Friends (quakers) Churches

Quaker worship has a tradition of silence. It eschews programmed worship, favoring instead meetings that are led by the prompting of the Spirit. Some Quaker groups have been influenced by American evangelicalism and have developed a somewhat more structured form of worship. The silent meeting for worship is the most visible element of classical Quaker worship. Worshipers assemble without leader or program, stilling their minds and focusing their attention, waiting to sense the presence of the Spirit of God and then to respond as they are moved in their own spirits. The silent meeting for worship is but a means, however, for achieving the essential element of Quaker worship: the response of the soul to the felt presence and the moving of the Spirit of God. "Worship is the adoring response of the heart and mind to the influence of the Spirit of God," says the Richmond Declaration of Faith (1887). "It stands neither in forms nor in the formal disuse of forms; it may be without words as …