Quaker Theology

3. Schisms

  • Chapter 8 — Indiana Yearly Meeting Schism Documents

     Camping Out at the Borderland: Reflections on Life in a Liminal Time (Ruth 1: 1-14) By Stephanie Crumley-Effinger (Expanded from a message in Worship at West Richmond IN Friends Meeting, First Month 13, 2013) As readers of this journal are aware, Indiana Yearly Meeting is in the process of a separation. This essay is meant to give you a…

  • Moment of Truth: Wilmington Yearly Meeting Divides over a Familiar Set of Issues

    By Stephen W. Angell Wilmington Yearly Meeting (WYM), assembled at the Friends Meeting in Maryville, Tennessee, on the last weekend of July, released five meetings (four monthly meetings and one preparatory meeting) that requested to sever connections with the yearly meeting. Read More

  • The Separation Generation

    By Chuck Fager; with material edited and adapted from previous issues of Quaker Theology. I – Background It’s not easy – in fact, impossible – to pick a starting date for what I call the “Separation Generation” in American Quakerism. My personal preference is July 1977, when the first major interbranch conference in decades, gathered in…

  • Back From The Brink: North Carolina Yearly Meeting Says No To A Split

    Chuck Fager I North Carolina Yearly Meeting-FUM (NCYM) has ended the two-year effort to purge its “liberal meetings.” This seems to be the most definite outcome of its showdown annual session on August 13 and 14, 2016. It was a very close thing. The leadership Read More

  • Thunder In Carolina, Part Two: North Carolina Yearly Meeting – FUM And “Unity” vs. Uniformity

    Chuck Fager I We begin by looking back to August 30, 2014, at the annual session of NCYM-FUM. The Executive Committee has just made its report. Almost immediately intense controversy breaks out. Pastors and others from four meetings, in particular, rose to loudly insist that business, as Read More

  • 06: AFSC and Southern Appalachian Yearly Meeting & Association

    An Exchange About Numbers; (SAYMA), 2011-2012 From SAYMA’s minutes, 2011: [SAYMA =] Southern Appalachian Yearly Meeting & Association June 9-12, 2011[Below: SAYMA’s logo & Map of Meetings] Warren Wilson College, Swannanoa, North Carolina41st Annual Meeting 41-32: AFSC and Quakers Free Polazzo serves as one Read More

  • Is There Life after Death in Quaker North Carolina?

    Chuck Fager Demolishing a 320-Year-Old Meeting     At 10:58 Eastern time,  Seventh Day (Saturday), Eighth Month (August) 5, 2017, at Quaker Lake Camp near Liberty, NC, Clerk Michael Fulp asked, “Do you approve?”     The assembled Friends, Read More

  • An Increasingly Familiar Story: Northwest Yearly Meeting Expulsions & Sequelae

    Chuck Fager We’ve also been following the growing tensions in Northwest Yearly Meeting, out west (see Issue #24:, Issue #27  ; and Issue #28 ).     In January 2017, these tensions came to a head when the YM leadership announced a purge of Read More

  • Wilmington YM: Another Yearly Meeting Schism?

    By Stephen W. Angell The Fairview Minute This eloquent minute (around which most of the discussion in annual sessions in Wilmington Yearly Meeting was based) was approved on January 15, 2017, in a small rural Friends’ church in New Vienna, Ohio. It was in response to a longstanding Read More

  • Attachments: NC Yearly Meeting Documents

    Attachments to North Carolina Yearly Meeting Split debate

  • North Carolina & Northwest Yearly Meeting Updates: Ambushed, Sandbagged, and Kicked Down The Road

    Chuck Fager I Have you seen moments like this in detective films, or in stories? When Sherlock, or whoever the sleuth is, hunches forward and shouts: “Good God, Watson! How could I be such a FOOL??” (Usually, it means things are about to get very interesting.) I had that kind Read More

  • George Fox University and West Hills Friends:

    Controversy and Conflict in NorthwestYearly Meeting By Stephen W. Angell [Editor’s Note: In Issue #24, we reported on a two-sided struggle that had appeared in Northwest Yearly Meeting (NWYM). On one side, there emerged a visible support group for LGBT students, staff and alumni at the Newberg. Oregon campus of NWYM’s academic offspring, Read More

  • Part II: Northwest Yearly Meeting Elders “Release” (i.e., Expel) West Hills Friends Meeting

