Introduction to Free Quakerism

The Quaker Universalist and Unitarian Church, Inc. (“QUUC”) was organized as a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation. We are a non-denominational and non-autocratic community-based faith organization. QUUC is also known as “The Free Quaker Society of Friends”. Quakers interchangeably refer to themselves and other Quakers as “Friends”. We also refer to our members as either “Free Quakers” or “Free Friends”. We have spent many years living among Older Order Mennonite and Amish communities (Quakers are not Amish! We use electricity, technology, and vehicles when necessary and dress the same as the average American). This experience has been incredibly instructive as to how functioning cooperative communities work and thrive over many generations. We believe that real and abiding communities can come into existence again for average Americans. If you are interested in living in a cooperative community please contact me at the email below.

Our organization is a break from the Faith and Practice and ideology now ensconced in the establishment Quaker organizations. Free Quakerism rejects collectivism, feminism, and authoritarianism in all forms—but especially in the name of Quakerism, the Religious Society of Friends, and any other name that Quakers or Friends are or were known by. We are an egalitarian faith, practice, and philosophy—not an advocacy group for identity politics. We desire to share this world with goodwill towards our fellow man and to engage ideas on the merits—not waste the limited moments of our existence in a constant state of anger, resentment, and frustration.

Our Free Quaker faith and practice is not governed or autocratically informed by the foundational texts of the great religions or by intermediaries. Our faith and practice is a way of life and our creed is our personal moral foundation and the manner in which we live our lives. Our ethics springs from reason and the rational nature granted mankind by our Creator. Many Friends refer to this as our Inner Light. Others see it as a spark of the Devine that resides in all men and women. We do not purport to know the mind of the Creator, and there is no institutional requirement that Free Friends believe or deny the mysticism which envelopes and defines many other faiths.  This is an intensely personal and individual choice, and Free Friends must be at liberty to go where their good conscience takes them and are encouraged to look within themselves. Traditionally and since our very inception, Friends sought substance and placed little importance on outward forms.

Free Quakers have five precepts; early Quakers referred to these as the five testimonies.

Simplicity: We hold that arranging one’s life in such a way as to reduce tension, pressure, and hurry will lead to greater satisfaction, pleasure, and joy with our lives during our brief existence. Our primary responsibility is our own, individual well-being: we must, ourselves, be well before we can meet any obligations to our families or to participate in our communities, and it is the practice of simplicity that yields the calm and peaceful mind necessary if we are to live out our next precept of Integrity. Therefore it is Simplicity that must come first.

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Integrity: We hold that we are to be industrious and avoid idleness, frugal and provident in our efforts, fair in our dealings, moderate in our consumptions, and place significant emphasis on personal responsibility so that we may enjoy the virtue that one feels when properly providing and caring for our children and family. Integrity precludes despair. Sorrows will come, and Life and the family must go joyfully on and it is our Integrity that brings this about.

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Community: Thomas Paine, more than anyone else the Father of the American Revolution, and a Free Quaker, wrote this in his seminal work “Common Sense”.

“…the strength of one man is so unequal to his wants, and his mind so unfitted for perpetual solitude, that he is soon obliged to seek assistance and relief of another, who in his turn requires the same. Four or five united would be able to raise a tolerable dwelling in the midst of a wilderness, but one man might labour [sic] out the common period of life without accomplishing any thing; when he had felled his timber he could not remove it, nor erect it after it was removed; hunger in the meantime would urge him to quit his work, and every different want would call him a different way. Disease, nay even misfortune, would be death; for, though neither might be mortal, yet either would disable him from living, and reduce him to a state in which he might rather be said to perish than to die.”

Those practicing Simplicity and Integrity will be in a position to contribute to the wellbeing of the community. No community can stand for long without a balance between giving and taking. A community is a voluntary organization of mutual assistance and interdependence. That assistance and interdependence begin in the home of a family where the children are raised and extends from there into the community. The raising of happy, healthy, cultured, and educated children into fitly functioning and well-adjusted adults—this being part and parcel of our personal wellbeing—is our primary responsibility.

A community—and its members—must have an ethos of intergenerational stability or the community will not last. Children must be imbued with values that will perpetuate the community.

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Peace:  Free Friends do not initiate the use of force or violence—and will not countenance the use of force or violence by proxy—to achieve personal, moral, or political agendas. This does not preclude Free Friends from defending their persons, their family, or personal property that their life may depend on. “Violence by proxy” is as abhorrent as personal violence and is defined as supporting or approving of the application of violence by others—police, military, judiciary, and the non-official—to achieve personal, moral, or political agendas that we as individuals would reject using personally. If an action is immoral it is immoral—and it does not become moral by having or approving a proxy to commit violence for us even if the violence is somehow approved of democratically.

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Equality: Free Friends are equal before our Creator, and; Free Friends are equal before the community in what they may expect from the community and in what the community expects from them. Egalitarianism is the rule.

Our precepts—or testimonies—are a call to action. They do not represent the entirety of the human virtues that are important to us.

Our mission is to provide a locus and support system for real communities of cooperation, collaboration, and mutual assistance to coalesce around. We feel that respect for the sovereignty of the individual and the rejection of a way of life that leads to isolated and alienated individuals are the proper course to take for real community. Your rights and value are yours as an individual and are best recognized in community with other like-minded individuals. We believe that a real and productive community that enjoys a common culture and common expectations of reasonable behavior, and that holds personal responsibility and meaningful member involvement in high regard can provide community members with comfort, stability, and security—while also respecting the autonomy of the individual. To us, this is what it means to have a community. The definition of autonomy or freedom is not freedom from responsibility. Rather true freedom implies responsibility. A community is not something one plays at. Real community implies effort and work that result in real contributions by all so that the community enjoys a surplus of capital, or if you prefer—‘abundance’. After all, a community suffering want will not last long.

We cannot do this alone. We need your help in the form of money, members, and volunteers. We ask that donations under $500 be made at our "Go Fund Me" page (click the link!) and that larger donations be made directly (Go Fund Me is not free). All donations are tax-deductible. Your money will be put to good use in very real and measurable ways. If you would like to know more please email me and include a phone number (I don't carry a cell and use google voice) and I will get right back to you.

Thank you.

Greg Jeffers, Quaker Unitarian and Universalist Church, Inc.
greg at quuchurch dot org