Society: a different state

RantWoman posts this blog as filing cabinet item because of its treament of questions about membership and sex offenders.

This is about the State of Society report for Multonomah Monthly Meeting in Portland OR. Readers who want the actual text of the report should look either at the Multonomah website whch RantWoman is too lazy to look up or eventually, RantWoman thinks at npym.org

The blog link:
http://worldgame.blogspot.com/2014/04/state-of-society.html

Recorded membership is one of many practices Friends engage in to signify their loyalty to the Religious Society of Friends.

Unlike the Tallahassee Friends, who according to our documents see becoming a member as a kind of detailed vetting, an integrity test, almost an initiation or hazing, I look for a willingness, an eagerness, to publicly identify as a Friend in a way that deserves the backing of some Monthly Meeting.  The meeting will not disavow so-and-so when they publicly proclaim to be a Friend.  That's the social contract.

We do not hire expensive Internet services to study the public record, as we might if you want to work in the children's program as one of two supervisory adults, as required by our insurance company (another item of business during the same meeting).  As a third adult in the room, you would not need a background check or social security number.

No, that's not how the process works, in the case of something routine like membership.

We're encouraging people to come forward as Friends and deal with the consequences in the aftermath (for the rest of their lives perhaps).


However, we do not certify, as a meeting, that so-and-so has met a lot of deeply spiritual criteria.  Presumably so-and-so wrote a letter to Oversight and a clearness meeting was convened.  We do not require any criminal background checks, e.g. we are not assuring the public that Y is not a child molester.  We hope not, and will be surprised if so, but let us not mislead the general public into thinking a member has somehow been through some thorough quality assurance program in order to "come out" as a recorded member.