A Friendly Letter, The Blog.

Reports are trickling in about the Interim Meeting session of Philadelphia YM last Saturday (April 9), when the budget with the staff layoffs was brought forward. What I’ve heard so far is that all went quietly, decisions were put rhinocort off for a couple of months, but it sounds like the deal will be done, and the pink slips issued. This is not surprising, as none of the dissidents have as yet offered any other way out of the million-dollar deficit the new budget and its layoffs will undertake to close.

I’ll be interested to hear more. But for now, we’ll turn to other matters.

With an appropriately self-mocking headline, Have you heard about the proposed PYM Budget? PYM Clerk Tom Swain finally joined the fray and uploaded a bunch of documents Thursday to the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting website.

The disclosure is good. The timing, not to put too fine a point on it, stinks.

A memo from General Secretary Arthur Larrabee dated March 17 (three weeks ago), and included with the budget, says, in part, that the budget shows:

d. We are proposing to balance the budget this year by making necessary cuts and not by other means such as adding an administrative fee or using onetime only transfers.
e. We are actually signaling to the meetings and members that we no longer do business as usual.
f. We will be undertaking a discernment process about the Yearly Meeting’s future and what should be the work of staff.

In other words, this budget is intended to mark a drastic change in structure and direction for PYM.

But the Friends at large who are to deliberate on it didn’t get a look at the numbers and the details until 48 hours before they’re supposed to take action.

What is this, The PATRIOT Act, that Congress votes on without even getting a chance to read?

I hope there are some pointed questions about this “process.” But we won’t linger on that. Let’s glance quickly at some numbers.

This will not be a summary of the whole budget; read the documents for that.

Here are two key figures:

Total budget decrease from last year: $800,537 -14%
Total decrease from 2009 Budget: $1087,332 -18%

So the talk about closing a “million dollar gap” is correct or not quite, depending on what year it’s compared to.

As to the human impact, Larrabee’s memo continues:

In order to create a budget that is sustainable in future years [i.e., not using mechanisms that cannot be repeated in succeeding years], the budget includes:
1. Total staffing [full‐time equivalents] of 29.7, approximately 25% less than the current budgeted 40.4. The budget assumes no cost of living increase, but does provide for estimated increases in retirement and benefit costs. Also included are one time severance costs, partially offset by depletion of the personnel reserve.
2. An acceleration of the release of designations. The funds scheduled for release in 2013 and 2014 will be released at the start of the next fiscal year. This also reduces administrative fees since they will no longer be collected from these funds.
3. Members increasing participation in Yearly Meeting programs where opportunity for member involvement already exists, such as the library, Arch Street interpretation, youth programs, and others. A “Member Participation Coordinator” would seem
necessary.
4. Keeping the Annual Fund goal at $450,000 [the average of the past three years] and the covenant at the current level of $1,300,000 [also the average of the past three
years]

{Emphasis added.}

Okay, a bit of unpacking: The total number of staff is being chopped by one-quarter, or 10.7 fulltime positions from 40.4 to 29.7. (The budget lists the specific slots, which are consistent with what we’ve reported earlier.)

“Accelerated release of designations” as I understand it means that various funds formerly designated for numerous specific purposes are being folded into the general budget, and this process is being speeded up.

“Members increasing participation” means programs are to be operated by volunteers rather than paid staff. The PYM Library is one such enterprise.

While internal lobbies like the YAFs, and some dissidents in the Support & Outreach Standing Committee (SOSC), would like to stave off these cuts, the odds for that look slim. The only thing approaching a specific alternative was part of an “observation” in the SOSC that

letting a great endowment sit fallow while we lose staff and programs essential to the survival and growth of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting betrays the trust of the Friends of an earlier time who wanted us to preserve and grow our kind of Quakerism.

What this implicitly calls for, but does not say straight out, is a kind of “stimulus plan” deficit spending. The yearly meeting could liquidate some endowments or other assets (property? buildings?) to close the gap and retain the targeted staff — and presumably look to a future economic turnaround (and a great increase on donation income to the Annual Fund and from Meetings) to regain the capital thus lost. It might even work; but it’s a gamble. And 320 years of Quaker thrift are against such an idea.

[Flashback: In 1968 a popular movie, "The Shoes of the Fisherman," starred Anthony Quinn as a newly-elected pope, who dramatically announces that he will sell many Vatican treasures to relieve a famine which threatens to erupt in a world war. However, the film was not shot in Philadelphia.]

Otherwise, unless the YAFs and the SOSCers come into the Interim Meeting session Saturday bearing not only clever buttons on their lapels, but a million bucks or so up their sleeves, it’s hard to see how they can stave off the planned cuts. There’s sure to be much wailing, wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth and, in the extremity, creation of new committees; but not much more.

How did it come to this? A look back shows that such a reckoning has been simmering for awhile. Let’s peer into the reverse telescope of deja vu . . .

