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What is Quakerism?
Modern
Friends try to live our testimonies of simplicity, peace and stewardship. While
many in the area have been Friends all their lives, others originally came from
other religious backgrounds and have found a new spiritual home in
Quakerism.
Who are the
Quakers? Are they the same as the Friends?
What do Friends Believe?
Do they have a Creed?
How does the
faith of Friends show in their personal lives?
What forms of
worship are practiced by American Friends?
What are
Friends’ attitudes toward sacraments and Scripture?
What are
the principal “concerns” and activities of Friends?
What are the
historic and continuing Quaker “testimonies”?
What
is the meaning of “the Quaker Way” and “the manner of Friends”?
How do people
become members of the Society of Friends?
Who are the
Quakers? Are they the same as the Friends?
Friends or Quakers – either name
will do as they have the same meaning – are most easily described as those
persons who belong to the Religious Society of Friends.
“Quaker” was originally a nickname
for those Children of Light or Friends of Truth, as they thought of themselves,
friends of Jesus (John 15:15). They were said to tremble
or quake with religious zeal, and the nickname stuck. But in time they came to
be known simply as “Friends”.
Quakerism began in England about
1650 in the aftermath of the Protestant Reformation. It was a religious protest
against the hollow formalism which, for many, made up the Established Church of
that time. Seeking spiritual reality, these early Friends found that they could
experience God directly in their lives without benefit of clergy or liturgy or
steepled church.
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What do Friends Believe?
Do they have a Creed?
Quakers do not have a creed. No
single statement of religious doctrine is accepted by all the overlapping
regional bodies of Friends that together make up the larger Society. Each of
the so-called Yearly Meetings, however, has its own Book of Discipline or
Faith and Practice, which includes statements of belief or doctrine and
the uniquely Quaker feature: Advices and/or Queries.
George Fox, a troubled and searching youth in 17th century England, underwent
a profound religious experience that he described as a voice answering his need:
“There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to Thy condition.” Immediate,
direct experience of God became the heart of his message and ministry, the
beginning of the Quaker movement.
Friends are united in stressing that
an inward, immediate, and transforming experience of God is central to their
faith. They turn to an inner guide or teacher for continuing revelation and
direction. Many Friends identify this "Inner Light", "Seed Within," or "Christ
Within" (as it has been variously called) with the historic Jesus. Many affirm
their acceptance of Jesus Christ is their personal Savior. Others conceive of
the inward guide as a universal spirit which was in Jesus in abundant measure
and is in everyone to some degree – “that of God in everyone,” as George Fox put
it, “the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” (John 1:9)
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How does the faith of Friends show in their personal
lives?
Love of God and love of neighbor –
the overriding Christian commandments – find expression in the varied forms of
Quaker worship; in Friends’ "witness" and historic "testimonies"; in their
social attitudes and concerns, their mission and service outreach, their
programs of education and action. For Friends, these are the fruits of their
faith: the affirmation of the indwelling Spirit and redemptive love, spiritual
realities that they feel they do share and must share with others.
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What forms of worship are practiced by American Friends?
"Unprogrammed" Friends Meetings,
including those in the Philadelphia area, gather in silence and expectant
waiting, without prearranged singing, Bible reading, prayers, or sermon. Their
worship proceeds, rising above individual meditation to a sense of seeking as a
gathered group, with spoken ministry only as Friends may feel led to share their
insights and messages. This worship is the usual practice in both the more
liberal and the more traditionalist Friends meetings, and it continues in some
measure the Quaker way of earlier times.
In other parts of the country and
the world, some Friends follow the form of worship practiced by Protestant and
Evangelical churches including prayer and responsive reading, hymn singing and
choral/organ music, Scripture and sermon.
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What are Friends’ attitudes toward sacraments and
Scripture?
Most Friends reject the sacraments
in their outward forms – communion and baptism as variously practiced in
Christian churches. They are seekers, rather, for the inward reality. For them,
all great human experiences are of a sacramental nature.
The Bible was very precious to
George Fox, but he saw clearly that to understand the Scriptures they must be
read in the same Spirit that inspired those who wrote them. Another early
Quaker leader, Robert Barclay, said that the Scriptures are only a declaration
of the source and not the source itself. However, reliance upon the Inner Light
led Friends in the 18th century to decreased emphasis upon the Bible
as a source of religious wisdom. The Evangelical and Revival movements
influenced large segments of American Quakerism in the 19th century
and brought a new authority to the Bible and a literalism of interpretation.
From this, in time, many Friends felt themselves liberated. Today, especially
among more orthodox and evangelical Friends, the Christian Scriptures are
interpreted and honored as in a special sense the Word of God.
