P is for … Prejudice

I just started to read the novel ‘The Purchase’ by Linda Spalding. The opening chapter sets the scene of a young man – a Quaker – travelling with 5 children and a woman who – in the course of the chapter – is revealed to be 15 years old, an orphan the man had adopted some time ago, and now his second wife. The story is set at the turn of the 18^th to the 19^th century in the US, starting off at Brandywine, a major centre of Quakerism at the time.

This story may strike us as curious – why is he travelling, why does he have 5 children and such a young second wife?

What turns out to be part of the story is this: the first wife has died just after giving birth to the fifth of the children. The Quaker community, rather than offering support to the widower and his children at such a difficult time, berated him for not sending away the 15-year old orphan the family had adopted some time before, because it was considered inappropriate for him to have a young woman living with him.

He, however, felt that he couldn’t just turn her out as she had nowhere to go. So what does the Quaker Meeting do? They disown him. And that’s why he starts on a perilous journey in late autumn with 5 young children and the 15-year old: his wife now, but still a child herself.

It made me ask myself: what social constraints could have persuaded a Quaker Meeting to do such a thing; of course, there is no way this could happen today, could it? Well, at least not in Philadelphia or – for that matter – Britain YM I hope.

But do we have grounds for complacency?

And then I remembered that of course all sorts of prejudices have caused Friends (just as other people) through the ages to do things that today we would cringe at.

I remember the early days of being a member of Friends Homosexual Fellowship (FHF, the forerunner of Quaker Lesbian and Gay Fellowship – QLGF) and the Quaker Women’s Group (QWG); both encountered all kinds of prejudices against who we were and what we were doing.

And nor were we immune; I remember one discussion group we had at one FHF meeting on the subject of prejudice. One dear Friend – unusually for her – said nothing for the first half hour whilst we talked about our experience of our own prejudices; she then rose to her full height and said: ‘Prejudice? What Prejudice? I know I’m right!’ and sat down.

And that’s of course the nub of the problem. We know we are right, at least most of the time and so it’s really easy to see other people’s prejudice and ignore our own; ignore it, not because we do so wilfully, but because we don’t even see it.

It’s giving ourselves the permission to jump to conclusions.

Quaker Faith and Practice has much to say

I usually look at QF&P when I start thinking about one of these posts to see if there is anything relevant to weave into my musings. With prejudice, I hit a gold mine. There was far more evidence of this word than I had expected.

A few references:

In Advices and Queries the following: Refrain from making prejudiced judgments about the life journeys of others.

In Chapter 8, in the description of the work of Quaker Peace and Social Witness (QPSW) it says: (QPSW) works towards a society where diversity is appreciated and all people can fulfil their potential for fullness of life in harmony with others. It promotes social justice, the reduction of prejudice and the equal treatment of all people, and works against unjust systems.

Chapter 23 on social responsibility has many references.

So we are all very aware of the issue.

And in Advices and Queries, again, in paragraph 17 the killer advice: ‘Think it possible that you may be mistaken.’ That’s the hardest one; because we know we’re right, don’t we?

Why is it important?

There are lots of situations where we operate on assumptions (another form of pre-judgement) and where it is really difficult to opt out of the ‘cultural norm’ of thinking. Like Friends in Brandywine in 1798, we are faced daily with postulations and assumptions we’re supposed to accept:

• Of course it’s important to ‘make work pay’ and counter the ‘benefit culture’
• Of course we have to respond to ISiL with bombs; what else could we possibly do
• Of course, reducing taxes for better off people will encourage them to be enterprising and wealth will ‘trickle down’
• Of course we don’t want the European Court of Human Rights telling us what to do

And on it goes; in the next few months and in the run-up to the General Election we will be bombarded with such obvious truths – which turn out to be political views built on assumptions and prejudices against certain groups of people.

I want to remind myself – and all of us – just before the campaign gets hotter and hotter – to stop, think, examine facts, consider it possible that we (and those who have the ‘answers’) might be mistaken; and even if that is not going to be popular with the people around us: our neighbours, colleagues, the people we walk our dogs with and so on; we still must counter today’s prejudices which are the equivalent of agreeing to have a 15-year old orphan girl thrown out of the only home she has ever known rather than to give a young widower the benefit of the doubt that he might be able to behave honourably.

 

O is for Outreach

Outreach is for me an invitation to others to join us in our way of worship and response to life which are so important to us that we wish to share them. At the simplest level this means supplying information about meetings, Friends to contact, and basic beliefs, all of which should be given accurately, clearly and if possible attractively. In the second stage outreach offers to others, through meetings, personal contact and literature, the experience and truth which Friends have found for themselves through three centuries and which impel us just as strongly today. It is different from some forms of evangelism in that it does not use mass emotional appeal, idiosyncratic demands or autocratic compulsion but only the persuasion of insight, humanity and good sense. It does not depend on rewards or threats, but on the active acceptance of those who see it as truth. Edrey Allott, 1990QF&P 28.09 http://qfp.quaker.org.uk/passage/28-09/

Why our reluctance to let our lives speak with a Quaker label?