In 1999, PYM urged its Meetings to agree to increase their “covenant” pledges to the central body by ten per cent, which was a big jump. I was then a resident member of a PYM Monthly Meeting, one out on the edges of its territory. We were told that the “tax increase” was needed because of the widespread clamor for more PYM services to Meetings. Not having heard any such clamor in my Meeting, or echoes of it in visits to others, I undertook a detailed study of the data offered as evidence of the demand, and the associated budget figures. It was an excellent learning experience. The resulting analysis was uploaded to the web, where it still lingers twelve years later, under the title, “Too Far to Burgville.”

The first discovery was that the alleged “clamor” for more PYM services was in fact imaginary and trumped up, much more about a Friends Center wish list than anything else. Beyond that, it showed that the PYM central operation was a bark that floated largely on a sea of DQM, or Dead Quakers’ Money. Three quarters of the actual 1999 budget of almost $6 million came from endowments and fees; actual donations from Living Quakers came to $1,408,000. And the staff came to 40.4 FTEs (Full Time equivalents).

That last number was a shocker. Because in the 2012 budget data, it states that the current staff total comes to (drum roll) 40.4. It’s stayed right around that number all through the intervening years. For most of those years, when the bubbles were booming, it’s not a surprise; the DQM was rolling in. But how many nonprofits could show comparable staff stability, considering that we’re three years into the continuing crash? (See, Service Committee, American Friends, upstairs.)

And more than the staff total has stayed flat. Between 1999 and 2010 the total income from the Annual Fund and Meeting “Covenants” increased from $1,408,000 to $1721,440; that’s a $313,000 increase — except that adjusted for inflation, its actual value is flat or even down a bit. I interpret this as a statement that the “clamor” from actual PYM Friends for more services from PYM is no more in evidence today than it was eleven years ago; because real “clamor” is built on what living people are prepared to pay for.

The difference is that the DQM is down from something like three-quarters of the income in 1999 to a little of 50 per cent in 2010.

The Financial Stewardship Committee sent with the budget a March 24 minute which urged, in part,

That the Yearly Meeting begin a process of discernment with its meetings and members to forge a new vision for the Yearly Meeting and the work of its staff, within the context of the Yearly Meeting’s financial capacity.

The Committee Clerk called for this proposal to “be adopted and executed immediately.”

Talk of “a new vision” really brings on the nostalgia. Where have I heard such talk before? Something like, PYM should move to identify

those services which its meetings actually do want and need from the center. I predict that such a reliable analysis would produce a list that was vastly different, and likely considerably shorter, than the current roster. Then PYM could renew its effort to restructure itself for more effective and economical service.

Oh yeah– that was me, in 1999.

Oh well, whatever. That was a different century; even a different millennium. And there’s doubtless been many similar refrains since. But this time, a million bucks says that, barring some kind of earthquake on Arch street, a dozen or so PYM staffers will be moving on sooner than they planned. After that, stay tuned.

Found a couple of blog posts that speak of the PYM budget situation, mainly the YAF part of it.

The most interestingly titled one is: A Letter to Chuck Fager About His Blog and the Recent Budget Conflicts in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, by Zach Dutton.
Zach says he’s a student at one of my alma maters, Harvard Divinity School; but what really distinguishes him is the fact that he’s read my Quaker mystery novel, Un-Friendly Persuasion. Dude!

Beyond these items, Zach says, “I am writing, otherwise, to express some concern.”

Unfortunately, 900 words later, I’m not sure what the concern is. (Perhaps other readers can enlighten me.)

It has to do with PYM, the YAFs, budget cuts, and staying together. It may also have to do with my use of the term “fight” in an earlier post.

But I’m not sure: Zach, the point of “concern” escaped me. And your blog wouldn’t accept a comment I tried to post there.

So let me suggest you try again, and aim for clarity and conciseness. Plain speaking, as it were.

The other blog post is by Brad Ogilvie of William Penn House in DC, with the title, The Fragmentation of Friends? It speaks of the PYM budget cuts along with two other incidents: one is the tensions between some New York City Friends and the expensive Friends Seminary private school, reported on by the New York Times. And the third is a comment by someone at some yearly meeting session regarding a Quaker body which allegedly cut programs by half, but preserved pensions in full. (One suspects this jibe was aimed at the American Friends Service Committee.)

Ogilvie takes these three items as evidence of

a pattern emerging among Friends that is immensely disturbing to me. There seems to be a drawing of lines along wealth and generations that is somewhat convoluted, and all are driven by the current economy. But rather than coming together, we seem to be pulling ourselves apart at a time when we need each other the most.

Interested Friends will want to look this over and draw their own conclusions. For my part, it seems Brad’s getting a lot of interpretation out of a pretty thin base of data. Internecine hassles between Friends schools and meetings are nothing new; this one isn’t more important because it was noticed by the Times. Pension obligations are in the nature of contracts; dumping them is what predatory corporations do, and it keeps lawyers busy. Not least, staff layoffs have happened before (I know this from experience), and they are typically traumatic, especially for those being laid off.

