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Switzerland Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, or simply Switzerland Yearly Meeting or SYM, is the organizing body for Quaker groups and meetings in Switzerland.
The first known Swiss member of the Society of Friends is Theophil Waldmeier (1832–1915), missionary to Ethiopia and Lebanon.
SYM is rooted on one side with Swiss citizens involved in several movements like the Religious Socialists, the International Fellowship of Reconciliation and Service Civil International, and on another side with the presence of Quakers from England and the United States of America. [1] Leading figures were Hélène Monastier (1882–1976) and Pierre Ceresole (1879–1945), and later on Edmond Privat (1889–1962).
Local worshipping groups held their first regular meetings in Geneva and Zürich in the beginning of the 1920s. The first national gathering of Friends and friends of Friends took place in 1934, and went on every year, under the umbrella of London Yearly Meeting. It became the Swiss General Meeting in 1939. The status of an independent Yearly Meeting was given in 1947.
Friends were sent in Geneva especially to help and be present during the first years of the League of Nations. The most prominent being Bertram and Irene Pickard. This office officially started in 1923, named International Quaker Center. Since 1977 the Quaker United Nations Office . [2]
Beside the local group and the international center, a Quaker International Student Hostel was run in Geneva between 1926 and 1942.
Switzerland Yearly Meeting holds annually three sessions for business to which Friends in the Switzerland area are asked to come. One session in May–June is residential, over a week-end. Two other sessions in February–March and October–November are only one day long.
There is a Monthly Meeting in Geneva, and there are groups (or have been) in Zurich, Basel, Bern, Biel/Bienne, Neuchâtel, Lausanne, Montreux and Romanshorn.
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.
The Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Britain, also known as the 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.
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.
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.
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.
Service Civil International (SCI) is an international peace organisation. Since 1920, it organises international volunteering projects in the form of workcamps and it was the first organisation worldwide to do so. The organisation was founded by Swiss pacifist Pierre Cérésole in the aftermath of World War I in order to foster understanding and a culture of peace between people from different countries.
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).
Quaker Peace & Social Witness (QPSW), previously known as the Friends Service Council, and then as Quaker Peace and Service, is one of the central committees of Britain Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends - the national organisation of Quakers in Britain. It works to promote British Quakers' testimonies of equality, justice, peace, simplicity and truth. It works alongside both small local and large international pressure groups.
Iwao Frederick Ayusawa was a diplomat and international authority on social and labor issues.
Quakers belong to a historically Christian (Protestant) set of denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of the various Quaker movements are generally united by a belief in the ability of each human being to experience and access the light within or to see "that of God in every one". Some profess the priesthood of all believers, a doctrine derived from 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 is not reliant on the existence of God. To differing extents, the movements making up the Religious Society of Friends/Friends avoid creeds and hierarchical structures. In 2007, there were about 359,000 adult Quakers worldwide. In 2017, there were 377,557 adult Quakers, 49 per cent of them being in Africa.
The Quaker movement began in England in the Seventeenth Century. Small Quaker groups were planted in various places across Europe during this early period. Quakers in Europe outside Britain and Ireland are not now very numerous although new groups have started in the former Soviet Union and satellite countries. By far the largest national grouping of Quakers in Europe is in Britain.
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.
Edmond Privat was a Francophone Swiss Esperantist. A historian, university professor, author, journalist and peace activist, he was a graduate of the University of Geneva and a lecturer for the World Peace Foundation. His collective works consist of original dramas, poems, stories, textbooks and books about the Esperanto movement.
The Quaker United Nations Office (QUNO) is a non-governmental organisation representing the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) at the United Nations in Geneva and New York City. Parent bodies of QUNO are the Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC), American Friends Service Committee and Quaker Peace and Social Witness. FWCC holds consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council, and the Quaker UN Offices in New York and Geneva operate on behalf of Friends worldwide through this status. The offices work closely on issues of Human Rights and refugees, peace and disarmament, human impacts of climate change, as well as peacebuilding and the prevention of violent conflict.
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.
Pierre Cérésole was a Swiss peace activist and engineer, known primarily as the initiator of workcamps and the founder of the peace organisation Service Civil International (SCI).
Theophil Spoerri, was a Swiss writer and academic.
The Bilthoven Meetings were a series of networking and capacity building meetings of pacifist activists after World War I in the town of Bilthoven in the Netherlands. The activists gathered under the name of Movement Towards a Christian International, which was later renamed to International Fellowship of Reconciliation. The meetings took place at the house of Kees Boeke, a Quaker missionary and pacifist.
Hélène Monastier was a Swiss peace activist and teacher in Lausanne.
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