Friends United Meeting (FUM) is an association of twenty-six yearly meetings of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in North America, Africa, and the Caribbean. Its home pages states that it is "a collection of Christ-centered Quakers, embracing 34 yearly meetings and associations, thousands of local gatherings and hundreds of thousands of individuals". In addition there are several individual monthly meetings and organizations that are members of FUM; FUM's headquarters is in Richmond, Indiana, with offices in Kisumu, Kenya. Friends United Meeting is a member of the National Council of Churches in the United States of America, and is a global member of the World Council of Churches.
The views of Quakers around the world towards homosexuality encompass a range from complete celebration and the practice of same-sex marriage, to the view that homosexuality is sinfully deviant and contrary to God's intentions for sexual expression. The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) is a historically Christian religious movement founded in 17th-century England; it has around 350,000 members. In Britain, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, many Quakers are supportive of homosexual relationships, while views are divided among U.S. meetings. Many Conservative Friends and Holiness Friends, both of which have retained traditional Quaker practices such as plain dress, along with Evangelical Friends, view homosexual acts as sinful. 49% of Quakers live in Africa, and though views may differ, the Kenyan Church of Friends does not support homosexual relationships.
The Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Britain, also known as Britain Yearly Meeting, is a Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in England, Scotland, Wales, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. It is the national organisation of Quakers living in Britain. Britain Yearly Meeting refers to both the religious gathering and the organisation. "Yearly Meeting", or "Yearly Meeting Gathering" are usually the names given to the annual gathering of British Quakers. Quakers in Britain is the name the organisation is commonly known by.
The Religious Society of Friends began as a proto-evangelical Christian movement in England in the mid-17th century in Ulverston. Members are informally known as Quakers, as they were said "to tremble in the way of the Lord". The movement in its early days faced strong opposition and persecution, but it continued to expand across the British Isles and then in the Americas and Africa.
The Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, or simply the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, or PYM, is the central organizing body for Quaker meetings in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States area, including parts of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware and New Jersey. The PYM is primarily affiliated with the Friends General Conference and is a member of the National Council of Churches.
There are about 180,000 members of the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers, in Africa. African Friends make up around 49% of Friends internationally, the largest proportion on any one continent. Kenya has the largest number of Quakers in a single nation—about 119,000 in the year 2017. The three main denominations of Friends, Friends United Meeting, Friends General Conference, and Evangelical Friends Church International, all have affiliated Yearly Meetings (associations) in Africa. There are also independent meetings in several African nations.
Latin America contains approximately 14% of the world's Quakers. Latin American Friends are concentrated in Bolivia and Central America. Most of these Friends are evangelical and are affiliated with Evangelical Friends Church International. Friends World Committee for Consultation organizes among them through the Comité de Amigos Latinoamericanos CoAL del Comité Mundial de Consulta de Los Amigos CMCA FWCC.
Yearly Meeting is an organization composed of constituent meetings or churches of the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers, within a geographical area. The constituent meetings are called Monthly Meetings in most of the world; in England, local congregations are now called Area Meetings, in Australia Monthly Meetings are called Regional Meetings. "Monthly" and "Yearly" refer to how often the body meets to make decisions. Monthly Meetings may be local congregations that hold regular Meetings for Worship, or may comprise a number of Worship Groups. Depending on the Yearly Meeting organization, there may also be Quarterly Meetings, Half-Yearly Meetings, or Regional Meetings, where a number of local Monthly Meetings come together within a Yearly Meeting.
The Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC) is a Quaker organisation that works to communicate between all parts of Quakerism. FWCC's world headquarters is in London. It has General Consultative NGO status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations since 2002. FWCC shares responsibility for the Quaker UN Office in Geneva and New York City with the American Friends Service Committee and Britain Yearly Meeting.
