Kenyapost 5
The wall of epistles.
And just like that, the salt loses its taste and the light goes under a basket. The issue of homosexuality erupted at the conference yesterday.
I had been having a quiet spiritual morning, skipping the large morning gathering to worship by myself in the “quiet room” – a small room FWCC has designated for quiet worship of all kinds. It was a beautiful day, and the sounds of the large Kenyan service in the big church mixed with children playing outside. I left the front door to the little room open as an invitation, and was joined, briefly, by Ashley Wilcox who had led the Convergent Friends Thread Group.
After lunch I arrived at my home group. There was only one facilitator and she seemed a bit grim to me. Slowly, others in my group trickled in. The the other facilitator, a British man, arrived and he looked terrible – red eyes and ragged all around. Robin Mohr, the director of the American office of FWCC is also in my group, and she arrived and had a whispered conference with the first (female) facilitator, a Friend from California. This Friend began our meeting by saying we had no choice but to worship share about “what happened” this morning. I was bewildered and asked someone to fill me in.
What happened was, a Friends Group for Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Friends had posted an epistle on the wall outside the auditorium with all the other epistles. During the morning session, it had been torn down, re-posted and torn down again. The large morning gathering, which I missed, ended with an irate and tearful Liz Gates denouncing the “violent action” (this is an unreliable quote, it is second-hand, but later, another Friend remarked on Liz’s strong language) taken against this epistle and begged the gathering to hold each other in love.
As we began our home group session (my home group is described in Kenyapost 2), the female faciltator read aloud from the FWCC statement on diversity, handed out to all conference participants, which expressly addresses the issue of homosexuality. Several Kenyans in the room reached for their Bibles and began flipping through them. We settled in to worship.
The worship sharing lasted for about 90 minutes. The British Friend who co-facilitates began with an impassioned coming out. He is gay. He was distraught as he said he came to the conference not wanting to make his sexuality and issue but that now, he felt he had no choice. He said he no longer felt safe here. Several Kenyans and some others shared passionately about the book of Genesis, in which God creates a woman to be Adam’s companion, because His design is to further procreation. In some cases, this ministry was accompanied by an elaboration on the old testament definition of a family, in which “the woman submits to the man, who is the master”. Noah and I shared impassioned ministry about all the ways the Bible has been used to sew discord and even violence throughout human history, Noah pointing out that his Yearly Meeting (New England) was torn asunder in 1845 over the question of the primacy of the Bible. He referenced passages in Leviticus, which instructs us to kill people who wear cotton and linen woven together on the Sabbath, or who eat shellfish. He and I both pointed out the Bible was used as justification for slavery, when our forefathers came to this continent to enslave the distant relatives of the people here today. I said that homosexuality is not a “choice” (a position several Kenyans had taken), and that there were young gay and lesbian children in every community represented in this conference, and that Jesus call us to care for them with every fiber of our being. I said this issue, of human sexuality, is the defining human rights issue of our generation.
The Kenyans were unmoved, at least visibly, and two of them abruptly left while either Noah or I was speaking. Later, a Friend in our group charitably offered that they had done so because we had gone over time. I’m not so sure. On my way to the next event, a plenary session, I stopped and held my British Friend as he sobbed on my shoulder, and my Colorado Friend, a bisexual woman, rubbed his back and cried along softly.
In the vast auditorium, I sat by chance with a lesbian Friend from Philadelphia who has made the choice not to come out publicly at the conference, and was put off a bit by Liz’s strong language denouncing the events of the epistle earlier in the day, though she sympathized with the feelings. “I’m not sure that was helpful,” she said, “I have the feeling this is an issue we white westerners cannot help the Kenyans with. This is something they are going to have to work out for themselves, and our input, as well-meaning as it is, may be counter productive.” I was moved by her words.
The plenary was charged with a repressed restlessness. It was interrupted by the entrance of the Chancellor of the University, who had been the second President of Kenya. All the Kenyans rose to their feet when he entered, along with most Friends, but some Friends remained sitting. He gave a speech which would have made Pat Robertson proud, and I was afraid he was going to launch directly into the controversy but he did not. He only bemoaned the sorry state of the world’s “moral decay”.
His Excellency, The Chancellor, speaks.
As we resumed plenary deliberations on a set of queries woven together from the Thread Groups, there was some angry ministry about all of us rising to our feet for the Chancellor. I found this ministry petty. The remainder of the session would have reminded Friends of any larger Yearly Meeting gathering, with microphones being passed to Friends who wish to speak, although in this case some messages were delivered in Spanish or French and translated simultaneously. The issue of the day was not addressed directly, although it was glanced at in some messages, in my opinion. The epistle, by the way, is now up again.
Last night I attended an interest group about taking steps to avoid violence in Kenya’s upcoming elections. The last elections, in 2007, were marred by atrocities afterwards, and there are a variety of grass roots efforts underway, many of them led by Friends organizations and Friends churches, to keep things peaceful next time around. I never got a clear picture of what the issues in the elections were, but got a vague sense that the divisions are tribal.