So the first item doesn’t signal a trend on my radar. The last two reflect economic hard times, with emphasis on the “hard.” That’s the trend showing up for me.

Our main topic here is the PYM budget situation. And it may be worth mentioning that the discussion, at least what I have seen of it, has gone far beyond simply cutting the YAF slot. The SOSC document posted here is evidence of that. Further, if there really is a million dollar budget shortfall for PYM to deal with, that’s not exactly an elitist “drawing of lines” about wealth. It’s a situation of having to cope with a major loss of “wealth.”

A traumatic situation for sure. The “hard” part of hard times.

Many thanks to the sources up north who have passed on these items. Keep the cards and letters (and memos) coming!

A Friendly Letter has recently obtained a copy of the original “confidential” document listing planned staff cuts (described as a “realignment”) and the projected budget savings they are supposed to yield for Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. This document, which is now being widely discussed, is online here as a PDF. It confirms our earlier reporting, and proposes to save around a half million dollars in PYM spending by layoffs and cutbacks.

We have also received a copy of a strong response to the budget proposal. This rejoinder comes, not from Young Adult Friends, but from the Support and Outreach Working group. It names names, and challenges both the specifics of the budget plan, the process by which it was developed, and the propriety of the entire venture. It is online here, in full, also as a PDF.

The PYM Interim Meeting (the decision-making body for the group between annual sessions) is set to take up the proposal this coming Saturday (Seventh Day in proper Quaker lingo), Fourth Month (April) 9. Should be a very interesting session.

Hmmm. Looks like even the army is worried about budget cuts. Who knew?

In our previous post, we noted that Philadelphia Yearly Meeting officials have proposed a budget which includes numerous staff cuts.

Among the positions on the chopping block is the Young Adult Friends Coordinator.

Coming soon to Philadelphia YM?

But the post will not be dropped without a— thee should pardon the expression, Friend — fight.

A “worshipful and loving” fight, it is insisted; but a fight just the same.

A group of YAFs has set up a Facebook page and started a petition to preserve the YAF job. And in keeping with standard Quaker crisis response practice, a group of them has written a Minute (or resolution, in worldly parlance). The “worshipful and loving” phrase is theirs. Another excerpt:

We are aware that this is coming in response to a sizable budget shortfall and that this position was removed along with many others in an attempt to balance the budget for the coming year. While aware of sacrifices being made across the board and the financial situation which necessitated them, we are deeply concerned about the elimination of this position in its entirety. We can accept changes and believe that proportional reduction of this position, though regrettable, is acceptable under the given circumstances. However, it is clear to us that the complete removal of this position not only places the supportive scaffolding for young adult Friends in jeopardy but the current and future vitality of the whole yearly meeting as well.

They’re calling on supporters to attend the PYM Interim Meeting on April 9, and wear special buttons that will say, “YAFs need AND give support!” They are also urging that letters and emails of support be sent to PYM officials.

In sum, they’re setting out to lobby the body to roll back this cut. This is normal defensive budget behavior; happens every working day in Washington, 50 state capitols, and innumerable city halls. When budgets are growing, the jostling can be more decorous. When budgets shrink, especially by large amounts, elbows come into play.

It will be interesting to see how this turns out. If things are as bad as the proposed PYM budget suggests, should the YAFs win their struggle, it will be at the expense of some other program or staff slot. More elbows.

Quakers mostly hate such zero-sum, competitive, win-lose exercises. Along with potluck dinners, avoidance of open conflict is one of our Society’s most Sacred traditions. (I’ll be in trouble for even mentioning this.) But there it is.

Maybe there will be a flurry of behind-the-scenes negotiations to head off a floor fight. We’ll see. But a memory comes to mind:

In the mid-1990s, I sat in on a budget session at PYM, when the Treasurer brought in a budget calling for a substantial spending increase. It was to be paid for by a hike in the amounts to be collected from its 100-plus local Meetings. In those days, this amounted to a tax increase.

But then the unexpected happened: one after another, Friends rose, speaking with some warmth, to say that they were NOT going to pay this increase. It was a spontaneous (so far as I could tell) tax revolt, right there in front of God and everybody.

After half a dozen such ringing declarations, the abashed Treasurer said (approximately), Well, it looks like I’m bringing in a budget with NO spending increase after all; we’ll figure out the details later. And “poof” — there went glimmering about a quarter million bucks out of somebody’s program plans.

I doubt there’s a way to wish the missing million back into this proposed budget. But the lesson is not lost: From Washington to city hall, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. It appears some Philly YAFs understand this. So the course of these deliberations should be interesting indeed.

This is as sharp as Quaker elbows are supposed to get. But sometimes . . . .

