Quakerism (Religious Society of Friends)

This source names Quakers directly: "of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in the United States."

Quakers were central to the abolition campaign that ended the British slave trade in 1807 and slavery in the empire in 1833.

The Quakers emerged from 1652 in the freedom that followed the collapse of press licensing, and thousands were imprisoned for refusing oaths and hat honour.

A Protestant body of the Radical Reformation.

An unbroken succession of bishops confers nothing here. Authority to minister rests on the immediate moving of the Spirit rather than on outward ordination.

Barclay makes the scriptures a secondary rule, subordinate to the Spirit from which they came. Scripture alone is not the primary rule of faith here, and that is the point on which Friends divided from the rest of the Reformation.

A meeting house has no altar and no table set apart. Friends hold that no place and no furniture is more sacred than any other.

Unprogrammed meetings gather in silence and appoint no singing. A hymn set by another hand and sung on cue is the opposite of the speech Friends wait for.

Friends have no ordained ministry of any kind, so there is no office for a bishop to occupy.

Friends keep no outward sacrament of bread and cup, holding communion to be inward and continuous, so no vessel is set apart for it.

Friends hold that no one is set apart to perform what others may not, so a meeting has no minister and worship proceeds in silence until someone is moved to speak.

Friends record no separated priesthood, so there is no clerical order for a collar to mark out, and plain dress was adopted deliberately against distinctions of rank.

Friends use no outward symbol in worship. A meeting house carries no cross, no image and no ornament, on the ground that the light is inward and needs no sign.

Friends are organised in monthly, quarterly and yearly meetings, none of which is a territory with a bishop over it.

A meeting for worship has no ceremony to carry incense and no altar to cense. Friends refuse the outward form rather than the substance in it.

Friends recognise no separated ministry and no dress that would mark one, so the preaching gown has no place in a meeting for worship any more than the collar does.

A fixed text sung at a fixed point is what the meeting was founded against, and Friends kept no liturgy to put it in.

Friends use no outward symbol at all. A meeting house carries no cross and no ornament, on the ground that the light is inward and needs no sign set up for it.

Friends have no vowed religious life, and the refusal follows from the same conviction that refuses a separated clergy.

Friends hold that authority in the meeting is discerned together and conferred by no office at all, so a supreme office over the church is refused twice over.

A Friends meeting is a gathered body, and Quaker practice has never accepted that residence inside a boundary makes anyone a member of a church.

Friends refuse a separated priesthood altogether, holding that ministry is given as the Spirit gives it and not conferred by ordination.

A body that ordains nobody has nothing for a seminary to train, and Friends have consistently refused a professionally formed ministry.

Friends practise no outward baptism with water, holding that the baptism Christ gives is inward and that a sign of it adds nothing. This is not the neglect of a rite but the considered refusal of one.

There is no confirmation, since there is no initiating rite for it to complete.

Friends ordain no one. Ministry is recognised in a person by the meeting rather than conferred on them, and every member may speak in worship.

No child is baptised, because no person is baptised outwardly at any age.

A daily office of appointed psalms and prescribed words at appointed hours is the opposite of what a meeting for worship is: Friends wait in silence with no order of service and no scripted prayer.

The sacramental scheme itself is refused, not merely its number.

Friends keep no outward supper of bread and wine, holding that communion is the direct and unmediated meeting of the worshipper with God and that this is what a meeting for worship is.

Traditional Quakers observe no outward sacraments at all, neither water baptism nor an outward Eucharist, holding that the realities both signify are received inwardly and directly.

Quakers use the word for the specific work a person is held to have been given, which is not conferred by any institution and may be exercised without permission.

Friends keep no separate priesthood. Ministry is held to be given by the Spirit to whom it will, which is why the traditional meeting has no appointed minister at all.

This tradition holds the standard thirty-nine-book Protestant Old Testament and does not canonize 1 Esdras, following the confessional consensus among Protestant bodies against the wider Trent and Synod of Jerusalem deuterocanon.

This tradition holds the standard thirty-nine-book Protestant Old Testament and does not canonize 2 Esdras, following the confessional consensus among Protestant bodies against the wider Trent and Synod of Jerusalem deuterocanon.

This tradition holds the standard thirty-nine-book Protestant Old Testament and does not canonize 3 Maccabees, following the confessional consensus among Protestant bodies against the wider Trent and Synod of Jerusalem deuterocanon.

This tradition holds the standard thirty-nine-book Protestant Old Testament and does not canonize 4 Maccabees, following the confessional consensus among Protestant bodies against the wider Trent and Synod of Jerusalem deuterocanon.

