Friends meeting house

Plymouth Friends Meetinghouse, in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania

Chichester Friends Meeting House near Philadelphia, built 1769

Interior of the Arch Street Friends Meeting House in Philadelphia

A Friends meeting house is a meeting house of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), where meeting for worship is usually held. Typically Friends meeting houses do not have steeples.

History

Quakers do not believe that meeting for worship should occur in any special place. They believe that "where two or three meet together in my name, I am there among them" (Revised English Bible, Matthew, Ch 18, v 20). Therefore meeting for worship may take place in any place. Early Quakers often met for worship outdoors or in local public buildings. However, when the Religious Society of Friends began to grow there became a need for buildings to house their meetings.

Quakers have always reserved the word church to mean the body of people who make up the worshipping community: Quakers do not use the word church to refer to the bricks and mortar of a worshipping community. George Fox, an early Quaker, spoke of places of worship that have steeples as steeple houses, and those that do not as meeting houses. This practice is shared by a number of other non-conformist Christian denominations, including Unitarians, Christadelphians, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Mennonites.

Some Friends meeting houses were adapted from existing structures, but most were purpose-built. Briggflatts Meeting House is an example of the latter. The hallmark of a meeting house is extreme simplicity and the absence of any liturgical symbols. More specifically, though, the defining characteristics of the Quaker meetinghouse are simplicity, equality, community, and peace. Though never explicitly written or spoken about, these tenets (or “Testimonies”) of Quakerism were the basic, and only, guidelines for building a meetinghouse, as was seen through the continuity of the use of Testimonies within meetinghouse design. While meetinghouse design evolved over time to a standardization of the double-cell structure without explicit guidelines for building, the meetinghouse’s reflective architecture revealed a deeper meaning. The meetinghouse design manifested and enhanced Quaker Testimonies and the cultivation of the Inner Light that was essential to Friends. Quakers easily moved from one place of meeting to another, but when given the opportunity to design and construct their own place of meeting, Friends infused their Testimonies in the planning, design, and construction of the building.

Interior of the Colora Meetinghouse in Maryland, showing the facing benches and the moveable divider typical of 18th and 19th century meetinghouses in the area

Meeting Houses built in a traditional style usually had two meeting rooms: one for the main meeting for worship, and another where the women's business meeting may be held (often referred to as the women's meeting room). Meeting houses of this style usually have a minister's gallery at one end of the meeting room, where traditionally those traveling in the ministry would have sat, with an elders bench immediately in front of this. Wooden benches facing this occupy the rest of the room, often with a gallery for extra seating. Meeting houses of this style usually have high windows so that worshippers sitting in meeting for worship cannot see outside.

Meeting houses built in a more modern design will usually consist of: a large meeting room, smaller rooms for committees, children's classes, etc., a kitchen and toilets.

The meeting room itself is a place for Friends to withdraw from the world. The windows are set sufficiently high that worshippers will not be distracted by the activities of the world's people outside, or in some cases they provide a view into the meeting house garden. The seating was originally long, hard and wooden. Today it is usually separate chairs but the layout remains the same — a square or rectangle facing inwards to a central table.

Examples

Sydney Friends meeting house

The Quaker Meeting House in Congénies

United Kingdom

• Briggflatts Meeting House, near Sedbergh, Cumbria, England
• Brighton Friends Meeting House, Brighton, East Sussex, England
• Coanwood Friends Meeting House, in an isolated, unpopulated valley south of Hadrian's Wall, about 2 miles (3 km) east of the village of Coanwood, and about 5 miles (8 km) south of the town of Haltwhistle in Northumberland, England
• Come-to-Good Friends Meeting House, Kea, near Truro, Cornwall, UK. It was also known as Kea Meeting House and Feock Meeting House.
• Ifield Friends Meeting House, Ifield neighbourhood of Crawley, West Sussex, England
• Jordans Friends Meeting House, Buckinghamshire, England
• Leicester Friends Meeting House
• Littlehampton Friends Meeting House, Littlehampton, part of the Arun district of West Sussex, England
• Osmotherley Friends Meeting House, North Yorkshire, England
• Petts Wood Friends Meeting House, Kent, England

France

• The historic meeting house of Congénies (Southern France), since 1788

United States

See also

• List of Quaker meeting houses

References

Notes

Bibliography

• Alexander, William. Observations on the Construction and Fitting Up of Meeting Houses &c for Public Worship: Illustrated by Plans, Sections and Description, Including One Lately Erected in the City of York, Embracing in Particular the Method of Warming and Ventilating. York, England: the author, 1820.
• Lippincott, Horace Mather. Abington Friends Meeting and School: 1682-1949. n.p.: n.p., 1949.
• Rose, Harold Wickliffe. The Colonial Houses of Worship in America. New York: Hastings House, Publishers, 1963.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Quaker meeting houses.

• Flickr site for photographs of British Friends Meeting Houses, arranged by County
• Hopewell Centre Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends "Quakers The Hopewell Meeting House was built in 1759 to 1761 and enlarged during 1788-1791.
• Haverford College triptych tri-college digital library, collection of photographs of meeting houses in the United States
• Randolph Friends Meeting House
• Friends meeting houses UK search