Our Faith
Imagine a religious movement...
- ...that values equality so much it has no leaders or hierarchy,
- that doesn’t require signing up to a fixed statement of belief,
- in which women have had equal status since Quakers began.
- that doesn’t claim to be the single holder of truth and respects differing beliefs,
- that campaigns for social change rather than resisting it.
Well, that movement is here, right now, at Quakers
What is it that unites us?
Quakerism grew out of Christianity but it is no longer considered an exclusively Christian-based religion. Whatever our faith background may be, we seek to find our own paths and truths, whilst respecting those of others.
What we share is a conviction there’s something transcendent and precious in every person. Different Quakers use different words to describe this.
We use the quiet in our Meetings to open ourselves to the wisdom that comes out of stillness. It enriches us and shapes us, individually and collectively.
In everything we do, Quakers try to be guided by our values of Simplicity, Truth, Equality and Peace.
Reflections on Faith
Do Quakers have a Holy Book?
We don’t call it holy, but we have a book called Quaker Faith and Practice. It is a collection of writings by Friends from over the last nearly 400 years; it draws upon new insights wherever they may come from. Once every generation, the book is revised to keep it fresh and relevant for today’s world whilst retaining ancient wisdom. You may like to take a look at the online version.
Some extracts from Quaker Faith and Practice:
1.02 Advices and Queries
(para 1) Take heed, dear Friends, to the promptings of love and truth in your hearts. Trust them as the leadings of God whose light shows us our darkness and brings us to new life.
(para 28) Attend to what love requires of you.
(para 42) We do not own the world, and its riches are not ours to dispose of at will. Show a loving consideration for all creatures, and seek to maintain the beauty and variety of the world. Work to ensure that our increasing power over nature is used responsibly, with reverence for life.
(final para) Be patterns, be examples in all countries, places, islands, nations, wherever you come… walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in everyone. (George Fox 1656)
3.06 As a worshipping community, particularly in our local and area meetings, we have a continuing responsibility to nurture the soil in which unity may be found.
10:01 Our life is love, and peace, and tenderness; and bearing one another, and not laying accusations one against another, and helping one another up with a tender hand. (Isaac Penington 1667)
21:17 True godliness don’t turn men out of the world, but enables them to live better in it, and excites their endeavours to mend it; not hide their candle under a bushel, but set it upon a table in a candlestick. (William Penn 1682)
23:26 That which is morally wrong cannot be politically right.
27:43 It is a bold and colossal claim that we put forward – that the whole of life is sacramental, that there are innumerable means of grace by which God is revealed and communicated – through nature and through human fellowship and through a thousand things that may become the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.
28.07 Have you anything to declare?’ is a vital challenge to which every one of us is personally called to respond and is also a challenge that every meeting should consider of primary importance. It should lead us to define, with such clarity as we can reach, precisely what it is that Friends of this generation have to say that is not, as we believe, being said effectively by others.