Message from the Pastoral Care and Eldership Team (PaCET) for Sunday Meeting 27th November 2022

Dear Friends,

The death of David Blamires was recorded in ‘The Friend’ last week. I knew David from in the early 1970s when he was a member of the Woodbrooke Council and I was a fairly new member of staff. He was a well involved Friend and a lecturer in German at Manchester University. Always courteous and careful with his comments. I had not realised that he was keeping his sexuality very private, as many people did at that time, until in 1973 a book ‘Homosexuality from the inside’ came out with his name as the author. That was bold at that time, as was the co-operation of Friends House in publishing it.
 
In the book and in associated talks, he was saying “accept me for who I am, don’t ask why, just listen to how life feels to me and learn.” That was a significant lesson for me and of importance when around 10 years later one of our sons came out as gay.
 
At that time, the Quakers in Britain were moving ahead, if slowly, with acceptance of gay relationships. David helped with that moving and indeed by 2012 could look back on how the Society had become committed to and campaigning for equality in same-sex relationships. He could call that book ‘Pushing at the frontiers of change: A memoir of Quaker involvement with homosexuality.’ Wider society has moved on too in our and many parts of the world though not in all, as the current comments in relation to the football World Cup being held in Qatar show and as Quakers know too within their own world community.
 
The foundations for the way Friends came to view relationships were set out in 1963 in the fresh thinking in the booklet ‘Towards a Quaker view of sex’. This had emerged out of several years consideration by a group of concerned Friends. They were no part of the official structures though their views got the Society plenty of press attention. The heart of their convictions is by now in Quaker Faith and Practice 22.18:

“Where there is genuine tenderness, an openness to responsibility, and the seed of commitment, God is surely not shut out. Can we not say that God can enter any relationship in which there is a measure of selfless love? – and is not every generalisation we make qualified by this?” Towards a Quaker view of sex, 1963

David and many others have affirmed that. We can try to do so as well.

In Friendship

Chris Lawson

On behalf of the Pastoral Care and Eldership Team (Bob Harwood, David Hitchin, Chris Lawson, Tim Pitt-Payne, Theresa Samms, Nancy Wall)