NOTE: This post is updated below.

The Great Quaker Turnover just got a MAJOR jolt, In Billy Penn’s fair city:

I’m still working to confirm the specifics, but usually reliable reports say that several staff cuts were announced at Philadelphia Yearly Meeting yesterday (March 29)

PYM has by far the largest staff of any American Quaker yearly Meeting. Ten years ago it amounted to 50-plus full-time slots.

There has been some down-sizing since, but the current cuts are the biggest block.

There’s been no announcement about this on the PYM website. But here’s some of what’s affected, according to my current information:

— The Burlington NJ Conference center is slated to be closed. The historic building was renovated at a cost of millions, and re-opened in 1995 with much fanfare, with special hopes it would be a center for Younger Friends.

– The PYM Library will no longer have a staff librarian, but will depend on volunteers.

– The Young Adult Friends Coordinator’s slot is being eliminated.

– The position of Associate General Secretary for Advancement & Communications is being eliminated.

– PYM’s five regional coordinators will have work hours reduced.

The total cuts reportedly affect eight present staff and thirteen positions. There may be at least one new position created, a volunteer coordinator.

I’m pursuing confirmation of the specifics with PYM officials. In the meantime, the reports are substantiated enough to be surfaced here.

UPDATE: 8:30 PM March 30

I just received the email below from Arthur Larrabee, general Secretary of PYM:

Chuck-

Greetings.

I am upset that the information you have was given to you prematurely, without my knowledge or permission. It comes from a confidential document, prepared by me, and shared with staff yesterday at a staff meeting. The document was plainly labeled “Confidential.” I ask you to take it down from your blog until it is public.

The reason for my upset is that this information has not yet been made available to members of Interim Meeting and, in my view, it is information they should have in their possession before it is presented or discussed publicly.   
 
The information you have is part of a proposed budget which is very much just that, “proposed.” It has not been finalized or decided. It will first be considered by Interim Meeting at its next regular meeting, April 9. Interim Meeting will consider the question, “Is the budget ready to be sent to the monthly meetings for their consideration?” If so, it will be sent out. If not, it will be “worked with” before it is sent out. The budget will not be considered for approval until annual sessions at the end of July. We’re in a delicate situation where staff need to be told what’s in the proposed budget (or not) so that it can be talked about openly at Interim Meeting, and in the monthly meetings, even though there is a possibility that it will be amended or changed in the process, and even though a final decision will not be made until the end of July.  Our open and extended time for consideration of it makes it hard on those directly affected by it.

So, given the above, I am not prepared to talk about the proposed budget, to affirm or deny it, until it has been presented to Interim Meeting 

Sincerely,
Arthur
Quakerism: Simple Faith, Radical Witness

Comments:
The first thing to note here is that there are no corrections or clarifications of the specific items mentioned in the post. This suggests they are accurate.

The next point Friend Larrabee might consider is that if the “confidential information” he discussed in Philadelphia yesterday made it as far as eastern North Carolina before nightfall, his hope of sequestering it within a prescribed procedural circle may be excessively optimistic. If I learned about it, isn’t it a fair assumption that many more folks in Philadelphia are talking about it? (I think so.)

Finally, there is a difference of interest and outlook here. Larrabee is properly concerned with the right order for PYM’s business processes. The interest here is in disseminating information. The premise of “A Friendly Letter” since 1981 has been that the more information more people have sooner, the better questions can be asked, and the deeper and more informed discernment can be. This is a standard journalistic presumption. (It may also be worth noting that a similar outlook was involved in this blog’s breaking the news of major decisions at FGC, and FCNL, and AFSC over the past several months.)

Thus the information posted above will stay here, unless it is shown to be either faulty or is superseded by fuller and more current data.

What is the option? A suggested answer is below; it seems like good order to me.

This info has been around for some time, from reliable sources, and has been bottled up long enough:

Friends General Conference is set to name Barry Crossno as its new General Secretary.

As was true of the other two Quaker big groups which have hired CEOs in recent months (AFSC & FCNL), Crossno is a new face, has roots far from Philly (Dallas), and has considerable experience in fundraising. (In fact, Crossno is currently “Development Manager” at Pendle Hill.) He’s younger than the others, tho, barely 40, and relatively young in Quakerdom as well, first visiting Meeting in 1998.

Barry Crossno

I’m not sure I’ve met him; but Crossno did the inquiring journalist the favor of maintaining a blog, “The Quaker Dharma,” for several years, which provided many interesting tidbits. A few salient points:

He came to Quakerism out of an intense involvement with Buddhism, so intense that he was an important staff member of a Billy Graham-style mass Buddhist evangelistic crusade event that went on for weeks — in Mongolia, aimed at resurrecting the Mongolians’ traditional Buddhism after decades of communist suppression. Quite a project, by his description. (I’m not sure he would approve of referring to it as a Billy Graham-style mass crusade, but that’s what it was, for sure.)

