Our Quaker Foundations

Quaker History

The Religious Society of Friends originated as a movement of dissenting Christians amidst the political, social, and religious turmoil of 17th century England.  As in all eras of violent revolution and cataclysmic change, people felt a special need for roots, for an abiding faith to which they could anchor their troubled lives.

One such seeker was George Fox, who, after years of emptiness, experienced the revelation of the immanence of God’s power that led to the birth of the Society of Friends. In the decades that followed, Quakers were cruelly persecuted for their departure from Anglican orthodoxy, and many joined William Penn in Pennsylvania where they found in his Holy Experiment a haven of religious liberty.  Some of these early Quakers in the new world settled in Germantown, where in 1690 a log Meeting House was built on the site of Germantown Friends School, and was probably visited by Penn himself.  Friends have worshipped here for nearly 300 years, with the present building dating from 1869.  Some of the stone used in its construction was salvaged from an earlier Meetinghouse built in 1705.

Quaker Beliefs and Worship

This same Light Within is seen by Friends as endowing all human life with a sacred quality, so that it may neither be debased nor exploited, nor wantonly destroyed. Evil must be resisted in the spirit of Jesus’ teaching and example and not by killing and destroying. Whatever others may do, the Society of Friends finds it impossible to reconcile preparation and waging of war with Jesus’ message that is love that overcomes evil.

This is what lies behind three centuries of Quaker pacifist witness. It has led us also to undertake humanitarian relief in time of war, serving the hurt, the hungry, and the bereaved on every side, and to pioneer in caring for the mentally ill and in the humane treatment of prisoners. In 1688 it produced one of America’s first public protest against slavery and led Friends into the abolitionist movement, and later into the struggle for equality and justice for all minorities- a concern that persists to the present day.

Our Decision Making and Outreach

Germantown Friends Meeting carries concerns into the wider community. Decisions on these actions –and on all Meeting affairs-are reached in a monthly Meeting for Business, where we gather in a spirit of worship to seek answers to our problems and challenges and find unity. Friends never make their decisions by majority vote, but work towards unity and consensus, striving for a “sense of the meeting” on which all can agree.

Two long standing and major undertakings of the Meeting are the Friends Free Library and Germantown Friends School. Both date from 1845, when the Meeting for Business appointed two committees, one to establish a library and the other a school. The library began with 41 volumes and led an itinerant existence until it was finally housed in the present building on Germantown Avenue in 1874. The library serves the wider Germantown community which was created to support as well as the school, and houses a collection of 60,000 volumes.

Its 1845 partner, Germantown Friends School, has flourished, and enjoys today a national reputation as a leading independent school, with an enrollment of 895 boys and girls from kindergarten through 12th grade. Today, students attend Meeting for Worship once a week, and the role of the Meeting in the guidance of the school and the nurturer of its spiritual roots remains as strong as ever.

This intimate involvement of the Meeting assures a lively concern at GFS for social justice, strong debates about arms policy, voices raised against capital punishment, a commitment to diversity within the school, an interest in service projects, and a keen respect for the integrity of individuals. But in all these areas there is also an absence of dogmatism and finality, for an important corollary of the Quaker belief in direct revelation is that God continues to speak, not that God once spoke and vouchsafed final truth. We must therefore always be open to new truth and more nearly perfect understanding. Indeed, Friends’ witness in many areas has matured and changed course as our insights have been enlarged by new perceptions, and as world conditions have changed.

The aim of our school is to provide a solid academic grounding and to expose our diverse student community to ancient and eternal values. We do not bind their consciences: our hope is that they may learn to judge for themselves that which is good and that which should be rejected-or made good. To the extent that we are successful in adding this capacity to the intellectual growth we seek in the classroom, GFS will reflect what the Meeting strives for in its governance.

Germantown Monthly Meeting of Friends
47 W. Coulter Street, Philadelphia. PA 19144