Friends General Conference

Together we nurture the spiritual vitality of Friends

Equality

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Queries

In what ways do we respond, as individuals and as a community, to prejudice and injustice?

How do we benefit from inequity and exploitation? How are we victims of inequity and exploitation? In what ways can we address these problems?

How do we show through our ways of living that love of God affirms the equality of all people, treating them with dignity and respect?

Advices

It is important to realize that equality does not mean sameness. Each person is a separate individual and should have the opportunity to pursue her or his own gifts. To deny anyone the right to develop his or her full potential for any reason is not equality. Cultural and other differences among us weave a tapestry that is immeasurably enriched by our diversity. It is the right of every person to be treated with dignity and respect.

In our Meetings for Worship, God’s message may be delivered through any person attending that meeting. In our Meetings for Worship with a Concern for Business, each person present may shed Light on a matter under consideration. We also need to recognize that the young among us need to be listened to as any adult, for their words might bring the spark of unity among us.

We need to be careful that we speak in positive terms when talking about others, especially those who might be different from ourselves or our close community. Adults have a specific responsibility to model Friendly values to children, who do not see other children as different until they are taught that others may be different and in some way may not be as “good” as they are. Speaking in a negative way about a person or group of people may be a form of violence, especially if the statement is not carefully qualified to show the rationale and purpose of the remark.

Voices

I believe that Meeting for Worship has brought the same awareness to all who have seen and understood the message that everyone is equal in the sight of God, that everybody has the capacity to be the vessel of God’s word. There is nothing that age, experience, and status can do to prejudge where and how the Light will appear. This awareness–the religious equality of each and every one–is central to Friends.

Ursula M. Franklin, 1979

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. 
Galatians 3:28 (KJV)

To consider mankind otherwise than brethren, to think favors are peculiar to one nation and exclude others, plainly supposes a darkness in the understanding. For as God’s love is universal, so where the mind is sufficiently influenced by it, it begets a likeness of itself and the heart is enlarged towards all men. 
John Woolman, c.1760

Guided by the Light of God within us and recognizing that of God in others, we can all learn to value our differences in age, sex, physique, race and culture. This enables mutual respect and self-respect to develop, and it becomes possible for every one to love one another as God loves us.… Jesus stressed the unique nature and worth of each individual. It is unreasonable to expect assimilation or to ignore difference, claiming to treat everyone the same. This denies the value of variety. Personality, sex, race, culture and experience are God’s gifts. We need one another, and differences shared become enrichments, not reasons to be afraid, to dominate or condemn. We need to consider our behavior carefully, heeding the command of Jesus that we should love our neighbors as we love ourselves. 
Meg Maslin, 1990

Our experience has been that spiritual gifts are not distributed with regard to sexual orientation or gender identity. Our experience has been that Alexandria Monthly Meeting has been immeasurably enriched over the years by the full participation and Spirit-guided leadership of Friends of all sexual orientations and gender identities. We will continue to listen to and honor those voices and gifts. We believe it is inconsistent with God’s Truth to silence the voices of Friends based on whom and how they love. Our experience confirms that we are all equal before God, as God made us, and feel blessed to be engaged in the work of Alexandria Monthly Meeting together. 
Alexandria Monthly Meeting, 2004

In the days ahead we must not consider it unpatriotic to raise certain basic questions about our national character. We must begin to ask, “Why are there forty million poor people in a nation overflowing with such unbelievable affluence? Why has our nation placed itself in the position of being God’s military agent on earth…? Why have we substituted the arrogant undertaking of policing the whole world for the high task of putting our own house in order?”
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 1967

That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody helps ME any best place. And aint I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm. I have plowed, I have planted and I have gathered into barns. And no man could head me. And aint I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man–when I could get it–and bear the lash as well. And aint I a woman? I have borne children and seen most of them sold into slavery, and when I cried out with a mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me. And aint I a woman?
Sojourner Truth, 1851

It is time for the preachers, the rabbis, the priests and pundits, and the professors to believe in the awesome wonder of diversity…It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength. We all should know that diversity makes for a rich tapestry, and we must understand that all the threads of the tapestry are equal in value no matter their color; equal in importance no matter their texture. Our young must be taught that racial peculiarities do exist, but that beneath the skin, beyond the differing feature and into the true heart of being, fundamentally, we are more alike, my friend, than we are unalike. 
Maya Angelou, 1994

In those first days in the South…a white kid of nine or ten was hanging over the roof of the Royals’ dugout. Above the chorus of boos, [Jackie] Robinson could hear him shouting, “Atta boy, Jackie, nice try! Atta boy, Jackie!” …He knew that never in his life would he forget the face of this boy who was honest at heart, not yet filled with the poison of prejudice, who shouted a word of encouragement above the cries of the mob. 
Carl T. Rowan, 1960

Gay and lesbian Friends and couples bless our Meeting. Their gifts of courage, love, and devotion speak to us of God, and move us closer to that of God within us all. We offer our experience of these gifts to other Meetings as they seek the Light on this issue. 
Charlottesville Monthly Meeting, 1997

So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. 
Genesis 1:27 (NRSV)

One has to fight for justice for all. If I do not fight bigotry wherever it is, bigotry is thereby strengthened. And to the degree that it is strengthened, it will thereby have the power to turn on me.
Bayard Rustin, 1953

Though all of us are attracted to physical beauty, cleverness, wittiness, and intelligence, the Quaker affirmation that there is that of God in each person asserts that being worthy of respect does not depend on possessing attractive qualities or skills. Until we can respect another person without justification except that he or she is a child of God, it is not really respect. 
Paul A. Lacey, 1998

 

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