HOJAS DE COSTOS DE PRODUCCION

My initial ethnography is a Quaker Meeting for Worship that took place at St Andrews. I now provide a background picture of this meeting and this can be supplemented by the profiles of participants of the specific meeting recorded in Appendix I.

The book of members shows the following membership for 2010:

Women Men Children Members 22 7 -

Attenders 12 10 4 Total 34 17 4

The attendance at Meeting for worship is usually about 18 and ranges from 12 to 28 people. There are usually 2 or three students who attend, sometimes for up to two years, but usually for one. The age range of adults is from 18-90. The current children are aged 2-7. Lately, there has been attendance by a

mother and two further children aged 4 and 6. This means that a small children’s group can be run at the same time as the Meeting for Worship on a Sunday. The children join the meeting for the last five minutes. Over the last 10 years, there has been a pattern of attendance by children. There have been three families with young children who have come to the meeting. The children attended for several years but ceased in one case when they reached 10-11 years old, and in another at age 16-17. The third family has young children and have been attending for three years. In two cases one or both parents stopped attending once the children stopped. It is the case nationally that Young Friends, an organisation that runs summer schools for young Quakers, is well attended but that this does not translate into ongoing

membership.49 Recruitment and retention of children of St Andrews Quakers

appear to be low. There is also a very low level of engagement with Quakerism by the children of existing members. Sylvia, aged 89, and her late husband were lifelong Quakers and have five children and have 18 great grand-children. None of the children or their offspring became Quakers. This is repeated throughout the meeting with only three exceptions. St Andrews being a university town sometimes attracts students to the local meeting – often American students – with Quaker connections through Quaker schools. They stay for short periods, usually a year. At any one time there may be two or three such attenders. Over the last five years one student has joined the Society of Friends. Five new members from existing attenders have formally joined over the last 5 years, all women between the ages of 35-60. These numbers and ratios have changed little over the past 5 years while the

49 _{Fieldnotes: Kindlers.}

national figures show a percentage decline of 1.54% in 2008, and 1.21% in 2009 amounting to 223 and 184 people nationally. St Andrews meeting seems not to recruit the children of existing members but existing attender adults, usually women. This reflects a recruitment pattern noticed by Heelas and Woodhead (2005) in relation to the ‘spiritual milieu’. They also noted that this age group of women brought experience of other spiritual milieu, ‘spiritual capital’. This pattern is reflected in St Andrews recruits; they all had experience, sometimes extensive, of other faiths. Of the 35 regular participants at worship six are members whose parents were Quakers. There are five couples, sometimes six, who come to the meeting and this creates significant close communications when jobs are allocated and pursued. There are two members with physical disabilities. Most members are British, one attender is from India, one has a Czechoslovakian background and another is Polish.

In terms of occupation, the available information on those who regularly attend is as follows:

Public Voluntary Sector Business Academic Not in Employment Retired 7 2 5 3 1 14 Of the 14 retired members 4 had been in academic positions.

The Meeting comprises a well-educated, able, group of adults with an average age in the mid-40s, mostly middle class, white, with retirees and

public service professionals being the most numerous groups. Included in the public service group is a person who is a local Lib-Dem councillor. Those with accounting backgrounds are sought for the position of treasurer and some with business expertise have lately taken on the responsibility of Clerkship.

The Meeting has cash assets of £11, 2047 plus the value of the Meeting House (c£300.000). General donations and Gift Aid to the meeting from members is annually about £5,600. A minimum £125 donation per member per annum is required to make ends meet and of that, £53 goes to central work in London. The meeting gives £2,000 per annum to worthy causes. An example of a donation to Ramallah School can be seen in Chapter 4, Section 2. The affairs of the Meeting are efficiently managed and the premises maintained by a small committee. There is a sense of order, care, and quiet efficiency in the dealings of the Meeting.

I describe the physical aspects of the Meeting in the ethnography. Like all meeting houses there is a well-used library which is important to Quakers. It stocks a range of books on Quaker history, peace, and devotional and theological publications. It holds regular magazines and periodicals on Quaker affairs. Notice boards are also a feature of most meeting houses and here they are extensive. Notices inform members of all the activities of the meeting, jobs, roles, and upcoming events. Meetings and conferences are well publicised and there is a sign-up system for those who want to make suggestions or bring some event to members’ notice. The notice boards also contain, from time to time, samples of the work of discussion groups or the

output of the children’s meeting. There are various groups – the Peace Action Group and the discussion groups on various aspects of the Bible – which co- ordinate their activities through these systems. The meeting provides members and any newcomers with considerable information. Coffee after Meeting provides a key gathering for the exchange of information and arrangements to be made and I describe this below.

