FUM Policy Concern
Minute for Consideration
BYM Interim Meeting, 18 Sixth Month, 2005
Baltimore Yearly Meeting has labored long, hard and prayerfully in our search for unity about making financial contributions to Friends United Meeting in light of our disunity with Minute 88-GB-52 of the FUM General Board and its implementation. This search for unity led us, at our 2004 Annual Sessions, to commit to a program of intervisitation with other Yearly Meetings within FUM to seek further clarity about what God requires of us. We are gratified that the FUM General Board has supported this intervisitation program in its Minute 04-GB-77.
As we prepare for our next steps, we acknowledge that some of us in BYM proceed with a sense of joy and unfolding opportunity while others are weighted down with a feeling of profound sadness at the wounds inflicted on members of our Yearly Meeting and other Yearly Meetings by these personnel policies and practices. We are torn between our desire to remain in loving community with all Friends, and our need to witness to our understanding of what the testimonies of equality and integrity require.
We now affirm that we in Baltimore Yearly Meeting feel led by God to make our customary contribution of $17,400 to Friends United Meeting for the 2005 budget year as a Restricted Contribution. We ask that these funds be used solely to fund a new FUM program of yearly meeting intervisitation, beginning with the North American Yearly Meetings. We ask that they not be used for administrative fees or FUM overhead costs, but only for the direct costs of the intervisitation program.
Funds contributed by BYM may be used for the travel expenses of Friends among the Yearly Meetings and the costs of one or more conferences related to understanding gender and sexual diversity. BYM's contribution may serve as seed money, encouraging other FUM Yearly Meetings to make their own contributions to such an FUM fund.
Baltimore Yearly Meeting has already begun a program of intervisitation and is well along in its implementation. We recognize that FUM's General Board may wish to appoint a committee to assure proper oversight of the intervisitation fund. We offer FUM our assistance, and ask that FUM include at least one member of BYM in planning the FUM program.
We ask that FUM report annually to BYM on how these funds have been used, and what progress is being made in addressing this painful divide among Friends.
APPROVED, 18 JUNE 2005 AT INTERIM MEETING, RICHMOND MEETING HOUSE
For more information see reports from BYM's Intervisitation Committee
Minutes from Baltimore Yearly Meeting
Minutes from Monthly Meetings
Minutes from Elsewhere
Responses from FUM
Related Information
