Native American Quakerism at Great Plains Yearly Meeting

By Micah Bales

Great Plains Yearly Meeting was founded as Nebraska Yearly Meeting in 1908, when it was set off (amicably separated from) Iowa Yearly Meeting. Nebraska Yearly Meeting was established as a member of the Five Years Meeting (today Friends United Meeting). It was founded as a pastoral, Evangelical-leaning body of Friends on the great American prairie.

In 1957, twenty-one of Nebraska Yearly Meeting's twenty-seven local churches left NYM to form Rocky Mountain Yearly Meeting. Though officially RMYM was “set off” from Nebraska Yearly Meeting, this reorganization was essentially a schism. Rocky Mountain Yearly Meeting, with the vast majority of NYM's Monthly Meetings, would become a part of the emerging Evangelical Friends branch. Nebraska Yearly Meeting, with its six remaining churches, would remain loyal to FUM.

It is perhaps an indication of the character of the old Nebraska Yearly Meeting that one of the favorite hymns of Friends in Great Plains Yearly Meeting is "Trust and Obey." In many ways, Nebraska Yearly Meeting represented the "loyalist" faction of pastoral Friends in Nebraska and Kansas. The Yearly Meeting, renamed Great Plains Yearly Meeting in 2001, continues to embody this character.

Today, GPYM is a fellowship of five Monthly Meetings in Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma. Of the original Nebraska Yearly Meeting, only Central City (Nebraska) Monthly Meeting remains. There are two Meetings in Wichita, Kansas - one pastoral/Evangelical and another non-pastoral. The other two Meetings are Native American congregations in northern Oklahoma. With a total membership of around 600, GPYM is one of most diverse Yearly Meetings in the world. It represents cultures rural and urban, Anglo-American and Native American, theologically liberal and Evangelical.

This year, GPYM met in Hominy, Oklahoma, in the heart of the Osage Nation. We were reminded that a substantial portion of our Yearly Meeting is ethnically and culturally Native American, and we were invited to deepen our relationship with this part of our heritage as a Yearly Meeting. We played local games and learned Osage dances. We heard the stories of the Kiowa people and were blessed by a keynote address of a local Pawnee Baptist pastor, who is doing the work of sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ within the Native American context, rather than as something separate and foreign.

Great Plains Yearly Meeting this year gave me much to think about, especially with regards to how our Quaker Christian faith plays out in different cultural contexts. What makes us Friends? Must we adhere to the British cultural heritage of most North American Quakers, or can the gospel as understood by Friends be adapted authentically to non-British, non-Western contexts and cultures?

Thanks to the brothers and sisters at Hominy Friends Church, we are learning what it can look like for a Quaker Meeting to live fully into its non-Western cultural identity, while at the same time remaining true to the gospel of Jesus Christ's living presence and teaching power in our midst. This can only serve to strengthen Great Plains Yearly Meeting as a member of the wider Body of Christ. I pray that this might also provide an example for Friends beyond GPYM.

How are Friends called to emerge from our cultural heritage as a mostly British-originated religious movement? How can we open a space for women and men of all cultures and nations to receive and embody the good news that Jesus Christ has come to teach his people himself? What of our theological insights and traditions are essential, and what ideas and practices can be faithfully jettisoned or adapted in order to meet the challenges of new cultural contexts? I pray we will be open to the guidance of the Holy Spirit in all that we do. I thank God for Friends in Great Plains Yearly Meeting, who provide us with a living example of how this important work is being carried out.

Micah Bales serves as Coordinator of Young Adult Engagement at ESR. He lives in Washington, DC with his wife, Faith Kelley. He is active with Capitol Hill Friends and is a member of Rockingham Friends Meeting, Ohio Yearly Meeting.