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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.
There are about 30,000 Friends in Bolivia. Quakerism came to Bolivia in 1919 through a Navajo man, William Abel, who sold Bibles and preached in the capital city of La Paz. Bolivian Juan Ayllón became convinced of the truth of the preacher's message and went to study at the Friends' Biblical Institute in Guatemala. After graduating in 1924 he returned and began the Evangelical Friends Church. This yearly meeting, now INELA-BOLIVIA, Iglesia Nacional Evangélica de Los Amigos, consists of 192 congregations throughout Bolivia and sponsors several schools.
Also during 1919 the Holiness Friends Mission, an association of independent Indiana Friends, established meetings in Bolivia's northern Andes surrounding Sorata village. When the mission reorganized as Central Friends Mission in 1952 the Bolivian meetings divided into two Yearly Meetings— Junta Anual de Amigos Central (Bolivian Friends YM), and Holiness Friends (Junta Anual de Misión Santidad de Los Amigos de Bolivia). At first, Bolivian Yearly Meetings consisted only of members of Aymara heritage. Aymara Friends are now working among Quechua, Moseten, Chimane, and other indigenous groups. Yearly Meetings include Iglesia Evangélica Amigos Central (semi-programmed congregations in the Friends Church related to Central YM), Iglesia Evangélica Unión Boliviana "Amigos" (Bolivian Union Evangelical Friends Church), Iglesia Nacional Evangélica Los Amigos de Bolivia (National Evangelical Friends Church of Bolivia) or INELA-Bolivia, and Iglesia Evangélica Misión Boliviana de Santidad Amigos (Bolivian Evangelical Mission of Holiness Friends Church).
In Peru there are about 5,000 Friends; they are a part of INELA-Perú Iglesia Nacional Evangélica Los Amigos del Perú (National Evangelical Friends Church of Peru), an outgrowth of INELA-Bolivia. This church has grown through extensive youth outreach. Bolivian Friends are also supporting missions in northwest Argentina, especially among indigenous people there.
Two other small Friends groups exist in Bolivia: Iglesia Nacional Evangélica 'Estrella de Belén', Iglesia Nacional Evangélica 'Seminario Bíblico' are beginning to cooperate with the other Yearly Meetings.
There are approximately 20,000 Friends in the nation of Guatemala. Missions from California and Oregon YM early in the 20th century led to the founding of Central America Yearly Meeting, with headquarters at Chiquimula. Due to the closing of borders because of war conditions, and because of theological distinctions, the Chiquimula Yearly Meeting formed daughter Yearly Meetings: Iglesia Nacional 'Los Amigos' de Guatemala (National Evangelical Friends Church of Guatemala), the official successor, Iglesia Evangélica Embajadores Amigos (Friends Ambassadors Evangelical Church) (a Monthly Meeting with several preparative meetings that functions as a Yearly Meeting), and Junta Anual Amigos de Santidad (Holiness Friends Yearly Meeting). There is also Guatemala Monthly Meeting, a small unprogrammed meeting affiliated with Pacific Yearly Meeting (meetings alternating between Guatemala capital and Guatemala Antigua), which operates PROGRESA (formerly Guatemala Friends Scholarship Program), an educational program at the high school and university level serving primarily highlands indigenous communities. (This last was laid down in 2018. [1] )
Honduras Yearly Meeting of the Friends Church was formed from the eastern missions of CA YM. In the 1950s an agreement among North American missionaries abandoned Tegucigalpa and nearby meetings and Junta Anual Evangélica Amigos de Honduras is concentrated around San Pedro Sula, Santa Rosa de Copán and San Marcos Ocotepeque, where there is a school/seminary. Tegucigalpa Friends Church has returned to the YM.
In El Salvador there are about 550 Friends, members of Junta Anual de la Iglesia Evangélica de Los Amigos en El Salvador (Friends Evangelical Church YM in El Salvador). They have a number of congregations and YM offices in Soyopango, a suburb of San Salvador. Recently the YM has taken on the project of promoting "Proyecto Alternativas a la Violencia" PAV (AVP - the Alternatives to Violence Project)
There are also about 72 Friends in Costa Rica. Monteverde Monthly Meeting was founded as a colony by a group of young Conservative Friends families in 1952, trying to find a place that was not militaristic. Many of the men in the group had been incarcerated in the United States as conscientious objectors and they were attracted when Costa Rica abolished its army. El Centro de Los Amigos para la Paz, with a small hostel, was founded as a community center and a home for San José Quakers' unprogrammed silent worship in the 1980s.
Mexico has about 800 Friends in two meetings—the Asociación Religiosa de las Iglesias Evangélicas de los Amigos (the yearly meeting of the Religious Association of the Friends Evangelical Churches EFCI) and the Reunion General de los Amigos en México (General Meeting of Friends in Mexico), which meets sesquiannually (every 18 months), comprising several churches around Ciudad Victoria monthly meeting (founded by missions from FUM), and Mexico City Monthly Meeting, affiliated with Pacific Yearly Meeting, an open worship, liberal meeting in the Mexican capital. They manage the Casa de Los Amigos in Mexico DF, which has numerous programs, including refugee support. There are similar groups in Sonora as well. A new evangelical mission is forming as Junta Anual de la Iglesia Evangélica de Los Amigos in the Valle de México.
