Southampton Quaker Meeting

Southampton Local Quaker Meeting

Friends Meeting House
1a Ordnance Road
Southampton
Hampshire
SO15 2AZ

Days and Times of meetings: every Sunday at 10.45 a.m.
Children’s Meeting: every Sunday, plus Junior Young Friends on 2nd and 4th Sunday in the month

Directions: On foot - 3/4 mile from Railway Station (Click on small map for a larger MAP)

Contact: Clerk: Ruth Heine here
Concerning the Meeting House: Tel. 023 80223758 or email here.

About Us: We are an active Meeting (usually about 50 people attend on Sundays) with a wide age range and a variety of interests.

The Minute of Appreciation for Jeanne Christie is reproduced below.

In addition to the Children's Meeting and the Junior Young Friends, the Prime Group (ages 18 to 40ish) meets monthly for lunch followed by discussion (reports of some discussions are below). There are also worship and study groups held in Friends' homes and a Healing Group once a month before Meeting for Worship.

The Meeting House, built in 1884, is used during the week by a number of local organisations.
... More history below.

Southampton Quakers are much involved in local peace action and in interchurch and interfaith activities such as the Southampton Council of Faiths.

THE SOUTHAMPTON PRIME GROUP
This is a wide-ranging discussion group intended for those aged (approximately) 18-40 who are interested in Quaker beliefs, spiritual possibilities, moral issues and practical activities. All are welcome.

Southampton Quakers - Prime Group Meeting
Sunday 10 May 2009

“Quaker Universalists” with Stephen Perkins

This was Stephen’s second presentation to the Prime Group – he’d given us a talk in May 2004 about the Universalists which had been very well received so he’d been asked back. Stephen began with a brief history of his time with the Quakers. Stephen came South in 2000 after living in the northwest for 13 years, near to Blackpool where he’d got his first teaching job. He is now a 6th form college teacher at Peter Symonds College, Winchester. Stephen had always been attracted to the Universalist strand of Quakers and is an Attender at Winchester Meeting.

Stephen handed around a tray of potatoes and asked us each to take one and study it carefully. He then collected up the potatoes and asked us whether we could identify our own, a majority of us could. Stephen’s point was that, despite sharing a lot in common with one another everyone is unique. Stephen’s aims for the talk were both to raise awareness of the Quaker Universalist Group and to help encourage our own spiritual development by connecting the universal with the personal.

Stephen outlined how the silence in Meeting was comforting – and uniting - and that some of our deepest insights are non-verbal. Words can be/feel threatening when sharing our vision and values. Stephen talked of his own vision and values and asked – ‘In this world of globalisation including globalisation of religion are we Quakers/Christians/Universalists/Other?’
We all found it difficult – or were reluctant -to label ourselves and gave a brief account of our Spiritual paths instead. We discussed the difference between being an Attender and a Member.

Even the word ‘Quakerism’ can be difficult – for those who don’t know or understand it – it can push others away. Stephen said that there was a tension between the idea of there being constants such as love, truth, beauty, etc., but that the traditional can be fundamental and contemporary society which promoted ideas such as ‘ethical’, flexible, progressive, global – were more attractive. So language can produce barriers. Stephen handed out the Quaker Universalist Group leaflet. The Group is an informal group within the Quaker movement based on our understanding that spiritual awareness is accessible to everyone of any religion or non, and that no one person and no one faith can claim to have a final revaluation or monopoly of truth. The leaflet (www.qug.org.uk), outlined its vision, what they do, their aims and information about Membership.

We discussed how Quakerism is a relief from fundamentalism – that there is an emphasis on how we live our life – not on what we believe. There is though a tension between more traditional Christian beliefs and an emphasis on the Christian roots of the Society – and Universalism. Christianity teaches that there was only one way to get to heaven – and that was through Jesus, but this belief excludes other faiths. It was argued that the Testimonies, silence and the right ordering of the Meeting provide the glue to hold the different beliefs together.

Stephen explained that it was the 30th anniversary of the Universalist group and displayed more leaflets and booklets for us to look at. He then talked about the Quaker willingness to live adventurously and led us through a visioning exercise. Stephen provided us with a sheet which challenged us to write a mission statement for ourselves. Stephen quoted Victor Frankl:

‘Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognise that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.’

We were asked to identify an influential person in our lives, define who we wish to have become in 20 year’s time, determine what is important to us today and to draft a mission statement (based on the ideas following below).

We are challenged to cultivate a Universal responsibility for one another and the planet we share. We each have to develop an intellectual framework we feel comfortable with – not in words, but a core that holds us all as one.

