Quakers as People

Throughout Quaker history, Quakers have mostly been ordinary people, as they still are today. Managers and shop floor workers, school teachers and shop assistants, social workers and dock workers, business managers and police officers, journalists and actors, students and lecturers.

It is impossible accurately to generalise about who individual Quakers are. In Britain Yearly Meeting, there are Black people, white people, Asian British people, and so on. There are gay people and straight people, and people elsewhere on the LGBT spectrum. There are young people and young adults (Young Friends), middle-aged people, retired people and people approaching the end of their life; single people, parents with families, divorcees and those who are widowed. There are able-bodied people, and people with disabilities. There are people who are therapists, and people who are mental health service users.

There are people who have been Quakers all their life (birthright Friends), and people who have found the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers by convincement), some of whom may still be trying Quakerism on for size. There are people who have arrived from another church, such as the Church of England, or the Methodist Church, or the Roman Catholic Church, some of whom retain their previous affiliation whereas others choose not to. There are people who arrive from other faiths, such as Judaism, Buddhism and Hinduism, to name but three. There are also people who have previously experienced little or no religious observance, but recognise that their life has a spiritual dimension.