Talk:Quakers

Material removed from another page

The following I remmoved from the disambiguation page Sylvania. I have no idea why it was there.

I do not feel competent to determine if any of this should be in a Quaker article so am putting it here for whatever use anyone cares to make of it.

Ramallah Friends Meeting

The history on the Ramallah Friends Meeting in Quakers#Middle East seems too detailed for this article. I currently have a draft for a separate article on the Ramallah Friends Meeting waiting approval. InquisitiveALot (talk) 20:59, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

Polity

Hi @TechBear, I see you reverted my edit removing "Congregationalist" polity. I do not think the phrase is accurate when applied to either the whole or majority of the Quaker tradition. I do not think that Quakerism should be included on the Congregationalist Polity page either. If you think the below makes sense, I will alter that page as well.

While the entire membership is wholly responsible for discernment within Meetings for Worship for Business, this does not mean that the local meeting (i.e., the one closest to Friends which they worship at most regularly) is the meeting in control of church governance. In most cases, this is in fact the Yearly Meeting/Area/Monthly Meeting.

Sticking to the discipline of Britain Yearly Meeting, as I know it best, examples from https://qfp.quaker.org.uk/chapter/4/ include "By 1676 [area meetings] were the unit of authority for membership, marriages, property, records, the recognition of ministers (until 1924) and the recognition and laying down of local meetings; most of these functions continue today. So too does their formal responsibility, completed by 1789, for the appointment of elders and overseers. ... The area meeting is the primary meeting for church affairs in Britain Yearly Meeting".

6.05 includes "In 1999 the Agenda Committee wrote:

We see Yearly Meetings as events in the life of the institution of Britain Yearly Meeting which can involve:

• constitutional decision-making;
• annually overseeing and guiding the stewardship exercised between Yearly Meetings;
• settling policy on major areas of work or witness;
• promoting teaching and learning;
• offering inspiration and leadership;
• celebrating together;
• re-dedicating ourselves;
• calling us to action;
• creating and sustaining a community, including those both under and over nineteen."

The reservation of all of these matters to bodies which are signfiicantly removed from (though constituted by) local meetings seems at odds with a Congregationalist Polity. Many such important functions are reserved at such "higher" levels than Friends' immediate congregations in Yearly Meetings across the world. Yearly Meetings frequently call upon their AMs and LMs to act in certain ways, while the reverse does not happen. It would thus be inaccurate to label the entire movement as congregationalist, even if some YMs lean towards it more than others. For the sake of this article, it is irritating that Quaker polity does not neatly fall into an established box - I see very little discussion of it online at all. UU interfaith material explicitly says it is not https://www.uua.org/re/tapestry/youth/bridges/workshop17/189721.shtml and Britannica says Quaker polity is merely "not unlike" congregationalism (i.e., it does not say it is). I hope that, in accordance with WP:NOR, we do not include this label in the factbox. Thanks for reading Onga0921 (talk) 23:53, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

Typically, yearly meetings are run by members of monthly meetings: decision-makers are not elected as members with special authority (as with a presbytery) nor are they part of a self-appointed oligarchy (as with bishops.) Yearly meetings are typically very bottom-up, in that they find common ground and agreement rather than impose. That is the definition of a congregationalist polity.

Of interest is the Cambridge Platform, written in 1648 as the basis for Congregationalism in the New England Colonies, which reads very much like a Quaker polity manifesto. This is why I conclude that the article is correct as it. TechBear | Talk | Contributions 22:17, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

While YMs are run by members of AM/MMs, they are run by them in their capacity as members of a YM. Anyone who is a member is entitled to attend - it is not the practice of many YMs for them to be representatives of their congregation, etc. YMs (and AMs over their constituents) are ecclesiastically superior to their Local/Preparative Meetings. LMs and AMs are bound by YMs discernment, even if it is not often explicitly exercised. A clear example is each YMs (book of) discpline: LMs and AMs are bound by the YMs discipline and discernment, rather than left to go their own way. Of course, the people doing this discernment at a yearly meeting are members of their own AMs, but they are unable to go against YM decisions at an AM level, it must be brought back to YM. Another is how, in Britain Yearly Meeting, a local meeting cannot lay itself down - it must be laid down by its AM, a higher body. This clearly impinges upon "every local church (congregation) [being] independent, ecclesiastically sovereign, or "autonomous"." as it says in Congregational Polity.

re the Cambridge Platform, while the RSoF could be (somewhat inaccurately) said to be democratic, it is not a mixed system and does not include aristocratic nor monarchical elements. Furthermore, many of the elected officers are totally alien to historical and contemporary Quaker practice. Their beliefs on membership and unity are similar, but this is not enough to say Quakers have a congregational polity (if so, so do many secular voluntary organisations).

Regardless, I have found no reliable sources that indicate there's any polity label for the polity exercised by the RSoF apart from "Quaker polity". Without original research, I don't believe it would be appropriate to include any polity in the infobox. Onga0921 (talk) 13:38, 5 September 2024 (UTC)