Quaker Family Tree

The Quaker Family Tree graph above showing the distribution of North American Yearly Meetings is overly simplistic and not to scale in number or date. It is presented to indicate the traditions out of which the current Yearly Meetings in North America are derived. A complete depiction is far more complicated with splits, mergers, and individual Monthly Meetings changing affiliations and/or belonging to more than one Yearly Meeting.

In Canada, there is one Yearly Meeting but with different Half Yearly Meetings in different parts of the country. Individual Monthly Meetings may belong to both the Canadian Yearly Meeting and a Yearly Meeting that has Monthly Meetings in the U.S.

As the number of attenders has dropped, so have the sharp differences between traditions. An example might be the Conservative movement; although Ohio Yearly Meeting (C) still professes to hold the Wilburite traditions including some Friends holding to plain dress.

Currently, one can find a range of traditions (Universalist, Hicksite, Quietist, and Evangelical) within a single Yearly Meeting, within the same Monthly Meeting and spanning quite different Yearly Meetings. Yet stark differences can still be found. These questions are too complex to accurately depict in such a chart, as there is a rainbow of variations within both Christocentric and Non-Christocentric traditions.

Perhaps one of the most dramatic changes is PYM going from its orthodox roots, merging into the FGC back in the 1950s. To confuse things further, 5 of the 38 Yearly Meetings in North America belong to both FGC and FUM spanning the traditions from Universalist to Evangelical. This was an effort to recognize that we have more in common than we have differences.

That is not to say friction has subsided amongst Friends. There have been a couple of recent splits over questions of theology and tolerance of gender identity issues and lifestyles. This has recently caused a long time Year Meeting to be laid down, to be replaced by two new Yearly Meetings.

The chart tries to show as many differences as possible, like the fact that unprogrammed is not equivalent to Hicksite. It is interesting to note that there are unprogrammed Meetings with pastors and programmed Meetings without pastors. The chart though does not consider the Holiness movement of Central Yearly Meeting that still holds Camp Meetings. The Holiness movement has its roots in the Methodist tradition.

It is interesting that in PA there are unprogrammed FGC Friends, evangelical EFC Friends, and Wilburites. However, these different traditions stemming from the same root don’t seem to interact much on a Meeting-to-Meeting basis. On a positive note, Friends from different traditions do participate in each other’s service programs like AFSC, FCNL, Ramallah Friends School, and Right Sharing of World Resources, to name but a few. As Margret Fell said, “Theology divides, Service unites.”

FGC = 20,369+ Members

Conservative = 1,464+ Members

Unaffiliated = 2,277+ Members

FUM & FGC = 15,044+ Members

FUM = 23,939+ Members

Independent = 585+ Members

EFC= 28,792+ Members

Total North America = 92,470+ Members