MLK Day 2008 Message
Some surely felt that my spoof last week of the well-known ‘Friends institutions’ was over the top. Many others surely understand that my substantial criticism is meant to ‘wake up’ those who have ‘fallen deeply asleep’ without realizing it. Socrates said, something to the effect that "we are not normally in a good mood upon waking". Are we?
So, in essence, my criticism is meant to revive vigilance in internal Quaker affairs where complacence has entered during membership decline. It is easier for an organization or a person to focus vigilance outward, rather than inward to the hard work of honesty, integrity and growth, self-governance and living within one’s means.
Upon being reminded today at the Riverside Church in New York City, at the Memorial for Martin Luther King, Jr., that “Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend” – my messages have been such. Many have misinterpreted them as harsh, when in fact they have been of honesty and ‘tough’ love. When did Friends become a warm-and-fuzzy, touchy-feely, universal, distant-looking, dishonest religion? When did Friends begin to rely on the wealthy or others to pull our weight in larger budgets than should have been approved in the first place? MLK as a Christian, elegantly did not mince words, as he was first and foremost – a minister.
Friends in New York Yearly Meeting, and extending to wider Quaker bodies, as I’ve pointed out for the past year, have mostly forsaken their grass-roots duties to themselves and have run the risk of becoming a hierarchy of meditation and discussion groups - not the Church. When this happens, paid persons begin to consider their jobs life-long, and the positions they fill – never ending – no matter what the constituent Friends’ bodies would have become or decided in a bottom-up model of decentralized finance and governance.
New York Yearly Meeting has again approved a deficit budget for 2008, the 3rd in 4 years. The 2008 deficit is approximately 2% of the total budget, thanks to the hard work that Long Island Quarter has done in determining its covenant, bottom-up Yearly Meeting contributions. The NYYM shadow government was again unable to switch gears between 9th Month 2007 and 11th Month 2007 and cut expenses. This even while the budget is still padded, and with advance notice of Long Island Quarter’s substantially reduced contribution in 2008 versus 2007. So we might say – the ‘leadership’ of NYYM is somehow still detached and out of touch with the constituency in living within the means of the body.
I was not able to speak freely when I was a member of NYYM. This is similar to the U.S. government’s top NASA climate scientist who spoke tonight on ’CBS 60 Minutes’ who has not previously been allowed to speak by the current executive administration in the United States. Does anyone understand that malfeasance of governance is the same whether the government is civil or religious?
And indeed, even before I spoke out publicly as I have in the past one year, I was forced out of the Yearly and Monthly Meetings in 9th through 12th Month 2006. This happened after I brought up uncomfortable evidence of financial and religious government malfeasance to the ‘leadership’ within the context of my appointment to the Financial Services Committee of NYYM. See the 4 Year Timeline of Malfeasance.
The way I see it, the NYYM ministers felt I threatened their financial interests and their own egos, by questioning an unaccountable and non-transparent religious government. This complacence was encouraged by the culture of NYYM in providing a perennial cheap summer vacation at a lake resort in the mountains as the reason-to-be ever since the reconstituted Yearly Meeting began again in 1955. Two of my own Quaker ancestors left the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting in 1701 to follow George Keith’s disownment, when Keith was thrown out for speaking up about the too powerful ministers, the wrongness of slavery, and the need for Friends to confess one’s faith regularly.
Some may feel that my ‘ministry’ over the last year, has been without religious overtone. If anyone is interested, I have made religious messages in my former Monthly Meeting, which are available to be read even now.
- 8/22/2005 (with basis on John 15, and Matthew 20)
- 5/15/2005 (with emphasis on an epistle of John Woolman’s, Howard Brinton’s Quaker Doctrine of Inward Peace)
(Manhattan Meeting has not updated this website in the past 18 months)
Each Friend is called to be a minister and support the Church financially when and where there is a need. If this is not being made clear upon membership approval of new Friends, what has gone wrong?
Unfortunately, Manhattan Meeting, of New York Yearly Meeting is apparently faced with corruption issues of financial and governmental malfeasance. On this day of Martin Luther King’s Birthday celebration, I can say also that racism - however twisted its whole concept – more likely translated to ‘entitlement based on skin-color’ - played a role in the actions of those who forced me out. I stood witness to financial malfeasance in both the Yearly Meeting and Manhattan Meeting. The Pastor of Manhattan Meeting is a prominent member and recorded minister of New York Yearly Meeting.
I cite one example here of how Manhattan Meeting has most probably misrepresented its membership size in its report of 10/28/2007 after refusing to transfer me in 12/2006, and instead releasing me and another Friend that meeting. There are still many examples of misrepresentation of membership numbers by other Monthly Meetings in NYYM, or in tandem with New York Yearly Meeting as it admitted again its membership declined slightly in the latest Yearbook,. After visiting over 20 meetings in NYYM in 2006, I personally believe there are only approximately 1500 Quakers within New York Yearly Meeting, not 3500 as they have stated in the latest Yearbook. The lights are on, but there are very few at home.
Again the shirking of bottom up duty to ministry and self-governance during membership decline – given over centrally to those who are continuously paid - goes against what the Friends should and do stand for.
Do my satirical observations of one week ago signal the impending death of Quakerism, or is it already dead? The rich paid the ministers throughout religious history, and they in turn interpreted religion to please those who paid them. This is almost the case in many Friends meetings if we looked, potentially - where 10% or less of the membership pays 90% or more of the costs of the Church operating budget?
Does anyone believe that Friends are becoming anything different than other hierarchal (Christian) religions today? Does the world need one more hierarchal religion? Isn’t this the same as the deterioration in our civil government, which we say should be ‘by, of, and for the people’, where we have public or private fantasies about electing those who have become career politicians to fix everything for us?
I have left a somewhat comprehensive numerical description of how New York Yearly Meeting can re-make the connection – described in the numbers in a five-year plan. Special interests in NYYM did not allow this vision of integrity of living with the means of the Monthly Meetings to come to life. NYYM Friends refuse to believe that paid positions are ‘overpaid’ or have gone on too long for individual Friends to return to productive work in their own lives. But is the honesty of making a real connection, or making a real difference in individual cases for each of us, just too hard to do for those Friends who are left?
My messages describing how one Yearly Meeting has gone wrong were meant to educate all others not to follow these mistakes. I’ve written my previous epistles over the last year to all Friends that I know, based on the assumption that Friends are different than the rest of the world – we are a breed apart. I’ve based my commentary on the assumption that those Friends who are not working up to their potential really do have a sense of duty to their internal condition before they look outward to try and change others. I have made my statements based on the assumption that change in oneself often makes others change more easily than some legislation or ‘minutes’ we can envision and approve? Have I been incorrect in my assumptions?
posted by nyymsadud at
11:39 PM
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