Birmingham Friends Meeting Religious Society of Friends (Quakers)

Religious Society of Friends (Quakers)

. . .be patterns, be examples in all countries, places, islands, nations, wherever you come, 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. (George Fox, 1656)

As the daughter of a Presbyterian chaplain in the United States Air Force, I grew up in an interfaith, interracial environment. Even before my father entered the military, he served a church in rural Oklahoma with many American Indian members. But in the Air Force, we made friends with those of other faiths as well as of different ethnic groups. In Libya my dad studied Arabic, and the family made friends with Arabic and Palestinian Muslims. We worshiped throughout my youth in Protestant services peopled by all denominations. I never learned specific dogma about proper methods or times of Baptism, for example, and communion was served in many different ways. I learned early from those who complained about variations from their own orthodoxies how people limited themselves, how they cut themselves off from potential friends as well as possibilities of spiritual growth. We shared all of the chapels with Catholics, and during dull parts of our Protestant services, I entertained myself by reading the Catholic missals found on the racks on the back of each pew. With every move, it seemed, we moved into territory dominated by one major group. In Arkansas, the culture was Baptist. In Utah it was Mormon. In Minnesota it was Lutheran. I learned that each culture offered spiritual gifts to those willing to learn. But it was also true that almost each culture had its own form of racism. In rural Oklahoma, the American Indians had a difficult time finding jobs and adequate food, shelter and access to education. In Utah it was the African-American and the Hispanic communities. In Arkansas (and later Alabama, where I moved in 1961 to attend the University in Tuscaloosa) it was the African-American community. We always found racism and it was always directed at tan people. My Midwestern mother and my Southern father were anti-racists and were naturally ecumenical. I was fortunate in having them for my parents, so take very little personal credit for my early insights into the possibilities of others being an important source of the Light, regardless of religious affiliation or ethnic identity.

From my parents and my early experience, I learned that each person can be a source of spiritual growth. From University Presbyterian Church in Tuscaloosa, I learned that spiritual growth needs spiritual activism. Faith without works is dead. In that church, formed during the civil rights era to be an interracial church, I learned to go to work for social change. As Jesus had ministered to the unnoticed, the ill, the suffering, society’s rejects, it was my place to do the same. Under the leadership of a genuinely brave pastor, an unsung hero, the church participated in interracial dialogue, in tutoring, in letter-writing, teaching, witnessing and many other methods of working for justice. Many of the church members were against the Vietnam War, so I began my journey toward questioning the meaning of war and the spiritual, political, and social consequences of war.

I stayed in Tuscaloosa a long time; when I finally moved to Birmingham and looked for a faith community, I knew I needed one open to everybody’s leading of the Spirit. I needed one engaged in the difficult work of social change. I needed one that would encourage my spiritual growth. After a few years of attending various churches, I walked into a small worship group of six or seven Quakers, and knew at that first meeting for worship that I was more profoundly at home than I had ever been. Birmingham Friends Meeting draws from a heritage of inclusiveness dating from the 17th Century when Friends developed prison ministries to alleviate sufferings of Friends who defied the oppressive laws of their day. In Pennsylvania, named for William Penn’s father, Friends kept faith with American Indians, freed slaves and participated in abolitionist groups and the Underground Railroad. Four of the five women at the Seneca Falls women’s rights convention were Quakers, including the preacher and abolitionist, Lucretia Mott. Susan B. Anthony was also a Quaker. It was the American Friends Service committee, developed during the First World War to alleviate suffering of all war victims, regardless of nationality, that first published Martin Luther King’s Letter from the Birmingham Jail.

Birmingham Friends, then, have a lot to live up to. We try our best. Coming out of the Christian tradition, we believe we are led by - the inner Light, - the Inward Teacher, - the Holy Spirit, - the Divine source of love and peace, who is found in all persons on the planet. We tend not to be evangelical in words, but try to let our lives speak. A profound sense of the Divine Presence in all persons leads us to live according to a series of what we call testimonies. Our dreams for Birmingham are reflected in these:

Peace. Friends are pacifists. Human beings, bearers of the Light Within, are precious. We can find no justification for killing in the life and teachings of Jesus nor in any other words or in the Spirit by which we live. This testimony leads us to work for abolishing the death penalty as well as to wage peace and refuse to participate in war.

Equality. Early Friends were jailed because they refused to take off their hats in the presence of nobility. We seek an earth on which all persons are treated with equal respect, acknowledging their status as children of God and our sisters and brothers. We are open to people of all ages, races, economic levels, spiritual traditions, and sexual orientations.

Simplicity. We try to forgo the extravagance pushed by the consumer culture to better ensure all have their basic needs met and to ensure we let nothing stand between us and the Light.

Care for the earth. The earth is our home, given to us by a loving God, and it is our responsibility and our joy to care for it in all ways.

Community. We begin with our small group of family and Friends and extend our care for our neighbors, those in our workplace, through the Birmingham area, to Alabama, the U.S. and the world. We especially are concerned with those whom Jesus called - the least of these, -  the poor, homeless, hungry, and sick. We work through politics, governments, and local, national and international service agencies to alleviate suffering.

We draw our spiritual nurture from God, the source of all life, and all life is precious to us. Because each person has direct access to God and all are equal before God, we have no special person designated as clergy. We have no laity; each person is a minister capable of hearing the still, small voice of the Spirit and sharing it with others. Our Meetings for Worship begin in silence. Often a person or persons will be led to speak out of the silence in vocal ministry to the group. Sometimes the meeting remains in prayerful and healing silence for the entire worship hour, and we rest in the comfort of our common humanity before the Divine Presence.

We try to be faithful to our calling. Birmingham Friends Meeting is located in Avondale, not far from downtown Birmingham. We love the city. We are awed by the courage of Birmingham citizens and seek to carry on the legacy of those civil rights leaders, the union leaders, the church leaders, and the business leaders who worked to make life better for all of us throughout the history of the city. Birmingham Friends seek to work within that legacy. We have a peace center open to all. We work against the death penalty and remind Birmingham of wrongful death by raising a black flag mourning the loss of a fellow human being at our Meeting House each time a person is killed by a state in the U.S. We give what we would pay in property tax to the P.T.A. of Avondale school each Christmas. We are beginning to sponsor the education of a Rwandan orphan girl. We are learning to participate in the national G.I. Hotline, which counsels military personnel who object to killing. If a military draft is instituted, we will work with conscientious objectors to facilitate their response to participation in the military. All are invited to participate in all we do. Our Meeting House is open for the use of small groups.

Birmingham Friends came late to Birmingham. We have been here as a worship group, then as a certified meeting for 30 years. Many of us come from other religious groups, and we have Friends with Buddhist, Jewish, Catholic and Protestant affinities worshiping with us. We meet “in that which is eternal” in the silence. We’re a small group of about 25 adults and children trying to remain faithful to a unique spiritual heritage which calls us to be active in the world as peacemakers. This role impels us to struggle for economic, social and political justice, which we see as the only way to peace and an imperative inherent in the teachings of all great prophets of all faiths, in our case specifically to Jesus’ teachings in the Christian gospels. Years ago the Puritan, John Winthrop, said that the Massachusetts Bay Colony could be a “City on a Hill,” an example to the nations of what a community could be. Birmingham, because of its history, is all ready a “City on a Hill.” People the world over look to us to see whether Birmingham will remain a negative or become a positive model of justice, healing and peace. Friends’ hope and belief is that now those working in all faith groups of Birmingham can lead us into a city of true community.

Friends desire, in the company of all faith groups of Birmingham, to live our lives in such a way that we indeed can walk cheerfully over the earth answering that of God in everyone.