Page 59 - The Hunt - Winter 2024

Located off Route 926 in West Chester on a site that was part of the Revolutionary War’s Battle of Brandywine, Birmingham Friends is one of the more frequented meeting houses in the region. There’s a mass grave nearby marked with a memorial. Quakers are historically pacifists, so they added a peace garden.
Apracticing psychologist, Martha Boston is clerk of Birmingham Friends Meeting. Located off Route 926 in West Chester on a site that was part of the Revolutionary War’s Battle of Brandywine, it’s one of the more frequented meeting houses in the region. “We get a lot of visitors because of the battlefield,” Boston says. “During the battle, the building was an American hospital, then a British hospital.”
There’s a mass grave nearby marked with a memorial. Quakers are historically pacifists, so they added a peace garden. Many were also part of the Underground Railroad that brought enslaved people north to freedom before and during the Civil War. Some meetings continue
to commemorate these activities and the people who took part in them.
Birmingham Friends has about 200 members, but only 40-50 attend the Sunday meeting, which may involve singing, poetry readings and planned talks. They also offer an array of social and community activities.
At Centre Friends, weekly attendance hovers at around 30 or so. Some meeting houses
go largely unused due to loss of members. According to Philadelphia Yearly Meeting,
there are 16 locations throughout the area that are no longer used regularly, though they’re still maintained and host occasional special activities. “We’re all getting a bit gray,” Miller says of his own congregation, adding that Quakers don’t
have any real methods to shore up membership. But Miller does point to the many Friends
schools operating in the area. Non-Quaker students often want to learn more about the religion and may even become converts. Still, the question lingers: What is it that keeps these modern, financially successful and progressive people so loyal to such simple, old-fashioned worship?
“Our values—what we call our testimonies—begin with the word simplicity,” says Boston. “Simplicity, peace, integrity, community, equality and stewardship.”
The meeting houses themselves are a testimony to that formula, which has endured for almost 400 years. TH
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