Since the Quakers make no distinction between their spiritual and their everyday life, they conduct their meetings for business in very much the same spirit as their meetings for worship. Business meetings begin with a period of silence, often deep and meaningful rather than perfunctory. Sometimes the meeting lapses into silence again in the course of discussion. This is apt to happen when the give and take becomes too heated, when a seeming impasse has been reached, or when one member speaks so eloquently that the group is moved.

Leading the discussion in a Quaker business meeting is the clerk, whose role it is to be sensitive to the wishes of the group. He tries to see to it that on important matters everyone present expresses himself. He must prevent a dominant member from exerting undue influence on the meeting, see that the proper weight is given to the opinion of a member whose views are particularly pertinent to the subject at issue, and encourage the timid to speak up. He avoids expressing his own views. After what he believes to have been an adequate discussion he will try to phrase the sense of the meeting. “What I seem to be hearing is that we are agreed on appropriating the money for the new sidewalk,” he may say, leaving room for those who object to say so. If there is no dissent, group approval is expressed, various members saying, “I agree with that” or “that speaks my mind.” Like their forefathers, modern Quakers do not vote.

In a real sense the whole of Quaker childhood training and education prepares the individual for participation in this sort of democratic exercise. From childhood on Quakers are taught to say bluntly what is on their minds, rather than to hide latent conflict behind polite words. On the other hand they are also taught to subdue individual aggressiveness in the interest of the group and to be as objective as possible in group discussion. Even when deep issues are involved and thorny conflicts are being faced, the discussion at a Quaker business meeting sounds bland and low keyed to an outsider. There is a surprising amount of laughter, perhaps used for the release of tensions.

When an individual Quaker in a group meeting finds that the group seems to be deciding an issue in a manner with which he disagrees, he must search his conscience. Is his stand based on an objective view of the facts, informed by his individual conscience? Or is pride, insensitivity, or personal ambition in some way standing between himself and his ability to see the group’s point of view? Only when he feels clear that his objection is based on valid grounds of conscience does he oppose himself to the group.

If one or more members decide in this fashion that they cannot agree, the decision is held over sometimes for months, sometimes for years, until time softens hard feelings, or until a new synthesis is possible on the basis of a new idea. Occasionally a subcommittee is asked to wrestle with a thorny issue in the hope that it can produce the new spurt needed to solve the problem. The subcommittee must, however, report back to the full group, and cannot therefore be used as a dodge.

The process of reaching a decision in this fashion is slow, and does not always work. In order to reach apparent unity, meetings sometimes do not bring their conflicts sufficiently out into the open, and wallpaper over their differences. Nevertheless, Friends continue to feel that when a true sense of the meeting is achieved, the results are well worth the extra effort and time involved.

Once a Quaker meeting makes a decision in proper fashion, the decision has the wholehearted support of all its members. There is no bitter minority to nurse its defeat and to sabotage the new project. The decision finally taken is generally not a compromise, but a new idea, both more encompassing and more creative than those previously advanced. The wrestling that goes on while a meeting waits for such an idea may have something to do with the Quaker reputation for coming up with unexpected and practical solutions to thorny problems.

In the spring of 1967 the small meetinghouse of Conscience Bay Meeting at St. James, New York, heard a fellow Quaker from Philadelphia call for an end to the Vietnam war. During the following week vandals smeared ugly accusations of disloyalty on its white walls: “Treason! Traitors! There can be no compromise with Commies! $10,000 for a V.C. a Knife in the back for American G.I.’s. The American Dead will be avenged! This is a God-is-Dead so-called Church.” Everywhere the walls were disfigured with a rash of stenciled red hammer-and-sickle designs.

During a long business meeting, full of turbulent feelings, the members of the meeting decided what their response to this action should be. Should they give the act wide publicity? Or should they say nothing, and meekly repair the damage? Or call the police? Or leave the signs for all to see? The meeting was deeply divided between those who wanted to use the occasion to protest the illiberalism of the vandals and those who wanted no publicity. One man in particular felt strongly that nothing should be released to the papers. Feeling ran high, and several times the clerk had to ask the meeting to settle into silence. finally, after a particularly long and deep period of silence, the man who had opposed publicity  came up with a new idea. Why not invite the friends and neighbors of Conscience Bay Meeting to join with its members in repairing the damage? The invitation could be issued through the medium of the press, but it would create positive, not negative, publicity.

The idea, endorsed enthusiastically by the meeting and published in The New York Times and other papers, caught on quickly. Groups from neighboring churches and civic groups volunteered to help. Persons called the Quakers to say, “I’m opposed to your stand on the war in Vietnam but I want to help paint the meetinghouse.” A successful paint-in with more than two hundred persons present was held the next Sunday.

This is just one small example of something that has happened over and over again in Quaker history; the emergence from group struggle of a new and better idea. The “sweet unity” which Friends cherish is gained not by compromise but by creativity. Quakers occasionally but only rarely confuse the two.

Will the Quaker method work for other groups? Ideally a Quaker meeting is made up of individuals who have been taught from childhood to express their feelings openly and to avoid dominant, aggressive behavior. These individuals have known each other over long periods of time, hold similar values, and are bound together by ties of affection and commonly held ideals. All these qualities are hard to duplicate in other situations. Moreover, the Quakers themselves point out that their method is based on a commonly shared belief in a unifying Presence which each meets in the silence of the period of worship.

Nevertheless, modifications of the Quaker method have been put to work in business, in the United Nations, in international conferences. The Quakers themselves have had considerable success in using the techniques of the Quaker business meeting in their efforts to reconcile opposed groups—in labor relations, in race relations, and in the field of international diplomacy. The attitude of openness toward other points of view, the patient search for unity beneath diversity, the avoidance of polarization—and the agendas, written statements, and votes that lead to polarization of opposing views—have helped the Quakers gain their reputation as the world’s peacemakers. 

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From The Quiet Rebels: The Story of the Quakers in America, by Margaret Hope Bacon

(Image from Goodreads.com)

(Contributed by Janet Cornwell, H.W., m.)