Page 56 - The Hunt - Winter 2024

In 1690, Centre Friends became its own congregation.
A log meeting house was completed in 1711. The current brick building was erected on the same property 85 years later.
The Religious Society of Friends was founded in England in the mid-1600s by George Fox and his followers. Like many Protestant religions of that era, it went against the grain of established churches.
These spiritual rebels believed God dwelled within everyone and wasn’t available exclusively to kings, popes and other anointed conduits. Persecution forced many to flee to America, where they were welcomed by William Penn, who’d converted to the Quaker religion as a young man and was briefly jailed for his beliefs. Penn’s father was friends with the king, however. And upon the elder Penn’s death, his son was given land west of the Delaware River as payment for a debt the monarch owed the family.
In England, Friends had been derided as “Quakers” because they were instructed to “tremble” before God’s word. Rather than chafe at the insult, they owned it instead. Today the terms Friends and Quakers are
used interchangeably.
The basic Quaker service today isn’t all that different from
colonial days, with meetings on Sunday mornings. No one has a religious title, so either the clerk or someone designated by one of the several Quaker committees will signal that
it’s time for the meeting to start. “We usually sit quietly for five or 10 minutes,” says Joan Broadfield, clerk of Chester Quarterly Meeting in Delaware County. “Some people focus on clearing their minds. Others will hear the Spirit speaking to them—and I don’t mean ‘spirits,’ but the Spirit. Then they can decide if the prompt from the Spirit is for them alone or whether it’s intended to be shared with other people.”
Miller notes that there are days with no messages or testimony. “We used to sing songs, but our voices weren’t that good,” he laughs.
Quakerism isn’t all about weekly worship. Centre Friends has a business meeting each month—one of 105 such meetings across Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and New Jersey. “From the beginning, there were men’s business meetings and women’s business meetings,” Miller says.
54 THE HUNT MAGAZINE winter 2024-25