He brought with him into Quakerism four particular interests, which combine the familiar and the new (or re-newed):

First is a strong mystical base. His 2004-2006 blogging breathes the enthusiasm of the new devotee, and speaks with assurance (and numerous repetitions) that Quakerism is first, last, and always, a mystical form of religion, or rather, a religious form of mysticism, for which “experience” is the core, the center, the Holy Grail. As, for instance, in this 2005 entry:

In the forward to the Quaker Reader, Jessamine West posited the idea that much of what could be said about Zen could be said of Quakerism.This really had resonance for me as it was around the time of reading that book that I really started to understand Quakerism as more of a process than a “thing.” [Emphasis added; spelling not corrected.]

Or this 2006 cry:

What is it I’m experiencing? What is discernment? How do I discern? What does being “spirit led” mean? How do I settle my mind during the silence? Should I do silence every day? Why do I never feel led to break the silence during worship? . . . . Can the cumulative Quaker experience answer these questions? Can I access training methods that will get me to a spirit led place? I know the Source is beyond human definitions and is beyond what any one religion can contain. Therefore, should I continue to look to other traditions like Buddhism to answer some of these questions or am I looking there only because I don’t know what’s available in my own tradition?

Some will answer that there are lots of lovely books that address many of these questions. . . . Others might say to simply continue to seek and you will find.

First, I’m sick of lovely books. That side of my brain is hemorrhaging from too much reading. I’m ready for more of the “burning experience of God.” Take me there. Get me there. No more second hand stuff. Quakers are all about the experience, right?

Elsewhere he points to the undoubted sources for this understanding of Quakerism: FGC, Howard Brinton, the AFSC’s Friends Fellowship council of the 1930s and 1940s.

The last blog entries are from 2008, more than two years ago. One hopes that in the interim Crossno has begun to discover a few points which can enlarge this view.

For enlarged it needs to be, if he is now to become one of the main American Quaker “statesmen.” The identification of Quakerism with “mysticism,” for instance is a relatively recent phenomenon, hardly a century old (as, indeed, is the concept itself), and confined to fairly limited sectors. Many Friends, past and present have not been and are not “mystics” and have even said so, though they have often been ignored.

One such statement which I find very poignant came from William Littleboy, an early director at Woodbrooke, in his 1916 pamphlet “The appeal of Quakerism to the Non-Mystic.” Regrettably this work has not been put online yet, but a brief quote will suffice:

LITTLEBOY: Can I who never consciously heard the inward voice, who am not of those to whom it is given to see visions and dream dreams – dare I believe that a real and intimate relationship exists between God and my own dull and earth-clogged soul? Upon the answer to our question stated in this personal form, depends I believe the hope and peace, the character of the whole outlook, of multitudes of anxious spirits. . . . Exceptional experiences of revelation or guidance are not necessarily signs of deep spirituality. . . . We know that to some choice souls god’s messages come in ways which are super-normal, and it is natural that we should look with longing eyes on these; yet such cases are the exception, not the rule . . . . Let us then take ourselves at our best. We are capable of thought and care for others. We do at times abase ourselves that others may be exalted. On occasion we succeed in loving our enemies and doing good to those who despitefully use us. For those who are nearest to us we would suffer – perhaps even give our life, because we love them so . . . .(W)herever there are seeking souls, restless, unsatisfied, agnostic, wherever there are spirits in prison crying out for light and liberty, there is the opportunity of the Quaker evangelist. To the great nonmystic majority his appeal should come with special power, for he can speak to them, as none other can whose gospel is less universal, of the unseen, unfelt Presence which is always seeking to express itself within them.

There are more recent voices (See, for instance, Margaret Bacon’s fine biography of the eminent, and eminently non-mystical Henry Cadbury, Let This Life Speak; or David Boulton’s vivid The Trouble With God. More on Cadbury here. ). These and others reinforce an important point: there is a galloping “mysto-chauvinism” within FGC circles that is not only dreadfully insular and parochial, but also carries the seeds of trouble for Friends.

Henry Cadbury. Quaker, Yes. Mystic, No.

Whenever I read such mystical panegyrics, I hear Lydia Cadbury, Henry’s wife and a lifelong Friend, who once said to a visitor, “Are you a mystic? Well, I’m not. Rather do a big load of laundry any day.” (Bacon, p. 36.) The head of FGC, however rooted in mystical awareness, needs to be able to see beyond this small hothouse garden, and avoid letting it become a hazardous fetish. Let us hope Crossno has been gaining that enlarged vision.

An early Friend, widely rumored to be mostly a Non-Mystic also.

