| Part of a series on |
| Quakerism |
|---|
 |
 Christianityportal |
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.
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 1,200 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 19,800 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 90 Friends in Costa Rica, divided between 3 meetings. 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 1,250 Friends in three Yearly 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), 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 900 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 around 10 in Colombia's 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.
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 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.
Evangelical Friends Church International (EFCI) is a branch of the Society of Friends (Quaker) yearly meetings located around the world. This branch makes up most Evangelical Quaker meetings from the Gurneyites.
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.
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 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.
Conservative Friends are members of the Wilburite branch of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). In the United States, Conservative Friends belong to three Yearly Meetings: the Ohio Yearly Meeting (Conservative), the North Carolina Yearly Meeting (Conservative), and the Iowa Yearly Meeting (Conservative). Of these, the Ohio Yearly Meeting is the most traditional. English Friends affiliated with the Conservative branch of Quakerism are organized as the Friends in Christ and tend to use the terms Primitive or Plain.
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 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.
The Quaker movement began in England in the 17th Century. Small Quaker groups were planted in various places across Europe during this early period. Quakers in Europe outside Britain and Ireland are not very numerous (2023) although new groups have started in the former Soviet Union and successor countries. By far the largest national grouping of Quakers in Europe is in Britain. As of 2017, there were around 32,100 Quakers (Friends) in Europe.
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.
Central Yearly Meeting of Friends is a yearly meeting of Friends (Quaker) churches located in Indiana, North Carolina, Arkansas, and Ohio. Central Yearly Meeting of Friends is a part of the Gurneyite wing of the Orthodox branch of Quakerism, and is aligned with the conservative holiness movement. Meeting for worship is programmed and led by pastors.
The World Communion of Reformed Churches (WCRC) is the largest association of Reformed (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).
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.
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.