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QUAKERS IN SOUTHAMPTON

George Fox, the founder of the Quaker movement, came to Southampton in 1655. One of the earliest Southampton Quakers was George Embree. He lived in the parish of All Saints and early Quaker Meetings were held at his house. In defiance of the Conventicle Act, Quakers held their Meetings openly. Between 1657 and 1666 some sixty Friends were persecuted, a third of them women.

George Embree died in September 1678 and left a legacy to Southampton Friends which still survives. He had bought a piece of land known as the 'cabbidge plot' on the road leading to Winchester and presented it to the Meeting in 1662 as a burial ground, since when it has been in continual use, and is now the only private burial ground in Southampton.

After the passing of the Toleration Act in 1689, Friends began to think about building a Meeting House. Eventually they found a site in Castle Lane and built a Meeting House with a yard for tethering horses. During the eighteenth century, the number of Quakers in Southampton declined and the Castle Lane Meeting House fell into disuse. By the early nineteenth century the population of Southampton was increasing rapidly as more people were moving into the town. Two Friends, William Colson Westlake and Joseph Ball advanced money for a new Meeting House in Castle Square which continued in use from 1822 to 1884.

By 1880 the town was extending rapidly northwards and the Meeting House was described as 'situate in a degraded part of the town'. The decision was taken to build a new Meeting House in Ordnance Road, conveniently close to the burial ground in the Avenue. The architect was instructed to design 'something between a chapel, a mission room and a club building'. The Quakers in 1884 sought to provide a building which would serve the needs of the Meeting well into the twentieth century, which it has done.

Minute of Appreciation for Jeanne Christie (2.11.1927 to 28.3.2010)

Jeanne Christie was welcomed into Quaker membership about ten years ago, after attending Meeting for Worship for several years. She was already an ordained minister in the United Reformed Church, so she was glad to be able to hold dual membership and to continue with her work for her other religious community.

Jeanne will be remembered by Southampton Friends for her energetic upholding of our testimony to social justice; her efforts took many forms, including her work with asylum seekers and with the URC Wessex Synod racial justice group, her fundraising for various charities, her advocacy of the Sunday Lunch project at Freemantle United Reformed Church, and her chaplaincy at the Department of Psychiatry. In our Meeting, she was actively engaged in supporting several elderly Friends, and she was an enthusiastic member of several groups – Worship Sharing, Book groups and discussion groups. She supported the mid-week Meeting for Worship which met in the homes of Friends and enabled elderly and frail Friends to continue worshipping together.

Alongside the deep certainty of her faith, her very active and enquiring mind led Jeanne’s theology to become more radical as she grew older, when she became a devotee of Spong and his ideas; she was always keen to explore both religious and psychological ideas, and these led to her individual and group work in the local Psychotherapy Department and the Southampton Counselling Service.

Jeanne loved the silent worship of Quaker Meeting, and she will also be remembered with gratitude for organising an annual retreat or Quiet Day for Southampton Meeting but open to Friends from neighbouring meetings. She organised these for several years, always in lovely places, and always with outstanding leaders.

Jeanne’s professional training and background was in hospital social work and child care. She became a well-known and respected senior practitioner locally with experience in pioneering work with what was then called “non-accidental injury” of children and with those providing child and adolescent psychiatry and she was a good team-builder, providing welcome support for her junior colleagues. In earlier days, she had pioneered the organisation of professional conferences, always persuading eminent speakers to take part.

Her family took a major role in her life, and she and her mother cared for one another faithfully for many many years, together with their precious cats. Some of the younger generation lived in South Africa, so Jeanne was a frequent traveller there – but she was already an intrepid traveller to destinations all over the world, usually with a companion, often by car or even motor scooter, to quite remote places for camping or walking trips, or to other countries to explore new cultures.

Wherever life led her, professionally or personally, Jeanne always seemed to “adopt” people with whom she kept in close touch afterwards; she took a great interest in the children of her friends, and was deeply involved in the lives of several young people who continued to have a close relationship with her in their adulthood.

Jeanne challenged unthinking prejudice and lethargy of purpose in her robust and fearless style. She despaired of conventional thinking and behaviour where it prevented social justice, and did her best to change things for the better. In spite of her underlying anxieties and insecurities she tackled life boldly and challenged difficult situations bravely. At her funeral, her friend Kate Compston who conducted the service, reminded us how frustrating it had been for Jeanne in her final years “that all the things in her heart demanded too much of her body”. But those of us who have been influenced, inspired and energised by her, introduced to new ideas or new activities, stretched to new achievements by her confidence in us – we will give thanks for the many lively years she was able to enjoy.

Margaret Heathfield and Sheila Blatch 18.6.2010