The second salient feature is another side of this “Dharma Quakerism”, Crossno’s guiding word combination. In a telling post from April 2006, he notes that

A good friend has been acting as a teacher and guide for me the past two months. Two weeks ago she hit me with something of a mental bomb. “You have a problem with Jesus.” “Excuse me,” I said. “You have a problem with Jesus.” After a couple of sentences to clarify things, she hung up the phone. I found this really confounding coming from a woman who doesn’t consider herself traditionally Christian and has done lots of Buddhist study. Maybe this was the point? Hm. Today’s lesson was over. Now what to do about it?

After a little ranting and raving, I realized, “Yeah, I’ve got a problem with Jesus.” For years, I’ve held the person and concept of Jesus responsible for two thousand years of war, genocide, slavery, and oppression. From the time I was fifteen my basic feeling was “Christianity is the problem. God is the solution.” This position softened a lot in my twenties, but Jesus still had very little to do with God in my mind. The whole Jesus thing was a problem to be solved, rather than being in any way life affirming. . . . I have to let go of my anger towards what people have done in Christ’s name. And I have to let go of some of my thoughts that Jesus must of have been a crappy teacher for things to get this messed up! 

Interestingly, during the process of letting go I started thinking, “But how do I know what Christ really taught?” I gnashed on this for a while. Then I remembered some of the original Quaker teachings about the Inner Christ– that you can receive clear guidance. I’ve always thought of that in terms of God, but maybe I can receive guidance from the life and presence of Jesus. What a novel concept! Wow, and it’s what Quakers have taught all along!

Sometimes it takes me a while to catch on . . . .

I was greatly relieved to read this exchange, for the “problem with Jesus” had been obvious from very early in the blogging. Almost the only “Christian” references in the corpus had been a couple of allusions to the “inner Christ”; I don’t recall seeing “Jesus” in the blog at all until this point; and it rarely recurs again afterward. Crossno’s response to this eldering was to visit a protestant church. It’s not clear what, if anything was gained from the visit.

Such “problems with Jesus” are of course not unusual among liberal Friends, especially those relatively new to the Society; I’ve had them myself. And many a backbencher Quaker can live and die within the orbit of a local liberal Meeting, and have a rich religious life, with no need to get past them.

Yet for the CEO of FGC, such a “problem” is, well, a problem. I’m not speaking here of needing “belief” in Jesus, in the orthodox way. Instead, it’s a matter of getting comfortable with the guy, AND familiar with the literature and the tradition.

Yes: familiarity and lack of discomfort with Jesus, the traditions and literature that’s gathered around his figure; in 2011, these really are not optional. Rather, they are basic “management tools” for dealing, first of all, with all those OTHER kinds of Quakers (who are by far the majority). It’s basic to their language and worldview; and I’m sure Crossno understands that the old liberal notion of “Well, really, under the different verbiage we’re all really saying the same thing (which of course agrees with me),” is condescending nonsense.

And the same skills are needed for relating to all those OTHER Christian groups in the world outside — and then many of the NON-Christian groups (like Muslims, for instance) whose more able advocates have consciously set out to develop such familiarity, for their own purposes.

Crossno concludes this entry thus:

While it’s unclear that I’ll ever refer to myself as traditionally Christian, it feels right to embark on a path of reconciliation with the tradition of my culture and to let go of my resentments. If I’m to emulate the life that Jesus lived then I can’t be caught up with labels anyway. Love is all.

The first part is unassailable; the second, alas, is not sufficient. Surely, love is necessary, but it is not all; for an FGC CEO to be effective today amid the variety of Quakerdom, and Christianity, and the world, such knowledge will ride beside him, every day.

Such an enlargement affects as well the third feature of Crossno’s religious life highlighted in the blog: a passion for Quaker “outreach,” or what others call evangelism. He writes often of the need for a nationwide program of outreach and education-formation for newcomers and inquirers, to include advertising, in-depth study materials, circuit-riding missionaries (he eschews this Christian appellation, of course, but that’s what’s in view), college lecture programs, and more. Crossno was thinking big, and in several posts he earnestly solicited help in forming such an ambitious home missions body, either under some existing group umbrella, or free-standing.

He didn’t get it. The handful of replies to his appeals were dreamily supportive, but lacking in any offers of practical resources, especially that secret ingredient which (as he knows well) spells the difference between the pipe dream and the actual launch of such a project, i.e., money. The kind of undertaking he imagines would be hugely expensive. That is not said as criticism, by the way; I believe good outreach is worth what it costs. And I like to see Quaker functionaries thinking big.

Yet the best he can do, as the final 2008 entry attests, is to get involved in the Quaker Quest program, FGC’s developing outreach effort. Compared to the evangelistic juggernaut Crossno fantasized about, of course, QQ is pretty small beer. So I hope he has hung on to his dreams. If Crossno could mobilize his core FGC constituency to launch a serious exploration of evangelism, the results would be something to see. I suspect it will be a hard sell, tho; but let me not pour cold water on any remaining enthusiasm.