Just the other day, we had a very good presentation about Quaker work in the Middle East over the last 150 years at Meeting (as part of our 4^th Sunday after shared lunch programme). One of the things that struck me was the fact that the speaker said: there are of course lots of Quakers who do and have done lots of work on Middle East issues, but they often don’t put a Quaker label on it.

And earlier in the year, when I was standing as a candidate in the local elections, one of the members of the Meeting asked to see my public candidate statement (which was published on the website of the local Green Party – for whom I stood) and after she had read it, she said: you have mentioned that you are a Quaker far too often.

And yet earlier – actually nearly 10 years ago, when I was party to a discussion about outreach, finding new attenders and possibly members, in a Meeting in continental Europe, one seasoned Friend said: I’d never say that I’m a Quaker when I’m in a non-Quaker group or at work.

So why is it that we hide our light under a bushel? And quite often so tightly that not even the subtle rays get out?

And how do we think people will know about who we are and what we stand for?

The opportunities we create for ourselves – and how we can use them

At Britain YM Gathering in 2014, we agreed a statement on the violent situation in Palestine and Israel and with special reference to Gaza which, at the time the statement was drafted, was in the middle of a bloody war.

This received a certain amount of public attention in the media; it was a bold statement, one that is not uncontroversial among Friends in Britain (or elsewhere); but it is one that many of us – and I count myself in that number – are very proud of. It is measured, clear, committed to alternatives to violence, and it makes a clear request of our government to act.

So what has happened with this statement from the point of view of individual members and Meetings taking action and using it as an outreach tool?

I would be interested to know what others have done. What I have done is this: I have written to my MP and sent her a copy of the statement; I have asked her to support the call both for the UK government to recognise Palestine as a State and to place an arms embargo on Israel.

She has responded; to give her her due, she responds to most of the e-mails she gets from me. Her response was fairly bland and included a standard response from the Foreign Office who basically said they had received too many communications about the situation in Gaza to respond to them individually.

I wasn’t impressed with either their or her response. So I have now written again and asked her to comment on the two specific requests Quakers in Britain make of the UK governments; I have also asked her to find out the response of the Foreign Secretary and the Business Secretary to these requests and to make sure they are aware of my views.

And I have asked her to make sure she participates in the debate in the House of Commons, scheduled for 13 October 2014, to debate the motion “That this House calls on the government to recognise the state of Palestine alongside the state of Israel”. I don’t know whether she would support the motion; I rather suspect not; but I want to make sure she knows that I do and that she at least hears what other MPs have to say about it.

This is one form of outreach; by communicating with our elected representatives as Quakers, they become aware of (in Edrey Allot’s words) the experience and truth which Friends have found for themselves through three centuries and which impel us just as strongly today.

Questions to ask ourselves

If we are not prepared to take that action, daily, weekly, all the time, are we failing in one key form of outreach?

If we are not saying to people that what we do comes from our being Quaker, from the insights we gain from the experience of Meeting for Worship, then are we selling ourselves and Quakers short?

If we do things that are informed by our being Quaker – and how could we do other – without putting a Quaker label on them, how are we letting our lives speak in a way that might open the experience of Quakerism to others?

H is for – what do we do about Hate Speech

Over the last two days I have picked up a lot of very destructive hate speech in the comments to articles in the Daily Telegraph. And example would be this article and the comments which relate to it.

Let me explain:

I have been reading the DT online for the last 12 months or so for the sole purpose to inform myself about how the other side sees things. The DT itself is quite conservative and Eurosceptic and its readers are, on the whole, even worse. But they do represent a substantial part of the population.

In the wake of the ‘trojan horse’ story about schools in B’ham, there has been quite a bit of vitriol in the DT (and no doubt in other papers, too). And don’t get me wrong, I’m as opposed to the things that have supposedly been going on in these academies.

I have checked with a Friend in B’ham who worked in the education sector for a long time and she is broadly confirming that there is some substance behind the allegations.

But the reaction of both the press and the public commenting in the press is really quite worrying. If you read some of the comments associated with the article (above – see link), you’ll see that people are talking about civil war, about targeted assassinations, about riots to deal with minorities, about the military intervening and so on.

Now, I don’t think any of this is really likely; but I do think that having this kind of stuff out there on the internet is very dangerous and very damaging so long as there is nothing coherent that puts another voice into the mix.

