Friends don’t have a particularly good track record with regards to controversy. There’s no reason we need to pretend to be talking historically. We’ve had two major yearly meetings break up in this summer (meet Sierra-Cascades Yearly Meeting and North Carolina Fellowship of Friends), with at least one more “at bat” for some future long hot summer.

Controversies flare up in many places. Friend Sa’ed Atshan just broke his media silence to talk about the cancelation of his talk at Friends’ Central School in February and the subsequent walk-outs, firings, and litigations. The controversy around Avis Wanda McClinton’s disownment by Upper Dublin Meeting continues to incense large numbers of Philadelphia Friends, with fuel to the fire coming from the role that the Undoing Racism Group does or doesn’t have in the yearly meeting structure. Last year a majority of Friends of color boycotted public events at the FGC Gathering over frustration at the site selection process and the underlying issues extend to other Quaker venues.

The most-commented recent article in Friends Journal is “It Breaks My Heart” by Kate Pruitt from the online June/July issue. Many readers related to her sense of alienation and loss. Two comments that hit me the hardest were:

Not all Friends are found in Quaker Meetings. You’re better off without your meeting.

Gone now is the hope… of finding community among Quakers. To be frank, why bother? There’s plenty of brokenness right where I am.

And I get enough “Why I’m leaving Friends” manifestos in my email inbox every month that I could turn it into a regular Friends Journal column.

It seems to me that are a number of underlying issues that tie these controversies together. What do we do when a group of Friends starts acting in a manner that seems contrary to our understanding of Quaker testimonies and practices? How do we balance love and judgement when conflict arises among us? When do we break out of Quaker niceness? Maybe even more challenging, how do we maintain our integrity and accountability when controversy breaks us into camps willing to engage in exaggeration? And just what do we say when the outside public only gets half the story or thinks that one side is speaking for all Friends?

So this is a plug for submissions for December’s Friends Journal.  The theme is “Conflict and Controversy” and the submission deadline is September 9. We’re not looking for blow-by-blow accounts of being mistreated, and we’re not terribly interested (this time) in manifestos about Quaker cultural norms. I’m less interested in specific issues than I am the meta of discernment: How do individuals or small groups of Friends move forward in the heat of controversy. What do we do when the easy solutions have failed? How do we decide when it’s time to break out of Quaker niceness to lay down some truth—or time to kick the dust off your sandals and move along?

Just a moment…

www.friendsjournal.org

The alumnus said he’s upset the principal [Harold Jernigan] has not acknowledged the accusations. But he said he doesn’t regret sending his original message. ‘If you read Quaker literature, they spell ‘Truth’ in the uppercase – the implication of divinity,’ he said, ‘that it is a holy thing to continue that search for truth.’

I’m glad this is getting out now, but I did a double-take as the accused principle is still alive and living a few dozen miles from me. He was a lightning-rod figure as principal of at least two other schools after Carolina. I imagine the behavior continued. Updates below:

• An period article on his tenure at a Friends Seminary, a Manhattan Friends school, talked about the unrest of his two-year tenure there. It sounds like he came in and summarily fired the heads of the lower, middle, and upper schools. This is the kind of thing one would do if they wanted to curtail accountability.
• A memoir by Quaker educator Leonard Kenworthy talks about this period at Friends Seminary: “He moved much too rapidly in bringing about changes, asking for the resignations of the heads of the elementary and middle school, plus several other shifts, within a very short period, even before he took over as principal. Over and over I urged him not to move too fast but he said there were two ways of handling such a situation. One was to move slowly over a period of years. The other was to bring about quick changes and then to begin rapidly to initiate new programs and new personnel. He was determined to use the latter approach.”
• A 1986 New York Times profile of Friends Seminary had this to say of its former head: “After a shake-up of the staff that led to the resignation or dismissal of several teachers, a teacher’s union was formed, and students went on strike. Eventually, the principal, Harold Jernigan, resigned and the school ”rejected muscular Quakerism and returned to its mystical faith,” in the words of the official history.”
• A commenter on one news article writes: “Please also know that Harold Jernigan’s behavior continued on at Atlantic City Friends School, where he was Headmaster. As an Alum of ACFS, I thought that should be made clear.”
• Carolina Friends School wrote an open letter to the community in June.

Update December 2014. I have received emails from a former student who wished to remain anonymous at this time. I have no way to fact check this but it is consistent with the history and I have no reason to think it’s inaccurate. With that caveat, here are some excerpts:

As an Alumni of Atlantic City Friends School I am not surprised at all to hear about Harold Jernigan sexual abuse in the least . Please note this abuse along with more forms of abuse went on at ACFS into the early 80’s

Sexual abuse was not the only abuse. Abuse of the school system in general including drugs , abuse of power , money , teaching so badly that curves were used to grade so curved that the highest grade in a math class Harold Jernigan taught was a 42 yet all were passed . Harold Jernigan also would listen to classrooms and locker rooms with a speaker system in his office even after he promised Teachers he would not . Please note if Harold Jernigan did not want a student to pass he would call a meeting with all Teachers to make sure certain students would not pass no matter what .

