'The vital thing is to never stop talking at least a little – and listening a lot' 

Jonathan Doering introduces a listening project that explores issues around racism and social and political (in)justice called Enlarging the Tent

…Each of us has a particular experience of God and each must find the way to be true to it…. Listen patiently and seek the truth which other people’s opinions may contain for you….[1]

In late 2020, many of us were living in a pleasurably eerie world. Covid had condemned anyone in a position to accept it to a kind of house arrest. Apart from necessary shopping and daily exercise, everyone who could was working from home. Our family house in South Yorkshire became a kind of gilded cage. My wife and I were blessed with jobs that, thanks to the internet, could be handled from home. Our son was well-supplied with schoolwork. We settled into a pleasant enough domestic routine, as emissions from planes dropped radically and dolphins were sighted for the first time in decades in Venice’s Grand Canal.

The Covid death toll offered medical horror, and of course many people had to go out into the world so that the rest of us didn’t need to. I was thankful to be studying for my Quaker Studies MA at Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre to give me another focus. As what had been enjoyable and rewarding research was drawing to a close, I started to wonder what should be my next project.

Then, human horror. George Floyd, an African American with a troubled history, died at the hands of four Minnesota police officers. He was one of 26 Black Americans to be killed by police that year, the horrifying tip of a blood-stained iceberg. Outrageous details piled on top of each other: transcripts and recordings of Floyd’s final moments, the outraged interventions of on-lookers, and the sickening sense in which this was the fatal logic of a machine of injustice – a machine crafted by human hands.

Like many others, I felt moved to join protests and educate myself. Throughout those actions, another question kept poking through: “What else can I do personally?” Alongside my teaching work, I’m a freelance writer and interviewer. It didn’t take me long to decide to try to do something I enjoy in order to shine a little more light on the situation. While mulling over the options with my postgraduate support group, someone advised, ‘Contact Nim Njuguna. He’s doing good work on this.’

A former Baptist minister who has been a practising Quaker for more than ten years, Nim is a man of many parts, including working as a counsellor, selector of magistrates, social and political activist, prison and university chaplain, FE and HE tutor, as well as a freelance writer. After being given his name, I did the usual internet search, and discovered that he had recently delivered a keynote joint lecture on privilege and the climate crisis at a recent gathering of Britain Yearly Meeting. Clearly, this was a man with something to say that would be worth listening to.

During our subsequent conversation, my familiar playlist started up as I unveiled my big idea: an in-depth interview with Nim about the current situation of racism. There was an abrupt shriek as the needle was snatched from the record groove.

Nim wasn’t particularly interested in a standard interview. Ultimately, no matter how respectful and democratic the process, I would remain largely invisible and he relatively exposed.

Rather he was interested in me getting on board with his big idea, which was at once simple and radical. We would interview each other, creating a series of dialogues about this critical social situation. We would each draft ten questions, then share and discuss them. Once we had hammered out these questions, they would form the underlying framework of what would become our Quaker listening project.

Each week we would meet on Zoom and explore a pair of questions employing active listening, honestly thinking aloud about ourselves, our experiences, and our responses.

Our questions covered such topics as: addressing historic guilt; turning threats into opportunities; cultural inspiration; and how to keep momentum in our work for racial, social, and political justice. We set about inter-weaving our close attention with thoughts and experiences.

Our aim was deliberately open-ended: to explore issues around racism and social and political (in)justice, and to consider possible Quaker responses to the situation.

As we sifted our ideas and anecdotes, seeking out the specks of gold, two truths caught the sun.

Firstly, that addressing prejudice and injustice is a lifetime’s work, and must start with the self.

Secondly, that if we’re truly “all in this together”, it isn’t possible to bring your empathy to bear on one area. In positive and negative ways, things flow into one another, interconnect.

At the deepest level, like it or not, we don’t all just have a responsibility to one another: we need one another. Black, White; young, old; Brown, White; gay, straight; disabled, non-disabled; cis, trans; and so on. One of my touchstones during my MA research was the father of Dialogism, Mikhail Bakhtin. His insights into the interplay and interdependence of everyone and everything is revelatory. When we reach out to the Other in another person, we reach out in some profound way to a richer version of ourselves.