A few days ago, I actually commented on another article in the DT about the story that there was discrimination and non-adherence to the national curriculum going on in 3 schools in B’ham. It appears to be part of the same ‘plot’ as the trojan horse story. And because I said something to the effect that it is important to deal with such breaches of standards and governance in academies through judicial means rather than whipping up hate against whole communities, I got an avalanche of relatively negative comments back ranging from telling me I was part of the problem by saying these things to some comments that were considerably worse.

I don’t really mind getting that sort of stuff – it doesn’t really affect me personally. But I do think there is a need for a different voice to be broadcast effectively, that addresses such problems in context and highlights responses that are reasonable, lawful, non-violent and – dare I say it – rational.

I am at a loss on this one; I don’t know how as Friends we can stand up against such hate speech in a way that is visible on the Internet, on social media, in the on-line papers and that is heard by the communities that are being vilified.

I await your comments and ideas.

E is for Equality

‘I believe that meeting for worship has brought the same awareness to all who have seen and understood the message that everyone is equal in the sight of God, that everybody has the capacity to be the vessel of God’s word. There is nothing that age, experience and status can do to prejudge where and how the Light will appear. This awareness – the religious equality of each and every one – is central to Friends. Early Friends understood this and at the same time they fully accepted the inseparable unity of life, and spoke against the setting apart of the secular and the sacred. It was thus inevitable that religious equality would be translated into the equality of everyday social behaviour. Friends’ testimony to plain speech and plain dress was both a testimony of religious equality and a testimony of the unacceptability of all other forms of inequality.’

Ursula Franklin, 1979 – from QF&P 23.32

The testimony to equality is an essential part of Quakerism for me. The conviction that we are all equal – in the sight of God and therefore in the sight of each one of us – is where it all starts.

Because we believe in that of God in everyone there is no rational way to argue that we are anything other than equal.

So what does this require of us today?

It means that we treat everyone with the same respect. That means that we don’t go around vilifying people because of the social class or group they belong to. It means engaging with each person we meet as an individual and expect him or her to do likewise.

It means that we do not accept policies imposed by our government – at whatever level of government – that significantly undermine the ability of some people to fully participate in society; i.e. policies that diminish people.

In the last few days, Catholic and Anglican clergy, Methodist and URC leaders and representatives of Britain YM (and I am so immensely proud to know that BYM participated in this) raised their serious concerns with government policies that drive people into poverty.

Being forced to feed yourself and your family from a food bank – as well meaning as food banks are – is diminishing people. It means that they are not able to participate fully in a society based on the ability of at least most people to earn their own living, to support themselves and those they that are dependent on them.

And then, today, there is a story in the Guardian that suggests that people who have benefits withdrawn and want to challenge that decision may have to pay charges to bring such appeals.

Equal access to the law, equal access to justice is another fundamental pillar of a society that regards people as equal. And to remove access to justice on the basis of ability to pay from people who by definition are amongst the poorest, is cynical and very close to evil in my book.

So at this point this is just a leak of an internal document from the Department of Works and Pensions; in my view it is a cynical fishing expedition the government is on. They float such ideas and gauge the public response. If we all just glaze over and don’t respond, they’ll bring in this new rule on the quiet wrapped up in some piece of legislation that looks innocuous. If there is an outcry, they’ll drop it and say it was just the random musings of some civil servant.

Well, let’s call there bluff. Let’s tell them what we think about this.

Testimony is about speaking and acting our truth. Let’s make our testimony to equality stand up to scrutiny on this issue. We have to draw a line somewhere.

So here’s what I have just written to my Member of Parliament:

This morning, I read with some disquiet a piece in the Guardian which suggests that the Department of Works and Pensions is considering requiring benefit claimants to pay a charge for appealing against sanctions decisions.

Given that the article further reveals that since 2010 the proportion of successful appeals has been 58% (as compared to 20% before 2010), then this means that people who have a very good cause for challenging an administrative decision which very often will lead to them going hungry and being at risk of losing their home will be prevented from doing so for financial reasons.

These are – by definition – among the poorest in society. Preventing access to justice to people in this situation is morally wrong and politically cynical.

I appreciate that this is – as yet – not government policy; it is a leaked document that is floating this idea; no doubt, the leak has been engineered to gauge public opinion. And that is the reason I am writing to you now: please note that I am wholly and unequivocally opposed to any such measure being brought in at any point.

Please make sure that your party uses its position within the Coalition to prevent this idea from going any further. Please communicate this view to Ian Duncan-Smith on my behalf.

Thank you for your assistance in this matter. I do appreciate all the hard work you do and all the support you give to your constituents (like me) in making our views heard by government.

If you are a UK citizen, I invite you to write to your MP in a similar vein.