Message from the Pastoral Care and Eldership Team (PaCET) for Sunday Meeting 13th March 2026

Dear Friends,

If there’s a ‘half-in, half-out’ Quaker, that’s me. My parents were Friends, and I always felt the Quakers were the family team. But I cannot shake off a visceral aversion to organised religion, considering it to be a form of political manipulation of individuals’ faith. So the question for me has always been: are the Quakers the acceptable end of the organised religion spectrum, or does the fact that the full name is Religious Society of Friends rule Quakers out for me?

Heavily linked with this question is the use of the word ‘God’. If I’m honest, I bristle at it, and that bristling kept me out of the Quakers for several decades. Then a couple of years ago a friend/Friend told me she felt the same about ‘God’ as I do, but she could look beyond the associations the word conjures up from her childhood and run with the spirit implied. Recently another Quaker said exactly the same to me.

So the permission I give myself to be a Quaker is that I seek to accept the broad spirit and ethos of ‘God’ without getting hung up about the term. Which then makes me wonder if the Quaker movement might consider itself on a similar mission to be true to its spiritual values without over-using the word ‘God’? As an extension of that musing, I find myself wondering whether there are lots of spiritual people out there (especially children) who are just waiting to discover the Quakers who would find Quakerism more amenable to them if the word ‘God’ was used as little as possible?

Chris Bowers

Quakers value diversity. We share this Friend’s message in the hope it will speak to others.

Pastoral Care and Eldership Team: Patricia Cockrell, David Hitchin, Sharon Krummel, Tim Pitt-Payne, Theresa Samms, Emily Slater.