As the weeks progressed and we worked through our questions, some collapsed into others, and eight dialogues emerged. We also had a growing sense that we wanted this to be the start of an ongoing conversation, rather than a discrete engagement in itself. We therefore set to work developing ten worksheets to accompany our dialogues, which we hope will stand as one possible example of how Quakers and others who are concerned about these issues can work at the edges of their feelings, knowledge, and responses, nudging them outwards, thus enlarging the tent.

One of our worksheets offers case studies of two key Black Quakers – pioneering lawyer Mahala Ashley Dickerson and social worker and activist Barrington Dunbar. Dunbar was a Guyanese immigrant who first arrived in America in search of an education, working at various jobs while a New York City College before taking an MA in Sociology at Columbia. Having embarked on a PhD at the same institution, he became sharply aware of the glass ceiling faced by so many Black academics, so moved into social work. In time he would become a Quaker, and work on various UN social and health care programmes.

Dunbar proudly upheld the Quaker tradition of speaking truth to power. In his case that often meant holding a mirror up to the comfort and complacency of many White Friends, while also turning a lamp on systemic injustices in America, for instance offering an intellectual explanation of the necessity of “Black rage”.

In a 1970 interview for Friends Journal, he was asked if he regretted the controversy around some of his interventions. He replied: ‘No, I don’t mind…. Opposition means we are facing situations and each other. That’s the way we progress. If everyone agreed, there would be no change in either of us…. We have to keep confronting situations and each other.’[2]

This necessity for an ongoing dialogue, and a creative working with justified anger, is reflected upon by Nim in our book: ‘There has never been a relinquishing of power that we know of without people first trying to take it, whether it is slavery or women’s votes, or Brixton riots, or Toxteth, all that. You don’t have Lord Scarman coming to write a report until Brixton is burning.’[3]

How we hold the circle around that anger, all of the issues and feelings which are connected with it, and plot a peaceful path towards positive change, is one of the key challenges of our time.

So, three years and much writing and drafting later, Enlarging the Tent is due to be published. The river of life flows on and on. Since we first met, Nim, a long-time resident of London, has returned to his native Kenya with his wife Liz, while maintaining their international connections: 2023 has seen them holding a fellowship at Pendle Hill Quaker Centre. I have also done some moving of my own, albeit on a more modest scale, with my family from South Yorkshire to Nottingham. Nim and I have continued to collaborate on the book, and hope to deliver a discussion group course based on it next year.

The vital thing is to never stop talking at least a little – and listening a lot. Quaker Faith and Practice has a passage that aptly echoes Barrington Dunbar’s words:

Conflict happens, and will continue to happen, even in the most peaceful of worlds. And that’s good – a world where we all agreed with one another would be incredibly boring. Our differences help us to learn. Through conflict handled creatively we can change and grow; and I am not sure real change – either political or personal – can happen without it. We’ll each handle conflict differently and find healing and reconciliation by different paths….[4]

The conversation is still growing and will never cease; now is the time to join it!
 

Jonathan is a member of Nottingham Local Meeting in England. Enlarging the Tent is published by Collective Ink (formerly John Hunt Publishing) in December

1. 'Advices and Queries’, Quaker Faith and Practice, London: The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Britain, 1999 [1995]: 1.02.17.
2. “Quaker Portrait: Barrington Dunbar”, Friends Journal, Philadelphia, PA: Friends Publishing Company, Vol. 16, No. 9, 1 May, 1970: 258.
3. Njuguna, N. and Doering, J. Enlarging the Tent, Alresford, Hampshire: John Hunt Publishing, 2023: 47.
4. [4] Leavitt, Mary Lou, ‘Conflict Resolution’, Gifts and discoveries: phase 2A, Quaker Faith and Practice, London: Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Britain, 1999 [1995]: 20.71.