Illinois Yearly Meeting, founded in 1875, is a spiritual community of Quakers, also known as the Religious Society of Friends. Individuals in this community attend some 22 affiliated local meetings across five states. Each summer the yearly meeting gathers in a retreat on its campus near McNabb, Illinois to worship together and to conduct the business of the community.
Early Quakers had a vivid sense of the Holy Spirit as an active presence, transforming themselves, their dealings with each other, and the entire world. They honored each person’s direct access to the Light, yet were aware of the frailty of human judgment. Their response was to develop practices of communal listening, seeking, and discerning. Meeting for worship, meeting for business, and some more specialized practices were all developed to allow the group to clarify and support individual guidance and revelation. Today, Quakers continue to revise, refine, and hand on their characteristic practices of corporate listening and waiting, because these practices work.
As the name “Faith and Practice” suggests, this book is both a spiritual and a practical document. It articulates the historical and continuing faith of Friends; it also outlines recommended procedures regarding a wide variety of matters that local Quaker meetings are likely, and in many cases certain, to face.
Friends in Illinois Yearly Meeting engage in “waiting worship,” in which we gather silently to enter into communion with God and with one another and to seek God’s help and guidance in ministering to our own spiritual needs, those of the meeting community, and those of the wider world. Meeting for worship begins when the first worshipper enters the room. As Friends enter the meeting room, they seek to still their minds, leaving behind the concerns and activities of their daily life, and to focus inward and enter a period of expectant waiting. After a substantial period of silence anyone present who feels led to speak by the Divine Spirit may rise and do so. Friends speak spontaneously as led rather than composing a message in advance of coming to meeting for worship. This vocal ministry is typically followed by a period of silence to deepen the worship and allow those present to take in what has been said. When enough time has passed another Friend may feel led to speak. Sometimes the entire meeting may pass in outward silence. The meeting ends with the shaking of hands.
Deep within us all there is an amazing inner sanctuary of the soul, a holy place, a Divine Center, a speaking Voice, to which we may continuously return. Eternity is at our hearts, pressing upon our time-torn lives, warming us with intimations of an astounding destiny, calling us home unto Itself. Yielding to these persuasions, gladly committing ourselves in body and soul, utterly and completely, to the Light Within, is the beginning of true life.
Thomas R. Kelly, 1941
The Religious Society of Friends encompasses a wide variety of beliefs and perspectives, but perhaps the most distinctively Quaker religious concept is that of the Light Within. Also frequently called the “Spirit” or “that of God in everyone,” the Light is a Divine Presence within each of us: a manifestation of God in all people. Identified by early Friends as the living Spirit of Christ, the Light serves as a moral guide, a comfort in times of need, a spur to action, and the Seed from which inward spiritual transformation can grow.
Among the distinctive Quaker principles are those known as the testimonies. These are values that Friends hold corporately, and which are reflected in our witness to the world.
The testimonies express our communal experience of the Light Within and our commitment to its fruits. We show this commitment in our outward lives: in our dedication to living peacefully, for example, and in our love for each other in “that which is eternal.” Living out the testimonies in thought and action reflects the influence of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
Monthly meetings have a continuing responsibility to foster understanding of the beliefs and practices of Friends to members, attenders, and children under their care, enhancing full participation in the life of the meeting.
Southeastern Yearly Meeting, 2013
Religious education is important for everyone who participates in a Friends meeting. Each individual is on a spiritual journey which continues throughout life, and everyone needs the opportunity to continue the search with others. Meetings can offer support by providing a First Day School program for children from infancy through high school as well as an adult religious education program. Most meetings have a committee or committees to plan and coordinate these programs. (See “Religious education committee.”)
So Friends are not to meet like a company of people about town or parish business, …but to wait upon the Lord, and feeling his power and spirit to lead them…that whatsoever they may do, they may do it to the praise and glory of God, and in unity in the faith, and in the spirit, and in fellowship in the order of the gospel.
George Fox, undated
When Friends gather to do business, the process is the same for committees and meetings of all levels. We gather together to listen for how God would have us move forward. The decisions made during the Quaker meeting for worship with a concern for business are the sense of the meeting of those in attendance. Minuted decisions remain until such time as the body is moved to change them.
The clearness committee is, at its heart, about the mystery of personhood and of God’s call in our lives. These are intertwined dynamics by which we become more fully human.
Valerie Brown, 2017
Clearness committees are intended to serve Friends who seek assistance in reaching clarity about a personal concern or decision. Such committees help Friends determine what God would have them do based on the Quaker belief in the Inner Light in each person. (See “The Light Within and Its Religious Implications.”) The task of clearness committees is to provide spiritual support in helping Friends attend to, and be guided by, the Inner Light.
Any Friend is welcome to seek the assistance of a clearness committee to clarify an issue and seek a way forward, or to discern the truth of a leading. More specifically, Friends may seek clarity about a proposed marriage (see “Marriage”), membership in a monthly meeting (see “Membership”), a change in family circumstances, a move to another region, a change in vocation or job, a contemplated divorce, taking a stand or witness on a public issue, traveling in the ministry, or any other personal concern for which a decision is needed.
Becoming a member of the Religious Society of Friends is a public act of accepting God’s gift of a spiritual home and family. In being recorded as a member, one accepts the support and practices of this community for spiritual growth and assumes responsibility for the activities of the meeting as well as its practical and spiritual maintenance. This is a spiritual community bound together by love in which there are mutual expectations for trust, open communication, forgiveness, participation, and perseverance in the face of differences. Membership is not a sign of having reached a particular level of spiritual accomplishment, but it does mean that the new member has decided to pursue their spiritual development in the context of this Quaker community.