26 Facts About Quakers

Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends.

Quakers focused their private lives on behaviour and speech reflecting emotional purity and the light of God, with a goal of Christian perfection.

Past Quakers were known to use thee as an ordinary pronoun, refuse to participate in war, wear plain dress, refuse to swear oaths, oppose slavery, and practise teetotalism.

In 1947, Quakers represented by the British Friends Service Council and the American Friends Service Committee were awarded a Nobel Peace Prize.

Quakers claimed to have received a revelation that "there is one, even Christ Jesus, who can speak to thy condition", and became convinced that it was possible to have a direct experience of Christ without the aid of ordained clergy.

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Quakers described themselves using terms such as true Christianity, Saints, Children of the Light, and Friends of the Truth, reflecting terms used in the New Testament by members of the early Christian church.

Quakers's was one of the four executed Quakers known as the Boston martyrs.

In 1665 Quakers established a meeting in Shrewsbury, New Jersey, and built a meeting house in 1672 that was visited by George Fox in the same year.

Early colonial Quakers established communities and meeting houses in North Carolina and Maryland, after fleeing persecution by the Anglican Church in Virginia.

Hicksites, though they held a variety of views, generally saw the market economy as corrupting, and believed Orthodox Quakers had sacrificed their orthodox Christian spirituality for material success.

These older Quakers were suspicious of Darwin's theory and believed that natural selection could not explain life on its own.

Many British Quakers were conscripted into the Non-Combatant Corps during both world wars.

In Kenya, Quakers founded the Friends Bible Institute in Kaimosi, Kenya, in 1942.

Five of the Quakers had been amongst the informal group of six Quakers who had pioneered the movement in 1783, when the first petition against the slave trade was presented to Parliament.

Quakers bear witness or testify to their religious beliefs in their spiritual lives, drawing on the James advice that faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

For example, many Quakers feel that fasting in Lent, but then eating in excess at other times of the year is hypocrisy.

When this happens, Quakers believe that the spirit of God is speaking through the speaker.

Quakers consider this a form of worship, conducted in the manner of meeting for worship.

Friends World Committee for Consultation is the international Quaker organization that loosely unifies the different religious traditions of Quakers; FWCC brings together the largest variety of Friends in the world.

Quakers today are organised into independent and regional, national bodies called Yearly Meetings, which have often split from one another over doctrinal differences.

In Britain, Quakers keep a separate record of the union and notify the General Register Office.

In jurisdictions where same-sex marriage is not recognised by civil authorities, some meetings follow the practice of early Quakers in overseeing the union without reference to the state.

Highest concentration of Quakers is in Africa The Friends of East Africa were at one time part of a single East Africa Yearly Meeting, then the world's largest.

Considerable distances between the colonies and small numbers of Quakers meant that Australia Friends were dependent on London until the 20th century.

Some people who attend Quaker Meetings assume that Quakers are not Christians, when they do not hear overtly Christian language during the meeting for worship.

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Early Quakers distanced themselves from practices that they saw as pagan.