Friends gathered to learn about peace activism and the Kenyan elections.
Today, Monday, should be an interesting day. The plenary sessions continue, and I will meet with my home group again later this morning. I do not expect that any hearts have been moved. I sense that the best we can hope for around the issues of human sexuality is “agree to disagree”.
Dear Friend, I’m a British Friend living in Nairobi. Thank you so much for the frankness & honesty of your blogs during the conference, which so help those of us beyond Kabarak to feel part of the churning & the process. Thinking of you – all – as you enter the last few days together.
It’s difficult to imagine that anyone at the World Conference or any other Quaker gathering could get away with ripping down a women’s group’s posters or clawing through their bible to find support for the racist statements they made during meeting for worship. That gay and lesbian Friends are deemed suitable targets for this sort of treatment by the weighty members of the Society at the world level who do nothing to stop it only indicates that there has been no change in the attitude of the “World Family” of Friends since a statement that conference participants had ‘heard the pain of gay and lesbian Friends’ was removed from the draft epistle of the 1991 Fifth World Conference gathering in the Netherlands which I attended because a weighty African Friend said he could not take an epistle with such a statement home with him.
Now as then, Gay and Lesbian Friends will have to wait patiently and lovingly while being bible bashed within the World Family, and the Religious Society of Friends will continue to twiddle its thumbs while homosexuality is criminalized and homosexuals are beaten, murdered and driven to suicide. While I would agree with the lesbian who did not let that aspect of her life speak at the World Conference quoted in the blog post that this is an issue African (and Evangelical and Conservative Friends elsewhere as well) will have to work out for themselves, I am not at all sure that input from Friends who hold other opinions–particularly Friends who know homosexuality as a gift from God that can be used wisely for the benefit of self and others–is counterproductive. Friends are, after all, known for speaking Truth to Power. Occasionally Friends are even known to listen.
grateful for your keen observations and prayerful for all of those gathered and struggling … not sure we Westerners can second-guess another culture
“. . . a weighty African Friend said he could not take an epistle with such a statement home with him.”
james, someone who can take that position may certainly be a Friend, but he is not a weighty one.
Thank you for your reporting. I appreciate that this is a difficult situation for many of us but the issues is so alive. How do we hold the Bible with tenderness and those who have different views equally tenderly? We are all Quakers and our struggles and issues in our various cultures can cause our diversity to be hurtful at times and enjoyable at others. May we learn to respect one another in the love God creates in the whole of Creation.
.’We are all Quakers’. In name we are but the differences are so huge that the word ‘Quaker’ here means completely different things, or references completely different positions re some very significant issues, even the most basic and defining.
This does not mean we should not meet but who can be surprised at this kind of conflict? It is a difficult choice for LGBTQ people from Europe and USA as to whether to attend the conference or not. One approach is to stay away and not put oneself in a position of being attacked and derided. The other is to be a visible witness to the beauty of one’s God gifted nature. The latter is perhaps the more difficult and very much ‘under the Cross’. And yet it is to truly be ‘salt and light’ in a place of hostility. Both these approaches are valuable. As I was not appointed to go and couldn’t afford to go under my own steam I was spared that choice.
Thank you for sharing your experiences Benjamin!
Jeff :)
I am saddened by the events in Africa. How do we overcome such differences in the manner of Friends. Unfortunately, it is not only Africa that gives rise to such marginalizing of many valued and “weighty” Friends, Bayard Rustin to say the least. In is hard for Friends to be critical of African Quaker theology when, in the United States, 30 to 35,000 FGC Friends are a significant minority when compared to FUM and EFI Friends, a total of nearly 100,000 Friends who not only reject the divine sanctity of same-sex intimacy, but have employment and leadership standards that are equally marginalizing. The question I ask, anticipating that a theological critique of FGC Friends may opportunistic in light of the ongoing in Africa, is, when Friends refuse to consistently identify a corporate nature of testimonies, and devalue the importance of ancient texts and relevatory experiences, how can we take others to task for not being “Quakerly?” If all are lead according to an individual measure of Light without accountability to a coherent representation of Friends’ Testimonies, how will other Friends, and other religious communities, take us seriously? Without some aspect of corporate religious authority through which we test our leadings against the ancient experiences, we lose an ability to articulate our Light in any other light than our own spiritual preferences. As the saying goes, the rabbi says “so sayeth the LORD.” The priest says “so sayeth the Church.” The liberal Quaker says “Well, it seems to me…” Our tendency to think like utilitarians and refuse to mark specific ways in which testimonies are authoratative leaves us without any specific means of articulating truth. And yes, there are truths. One of them is that every human being is an image bearer, every one has a measure of inward Light, and we know this through the life of Jesus as known in the text, and through the lives and writings of Friends before us. However, simply saying that we think God loves gay folk, well, that might be well and nice for us, but it sort of counts us out of a place at the table of religious discourse, not only in Africa, but the United States as well.
am lsibian m lukin fo a 30 3o 36yr old