Message from the Pastoral Care and Eldership Team (PaCET) for Sunday Meeting 23rd February 2025

Dear Friends,

Am I my brother’s keeper?  You’ll recognise this as coming from one of the quaint and rather contradictory stories which were eventually included in the book of Genesis which opens the Hebrew and Christian Bibles. Cain murders his brother Abel in what appears to start as a spat between shepherds and settled crop growers. When God confronts him about the crime by asking him where his brother is, a defensive Cain gets uppity:- “how should I know? Am I my brother’s keeper?”

Do we need to keep telling these primitive myths? Maybe not, but if we take brother to mean any member of the human race, not just male siblings, and take the duty of keeping to imply caring for, then Cain’s evasive counter-question has remained urgently pertinent throughout history right up to the present day, despite the primitiveness of the tale and the vast changes in our understanding of the universe since it was first told.  At crucial times – like elections, budgets and episodes of political conflict such as the world has in spades at present – Cain’s question to God seems fundamental to our individual and collective reaction. Before choosing sides, ask yourself how each side would answer it.

There is little doubt that the author(s) of Genesis believe the answer should be a resounding Yes, you are your brother’s keeper. It was certainly the Christian answer, and therefore became the Quaker answer too.  It feels desperately urgent to proclaim it far and wide, but how to do it? I see few signs that it is possible by logical reasoning to convince anyone of the necessity for this answer; it comes only through example and the promptings of truth and love. Otherwise we have eyes but see not, as Mark has Jesus say.

The mixture  of conviction and frustration I feel about the pressing need to achieve  world-wide attitudinal change is captured by this public statement issued  by Yearly Meeting in May 1987 albeit in slightly different circumstances. It reads in part:-

Quakers in Britain have felt called to issue this statement in order to address a matter of urgent national priority to promote debate and to stimulate action.

We commit ourselves to learning again the spiritual value of each other. We find ourselves utterly at odds with the priorities in our society which deny the full human potential of millions of people in this country. That denial diminishes us all. There must be no ‘them’ and ‘us’.   QF&P 23.21

Bob Harwood

on behalf of the Pastoral Care and Eldership Team (Patricia Cockrell, David Hitchin, Sharon Krummel, Tim Pitt-Payne, Caroline Pybus, Theresa Samms)