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What are the principal “concerns” and activities of
Friends?
The belief that there is a potential
for good in all persons – as indeed also the capacity for evil – makes
Friends sensitive to human degradation, ignorance. superstition, suffering,
injustice, exploitation. Under a sense of concern – inner prompting, divine
obedience, urgency – Friends are drawn to humanitarian callings and to programs
of education and evangelism, to projects of service and constructive action.
Early Friends went out with the Good
News of their quickened faith to the American Colonies, and they bore their
message of Truth to Czar, Sultan, and Pope. With changed perspectives, this
missionary witness for Christ continues under the Friends United Meeting and the
evangelical Yearly Meetings – in Alaska, in Latin America, in Africa, in Asia.
There is a new concern, too, for sharing of human resources with the developing
peoples, and transnational programs are now encouraged by Friends World
Committee for Consultation. Many Friends today are pressing for more rapid
social change by nonviolent means; for reform of the present system of criminal
justice; for real equality of opportunity in employment, housing and education;
for elimination of prejudice and discrimination against minority groups and the
underprivileged. The American Friends Service Committee plays an important part
in furthering these Quaker concerns, which are indeed the continuing expression
in action of historic Friends testimonies.
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What are the historic and continuing Quaker “testimonies”?
The Quaker testimonies – what
Friends have stood for publicly as a form of Christian witness – derive from
their central belief in the essential oneness and equality of all persons (women
no less than men). This has found expression in simplicity of life style,
integrity in personal relations, and at times controversial stands on public
issues. The Peace Testimony is perhaps the most widely known of these. Taken as
a whole, the Society of Friends is strongly opposed to war and to conscription.
It seeks to remove the causes of war; it tries to reconcile factions and
nations; it ministers to suffering on both sides of conflicts; it helps to
rebuild at war’s end. It witnesses creatively to the power of nonviolence in
the movement toward social change. While there have indeed been fighting
Quakers bearing arms in every American war, and some young Friends have accepted
the draft, many declare themselves conscientious objectors, and the others are
active draft resisters (refusing to register or in any way cooperate with
Another Friends testimony supports
social justice. Quaker colonists in America were fair and friendly with their
Indian neighbors, and they early advocated the abolition of slavery. Today
Friends work as friends with and for American Indians, Blacks, Mexican-Americans
and other ethnic groups in the United States and Canada, and with indigenous
peoples in Mexico and elsewhere throughout the world.
Many Friends today are
non-proselytizing, disinclined to witness verbally for their central religious
beliefs. Witnessing for Christ, however, so earnestly a part of early
Quakerism, continues to he the crowning testimony of evangelical Friends.
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What is the meaning of “the Quaker Way” and “the manner of
Friends”?
The Quaker Way is simply the way
Friends at their best (and with all their differences) put into practice their
deepest beliefs.
One example is the meeting for
business conducted after the manner of Friends. Such a meeting proceeds in the
spirit of worship and openness to divine leading. Questions are not decided by
majority rule. The presiding clerk tries to be sensitive to the meeting’s search
for truth and unity. Strongly opposed views are often reconciled through
suggestion of a Third Way; or in a period of silent worship differences are
quietly resolved; or decision is held over to a later meeting. awaiting further
insight, information, understanding. No vote is taken. When the clerk sees
clearly that unity has been reached, he phrases and rephrases what he believes
to be the sense of the meeting – approval is voiced or apparent – the minute is
recorded.
In ministry and service to others,
however disadvantaged, the Quaker way is to identify with them, to share and
work with them in dignity, to approach those who oppose them with openness and
faith. When their witness and concern bring Friends face to face with illegal
or repressive authority, nonviolence is an essential part of the way Friends
approach the oppressors as persons.
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How
do people become members of the Society of Friends?
Each individual Friend holds
membership in a particular Friends meeting or church and in this way belongs to
the Society of Friends.
Children born into Quaker homes and
brought up in a Friends meeting/church may in time be accepted as adult members.
Other persons, who are attracted to membership by the faith, witness, or
fellowship of Friends – who feel themselves ready to become members of a Friends
meeting or church by “convincement” or conversion or by transfer from another
religious body – are encouraged to apply for membership. There is such a wide
range of conviction and belief within the Quaker framework that persons of quite
dissimilar views may find somewhere within it their spiritual home, opportunity
to worship and serve with others of the same persuasion. Speaking truth to each
other in love, as Christian neighbors, would be the Quaker way for Friends –
with all their variations – to feel themselves “members one of another” (Eph. 4:25).
Taken (with permission) from “What is
Quakerism? Friendly Answers to questions about American Quakers”
Friends
World Committee For Consultation.
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