Speaking out in the world

In the past few days we have seen and heard coverage about a Quaker decision at Yearly Meeting on the Today programme on BBC Radio 4, in the Times, Guardian, Daily Mail and Daily Mirror newspapers, a piece from the Press Association and regional coverage such as on the BBC Lancashire website.

All this coverage has been achieved without allowing journalists into our Yearly Meeting sessions.

The most important issue is the decision-making and what results from our discerning God’s will and how we go about doing that isn’t ultimately important to your average journalist. But it may be important to us to be represented correctly and to others who may find themselves attending Quaker Meetings in the future.

In the framework for action 2009-2014, a document of Quakers in Britain, one of our seven key priorities is ‘Speaking out in the world’. We have shown these last few days that we (for example Rosemary Hartill in the Guardian, Michael Hutchinson quoted in various media and Jenny in the BBC Lancashire piece) can confidently do this without non-Quaker journalists in our midst.

What we need to do now is find ways to work together, across Britain to make sure that it is our own voices being heard.

We should not rely on our media officer for Quakers in Britain to do this work for us on her own, but there should be more of us working together to get out there and be heard.

The Friend, Quaker Life, Quaker Quest, and individuals and Meetings up and down Britain could be working out how to handle this sort of situation in the future to make a combined best effort to get our message across.

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