For this and other efforts, I also hope Crossno will be bold about the fourth prominent theme in his blog, the need for Quakers, especially liberals, to rediscover their once rich (in more than one sense) entrepreneurial and business heritage and outlook. As he wrote in 2007:

I believe it’s now time, as part of the Quaker renewal movement, for Quakers to re-embrace their entrepreneurial past to deeply impact institutional worldwide commerce. In the past half century, many Quakers have been drawn deeply into social services work, academia, and government service. This is good and noble work, yet there is another avenue through which to live the Testimonies– the business world.

He also quotes the old saw about how Quakers came to Philadelphia 300 years ago to do good, “and some did very well indeed.” (I believe this may have been the very first Quaker joke I ever heard, almost 50 years ago. Maybe it’s the most important.)

He continues:

To successfully do this, however, Quakers and non-Quakers alike need an institution of higher learning that focuses at the Graduate level on rigorous traditional and alternative business practices. This program could build on the successes of the undergraduate business programs at Guilford or Earlham, or it could be a stand alone program solely focused on Graduate Certificates and an MBA program.

Doubtless education would be crucial: good intentions in commerce seldom get far unless the wannabe entrepreneurs know what the hell they’re doing, business-wise. Yet my own sense is that this aspiration brings Crossno face to face with the doppelganger of his “Jesus problem”: the fact that most liberal American Quakers (and the Brits I’ve met as well) are almost reflexively anti-business. As a corporate culture — which while disembodied is a very real “thing,” (i.e., the sort of entity which Crossno was once convinced, mistakenly, that Quakerism was not) –liberal Quakerism is as deeply anti-entrepreneurial, and anti-profit a group as I’ve come across in my adult life. This “business problem” is a big one.

(By contrast, I recently visited a group of Trappist monks. In their centuries-old monastery, they own nothing personally, eat simple meals, dress in identical rough habits, and rise daily at 3 AM to start the first of eight long sessions of prayer during that day; they do this week after week, decade after decade, til they die. Mystics all, as far as I could tell. Yet these men also operate a very successful cheese factory, a business which expresses their values, and is profitable enough to permit them to follow their chosen round of devotion, a routine which wore me out after sampling only a few of their sessions. The cheese was good, tho.)

A Certain Cheesy Monastery

The moral of this little story is: if we Friends want to keep doing our special Quaker things in our special Quaker ways, we will need lots of extra available Quaker money with which to do them. And such money will need to come from Quakers who get the drift, and can generate the extra money (i.e., profits). Don’t get me started on a rant about what happens to Quaker groups that get most or all their funding from non-Quaker sources; suffice to say that the Golden Rule (Them With the Gold Makes the Rules) applies. And while Quakers are not better than other people, they do tend to be more Quaker than others.

A Certain Mystically Monkish Cheese

So prior to the Quaker MBA program, my hunch is that Crossno will need to mount an aggressive campaign of evangelism, aimed at nothing less than mass conversion among liberal Quakers, to repent of our ingrained anti-business outlook and seriously mend our ways. (Let the church say, “Amen!” — Oh, wait, I mean: let’s revise our Quaker Dharma.) On this I wish him all success, and say: Get busy — the budget you save may be your own.

Now the technicalities of this anointing are thus: the FGC Executive Committee will gather this weekend in Sarasota, Florida (they are ever a hardy bunch), and after due and weighty consideration, act on this appointment. The lack of suspense is, I gather, palpable.

And there is one footnote to be added. When this impending FGC appointment was mentioned on this blog before, our recommendation was that the search committee look outside the ranks of incumbent staff and veteran committee leaders, because of the lingering taint of the 1994 Quaker Sweat Lodge debacle, which had discredited them and FGC as an exemplar of justice and ethical practice.

It appears that this advice was followed. This many years later, when the “dead elephant” of the QSL matter is supposed to be buried and forgotten, it may seem gauche to some to aver to it. But what was rotten in 1994 is rotten still, and unforgotten, its corrosive effects unaddressed. FGC still needs some internal work to regain any credibility as a moral exemplar. My best wishes go with Barry Crossno as he takes up this mainly unacknowledged task along with the body’s more explicit agenda, which is busy and demanding enough.

And the Great Quaker Turnover keeps on churning.

In an email sent out widely today, FCNL announced the selection of Diane Randall as the choice to succeed retiring Executive Secretary Joe Volk.

Who is Diane Randall? Currently she is Executive Director of the Partnership for Strong Communities, a Connecticut non-profit organization “that engages civic and political support to solve homelessness, create affordable housing and develop strong, vibrant communities,” according to its website.

Randall describes her personal and spiritual journey in more detail here.

Randall’s selection will be submitted to the FCNL annual meeting next month for formal approval.

In an earlier post, your correspondent nominated FCNL staffer Bridget Moix as a candidate.

