Talk:Quakers

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This article is written in British English, which has its own spelling conventions (colour, travelled, centre, defence, artefact, analyse) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.

Quakers was one of the Philosophy and religion good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
November 21, 2005	Peer review	Reviewed
December 11, 2005	Good article nominee	Listed
July 21, 2008	Good article reassessment	Delisted

Current status: Delisted good article

Religion Top‑importance

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This article has been mentioned by a media organization:

"Quaker Roots". Times Record News. November 7, 2004. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

Material removed from another page

The following I remmoved from the disambiguation page Sylvania. I have no idea why it was there.

I do not feel competent to determine if any of this should be in a Quaker article so am putting it here for whatever use anyone cares to make of it.

Ramallah Friends Meeting

The history on the Ramallah Friends Meeting in Quakers#Middle East seems too detailed for this article. I currently have a draft for a separate article on the Ramallah Friends Meeting waiting approval. InquisitiveALot (talk) 20:59, 31 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Polity

Hi @TechBear, I see you reverted my edit removing "Congregationalist" polity. I do not think the phrase is accurate when applied to either the whole or majority of the Quaker tradition. I do not think that Quakerism should be included on the Congregationalist Polity page either. If you think the below makes sense, I will alter that page as well.

While the entire membership is wholly responsible for discernment within Meetings for Worship for Business, this does not mean that the local meeting (i.e., the one closest to Friends which they worship at most regularly) is the meeting in control of church governance. In most cases, this is in fact the Yearly Meeting/Area/Monthly Meeting.

Sticking to the discipline of Britain Yearly Meeting, as I know it best, examples from https://qfp.quaker.org.uk/chapter/4/ include "By 1676 [area meetings] were the unit of authority for membership, marriages, property, records, the recognition of ministers (until 1924) and the recognition and laying down of local meetings; most of these functions continue today. So too does their formal responsibility, completed by 1789, for the appointment of elders and overseers. ... The area meeting is the primary meeting for church affairs in Britain Yearly Meeting".

6.05 includes "In 1999 the Agenda Committee wrote:

We see Yearly Meetings as events in the life of the institution of Britain Yearly Meeting which can involve:

constitutional decision-making;
annually overseeing and guiding the stewardship exercised between Yearly Meetings;
settling policy on major areas of work or witness;
promoting teaching and learning;
offering inspiration and leadership;
celebrating together;
re-dedicating ourselves;
calling us to action;
creating and sustaining a community, including those both under and over nineteen."

The reservation of all of these matters to bodies which are signfiicantly removed from (though constituted by) local meetings seems at odds with a Congregationalist Polity. Many such important functions are reserved at such "higher" levels than Friends' immediate congregations in Yearly Meetings across the world. Yearly Meetings frequently call upon their AMs and LMs to act in certain ways, while the reverse does not happen. It would thus be inaccurate to label the entire movement as congregationalist, even if some YMs lean towards it more than others. For the sake of this article, it is irritating that Quaker polity does not neatly fall into an established box - I see very little discussion of it online at all. UU interfaith material explicitly says it is not https://www.uua.org/re/tapestry/youth/bridges/workshop17/189721.shtml and Britannica says Quaker polity is merely "not unlike" congregationalism (i.e., it does not say it is). I hope that, in accordance with WP:NOR, we do not include this label in the factbox. Thanks for reading Onga0921 (talk) 23:53, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]