In the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), a monthly meeting or area meeting is the basic governing body, a congregation which holds regular meetings for business for Quakers in a given area. The monthly meeting is responsible for the administration of its congregants, including membership and marriages, and for the meeting's property. A monthly meeting can be a grouping of multiple smaller meetings, usually called preparative meetings, coming together for administrative purposes, while for others it is a single institution. In most countries, multiple monthly meetings form a quarterly meeting, which in turn form yearly meetings. Programmed Quakers may refer to their congregation as a church.
New England Yearly Meeting is a body of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) founded in 1661 and headquartered in Worcester, Massachusetts. It includes Friends from the New England region of the United States.
Canadian Yearly Meeting is a body of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), with approximately 1300 members in Canada and border areas of the United States. Its offices are located in Ottawa. It was formed in 1955 by the amalgamation of three groups from different branches of Quakerism: Genesee Yearly Meeting, Canada Yearly Meeting and Canada Yearly Meeting (Conservative).
Baltimore Yearly Meeting is a body of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) headquartered in Sandy Spring, Maryland, that includes Friends from Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, the District of Columbia, and West Virginia. It is one of the oldest yearly meetings in North America, first meeting in May 1672. It is one of two yearly meetings in North America visited by George Fox (the other being New England Yearly Meeting, who visited after a trip to Barbados. Its Presiding Clerk is Stephanie Bean. Baltimore Yearly Meeting is part of both Friends General Conference and Friends United Meeting –- two broader bodies of Friends. They are also part of Friends World Committee for Consultation and the Friends Peace Teams Project.
Quakers are people who belong to the Religious Society of Friends, a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations. Members refer to each other as Friends after John 15:14 in the Bible, and originally, others referred to them as Quakers as the founder of the movement, George Fox, told a judge to quake "before the authority of God". The Friends are generally united by a belief in each human's ability to be guided by the inward light to "make the witness of God" known to everyone. Quakers have traditionally professed a priesthood of all believers inspired by the First Epistle of Peter. They include those with evangelical, holiness, liberal, and traditional Quaker understandings of Christianity, as well as Nontheist Quakers. To differing extents, the Friends avoid creeds and hierarchical structures. In 2017, there were an estimated 377,557 adult Quakers, 49% of them in Africa followed by 22% in North America.
Quakers are members of a Christian religious movement that started in England as a form of Protestantism in the 17th century, and has spread throughout North America, Central America, Africa, and Australia. Some Quakers originally came to North America to spread their beliefs to the British colonists there, while others came to escape the persecution they experienced in Europe. The first known Quakers in North America arrived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1656 via Barbados, and were soon joined by other Quaker preachers who converted many colonists to Quakerism. Many Quakers settled in the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, due to its policy of religious freedom, as well as the British colony of Pennsylvania which was formed by William Penn in 1681 as a haven for persecuted Quakers.
New York Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, or simply New York Yearly Meeting or NYYM, is the central organizing body for Quaker meetings and worship groups in New York State, northern and central New Jersey, and southwestern Connecticut.
Margaret Hope Bacon was an American Quaker historian, author and lecturer. She is primarily known for her biographies and works involving Quaker women’s history and the abolitionist movement. Her most famous book is her biography of Lucretia Mott, Valiant Friend, published in 1980.
Gurneyite is a branch of the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers. The name originates from sympathy with the ideas of Joseph John Gurney (1788-1847), an English Quaker minister. Gurneyites came about in the 1840s during the second schism in Quakerism. In general, Gurneyite Quakers follow evangelical Christian doctrines on Jesus Christ, the Atonement, and the Bible.
Pacific Yearly Meeting is an FGC-affiliated yearly meeting of the Religious Society of Friends or Quakers. It gathered for the first time in Palo Alto, California, during the summer of 1947 with twelve member Monthly Meetings. Geographically the original area served by Pacific Yearly Meeting included British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Hawaii, Guatemala and Mexico, with connections to Friends in Korea, Japan and China. In 1973 British Columbia withdrew from PYM to align with Canadian Yearly Meeting. Two new Yearly Meetings were created out of sections of the original PYM: North Pacific Yearly Meeting in 1973 and Intermountain Yearly Meeting in 1975.