There are about 373 Friends in Cuba. They are members of Cuba Yearly Meeting ("Junta Anual de la Iglesia de Los Amigos (Cuáqueros) en Cuba"), which is affiliated with Friends United Meeting. The first MMs in Banes and Gibara were begun in 1904. All but one of the 11 monthly meetings are in former Oriente province, around Holguín. Also in Cuba there was a small unprogrammed group in Havana starting in 1994, which spread silent worship across the Island; there were unprogrammed groups in Holguin for two years, one in Santiago de Cuba and in Santi Spiritus for a while, but all have been laid down. Looking at their missionary heritage and developing their Quaker roots while seeking to develop a Cuban Quakerism in the rapidly changing national environment, the YM founded the Cuban Quaker Peace Institute, "Instituto Cuáquero Cubano de Paz" in Gibara in 2013, with courses promoting the Quaker Testimonies and peace-building.
After the Conference of Friends in the Americas in 1977, Latino Friends got to know each other and FWCC began an effort to help them organize. This led to the founding of CoAL in Mexico City in 1982. EFCI also began trying to bring all the Evangelical mission church YMs of the region into a region of their denomination, as well as other programmed Quakers. Today pastoral and Evangelical Friends in Latin America are in regular contact, but they are only slowly constructing links to one another.
There have been unprogrammed worship meetings and groups in Latin America for several years, the oldest and most permanent in Costa Rica and Mexico; the majority of the others are expatriates' worship groups plus about 20 in Colombia, Bogotá Monthly Meeting. Unprogrammed Friends in Latin America had their first meeting in November 2006 in Monteverde, Costa Rica.
Friends General Conference (FGC) is an association of Quakers in the United States and Canada made up of 16 yearly meetings and 12 autonomous monthly meetings. "Monthly meetings" are what Quakers call congregations; "yearly meetings" are organizations of monthly meetings within a geographic region. FGC was founded in 1900.
The Evangelical United Brethren Church (EUB) was a North American Protestant denomination from 1946 to 1968 with Arminian theology, roots in the Mennonite and German Reformed, and communities, and close ties to Methodism. It was formed by the merger of the Evangelical Church and the Church of the United Brethren in Christ. The United Brethren and the Evangelical Association had considered merging off and on since the early 19th century because of their common emphasis on holiness and evangelism and their common German heritage. In 1968, the United States section of the EUB merged with the Methodist Church to form the United Methodist Church, while the Canadian section joined the United Church of Canada.
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.
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 though views may differ, the Kenyan Church of Friends does not support homosexual relationships.
The International Lutheran Council (ILC) is a worldwide association of confessional Lutheran denominations. Member bodies of the ILC hold "an unconditional commitment to the Holy Scriptures as the inspired and infallible Word of God and to the Lutheran Confessions contained in the Book of Concord as the true and faithful exposition of the Word of God." The member church bodies are not required to be in church-fellowship with one another, though many of them are.
Quaker weddings are the traditional ceremony of marriage within the Religious Society of Friends. Quaker weddings are conducted in a similar fashion to regular Quaker meetings for worship, primarily in silence and without an officiant or a rigid program of events, and therefore differ greatly from traditional Western weddings.
Evangelical Friends Church International (EFCI) is a branch of Quaker yearly meetings located around the world.
The Religious Society of Friends began as a proto-evangelical Christian 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 on any one continent. Kenya has the largest number of Quakers in a single nation – about 146,300 in the year 2012.
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 Ireland Yearly Meeting is the umbrella body for the Religious Society of Friends in Ireland. It is one of many Yearly Meetings (YM's) of Friends around the world.
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.
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 also the only Yearly Meeting in North America visited by George Fox, who visited after a trip to Barbados. Its Presiding Clerk is Stephanie Bean. Baltimore Yearly Meeting (BYM) 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.
A meeting for worship is what the Religious Society of Friends call their church service. Different branches of Friends have different types of meetings for worship. A meeting for worship in English-speaking countries typically lasts an hour.
Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations known as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements are generally united by a belief in each human's ability to experience the light within or see "that of God in every one". Some profess 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. There are also Nontheist Quakers, whose spiritual practice does not rely on the existence of God. 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.
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.
The World Communion of Reformed Churches (WCRC) is the largest association of Calvinist churches in the world. It has 230 member denominations in 108 countries, together claiming an estimated 80 million people, thus being the fourth-largest Christian communion in the world after the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox Church, and the Anglican Communion. This ecumenical Christian body was formed in June 2010 by the union of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC) and the Reformed Ecumenical Council (REC).
