As York Monthly Meeting responds to the request of the Presiding Clerk of Baltimore Yearly Meeting for our discernment regarding the relationship between BYM and FUM, we refer Friends to the following statements from 1) Matthew 22: 36-40, 2) George Fox’s Journal, 3) Faith and Practice of our Yearly meeting, 4) Our York Monthly Meeting Minute on Same-Gender Marriage, 5) Our statement on violence and 6) a Friend’s statement on healing in community.

• Matthew 22: 36-40, New International Version

36"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" 37 Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself. 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."

• Epistle to Friends in the Ministry written in Launceston Jail, 1656 from George Fox’s Journal

“Be patterns, be examples in all countries, places, islands, nations, wherever you go, so that your carriage and life may preach among all sorts of people, and to them. Then you will come to walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in every one.”

• Faith and Practice of Baltimore Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, 1988 p.20
A. Living with Self and Others
Friends have a loving concern for the varieties of supportive relationships that exist. We realize that the range of long-term mutual commitments is now wider than traditionally accepted. Our Meeting communities now include persons living alone, two-parent families, single parent families, married and non-married couples, homosexual and heterosexual couples, single adults or extended families sharing a household, and larger communal groups. At present Friends are divided on the wisdom or rightness of some of these relationships. Nevertheless, we recognize that there are many kinds of domestic living situations in which individuals have made long-term commitments to each other and in which a caring, sharing, supportive relationship can grow. We are all called to make our primary relationships responsible, loving, mutually enabling, and spiritually enriching.

• York Monthly Meeting Minute on Same-Gender Marriage: York Friends recognize marriages to affirm lifelong loving commitments, to support families, and to strengthen our spiritual community. It is fundamental to Quaker faith and practice that we honor the equality and integrity of all human beings and affirm individuals in their leadings. Therefore, we find it consistent with Quakers’ historical faith and testimonies that we practice a single standard of treatment for all couples who wish to marry.
As Friends we have traditionally celebrated unions as marriages under the care of the Meeting. We affirm that we will offer the same loving care and consideration to all couples without regard to gender.  Gay and lesbian Friends and couples bless our Meeting. Their gifts of courage, love, and devotion speak to us of God, and move us closer to that of God within us all. (minuted and approved 1998 ?)

• On violence: We understand violence to mean more than war and physical savagery. We believe also that the assaults on the human spirit which are so common, in society, and even within the Society of Friends, as when parents insult their children, teachers demean their students, when physicians treat patients as objects, when people condemn gays and lesbians ‘in the name of God’, when racists live by the belief that people with a different skin color are less than human, when persons in myriad relationships humiliate and denigrate one another, these are evidences of spiritual and emotional violence, destructive of the sanctity of the divine spark in all Life. This kind of violence violates the identity and integrity of individuals and groups and violates our understanding of the Peace Testimony. (Adapted from Parker Palmer, A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward An Undivided Life, Welcoming the Soul and Weaving Community in a Wounded World.)

• On healing in community
“Thus we reach out to others
not as people who have all the answers
but as those who know the experience of fear and hurt
and who are in the process of being healed.
We speak to others who disagree with us not in condemnation
but with eyes which ever look toward the Source of our healing.
Sandra Cronk, 1984

We acknowledge the long years of struggle, sincere efforts, and fatigue of so many committed Friends and we affirm our faith that a deeper Love and Unity are yet to come as we take incremental steps of Love in the continuing revelation essential to the Quaker search for Truth.

We are committed to listening deeply, generously, and patiently to one another and to the Spirit of Love through intervisitation, formally and informally with Friends and others who are in unity or in disunity with our leadings on Friends’ Testimonies regarding right relationships among Friends.

We are committed to continue broadly inclusive Quaker dialog through many avenues* while believing that understanding of similarities, differences, and continuing revelation will be nourished in love and that Way will open in as yet unforeseen manifestations.

We request that financial support given through York Monthly Meeting not be channeled through FUM Corporate entities, but instead be used for intervisitation.  We request BYM to do likewise with their funds.  Furthermore, we are not in unity with the recommendations of the “Committee of Four Committees” to “direct our General Secretary to release to FUM the monies withheld since 2004, and furthermore to ask that Stewardship and Finance Committee together with Trustees formulate a plan for paying what is owed, in installments if necessary.” We believe it good practice to bring any recommendations to the Monthly Meetings for seasoning and any further action to be taken only by Yearly Meeting in Annual Session.

When there arise contemporary Quaker policies of discrimination against non-married and non heterosexual persons and violent practices to them, this contradicts in belief and practice our deepest understanding of reverencing that of God in every person and living in a spirit of love and nonviolence as described in the Testimonies of Peace and Equality. When voices call for  “Spiritual Purity” and for an affirmation of the “Richmond Declaration,” we are concerned that this will lead Friends to spiritual rigidity and judgmentalism. We seek an enhancement of more loving relationships rather than opportunities for divisiveness and exclusion in thought and action. We seek a way forward wherein we can be in loving relationship with FUM and all Friends without compromising our understanding of Truth and without going against our conscience.

We are committed to continued worship and dialog, sharing and seeking, welcoming and loving all who come to be in community together as Friends, believing that in so doing we can best ‘cross pollinate’ and share with other Friends for the ‘good of all’ and the ‘good in all’” (Riley Robinson, General Secretary, BYM)

We send forward this minute in love and faith.

Leada Dietz,
Clerk, York Monthly Meeting

5/1/2008

* for example: participation in Friends World Committee For Consultation, monthly and yearly meeting intervisitations, attention to the epistles and minutes published by all Friends groups, respectful and attentive reading of Quaker publications such as Friends Journal, Quaker Life, Pendle Hill publications, etc., and participation in Friends workshops addressing Faith and Practice in the 21st century,