St Andrews has most of the features that I have seen in other Meetings. It keeps good communications with Friends House, the administrative centre in London, and the initiatives that come from there. One of the Meeting’s Elders is on the Meeting for Sufferings (a key central decision-making body related to

the Trustees) and writes a regular report for the monthly Tayside Quaker

pamphlet on their work. Members of the St Andrews Meeting, two or three per

year, attend courses at the Quaker Centre in Birmingham on Quaker work

and duties. The Meeting attends the University Student Fair, has an Open Week and occasionally has vigils, or sets up a stall on peace issues in the town centre. These events create interest but do not recruit members. The

Meeting raises money for Quaker Homeless Action and for work in Palestine.

It meets with all political parties and candidates during election times and presses its views on peace and sustainability. The Meeting is supportive of the member who is a Lib-Dem councillor and has to make difficult economic decisions. The local air force base is occasionally the subject of discussion but no direct action in relation to it has taken place to my knowledge.

There are strong, long serving central characters in the Meeting who help determine its character and stability. I assess that there is a core of six people, Robert & Laura, Joy, Hannah, Sandra, and Mary who are long

serving, committed and active members. 50 They are linked to the three elderly

members who have been at the meeting for many years and provide continuity. Most of these members carry the history of the meeting and can remember the move to these premises in the 1980s. Two of them were the first members of the meeting when it was first set up in St Andrews. Close to these two groups is a more recent group, whose members are equally active but are less ‘weighty’, although highly regarded by others for their abilities and commitment. This group is composed of a further six people. It is from these three groups that most verbal ministry comes, either in the form of a reading from A&Qs, a well-crafted reflection on current events or upon the work of the Meeting for peace. Personal material is usually embedded within ministry that often has a theme of justice, peace or tolerance. It is rare for ministry of a personal vocational type to be given but it does happen and did towards the end of the meeting for worship I describe. It is usually warmly affirmed and welcomed at coffee afterwards. The pattern and content of ministry over five years shows that the use of Quaker text, particularly A&Qs, is prominent since it is a requirement that some section be regularly read.

The commonest forms of verbal ministry are: those that note Quaker tradition and history and its relevance to today; personal reflections on a poem or a biblical text; a general sense of seeking for meanings in contemporary events

50 _{I discuss these members’ expression of their Quakerism in their workplaces in}

within in a universal perspective; and a comment on the talents and ills of the human condition. I provide examples of such ministry in St Andrews meeting for worship in Chapter 2. Sections 1 and 5. I estimate that one in five meetings is wholly silent, with the average number of ministries in any meeting being two or three. Their duration is usually less than five minutes. The atmosphere created thereby is of a settled and serious gathering. Those present are able, experienced, serious and knowledgeable and this combines with a warm and hospitable feeling within the Meeting in general that clearly sets apart the actual worship as an event of importance, even reverence.

The Meeting contains and conceals much diversity – one long standing member might volunteer that she does not believe in any kind of ‘God’, another who was brought up a Quaker but shrinks from parading her Quakerism, is committed to Celtic prayer traditions, another links her ‘storytelling’ job to Quakerism and is highly eclectic, and yet another is concerned with Sufi spirituality and its connections to Quaker practices. A significant number are ‘refugees’ from other churches and they divide evenly into those who draw on that spiritual capital and those who wholly reject the paternalism of these churches. There is little overlap with what Heelas and Woodhead (2005) would call the ‘holistic milieu’ of alternative therapies or New Age ideas. Consistent with the atmosphere I describe surrounding the actual meeting for worship, I judge that most members and attenders would define what they are doing as ‘religious’. However, there is a rigorous rejection of symbols. Flowers and Bibles are allowed on the central table during worship but a candle placed there by a student, who was doorkeeping

on one occasion, was met by hostility from an Elder. Jobs are filled and proper Gospel Order and procedure is applied to all activities. This order seems not to be experienced as control but is accepted by members. It is in this setting that the ethnography of a particular Meeting recounted in the Chapter 3. is located.