Yearly Meeting asked: “Can we transform the way the world is going and recognise
that everyone and everything on the planet matters and can be thought of as a
divine commonwealth, or kin-dom? Quakerism is all about putting our faith in a
power which transforms us.”
Minute 36: Living out our faith in the world – are we ready to meet
the challenge?
How are we led to live out our faith in a world where we see
systemic injustice and increasing inequality?
We have been reminded that God’s
work is where our deep gladness meets the deep suffering in the world, as in
Psalm 85:
‘Mercy and truth are met together;
Righteousness and peace have kissed each other,
truth shall spring out of the earth;
And righteousness shall look down from heaven.’
We are all activists and we are
all worshippers. Our worship and action spring from the same spiritual source.
The light not only illumines us but pushes us to seek change.
We recognise the problems in the
world and the urgency of acting on them. Our current political and (especially)
economic systems only recognise and encourage part of the human condition, the
selfish, competitive, greedy part. So much of what is good and beautiful and
true in the world is being trashed. The model of power as domination needs to
be challenged and replaced with a model of power as service to the community;
in doing this, we need to live our testimony and hold firm to its source in
faith.
The damage of the present
systems, like the benefits, are not shared equally. We need to recognise how
many of us benefit through the possessions we hold and the houses we live in,
and to consider when we are part of the problem. In living out our faith in the
world, we may be called to give up our privileges, but if we do so our voice
and our lives will be all the more authentic and powerful. We can be at our
most powerful when we are vulnerable.
The damaged and damaging
structures of the world are not the only influence on our lives: there is also
the power of faith and the leadings of the Spirit, which if followed will lead
us, will push us, towards a better world. That, then, may be the first action
we need to take: to be more faithful.
What are the changes which are
needed to the systemic injustice and inequality that we see in society? We need
to go deeper to find the roots of our social ills, and how we might uproot the
powers that maintain them. We should rethink what needs to grow in this world
and what does not. Can we transform the way the world is going and recognise
that everyone and everything on the planet matters and can be thought of as a
divine commonwealth, or kin-dom? Quakerism is all about putting our faith in a
power which transforms us.
Many of us have spoken of the
anger we feel about the current injustices of the world, and sometimes our
hearts are heavy with all the things we cannot do. Anger can be a spur to
action, but we need Light and guidance to use it wisely and sparingly. We
already have a way of finding this wisdom in our corporate discipline
and our testing in worship of
leadings. Through these our righteous anger and passion can be transformed in
order to tackle the root causes of injustice and inequality. Our action begins
in worship, in seeking and reflecting before we act. Our practices of listening
within and being open to what comes to us from without are rarer than we think,
and are a precious gift that we should both use and share.
We are called to consider what
we each can do and also make and build on connections in our communities and
across the globe.
We are also called to be a community of Friends as a yearly meeting, pushed
towards the important things we can only do together. We have a body of
experience we can draw on and maintain. We are in this for the long haul. As a
yearly meeting we are restless to take corporate action to change the unequal,
unjust world in which we live.
We ask Friends and meetings to
engage with the evil of social and economic injustice which creates a world in
which the wrong things are valued. To do this requires owning and upholding the
work that is already being done by Friends and in our name; helping to fund
that work as generously as possible; and becoming involved in however small a
way. For ourselves we need to find some action however simple to do now.
We ask Meeting for Sufferings to
take the work on social and economic injustice forward, co-ordinating the work
of local and area meetings who might wish to become more deeply involved, and encouraging
the deep spiritual and intellectual searching that could underpin a ‘true
social order’ for our age.
We ask Yearly Meeting Agenda
Committee to align their work with that of Meeting for Sufferings and to keep
this issue before the Yearly Meeting for further consideration over the next
two years. Between Yearly Meetings we should all try to share our experience.
We ask our Recording Clerk and staff to make our concern about social and
economic inequality known as widely as possible and in particular to challenge
the incoming UK government to adopt policies which decrease inequality and
value equally the contribution which all can make to developing a more just and
sustainable society.
We must remember that what makes
the real difference is not adding further to the words in the world but being
and living out the new social order, testing our leadings together and trusting
to our Quaker processes, ‘opening ourselves to the Light to guide us in each
small step.'
