powerful ministry of those illiterate men: so that by their very countenance, as well as words, I have felt the evil in me often chained down and the good reached to and raised."

This startled me because it indicates something which I haven't, to my recollection, heard said in Quaker circles: that the majority of God's witnesses in the 17th century - by which Barclay almost certainly means Quakers - were members of the "labouring and mechanic" class. In other words, they were manual workers. Barclay goes on to say that he has direct experience of their ministry, and it has had a powerful effect on his faith, life and actions.

I wonder how many Quakers today can say that they have responded like this to the ministry of working-class people. 

I could extend this to wonder how many Quakers today can say that their lives have been changed, as Barclay's was, by the active presence of exploited, despised and marginalised people in their Meeting. Are there any Meetings in Britain today where the most frequent and most effective ministry comes from people who are poor?

We are missing a great deal of ministry - and it may be ministry that would, in Barclay's words, break and tender us - and by tendering he means softening us, making us tender to the call of the Spirit and the needs of others.

It's worth imagining what a Quaker Meeting might be like if we regularly received ministry arising, through the Spirit, from the lived experience of queuing at a food bank, or from fearing the loss of insecure housing or casual work. Ministry may arrive through an individual but it speaks through that individual's experience, knowledge and understanding, just as it uses that individual's words and language. Let's go further and imagine that all Meetings in Britain included a number of members who shared their experience of homelessness or, like many Black youths and adults, of being regularly stopped and searched by the police. Suppose most members of Quaker Meetings experienced, on an almost daily basis, the casual cruelty of a society that looked down on them and treated them as people of little worth. I wonder what Quaker Meetings for Worship would be like if that were the case, and whether we would, in such circumstances, build a stronger community and draw closer to the Light. 

Money, time and something else

The website for Quakers in Britain includes a section on giving.  It indicates two ways in which members of the Religious Society of Friends can contribute to Quaker work: by giving money or by giving time. Both money and time are useful and can be used well. But there are many people who have neither time nor money to spare and there's a risk that such people may come to feel they have nothing to offer the wider Quaker community - and that the Quaker community as a whole may forget what those without time and money actually provide.

Many people in Britain have less than no money. They are in debt. This isn't their fault. We live in a system where debt is a way of life. Some kinds of debt are respectable, even among Quakers who can be quite critical of debt. A mortgage is a debt. A student loan is a debt, although a debt that may never be repaid. A bank loan that underwrites a business venture is a debt. 

The debts that people working in insecure low-paid jobs or relying on benefits tend to be smaller but it's much harder to get by when these debts are incurred. Many people who have incurred debts through poverty or crisis find themselves working extra hours in an attempt to reduce of pay off the debt. These people often have caring responsibilities or illness or disabilities as well. They can't offer Quakers time or money but they are just the people we should welcome in our Meetings and as members. They have much to teach the wealthier and more fortunate people in our community. 

Some of what we might learn is purely practical. The book of  Pam Lunn's 2011 Swarthmore Lecture, Costing not less than everything, includes the following passage:
    "In the town where I live the local climate change action group recently had an interactive exhibition. ... I spent about three hours there, helping visitors use a simple online carbon footprint calculator. The people who were showing low carbon emissions and coming very close to one-planet living (in carbon terms) were the poor - people unemployed or on low incomes, with whole families living in small houses, in what many of us would regard as over-crowded conditions. I was surprised at how low some of their carbon footprints were. ... I don't regard my own home as luxurious, or my lifestyle as affluent - but on a global scale they most certainly are."

That passage is a useful reminder, and not just that poorer people in Britain may be doing less harm to the planet than the majority of Quakers. It's an uncomfortable reminder that Quakers are, by and large, affluent and liable to be surprised that poor people might set a good example. And while the paragraph draws back from suggesting that the author is herself living an affluent lifestyle in a luxurious home in local terms, that is precisely what her example suggests. If there were more people in our Meetings setting a good material example by their low carbon footprint because of their relative poverty, and if their example were valued, admired and followed, they would provide something of worth to the community of Quakers as a whole.

I think we sometimes pay too much attention to those who are able to offer time and money to Quakers, and too little attention to those among us who struggle and lack both. Because we don't have a paid priesthood, we depend on those who can afford to donate time to Quaker work and perhaps also to those whose money can fund Quaker projects. Of course their time and money is a useful and generous gift. But just as we worry about big donors to political parties wielding undue influence and power, we need to be concerned that big donors to Quakers (in terms of time as well as money) might exert too much influence on the decisions and direction of the Society. Those who possess spare time and money are often those whose life experience has been limited. There is a difference between observing need (even when we respond to it) and actually experiencing need.

