The Gathering: Past and Future

By Deborah Haines

Friends General Conference has its roots in a group of volunteer committees that sprang up in the years after the Civil War. These committees brought together Friends from the seven Hicksite yearly meetings to address common concerns such as religious education, social testimonies, religious life, and Quaker schools. Most of their work was done by correspondence, but every two years they would hold a large "general conference" to receive reports from each of the yearly meetings, and make plans for the future. When several of the committees began holding joint general conferences in the 1880s, the seeds were planted for Friends General Conference, which was formally organized in 1900.

For the first several decades, the FGC organization and its biennial conference were almost indistinguishable. The conference program consisted largely of reports by the standing committees, supplemented by talks on subjects of general interest. The conference gave the committees a chance to publicize their work, to support and encourage their existing networks of local volunteers, and to recruit new volunteers. Issues such as peace concerns, prison reform, economic justice, religious education and Quaker schools dominated the agenda. Young adult Friends were an active presence at every conference, presenting reports on their regional gatherings, caravans, and service projects.

The tiny staff of FGC, consisting at first of only an Advancement Secretary, was primarily responsible for supporting the young adult Friends movement and the Advancement Committee. The secretary arranged visits, organized regional gatherings, corresponded with isolated meetings, planned conferences for outreach workers, and supported the seeding of new meetings. Not until 1951 was the office staff expanded to provide support for the work of the other standing committees.

The conferences themselves required very little staff support. They were large–two thousands Friends or more–but largely self-generated. A volunteer conference planning committee was responsible for choosing a site, generally a resort with its own hotel, negotiating group rail or steamer fares, and inviting outside speakers. Registrants made their own hotel reservations or other housing arrangements. The program was largely developed by the standing committees. When FGC began charging a registration fee in the 1920s, at $1 per person for the week, the proceeds were used to defray travel costs for those who needed assistance.

In 1928 the conferences settled in Cape May, New Jersey for a remarkable forty-year run. By then a modified conference format had emerged. The morning began with meetings for worship, followed by "round tables" sponsored by the standing committees. These round tables, like the business sessions in earlier years, gave each of the committees a chance to present various aspects of their work over the course of the week, invite feedback, and recruit volunteers. A full-scale children’s program was offered beginning in 1930 to encourage families to attend. Afternoons were left free for recreation and fellowship. In the evenings there were usually talks by outside speakers.

Nevertheless, the business of FGC was still a central element in the conferences. The Central Committee of FGC, made up of delegates from member yearly meetings in proportion to their size, met only at the biennial conferences until 1937, when the first off-year meeting was scheduled. The ongoing work of FGC was overseen between conferences by a small Executive Committee, which met several times a year, usually in the Philadelphia area. Central Committee continued to hold business sessions at the biennial conferences through the 1960s.

In the 1960s, a great many things changed. An off-year conference was introduced in 1963, to serve Midwestern Friends in the newly organizing independent yearly meetings. Cape May was proving increasingly inhospitable, and was finally abandoned at the end of the decade. In addition, turmoil surrounding the Vietnam War made it increasingly difficult to conduct business at the conferences. After a thorough review of FGC organization in 1968, it was decided to separate out the work of Central Committee and the experience of the conferences. There were to be annual "gatherings" in different locations throughout the country, at which no business would be transacted, and annual Central Committee meetings each fall, which would carry forward the organizational work of FGC. A new staff position was created, to provide support to the Gathering planning committee.

Week long workshops, catering to a broad range of interests, became the centerpiece of the Gathering, replacing the "round tables" offered by FGC’s standing committees. By the 1990s, the standing committees of Central Committee were barred from doing business or holding meetings at Gathering. The ad hoc Gathering planning committees were not encouraged to consider how they might support the ongoing work of the standing committees. The growing divide between the Gathering and Central Committee sparked a campaign in 2001 to let Friends know that "FGC is more than the Gathering."

For more than half a century, FGC conferences brought Friends together around issues of common concern, in order to support Quaker witness in the world. Today the focus has shifted to providing opportunities for individual spiritual exploration in the context of themed gatherings. The Gathering has become, in Chuck Fager’s words, "our great religious festival." Anyone can set up a booth–hundreds of us do–and we spend a week sampling the wares, or hanging out in whatever booth we find most congenial. There is certainly excitement and vitality in this model.

Some Friends find the experience overwhelming, though, and the pace is sometimes too frenetic, the offerings scattershot. There is little opportunity at all for corporate discernment or settling into a sense of unity and common commitment. Would it be possible to simplify the Gathering? How can we envision the Gathering for the future?

Could we consider going back to a biennial Gathering? Or re-introduce large morning roundtables on essential concerns? Some of these might be planned by the standing committees of FGC Central Committee–Religious Education, Traveling Ministries, Advancement and Outreach–as a way of publicizing their programs, gathering feedback, and recruiting additional workers. Some should certainly focus on urgent social concerns–peace, earthcare, racism, economic injustice. Perhaps the experience of such roundtables would not only ground the Gathering more firmly in discernment, but would draw FGC Central Committee back into the business of Quaker witness, which was so important at its founding, integrating it with the opportunities for individual spiritual exploration that have become so prominent and beloved.