I was a victim of his non sexual abuse but still abuse all the same .

I am only telling you this so someone puts a stop to this abuse. Back in the late 70’s early 80’s who would believe a teenager . To see this Finally come out makes me know there is Karma .

As teenagers in school we would talk amongst ourselves . No one would come forward because we knew Harold would hold back our Diplomas or not forward a letter to a college .

You must remember ACFS was attended by either high IQ students , rich kids that were kick out of their other schools or students that wanted to attend a private school . This made the student body Easy Prey .

During my time at ACFS I made friends with some of the Teachers . These Teachers are some of my sources ! They knew but needed their job

Let’s talk Friends and music. The cartoon Quaker in our historical imagination glares down at us with heavy disapproval when it comes to music. They’re squares who just didn’t get it.

Getting past the cartoons

Thomas Clarkson, our Anglican guide to Quaker thought circa 1700, brings more nuance to the scruples. “The Quakers do not deny that instrumental music is capable of exciting delight. They are not insensible either of its power or of its charms. They throw no imputation on its innocence, when viewed abstractly by itself.” (p. 64)

“Abstractly by itself”: when evaluating a social practice, Friends look at its effects in the real world. Does it lead to snares and tempations? Quakers are engaged in a grand experiment in “christian” living, keeping to lifestyles that give us the best chance at moral living. The warnings against certain activities are based on observation borne of experience. The Quaker guidelines are wikis, notes compiled together into a collective memory of which activities promote–and which ones threaten–the leading of a moral life.

Clarkson goes on to detail Quaker’s concerns about music. They’re all actually quite valid. Here’s a sampling:

• People sometimes learn music just so they can show off and make others look talentless.
• Religious music can become a end to itself as people become focused on composition and playing (we’ve really decontextualized: much of the music played at orchestra halls is Masses; much of the music played at folk festival is church spirituals).
• Music can be a big time waster, both in its learning and its listening.
• Music can take us out into the world and lead to a self-gratification and fashion.

I won’t say any of these are absolute reason to ban music, but as a list of negative temptations they still apply. The Catholic church my wife belongs to very consciously has music as a centerpiece. It’s very beautiful, but I always appreciate the pastor’s reminder that the music is in service to the Mass and that no one had better clap at some performance! Like with Friends, we’re seeing a deliberate balancing of benefits vs temptations and a warning against the snares that the choice has left open.

Context context context

In section iv, Clarkson adds time to the equation. Remember, the Quaker movement is already 150 years old. Times have changed:

Music at [the time of early Quakers] was principally in the hands of those, who made a livelihood of the art. Those who followed it as an accomplishment, or a recreation, were few and those followed it with moderation. But since those days, its progress has been immense… Many of the middle classes, in imitation of the higher, have received it… It is learned now, not as a source of occasional recreation, but as a complicated science, where perfection is insisted upon to make it worth of pursuit. p.76.

Again we see Clarkson’s Quakers making distinctions between types and motivations of musicianship. The laborer who plays a guitar after a hard day on the field is less worrisome than the obsessed adolescent who spends their teen years locked in the den practicing Stairway to Heaven. And when music is played at large festivals that lead youth “into company” and fashions, it threatens the religious society: “it has been found, that in proportion as young Quakers mix with the world, they generally imbibe its spirit, and weaken themselves as members of their own body.”

Music has changed even more radically in the suceeding two centuries. Most of the music in our lives is pre-recorded; it’s ubiquitious and often involuntary (you can’t go shopping without it). Add in the drone of TV and many of us spend an insane amount of time in its semi-narcotic haze of isolated listenership. Then, what about DIY music and singalongs. Is there a distinction to be made between testoterone power-chord rock and twee singer-songwriter strums? Between arenas and coffeehouse shows? And move past music into the other media of our lives. What about movies, DVS, computers, glossy magazines, talk shows. Should Friends waste their time obsessing over American Idol? Well what about Prairie Home Companion?

Does a social practice lead us out into the world in a way that makes it hard for us to keep a moral center? What if we turned off the mediated consumer universe and engaged in more spiritually rewarding activities–contemplative reading, service work, visiting with others? But what if music, computers, radio, is part of the way we’re engaging with the world?

How to decide?

Finally, in Clarkson’s days Friends had an elaborate series of courts that would decide about social practices both in the abstract (whether they should be published as warnings) and the particular (whether a particular person had strayed too far and fallen in moral danger). Clarkson was writing for a non-Quaker audience and often translated Quakerese: “courts” was his name for monthly, quarterly and yearly meeting structures. I suspect that those sessions more closely resembled courts than they do the modern institutions that share their name. The court system led to its own abuses and started to break down shortly after Clarkson’s book was published and doesn’t exist anymore.

