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Transcript of Prezi Re NEYM M&C Presentation on Withholding Policy Transcript of a Prezi by Callid Keefe-Perry and Honor Woodrow on behalf of Yearly Meeting Ministry & Counsel Updated 18 November 2019 Edited for style and formatted by Peter Bishop 10 February 2020 1 2 Table of Contents Preface ..........................................................................................................5 Timeline and Background Information 1988-1991 FUM and NEYM: Structurally ........................................................9 FUM Statement of Sexual Ethics .....................................................9 FUM Personnel Policy ...................................................................10 2000-2005 The First Triennial in Kenya ..........................................................11 FUM Board Not In Unity ...............................................................12 2004 NEYM Minute of Exercise ............................................................13 2007 Joint Meeting of African and North American Friends .................15 2007-2009 NEYM Minute of Commitment .....................................................17 FUM’s Response ............................................................................18 NEYM Minute of Support for Same-Sex Marriages .....................18 NEYM Minute Establishing the Withholding Policy ...................19 2010-2014 Extending the FUM Withholding Practice ....................................20 2015-2019 NEYM Working Group Is Not Formed .........................................21 NEYM M&C’s Charge .................................................................21 2014 Listening Sessions Friends wanting to remain in relationship with FUM ....................25 Friends wanting distance from FUM .............................................25 Support for the NEYM withholding policy ...................................26 Resistance to the NEYM withholding policy ................................26 Sessions 2019 FUM Withholding Mechanism ......................................................27 Minute of Exercise on the YM Relationship with FUM ................27 Financial Data as of 2019 ..........................................................................29 Questions to Inform Our Ongoing Discernment ........................................32 3 4 Preface What is this Presentation? A tool for individual Friends and Meetings to use in preparation for ongoing discernment about New England Yearly Meeting’s Withholding Policy created in response to Friends United Meeting’s Personnel Policy. We hope that is helps Friends to understand and engage with the multiple facets of this complex moment, giving us a all an accessible resource for information, allowing a greater number of people to participate more fully in our collective discernment. Sharing with Ministry and Counsel If your Meeting would be interested in having an M&C-hosted Listening Session happen sometime before May 14, contact [email protected] to see about the availability of Friends who have been asked to travel. If you or your meeting would like to share your perspective with members of NEYM's M&C in preparation for their discernment, all emails sent to [email protected] will be shared at M&C's May 18th Meeting. If you have questions, want clarification, or would like to talk to the Clerk of M&C about this issue, email [email protected] and she will respond. 5 6 Timeline and Background Information 7 8 1988-1991 Summary • FUM Board approves a Personnel Policy Manual which states both that: o Staff and volunteer appointments are made without regard to sexual orientation, and that o It is expected that sexual intercourse should be confined to marriage, understood to be between one man and one woman. (91 GBEX 18) - 1991 • The board is divided. • As a result of the division, the general Secretary of FUM pushed for Yearly Meetings with a more universalist theology to unafiliate with FUM and only seek affiliation with Friends General Conference (FGC)- 1990-1993 Background Information FUM and NEYM: Structurally “The Friends United Meeting community stretches far and wide across the globe. We are a collection of Christ-centered Quakers, embracing thirty-seven Yearly Meetings and Associations, thousands of local gatherings and hundreds of thousands of individuals. Joined together through our shared experience of God and united in common ministries, we form a beloved fellowship that is powerfully at work in our local areas and through cross-cultural service.” Of note: organizations such as Friends United Meeting, Friends General Conference, and Evangelical Friends International, do not hold authority over the constituent Yearly Meetings. FUM Board minute 88 GB 52 FUM Statement of Sexual Ethics (a) We affirm the civil rights of all people to secular employment, housing, education and health care without regard to their sexual orientation. In particular, we condemn violence, whether verbal or physical, against homosexuals, and call for their full protection under the civil rights laws. (b) We reaffirm our traditional testimonies of peace, simplicity, truth speaking, gender and racial equality, personal integrity, fidelity, chastity and community. We recognize that there is diversity among us on issues of sexuality. For the purpose of our corporate life together, we affirm our traditional testimony that sexual intercourse should be confined to the bonds of marriage, which we understand to be between one man and one woman. 9 (c) The lifestyle of volunteers under appointment to Quaker Volunteer Witness, regardless of their sexual orientation, should be in accordance with these testimonies. FUM Minute 91 GBEX 18 FUM Personnel Policy In March 1991, the FUM General Board Executive Committee approved (91 GBEX 18) circulation of an “Organizational and Personnel Policy Manual.” It took the ‘88 policy and extended it as follows: Friends United Meeting holds to the traditional Friends testimonies of peace (nonviolence), simplicity, truth speaking, community, gender and racial equality, chastity, and fidelity in marriage. It is expected that the lifestyle of all staff and volunteer appointees of Friends United Meeting will be in accordance with these testimonies. Friends United Meeting affirms the civil rights of all people. Staff and volunteer appointments are made without regard to sexual orientation. It is expected that sexual intercourse should be confined to marriage, understood to be between one man and one woman. This wording has been retained in all subsequent editions of the FUM Personnel Manual. After Minute 88 GB 52 was approved in 1988 and after the FUM Personnel Manual was adopted by the Executive Committee in 1991, it was recognized that the board was divided. The divisions on the board seemed so great to some that a push for realignment was made between 1990 and 1993 by the General Secretary of FUM. The Secretary felt that the dually affiliated yearly meetings—the reunited Orthodox and Hicksite yearly meetings: Canadian, New England, New York, Baltimore, Southeastern—because of their universalism and because of the fact that many members did not identify as Christian, did not belong in FUM and encouraged them to make Friends General Conference their single affiliation. “Realignment” failed. 10 2000-2005 Summary • FUM held its first triennial overseas—in Nairobi, Kenya. • FUM General Secretary says: "There had been 20 plus names listed for possible worship sharing leaders. We only needed 12. I made a decision not to invite a person in a homosexual relationship to be a worship group leader...." • Years later the clerK and General Secretary found reconciliation: "my handling of the situation [was] inexcusable." • At a later Triennial, the General Secretary publicly named her behavior as “homophobic” and apologized. • Calls came forward from Baltimore Yearly Meeting Friends to the FUM board to reconsider the personnel policy. • The personnel policy was discussed at almost every general board meeting between Fall 2002 and Spring 2005. The board did not find unity to amend the policy or remove it—but it also did not find unity to reaffirm it. Background Information The Situation in 2002 The First Triennial in Kenya In 2002, as part of its effort to become equal partners with Friends in Africa, FUM held its first triennial overseas—in Nairobi, Kenya. No one had ever planned an international triennial before and some things went awry. One of them was that too many people were invited to be worship- sharing group facilitators. Of this situation, FUM’s General Secretary at the time said the following: There had been 20 plus names listed for possible worship sharing leaders. We only needed 12. I made a decision not to invite a person in a homosexual relationship to be a worship group leader. This was not a policy decision; just something I felt was a courtesy to our hosts. I also asked American women to wear skirts rather than pants, but no one reacted to that! It was at the Triennial sessions that I discovered this person had already been asked to serve and subsequently had the invitation withdrawn. This is where the pain comes in. Whether you support the decision I made or not, what is important is the pain and humiliation caused a human being through my actions. And that makes my handling of the situation inexcusable. 11 Upon discovering that the invitation had been extended and then withdrawn, my immediate response was to apologize. Only through the Spirit of God could what I was feeling be honestly transmitted. What I received in return
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