Minneapolis Friends Meeting

Minneapolis Friends Meeting

For my intercultural experience, I attended the Minneapolis Friends Meeting on Sunday, February 17^th with my friend Aren. For those of you who don’t know, Friends Meeting is what Quakers call their church services. I personally don’t have a strong religious background; my family isn’t very religious, so although we went to church for several years, it didn’t really sink in too much. I’ve attended churches of many different denominations, but none of them were anything like the Friends Meeting I went to.

I’ll start by giving you a little background about the Quaker religion, because that’s where I started. The chapter on culture shock from our book said that “keeping their expectations realistic and increasing their familiarity concerning the diverse facets of the new culture” can help to defuse culture shock, so I started by doing a little research on the Minneapolis Friends Meeting website. I also didn’t want to make a complete fool of myself, so I thought it would be better to know what to expect.

The single, most obviously distinctive thing that sets Friends Meetings apart from any other religious event I’ve ever seen is that there is no preacher, pastor, priest, or anyone directing the service. No one preaches, and no one tells people what they ought to believe and what they ought to do. In a traditional Quaker meeting, worshipers sit together in silence for the entirety of the service. The silence will only be broken if someone feels that they are being moved by God to share their thoughts with the Meeting. Nowadays, some Friends Meetings have moved to having full-fledged church services, like you would expect to see in most Christian churches today. However, there are still many Quakers who practice silence and listening as worship. The Minneapolis Friends Meeting has two services, one un-programmed and one semi-programmed. My friend and I attended the semi-programmed service; there was some piano music as the Meeting started, we sang two hymns, and one person shared a short prepared message—maybe four or five minutes long. Other than these planned activities, two people broke the silence to share their thoughts with the Meeting. I can’t even imagine what the un-programmed Meeting was like; even in the semi-programmed one, the silences seemed interminable. The majority of the hour-long service was held in silence. Most of the children ran off to First Day School—the equivalent of another church’s Sunday School—after the first hymn. I was enormously impressed to see that one boy, probably about seven or eight years old, sat through the entire service. I could barely do it.

Members of the Friends Meeting at a service
(this picture is from their website, although I did meet some of these people)

Before I attended the service, although I knew about the practice of worshiping in silence, I was pretty confused about it. First of all, I just didn’t understand what would keep bringing people back to sit in a room with no directed ministry every week, and what would connect these people, if they don’t talk about their shared values or demand that their constituency hold a certain set of beliefs. However, I tried not to let my confusion turn into ethnocentrism, and go in with an open mind and try to learn more about the Friends’ culture. I feel like, after attending the Meeting, talking with several people and reading the numerous pamphlets I picked up at the Meeting, I understand their culture a lot better.

Before I start to talk about the values and history of the Quakers and the reasons that they have their unique way of worshiping God, I’d like to talk a little more about my experience at the Friends Meeting. There is an “Adult Program” between the two services on Sundays. My friend Aren and I showed up shortly after the Adult Program had started, and weren’t sure whether we should join in or not. We were just standing in the hallway looking at pamphlets when someone else came who was a little late for the Adult Program. He started to talk to us and ask us what we were doing—it was pretty apparent it was our first time to the Meeting. He was extremely friendly and invited us to go in to the Adult Program with him. Overall, everyone I met there was very friendly. After the service, several other people noticed that Aren and I were new and went out of their way to talk to us, and ask if we had any questions about Quakerism, the Meeting, or anything else. One man even gave me his contact information. After everything had ended, we ended up going to Famous Dave’s and eating lunch with a couple of the people from the Friends Meeting. It was very helpful to get the chance to ask questions to all of these people, and I was very struck by how friendly everyone was to us. As an outsider, I felt very welcomed by the ingroup, although I realized at the same time how ignorant I was of their culture.

