Given the new global geek culture based on "cloning, forking and merging" (software projects), I'm predicting that future Quaker forking may be a lot smoother (lots less gnashing of teeth). We won't get so freaked out over "ism schism". One forks a project to experiment with possibilities. Quakerism is about knowing experimentally not just because the Bible tells us so, or whatever (we have a problem with "being told").

Quakerism holds that attending to God in a spirit of expectant waiting will produce results of an organizational (corporate) nature, and not necessarily in opposition to other Quaker organizations for the simple fact of its own existence.

In other words, in forking a new branch of Quakerism that wants to accept Somali refugee families intact, fully recognizing Biblical marriages (i.e. non-nuclear, might include > 2 adults), no hostility towards more ordinary Quaker practice is implied.

Other meetings observe the results and decide what of this practice to merge, if any. Through diversity and learning from one another (these go together) we become stronger, not weaker. What I see manifest in this practice is a greater faith in God than in calcified records ("old bones") as the agreed-upon "authorities." I'm all for Bible study BTW, just not to the neglect of other important homework.