There is no single experience of poverty and need. People who are poor or in need are complete, fully-rounded human beings. Each of them has something individual and specific to offer us, should they wish to join us at Meeting or become a member of the Religious Society of Friends. Each has particular spiritual insights. We can learn at least as much from those who lack time and money as from those who have both in abundance.

watercolour from the commonplace book of Quaker Elizabeth Clay

Where are the poor Quakers?

 Why are Quakers so wealthy?

Not all Quakers are wealthy. Some are poor, subsisting on benefits or working for low wages in the gig economy. Some struggle to make ends meet. But the overwhelming impression given by Quakers in Britain as a whole is of people who are, for the most part, comfortably off and who don't suffer from the day-to day money struggles that affect a large proportion of the British population. So what went wrong?

Quakers are, as our Advices and Queries make plain, a faith group with Christian roots. And the Bible, which Quakers are still advised to read, is not a book that sides with the rich. Jesus' teachings are quite clear: he brings good news to the poor and warns his followers not to lay up for themselves treasures on earth. Yet Quakers often seem quite proud of the wealth that Quaker businesses - the breweries, the banks, the chocolate factories - have created. By the mid-19th century, according to Elizabeth Isichei's research, the average Quaker was three times as wealthy as the average British citizen. I don't find that a cause for pride.

Once any group starts becoming rich it's also liable to start being defensive about its wealth. In religious groups this can be labelled the reward of providence of the gift of God. Surely we don't think like that any more. Surely we know that wealth - including Quaker wealth - was achieved in some dodgy ways. Even Quakers who didn't "own" enslaved people or take part in colonial wars reaped the benefits of a system of empire-building, war and slavery.

Wealth has other corrupting influences. It's not just that, as the Sermon on the Mount says, moth and rust will corrupt, and thieves break through and steal. It teaches people to protect themselves from any association with poor people and poverty - unless that association is one in which the rich can congratulate themselves on doing good to and instructing the poor. Separation between rich and poor becomes central to a way of life.

In the 1860s many Quaker missions had been set up. These were not based on the equality of all that we attempt today in Quaker Meetings, where anyone can minister (unless and until eldered). They included Bible readings, singing and preaching to the poor. By the end of the 1860s there were roughly as many people regularly attending Quaker missions as there were attending Quaker Meetings for Worship. The suggestion was made that Quaker Mission members should be admitted to membership of the Religious Society of Friends - though perhaps there should be a second-class, inferior kind of membership especially for them.

The proposal to admit Mission members to Quaker membership created much discussion among Friends. In 1869 Quaker Robert Barclay, in a widely-published speech, asked:

 "Do you wish to invite chimney-sweepers, costermongers, or even blacksmiths, to dinner on First Day? Do you intend to give their sons and daughters a boarding-school education? Do you intend to save the country the expense of supporting them when out of work, and give them a sort of prescriptive right to a maintenance – a right apart from the simple personal, individual act of Christian charity?"

The speech went on to explain that it would be wrong to ask labouring men to take time away from their labours so that they could attend the business Meetings in which the direction of the Society was determined. (He didn't mention labouring women because women were, at that time, excluded from such Meetings.) And he went on and on and on:

"There is the crossing-sweeper! He is a Christian; will you reject him from Christ’s visible church? He has the same Lord, the same baptism, the same faith, the same God. He will go to the same heaven as you. He will sit down at the marriage-supper of the Lamb. Nay, he may occupy a higher place in heaven than you. No, you cannot, as professing Christians, refuse to welcome him as one who Christ is not ashamed to call his brother and if you are ashamed  to do so, be very sure he will at the last day be ashamed of you before the angels of God.

           "You cannot refuse him that Christian communion, that  loving Christian sympathy and religious instruction which you desire your own child should enjoy. But is that any reason you should introduce him to what is religiously valueless, and invite him to dinner, and encourage your daughter to associate with him in her civil or social capacity? Is it any reason why you should give him a boarding-school education, which will help him to become one of the queen’s ministers? Are not these things beyond the functions of a Christian church? Must they not necessarily limit the mission of a church of Christ?"

That distinction, between wealthy Quakers and the faithful poor, was the view that prevailed. There is an absence of poor and working-class people among Quakers today because Quakers decided - perhaps by default rather than active decision - to exclude them from the Society. So today we have wealth  but are impoverished in diversity. There is important ministry that we may therefore fail to hear.