    Background On July 24, 2015, only hours after the annual NWYM sessions had adjourned, NWYM elders communicated to West Hills Friends Meeting (WHF) that they had been expelled, or, in the el­ders’ term, “released,” from the yearly meeting. This action has a long pre-history that Read More

  • Thunder In Carolina: North Carolina Yearly Meeting – FUM

    Chuck Fager North Carolina Quaker Showdown As this issue went to press, North Carolina Yearly Meeting-FUM (NCYM) was on the brink of a showdown over its future, with a high probability of undergoing a major schism. What’s at stake in the struggle? Many things, but what stands out are four Ms: Mission, morality, Read More

  • Letters From Meeting Demanding Disciplinary Action Against Meetings With Which They Differ – And Responses

    [Note: The letters are reproduced here, and are also online at our website. Links are listed after the letters. The quality of reproduction is as good as we could make it from the available copies.] Bethesda Friends Meeting, Dunn, North Carolina Deep Creek Friends Meeting, Yadkinville Read More

  • Links to NCYM-FUM letters online

    Protesting Letters Poplar Ridge Letter: https://afriendlyletter.com/files/Poplar-Ridge-Friends-NCYMFUM.pdf Pine Hill: https://afriendlyletter.com/files/Pine-Hill-Friends-NCYM-08-3024.pdf Deep Creek: https://afriendlyletter.com/files/Deep-Creek-Friends.pdf Hopewell: Read More

  • Separation Accomplished: New Beginnings for a New Association of Friends and a “Reconfigured” Indiana Yearly Meeting

    By Stephen W. Angell The disagreement became so sharp that they parted company; Barnabas took Mark with him and sailed away to Cyprus. But Paul chose Silas and set out, the believers commending him to the grace of the Lord. He went through Syria and Cilicia, strengthening the churches. – Acts Read More

  • Northwest Yearly Meeting and “Shattering” Conflict: Chapter One

    Chuck Fager with Jade Souza With the schism in Indiana Yearly Meeting over one meeting’s open welcome to LGBT persons now complete, one could have thought this journal would have a break from coverage of such events. But it was not to be. In July 2013, another American Friends church, this time in an Read…

  • Indiana Yearly Meeting Update & Documents

    In This Section: Update: The “Reconfiguration” of Indiana Yearly Meeting Enters an Intense Organizational Phase, By Stephen W. Angell Documents: Camping Out at the Borderland: Reflections on Life in a Liminal Time (Ruth 1: 1-14) By Stephanie Crumley-Effinger From Read More

  • The Proposed Split of Indiana Yearly Meeting: What Its Monthly Meetings Say

    By Stephen W. Angell Editor’s Introduction September 11th. Is there a more ominous date on the contemporary American calendar? Now, 9-11 has become a landmark date for Indiana Yearly Meeting (IYM), in a manner eerily reminiscent of its traumatic meaning for society at large. On September 11, 2012, Read More

  • Editor’s Introduction: Divorce in Indiana – Quaker Style

    Divorce is not as traumatic an experience as it once was. In fact, today most spouses resolve to part peaceably. No-fault laws and mediators can smooth the way to property and custody agreements. The results are still wrenching, but civilized, and much Read More

  • Two Current Conflicts in Midwestern Friends Meetings

    Stephen W. Angell Part I: Freight Train Bearing Down? West Richmond Friends Meeting and Indiana Yearly Meeting West Richmond Friends Meeting in Richmond, Indiana, might seem to be an odd ground zero for the newest intra-Quaker conflict, but that is where the Meeting has found itself in the past two years, after approving a “welcoming…

  • “Putting the Bible into Perspective: Hicksites and the Theological Treatment of the Bible in Progressive Reform”

    Jody Cross-Hansen This article is part of one chapter of my doctoral dissertation–a work-in-progress in which I am examining the Nancy Hewitt hypothesis that perhaps the Hicksite schism was a positive event because it led to liberal reform among women. The jury is still Read More

  • A Conservative Yearly Meeting is Born

    Lloyd Lee WilsonAdapted from Remarks at Representative Body, North Carolina Yearly Meeting (Conservative), 10/30/2004 Several years ago, Wil Cooper gave a plenary address to our yearly meeting sessions. After his prepared remarks, a member of the audience (not a Friend) rose to ask a question. Friends, this man observed, in his experience talked about themselves…