Gurneyite

Last updated

Gurneyite is a term assigned to certain members of the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers. The name originates because of the sympathy of the views of these Friends with the ideas of Joseph John Gurney, an English Quaker minister. In general, Gurneyite Quakers follow evangelical Christian doctrines on Jesus Christ, the Atonement, and the Bible. Orthodox Quakers separated into Gurneyites and Wilburites, beginning in the 1840s in North America.

English Friends, who suffered no major divisions, recognized American Gurneyites as legitimate Quakers. Most Gurneyite Friends joined to form the Five Years Meeting of Friends (now Friends United Meeting) in 1902. Among Gurneyite Yearly Meetings, only Ohio Yearly Meeting declined to join. Later, other Yearly Meetings withdrew from the Five Years Meeting. These dissidents eventually formed what is now known as Evangelical Friends Church International. Today, the ideological descendants of the Gurneyites comprise a majority of the world's Quakers and can be found in North America, Africa, South Asia, East Asia, and Latin America.


Related Research Articles

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, and has offices in Kisumu, Kenya. Friends United Meeting is a member of the National Council of Churches in the United States of America.

Homosexuality and Quakerism

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. The majority (52%) of Quakers live in Africa and many there do not support homosexual relationships.

Elias Hicks

Elias Hicks was a traveling Quaker minister from Long Island, New York. In his ministry he promoted unorthodox doctrines that led to controversy, which caused the second major schism within the Religious Society of Friends, the first being the schism caused by George Keith in 1691. He broke with the Philadelphia Friends Yearly meeting and established a separate Christian Quaker meeting. His followers were called "Keithians" or "Christian Quakers." Elias Hicks was the older cousin of the painter Edward Hicks.

Evangelical Friends Church International (EFCI) is a branch of Quaker yearly meetings around the world that profess evangelical Christian beliefs.

The Religious Society of Friends began as a movement in England in the mid-17th century in Lancashire. 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.

There are about 196,800 members of the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers, in Africa. African Friends make up around 52% of Friends internationally, the largest proportion in any one continent. Kenya has the largest number of Quakers in a single nation – about 146,300 in the year 2012.

Latin America contains approximately 17.5% 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 a term used by members of the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers, to refer to an organization composed of constituent meetings or churches 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.

Conservative Friends are members of a certain branch of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). In the United States of America, Conservative Friends belong to three Yearly Meetings, Ohio, North Carolina, and Iowa. English Friends affiliated with the Conservative branch tend to use the term Primitive, or Plain. There is no single unifying association of Conservative Friends, unlike three of the other branches of Quakerism in America, represented by Friends United Meeting, Evangelical Friends International, and Friends General Conference.

The Richmond Declaration was made by 95 Quakers in September 1887, at a conference in Richmond, Indiana. It was a declaration of faith, and although Quakers do not have a dogma or creed, the Richmond Declaration has been used as a standard by certain groups of Quakers, mainly Orthodox and Evangelical, ever since. The Declaration was "approved," "accepted," or "adopted" by the Orthodox Yearly Meetings of Indiana, Western, New England, New York, Baltimore, North Carolina, Iowa, and Canada. Among Orthodox Gurneyite Friends in North America, only Ohio and Philadelphia yearly meetings did not so act. The Friends United Meeting General Board reaffirmed the declaration as a statement of faith in February 2007. The Declaration appears in most books of discipline of Evangelical and Friends United Meeting yearly meetings.

Quakers Family of Protestant religious movements

Quakers, also called Friends, belong to a historically Christian (Protestant) denomination known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of the various Quaker movements are all generally united by their belief in the ability of each human being to experientially access the light within, or "that of God in every one".

Beanite Quakerism refers to the independent tradition of Quakerism started by Quaker ministers Joel and Hannah Bean in the western United States in the late 19th century, and in a more specific sense refers to the three Western yearly meetings that spring from that tradition.

Central Yearly Meeting of Friends is a yearly meeting of Friends churches located in Indiana, North Carolina, Arkansas and Ohio. Central Yearly Meeting of Friends is part of the Conservative Holiness Movement, and originated in the Gurneyite wing of the Orthodox branch of Quakerism. Meeting for worship is programmed and led by pastors. It is an independent yearly meeting of Quakers, not affiliated with any broader associations.

A Book of Discipline may refer to one of the various books issued by a Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, setting out what it means to be a Quaker in that Yearly Meeting. The common name for this book varies from one Yearly Meeting to another and includes Book of Discipline, Faith and Practice, Christian Faith and Practice, Quaker Faith and Practice, Church Government and Handbook of Practice and Procedure. Each Book of Discipline is updated periodically by each Yearly Meeting according to the usual practice of decision making within the Religious Society of Friends.

Bundelkhand Yearly Meeting is a yearly meeting of the Religious Society of Friends in the Bundelkhand region of Madhya Pradesh state in mid-India. It was formed from Friends Churches set up by missionaries from Ohio Yearly Meeting in 1896, and the first independent yearly meeting was held in Chhatarpur in 1956. Theologically it falls within the evangelical tradition, unlike nearby Mid-India Yearly Meeting.

Isaac Crewdson

Isaac Crewdson was a minister of the Quaker meeting at Hardshaw East, Manchester. He wrote A Beacon to the Society of Friends, a work published in 1835 which had a schismatic effect on English Quakerism.

Indiana Yearly Meeting is a Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers. Indiana Yearly Meeting was established in 1821 and originally included all Friends west of the Scioto River, in Ohio, and Friends in Indiana and Illinois.

Joseph Bevan Braithwaite

Joseph Bevan Braithwaite was a conservative, evangelical English Quaker minister.

Evangelical Friends Church - Eastern Region

The Evangelical Friends Church - Eastern Region is an evangelical denomination of Christians who trace their beginning back to George Fox and the Religious Society of Friends. Based in Canton, Ohio, it is composed of over 90 churches and church plants, and is part of Evangelical Friends Church International (EFC-I). Near to the church's administrative offices is the campus of the affiliated Malone University.