Puzzlingly, FCNL’s Clerk Dorsey Green wrote in the email that,

While we feel that sharing this information one-on-one with others in the Friends community who are close supporters of FCNL is a part of our practice of transparency and openness about this process, please refrain from broadcasting the news on email listservs or making general announcements to Friends everywhere about Diane. We seek to maintain the integrity of the process and provide the General Committee with the opportunity to discern its leading when we gather in November

Sorry, Dorsey Green, you sent the email to me among others. I’m indeed a fan of FCNL, but sharing information is what I’m about, so I’m not taking any vow of silence. I’m pleased to share this information with whoever wants to read and ponder and comment on it.

Friends Journal’s Ninth Month (September) issue just arrived here in the boondocks, and in it is a long letter from the clerk of their board, announcing that their Publisher/Executive Editor, Susan Corson-Finnerty, plans to take early retirement late next year.

With that, the Great Quaker Turnover continues to roll through the Establishment Quaker organizations.

Last winter, after FJ published a desperation “HELP! We’re drowning!” appeal, I asked in a post if the magazine could survive in its current, staff-heavy form, and expressing doubts about its long-term viability without drastic change. (That post was published on the in-groupy “QuakerQuaker” site, from which I was banned a few weeks later, so I can’t link to it. But it’s still worth searching out.)

In the August issue of Friends Journal, there was an announcement about the “big changes” to be made in response to this financial crisis — but the listed changes were, in my view, very small beer: cutting one issue, limiting the size of others, doing more on the web. These left untouched the elephant in the room, which is the large and expensive paid staff.

Now another shoe has dropped. Will Susan Corson-Finnerty’s successor have both of the titles, and the equivalent salary and bennies? Such transitions are a good time to make substantial cuts, as there is usually a long line of people eager to take such jobs.

And there is another consideration: will a new editor make an effort to break through the previously impenetrable layers of stodgy unimaginativity (if that’s a word) and chronic behind-the-curveness (ditto) which has characterized the magazine’s editorial ethos and corporate culture for so, so long? And if a new editor does, will he/she have a chance to bring it off?

From rhinocort here, the odds of any breakthrough seem long, and are reinforced by the timidity of the “changes” announced thus far. One hopes there are additional shoes yet to drop.

What would constitute an adequate survival program for FJ? Well, besides learning to operate with about half the current paid staff (or even less), the prescription would include an ingredient also suggested for its near neighbor the American Friends Service Committee: pack up and move out of Philadelphia, the city where good Quaker ideas go to die.

My understanding is that the magazine owns its office, which could be sold for enough cash to afford equivalent space in, say, North Carolina, with lots of dough left over. Plus, such a move would provide them — at no extra charge — with another sizable Quaker population center, one with far more real Quaker “diversity” than Philly, not to mention much better winters. Plenty of new perspectives and ideas around here. (I admit that being so far away from the Phillies would be a drawback, but they’re available on the net.)

Phillies Monthly Meeting in an October threshing session

It’s likely that dozens of FJ readers are even now polishing up their resumes after reading this issue. I wish them well, but note that FJ values continuity (see “stodgy” etc., above) and often promotes from within. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are strong inside candidates this time.

With the Great Quaker Turnover picking up momentum, one wonders which will be the next body joining the list. Field reports are always welcome.

In Britain Yearly Meeting, the “Mother Church” of Quakerism, the senior staff member and CEO is the Recording Clerk. This person heads up a staff of more than one hundred, and an organization that in 2009 had revenues of 9,000,000 Pounds (about $14 million US dollars). This staff is based at Friends House, which takes up most of a city block across from the busy Euston railroad station.

However, here is the statement from the Britain Yearly Meeting Trustees dated August 3, 2010:

“Britain Yearly Meeting trustees regret to announce that they have felt it right to accept the resignation of Gillian Ashmore, Recording Clerk. She feels it is time to step down and that a new person with different skills is needed now to take the work of change forward into the next challenging phase.

“We recognise and admire the considerable achievements of her time as Recording Clerk. We are working with the Assistant Recording Clerk, Michael Hutchinson and the senior management team to minimise loss of momentum and ensure continuity in the work and the process of change. We are also engaged in beginning to draw up the process of recruitment of a successor.”

But that’s not all. Another senior staff member is the General Secretary of Quaker Finance and Human Resources. This position was created barely a year ago, when two earlier positions became vacant and were merged. Gilliam Palmer, who filled this dual slot, has also left this post recently.

Very cryptic announcements, these, picked up from the weekly journal The Friend, and then backed up with some web-searching.

Seems clear to me there’s some backstory here, maybe a lot of backstory; but it’s all stiff upper lip, and “nothing to see here” for public consumption. If we pick up any interesting bits about this executive exodus, we’ll fill you in.

Meantime, tho, the news means that the Great Quaker Turnover has come to London, perhaps unexpectedly, in rather a big way. Two top jobs at the “Quaker Vatican” have unexpectedly come open.

So if you’re an organizational executive type at loose ends, hop on it.