Beliefs

What Quakers believe

Among key Quaker beliefs are:

• God is love
• the light of God is in every single person
• a person who lets their life be guided by that light will achieve a full relationship with God
• everyone can have a direct, personal relationship with God without involving a priest or minister
• redemption and the Kingdom of Heaven are to be experienced now, in this world  (http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion)
  
• See BBC Article
  

The Inner Light

At the very center of the Quaker faith lies the doctrine of the Inner Light.

Briefly stated, the principle of the Inner Light is this: In every human soul there is implanted a certain element of God’s own spirit and divine energy. This element, known to the early Friends as “that of God in everyone,” or the “seed,” or the “seed of Christ,” or the “seed of Light,” means to them in the words of John “the Light that enlighteneth every man who comes into the world.” ... ... full article

Quaker Peace Testimony

George Fox: Founder of the Religious Society of Friends, commonly known as the Quakers.

George Fox

Friends & the Bible

Fox is quoted as asking in the church at Ulverston in 1652: 

You will say Christ saith this, and the apostles say this, but what canst thou say? Art thou a child of Light and hast thou walked in the Light, and what thou speakest is it inwardly from God?

Hence the Friends refused to make the Bible the final test of right conduct and true doctrine. Divine revelation was not confined to the past. The same Holy Spirit which had inspired the scriptures in the past could inspire living believers centuries later. Indeed, for the right understanding of the past, the present insight from the same Spirit was essential. By the Inner Light, God had provided everyone with access to spiritual truth for today.

  (From Henry Cadbury's pamphlet Friends & the Bible)

Quotation by Henry Cadbury

" There are many values in the Bible beyond the simple meaning of single texts. As I wrote some years ago, of one of them,

The Bible is a training school in discrimination among alternations. One of the most surprising facts is that it is not on the whole a peaceful book—I mean a book of peace of mind. The Bible is a deposit of a long series of controversies between rival views of religion. The sobering thing is that in nearly every case the people shown by the Bible to be wrong had every reason to think they were in the right, and like us they did so. Complacent orthodoxy is the recurrent villain in the story from first to last, and the hero is the challenger, like Job, the prophets, Jesus, and Paul."

(  From Henry Cadbury's Pamphlet Friends & the Bible)

Pamphlets in the "Friends And" series can be obtained from Quakerbooks.Org. Copyright © 1994 by Friends General Conference.

Facts about Friends by Ted Hoare (member of Australia Yearly Meeting)

An overview of Quakers: International

Membership (see full article)
Today membership is a recognised outward sign of an inner and spiritual commitment to a way to worship and life as lived within the Society of Friends... ...