This tradition holds the standard thirty-nine-book Protestant Old Testament and does not canonize Additions to Daniel, following the confessional consensus among Protestant bodies against the wider Trent and Synod of Jerusalem deuterocanon.

This tradition holds the standard thirty-nine-book Protestant Old Testament and does not canonize Additions to Esther, following the confessional consensus among Protestant bodies against the wider Trent and Synod of Jerusalem deuterocanon.

This tradition holds the standard thirty-nine-book Protestant Old Testament and does not canonize Book of Baruch, following the confessional consensus among Protestant bodies against the wider Trent and Synod of Jerusalem deuterocanon.

This tradition holds the standard thirty-nine-book Protestant Old Testament and does not canonize Book of Judith, following the confessional consensus among Protestant bodies against the wider Trent and Synod of Jerusalem deuterocanon.

This tradition holds the standard thirty-nine-book Protestant Old Testament and does not canonize Book of Tobit, following the confessional consensus among Protestant bodies against the wider Trent and Synod of Jerusalem deuterocanon.

This tradition holds the standard thirty-nine-book Protestant Old Testament and does not canonize Books of the Maccabees, following the confessional consensus among Protestant bodies against the wider Trent and Synod of Jerusalem deuterocanon.

This tradition holds the standard thirty-nine-book Protestant Old Testament and does not canonize Letter of Jeremiah, following the confessional consensus among Protestant bodies against the wider Trent and Synod of Jerusalem deuterocanon.

This tradition holds the standard thirty-nine-book Protestant Old Testament and does not canonize Prayer of Manasseh, following the confessional consensus among Protestant bodies against the wider Trent and Synod of Jerusalem deuterocanon.

This tradition holds the standard thirty-nine-book Protestant Old Testament and does not canonize Psalm 151, following the confessional consensus among Protestant bodies against the wider Trent and Synod of Jerusalem deuterocanon.

This tradition holds the standard thirty-nine-book Protestant Old Testament and does not canonize Wisdom of Sirach, following the confessional consensus among Protestant bodies against the wider Trent and Synod of Jerusalem deuterocanon.

This tradition holds the standard thirty-nine-book Protestant Old Testament and does not canonize Wisdom of Solomon, following the confessional consensus among Protestant bodies against the wider Trent and Synod of Jerusalem deuterocanon.

Fox's preaching from the late 1640s gathered the following that organized itself into the Religious Society of Friends; he spent decades building its meeting structure.

Friends had been imprisoned in the colonies for refusing oaths and for meeting to worship, and the guarantee of free exercise answers exactly those coercions.

Friends require no subscription to a creed, so the Nicene faith reaches Quakerism as part of an inheritance rather than as a test that any member is asked to pass.

Giving belongs with the testimonies, and the meeting's concern for the poor and for prisoners is minuted and acted on as a body rather than left to individuals.

AFSC is organized on behalf of yearly meetings and other bodies of the Religious Society of Friends, so linked to Quakerism.

Quakers issued their peace testimony in 1660 and have refused to bear arms since, a stand that produced conscientious objection, prison sentences and a long record of relief work in wartime.

The dead are remembered in a meeting for worship, in silence, with anyone free to speak, and the burial is plain.

The Holy Spirit's direct, unmediated work in the believer is central to Inner Light theology and to unprogrammed Quaker worship.

The Inner Light, that of God in every person, is this tradition's central and defining conviction, taught by George Fox from the 1640s.

Friends marry themselves. There is no officiant and no pronouncement: the couple make their promises in a meeting for worship and every person present signs the certificate as a witness. English law has recognised this form since 1753.

Twenty-seven-book New Testament canon, shared across Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Protestant traditions alike, including this tradition.

Prayer here is silence held in common. Friends gather seated facing one another, with no minister and no order of service, and anyone may speak when moved to.

Quakers keep neither baptism nor communion, holding that the reality these signs point to is given inwardly and directly, so the outward form is unnecessary rather than merely optional.

Early Quakers used trinitarian language while refusing to make any creed a test of membership, and the tradition today contains members who affirm the doctrine and others who do not.

The Inner Light, that of God in every person, is the founding conviction of Quakerism, and it is what produces the silent meeting, the refusal of a paid clergy and the testimony to equality.

Painted by a recorded Quaker minister across the years of the Hicksite/Orthodox schism, and read in art historical scholarship as his own working through of that rupture, not a passing reference to the tradition.

The Religious Society of Friends' practice of reaching decisions through discerned unity rather than debate and vote.

Quakers have historically confessed the resurrection while stressing the risen Christ present to the gathered meeting, and their refusal of creeds means it is held without any required form of words.

Historic Quaker theology, set out in Robert Barclay's 1678 Apology, affirms the Trinity, though the tradition holds no fixed or required creed and later Friends have read this variously.