In separate conversations, two F(f)riends that I have known for a long time, Brent McKinney and Billy Britt, greeted me warmly and welcomed me back to North Carolina Yearly Meeting (Friends United Meeting), meeting at Caraway Conference Center in Sophia, North Carolina this month (Eighth Month, 2016). I was delighted to receive their welcome. But, in all honesty, I had to admit that they couldn’t welcome me “back,” because I was attending North Carolina Yearly Meeting for the first time! Both Brent and Billy were astonished. Hadn’t they each been in many meetings with me over the years? I agreed that it was so, but this was still my first time visiting with them in North Carolina. So, with gratitude for the wonderful hospitality of Brent, Billy and many others, and even though I bring something of a practiced Friend’s eye to the occasion, these are still the reflections of a newcomer to NCYM (FUM).

The last sentence of the book of Acts (28:30) portrays the Apostle Paul living in Rome and “welcoming all who came to him, proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance.” Colin was especially struck by the fact that the last word in the book in the original Greek is one that means “unhindered.” In a physical sense, this may not have been really accurate. Colin pointed out that Paul was probably shackled to his guard as he moved about. But Paul is, as we are, unhindered in the way that really matters. If we stop blaming our problems on others, and we were to really tap into the available power of the Holy Spirit, as Paul did, what magnificent changes could we manifest in our own time?

The Clerk of the Yearly Meeting, Mike Fulp, Sr., and the Clerk of the yearly meeting executive committee, Brent McKinney, brought the gathered assembly to consider the grave issues that currently confronted the yearly meeting. As Associate Editor of Quaker Theology, I was well aware of the issues faced by North Carolina Yearly Meeting, controversies that Quaker Theologyhas covered in-depth over the past two years (issues #26-28).http://quakertheology.org/QT-Issue-list.html Fulp reviewed the events of the past year. Fulp noted that the Executive Committee in 2015 had released, or expelled, three meetings, Poplar Ridge, Holly Spring, (two of the more conservative meetings) and New Garden, (a liberal meeting) because of “dual affiliations” with other yearly meetings. (The terminology gets quite confusing, as there is a North Carolina Yearly Meeting, Conservative, that is “conservative” in a different sense than the strongly evangelical theological identity that is being labeled as “conservatism” in the yearly meeting sessions that I went to. Nothing in this essay should be taken to apply to NCYM-C.) Said Fulp, but “east met west,” and meetings of all theological persuasions had rejected the Executive Committee recommendation that these three meetings had to go. Since that meeting one year ago, Fulp observed, “we have heard no objections to meetings being dually affiliated,”  so the cause of the discord within the yearly meeting must lie elsewhere.

Fulp remarked on the guidance to the yearly meeting provided by a theologically diverse group of nine pastors who convened to try to find a way forward for North Carolina Yearly Meeting.  On May 9, they submitted a report to the yearly meeting executive committee, that stated “while we can celebrate much that unites us, we also recognize the issues that divide us,” including the authority of Scripture, atonement, same-sex marriage, and the nature of our Christian identity. The controversial issues are often presented as non-negotiable. After a lengthy dialogue, seven of these pastors proposed that “the only way forward is a mutually-agreed upon separation.” This proposal came with a stated hope that North Carolina Friends could stay connected at some level, but there was a need to set Friends at liberty on those things that divide them. The other two pastors dissented from these conclusions, asserting that the yearly meeting needed to find a way to stay together.

Fulp and McKinney found this proposal to be quite helpful. Consequently, the executive committee had spent several  months exploring what a separation might look like. It would be a massive undertaking, which would need to account for matters of faith, organization, property, and law. One proposal was that the yearly meeting could separate, with one successor organization focused on “authority” of Scripture and of the yearly meeting, and the other on “autonomy” of the individual meetings. To my ear, this sounded very similar to the separation that had just taken place in Indiana Yearly Meeting. (Issues #18-24 of Quaker Theology had covered that yearly meeting’s separation.)  If a separation were to take place in North Carolina, McKinney observed, he suspected  that both new yearly meetings would be a part of Friends United Meeting. Just such an outcome had taken place in Indiana three years previously.

You can read more from Steve here: http://esrquaker.blogspot.com/2016/08/north-carolina-yearly-meeting...