We find outselves today pretty much without any structure for sharing our experiences (“Faith and Practice” sort of does this but most copies just gather dust on shelves). Monthly meetings don’t feel that oversight of their members is their responsibility; many of us have seen them look the other way even at flagrantly egregious behavior and many Friends would be outraged at the concept that their meeting might tell them what to do–I can hear the howls of protest now!

And yet, and yet: I hear many people longing for this kind of collective inquiry and instruction. A lot of the emergent church talk is about building accountable communities. So we have two broad set of questions: what sort of practices hurt and hinder our spiritual lives in these modern times; and how do we share and perhaps codify guidelines for twenty-first century righteous living?

I think the YAF/FI challenges can be roughly divided into three categories. They are introduced in the next paragraph, then elaborated on in turn. They are:

• *Accountability*. Communication and group process within YAF/FI has never been very good. We can change that, revitalizing the role of Business Meeting as setter of the vision and forum for subcommittee feedback and policy setting.
• *Outreach*. Who Do We Serve? YAF/FI has done no outreach to newly-convinced Friends and the planning of events has shown an insensitivity to the needs of this group.
• *Activities*. We’ve had a lot of conferences with mediocre programs that have little spiritual or Quaker focus. We can set yearly themes as a group in advance, giving Steering Committee guidance for particular programs.

ACCOUNTABILITY:

PYM/FI has not been an organization with good communication skills, group process or accountability. Business meetings have been thought of as a necessary and begrudged task where half the participants fall asleep.

Business Meetings should have clear, advance agenda. The YAF clerk should call for agenda items by email two weeks before the meeting (phoning prominent members who don’t have access to email), and send out a draft agenda the week before. Basic agenda items should include variation on the following (my facilitation experience comes from Quaker-inspired but not Quaker process, so some of these tasks might need to be turned into Quakerese):

• silent worship;
• agenda review;
• reports from all subcommittees (treasurer’s report, steering committee report, distribution committee report, email/web report);
• two substantive issues;
• setting next date;
• evaluation of meeting;

All reports should be written (ideally distributed by email beforehand and with a dozen copies at the meeting) and should include activity, fiscal activity, policy questions needing business meeting input, approval of future tasks. Every decision should have specific people as liaisons for follow-up, and part of the next Business Meeting should be reviewing progress on these tasks.

OUTREACH: WHO DO WE SERVE?

I have a very large concern that the official YAF/FI organization does not do extensive outreach and that it hasn’t always been sensitive to the needs of all YAFs.

As a convinced Friend who first ventured forth to a Quaker Meeting at age 20, I spent years looking for YAFs and not finding them. The only outreach that YAF/FI does is to graduating Young Friends (the high school program). Our outreach to newly convince Friends has been nonexistent.

Other underrepresented YAFs: the Central Phila. MM group, thirty-something YAFs, YAFs of color, les/bi/gay YAFs (our President Day’s gathering conflicts with the popular mid-winter FLGC gathering, an unfortunate message we’re sending), YAFs with children.

Some of the outreach challenges for YAF/FI include:

• Cliquishness. Many plugged-in YAFs know each other from high school days and it can be intimidating to jump into such a group. There’s also a reluctance to review assumptions brought down from the Young Friends (high school) program;
• The poor communication in YAF/FI keeps many disenfranchised YAFs from having a forum in which to express their concerns and needs. We can reach out to under-represented YAFs and ask them what a age-fellowship could provide them;
• Single-type events: the weekend gatherings keep away many YAFs with responsibility. The tenor of YAF/FI events often keeps away the more mature YAFs. I doubt one type of event could satisfy all types of YAFs. We should be open to support the leadership of disenfranchised YAFs by providing them the money, resources and institutional support to address their communities’ need (keeping in mind YAF events should be open to all).

ACTIVITIES

YAF events have had their problems. Thematically, they usually have not had Quaker themes, they have not been geared toward spiritual growth (usually First Day’s Meeting for Worship is the only spiritual component). They have followed the patterns of Young Friends events (3 day gatherings), even though this format excludes many (most?) YAFs.

We could easily have more of a mix of events. Some could be the traditional weekend events, some could be day events, like the successful apple-picking expedition and Swarthmore gathering a few years ago organized by Friends Center-employed YAFs.

As far as I’ve known, there has never been any Business Meeting brainstorming for themes, and each event has been organized in an ad hoc manner by a small group of people without feedback from the general YAF population. This is partly a result of the need for conference organizers to have a conference planned long in advance.