The part of my trip that I found most illuminating was sitting in and listening to the Adult Program. They were talking about the testimonies or beliefs that Quakers hold, and how the members felt about them and tried to live these beliefs in their daily lives. As it turns out, my preconception that Quakers didn’t have shared values because they didn’t discuss them during church services was completely wrong. Although there’s no doctrine that one must prescribe to in order to be a Quaker, and no set of beliefs that a person must necessarily claim to hold, there are several tenants, or testimonies, that Quakers tend to try to live by. On top of this adult program, I found the following website:

http://www.quno.org/newyork/Resources/AllQuakerTestimonies.pdf

very helpful in understanding Quaker testimonies. Particularly interesting is the idea that “A testimony is not a form of words but an expression of actions characteristic of Friends.” I think, in a nutshell, this really describes the essence of Quakerism. The Quaker religion formed during the Reformation, and was perhaps the left-most wing of the Reformation, rejecting all the rituals of the church as well as the professional ministry and the idea that of the sole authority of the Bible. George Fox, the founder of Quakerism, traveled around asking people to “live by the Inner Light and to demonstrate their faith by deeds”(from a pamphlet I picked up). I think the most interesting consequence of getting rid of formal ministry is the increased emphasis on expressing your religion and your beliefs through the way you live your daily life, rather than through formal rituals or statements of belief. Another interesting consequence, which someone I was talking to after the meeting pointed out to me, is that there can be both people with very conservative and very liberal viewpoints that prescribe to the Quaker religion. This is one thing that put Quakerism, in my eyes, in stark contrast with Unitarian Universalism. (The last church I regularly attended was a UU church, so that’s what I was mostly comparing my experience to.) Although Unitarians, like Quakers, don’t require their members to claim certain beliefs to be members, I can’t really imagine a conservative UU.

George Fox, founder of Quakerism

Now that I’ve discussed many of the surface- and intermediate-level culture practices of the Friends, let me briefly address the deep-level culture in the form of the values, or testimonies mentioned in the above link, which are the most common Quaker testimonies.

 

Peace

This is certainly the most well-known of Quaker testimonies. It stems from the realization that “the cause of Christ had been falsely used to rationalize political expansion by military means.” They have continued to demonstrate this value throughout history. Quaker beliefs are actually what led to the United States to recognize the right to conscientious objection in military service.

 

Equality and Community

These values were immediately apparent by the actions and traditions of the Friends Meeting. The very first thing we saw when we went to the Friends meeting was a woman out front with a shovel, trying to break up the sheet of ice that was covering the sidewalk. I’m fairly certain that she wasn’t employed by the Meeting; she was just trying to do her part to make the sidewalk safer for everyone. After the Meeting, several other volunteers got shovels and salt and started helping break up the ice. I think this really showed the collectivistic values that Quakers hold. One of the members of the meeting, who I was talking to afterwards, also mentioned that, because the Quaker sect is fairly small, he thought they felt more of a connection with each other than other denominations do. He said that, when he travels, he can stay with other Quakers in whatever place he travels to, because there’s that sense of community among Quakers.

As far as equality goes, simply the fact that there is no ordained ministry and no one leading the Meetings speaks to the commitment to this testimony. The Quakers clearly value small power distance. The Adult Meeting I went to had two women facilitating discussion, but the emphasis on equality and participation was still readily apparent. One of the main reasons Quakerism exists is on the basis of rejecting the hierarchical roles and power of the clergy. One of the more controversial things Quakers have done (although it isn’t really controversial anymore) is to refuse to address anyone by titles that would recognize their social status or confer any sort of superiority to certain people. There’s a clear emphasis on equality.

One of the women at the Adult Meeting spoke to the connection between equality and community. She mentioned that, although many Quakers were at the forefront of the civil rights movement in the United States, at the same time they didn’t allowed colored people to join their Meetings until much later. I thought that was very interesting. It also shows that the people of the Meeting are aware of the cultural roots and background history of their religion.

I found a Quaker meme! Who knew that existed?

Simplicity

Fun fact: In the 1800s, Quaker communities forbid their members to wear any colors, they were so dedicated to simplicity. Men wore black and women wore gray. This value, although they no longer have such a rigid dress code to adhere to, is still highly held among the Quaker community.

A few other values are truth, integrity, and the environment.

One thing I noticed about the way people communicated verbally is that everyone kept their voices very low. I’m not sure if this was out of respect for the church or for some other reason, but I tried to conform to this and also keep my voice low.

I asked the people I had lunch with several questions about Quakers. I think what I found most interesting was asking how people had come to be Quakers. All three of the people I asked had come to Quakerism later in life. Most were invited by someone they knew, and were interested by the values of Meeting. Apparently on the East Coast, where Quakerism has stronger historical roots, you are more likely to find people who were simply born into Quaker families. Out here in the Midwest, however, it is more likely that people converted to the religion later in life.

Overall, this was a great and very eye-opening experience. I really enjoyed the Friends Meeting, and I learned a lot about their culture. I’m considering going back sometime—which many of the members encouraged me to do. They were very friendly.