Quaker
LibraryPAGE ONE: INTRODUCTION
Index of pages: 1: Introduction, 2:Worship, 3:History,
4:Practices
The Quakers, or Our Neighbors, The Friends
By William J. Whalen
About the Author:
Since 1950 William J. Whalen has directed the publications program at Purdue University where he is also an associate professor of communication. He attended the University of Notre Dame and received degrees from Marquette and Northwestern. During World War II he served as a Navy public information officer on Saipan and Guam. Professor Whalen is the author or co-author of 13 books and more than 200 articles, pamphlets, and encyclopedia entries. He is a Roman Catholic.
The present pamphlet was originally published in 1966 by Claretian Publications. It is now republished by Friends General Conference with permission from the author, who has also approved certain up-datings and minor changes in wording.
Nicknames have a way of displacing more formal names, and this has been true of a number of religious nicknames as well: Mormons, Methodists, and Dunkers to name a few.
The nickname for members of the Religious Society of Friends goes back more than 300 years. The followers of George Fox, a sort of mystical hippie of his day, were variously known as Children of Light and Friends of Truth. Fox was once brought before a magistrate to answer for his radical and unorthodox religious views. Fox warned the judge that even he must tremble and quake at the Word of the Lord. The judge asked Fox if he were a quaker. The name Quaker stuck and is now accepted by the Friends.
Despite their long denominational history and the esteem in which they have been held in recent decades, the Quakers are few in number. All the Quakers in the world add up to fewer people than the Catholics in a diocese such as Peoria or Dubuque. Yet the 281,800 members of the Religious Society of Friends have demonstrated for more than three centuries how a small band of men and women can witness to the world out of all proportion to their numbers.
In East Jerusalem Quakers administer a legal aid center that provides assistance to Palestinians detained by the Israeli authorities. Other Quakers work with American Indians in their efforts to gain control over the natural resources of their reservations and to obtain justice in the courts and in Washington. In New York and Geneva Quakers offer their services in the quest for peace to United Nations personnel.
Volunteers give two or more years of their lives in Quaker sponsored projects in Chile, Mali, Somalia, Kampuchea, Laos and Lebanon. Throughout the United States Quakers sponsor conferences and projects for social justice, a nuclear weapons freeze and disarmament. Since 1943 Quakers have maintained one of the most influential lobbies in Washington, D.C. Their Friends Committee on National Legislation opposes capital punishment, conscription, and military spending while supporting peace, the sharing of the world's resources, and human rights.
Recognition of Quaker activities on behalf of peace came in 1947 when the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded jointly to the American Friends Service Committee and its British counterpart, the Friends Service Council.
Despite their catalog of good works and their reputation, the Quakers do not attract many converts. In any scale of proselytism the modern Quakers would stand at one extreme and the missionary minded Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses at the other. Today there are fewer than one-third as many Quakers in England-17,000-as there were at the end of the 17th century when the founder of the Society of Friends died.
Ronald Knox described the competition which Quakerism faced from both Deism and the Wesleyan revival. What survived "was a religious coterie rather than a sect; a band of well-to-do reformers, distinguished by their wide influence and active benevolence, but numbering only a handful of adherents among the multitudes on whom they had compassion" (Enthusiasm, p. 168).
During the 18th century it looked as if Quakerism would remain one of the major religious forces in America, but its growth has lagged far behind that of other denominations. It has probably never exceeded the American membership it reported in 1800. Most Quakers show only a slight interest in winning others to their faith; at times in the past, some groups of Quakers have devoted more attention to purging the membership rolls of those who fail to meet some standard of conduct than to spreading "the Truth." The 92,300 U.S. Friends comprise one of the smallest components of the religious panorama in the United States.
Next Page: Worship
Personal Commitment and Inner Light, The Way of Quaker Worship, The Value of Silence, Differences Among Friends.
Index of Pages:
1: Introduction (this page), 2: Worship, 3: History, 4:Practices.