I propose that we set Year-Long Themes, a process that some groups employ to interesting effect. In the fall, there could be a Business Meeting to decide the next calendar year’s theme; Steering Committee could then organize all of the programmatic events around this topic. This would give large YAF input into the selection process and also provide an interesting unity to topics. Each topic should be broad enough to allow for an interesting mix of programs and each topic should have a specific Quaker focus. One pedagogical motivation behind these events should be to introduce and reinforce Friends’ history and culture.

Themes that I’d love to see:

• Spiritual and historical roots of Quakerism. (Becca Grunko, Margaret Hope Bacon, Peggy Morsheck might be good resource people). Events could include a look at the fiery birth of Quakerism and an historical exploration of Friends Institute itself (founded in the 1880s, FI played a role in unifying the Hicksite/Orthodox schism in PYM and provided key assistance to the early AFSC; Gennyfer Davenport is hot on the trail of this history!).
• Quakers in the world. a look at volunteerism, and witness and ministry. An obvious event would be to participate in a week- or weekend-long PYM workcamp.
• Neat Quaker figures (maybe even neat PYM figures!). Conferences that look at the history of folks like John Woolman, William Penn, Lucretia Mott, perhaps current figures like the Willoughby’s.
• Quaker Lifestyle and the Testimonies. Egads, we could read Faith and Practice! For those of you who haven’t, it’s really an interesting book. Not all events should be thematic, of course. The early December Christmas gathering doesn’t need to be; neither does some of the day long events (i.e., the apple-picking expedition was a fun theme in itelf!).

This essay written Third Month 21, 1997 by Martin Kelley

The Story of this essay (written fall of 2003)

I wrote for Friends Institute, the Philadelphia-area young adult Friends group, back in March of 1997. I was very involved with the group at the time, serving formally as treasurer and webmaster and informally as the de-facto outreach coordinator. We had a visioning retreat coming up in a few months and I wrote this as a strengths / weaknesses / opportunities piece to get the ideas rolling. I thought we had some work to do around the issues of cliquishness, and I also thought we could become more thoughtful and spiritually-focused but I tried to find a sensitive way to talk about this issues.

I got a lot of reactions to this essay. Some people really really loved it, especially those outside the Philadelphia insiders group: “Thanks for the insightful analysis! You really did a wonderful job of objectively explaining the frustrations that some PYM YAF’s (myself included) have with FI” and “I was so inspired by your essay ‘YAF vision for future’ that we are hoping bring it forward and circulate it here in among Australian YAF.”

But some of the insiders felt challenged. One didn’t even like me talking about cliques: “I think that as a group we have all been aware for some time of the problems plaguing Friends Institute… I don’t like the word clique because it makes me think of an exclusionary snobbish group of people that looks down on others.” (of course this was my point).

As if to prove my analysis correct, the insiders immediately started talking amongst themselves. Within two weeks of emailing this essay, both of my formal positions in the organization were being challenged. One insider wrote a request to the yearly meeting to set up a competing Friends Institute website; others started wondering aloud whether it proper for an attender to be Friends Institute treasurer. No one ever questioned my dedication, honesty and good work. I was more actively involved in Quakerism and my meeting than most of the birthright members who participated in FI, and I was the most conscientious treasurer and webmaster the group ever had. My essay had obviously hit a nerve and the wagons were circling in against the outsider threat. Realizing just how ingrained these issues were and to what extent the insiders would go to protect their power, I eventually left Friends Institute to focus again on my monthly meeting’s thriving twenty- and thirty-something scene.

The essay continued to have a life of its own. The May 1997 visioning retreat focused on nothing at all and subsequent business meetings dropped to a handful of people. But the issues of the high-school focus, cliquishness, and unfriendliness to newcomers came to the forefront again a few months later, after some sexual assaults took place in the young adult community. A conference on “sexual boundaries” produced an epistle that hit some of the same topics as my visioning essay:

We identified a number of habits and issues in our young adult community that tend to bring up dangerous situations. For example, some of our sexual boundaries carry over from our experience as high-school aged Young Friends… Newcomers become “fresh meat” for people who come to gatherings looking to find quick connections… People get lost especially when we have larger gatherings, and we don’t watch out for each other.

Friends Institute drifted for a few years. By the summer of 2000, a convince Friend became clerk and tried to revive the group. She found my essay and emailed me: “I’ve been looking over the FI archives and am impressed by your contribution. Do you have any advice, suggestions, or time to become active again in FI?” Sad to say this attempt to revive Friends Institute also had a lot of problems.

I repost this essay here in 2003 partly to have a ongoing record of my Quaker writings here on my website. But I suspect these same issues continue in various young adult friends groups. Perhaps someone else can see this essay and be inspired, but a warning that I’ve seen these dynamics in many different young adult friends groups and seriously wonder whether reform or revival is impossible.
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