The March 2020 Friends Jour­nal will look at “Unnamed Quak­er Creeds.” The sub­mis­sion dead­line is Decem­ber 9. I’ve writ­ten up some of our thoughts on poten­tial arti­cle ideas and pub­lished it online at: https://​www​.friend​sjour​nal​.org/​u​n​n​a​m​e​d​-​q​u​a​k​e​r​-​c​r​e​e​ds/

Unpro­grammed Friends will often tell vis­i­tors we have no creeds or set prac­tices in wor­ship. Our wor­ship is spon­ta­neous, open-ended, and free to fol­low the unex­pect­ed prompt­ings of the Liv­ing Spir­it. But in prac­tice, this isn’t exact­ly true. There are all sorts of expec­ta­tions and unwrit­ten rules when we come togeth­er First-day morn­ings. Who can give min­istry? How long should a mes­sage go? What themes should it fol­low? What time does wor­ship end?

There are also unwrit­ten rules about our behav­ior and con­duct. What if we talk too loud­ly or share our beliefs too stren­u­ous­ly? Do our indi­vid­ual tastes in clothes, music, pol­i­tics fit the meet­ing? What are the divides between core Quak­er faith and option­al Quak­er culture?

The March issue is our chance to look at unwrit­ten rules and social con­for­mi­ties and ques­tion any that may be mak­ing our meet­ing spaces unfriend­ly to new­com­ers. What bound­aries do we need to make more explic­it? What prac­tices do we need to make less manda­to­ry? How do we need to change to be more acces­si­ble? And in what ways do new­com­ers feel they have to change to fit us?

Dif­fer­ent fla­vors of Friends have answered these ques­tions dif­fer­ent­ly. Pro­grammed Friends have more explic­it wor­ship struc­tures. They’re also more com­fort­able mak­ing creedal state­ments like the Rich­mond Dec­la­ra­tion of Faith. How have these tools helped ground the spir­i­tu­al com­mu­ni­ty? What new prob­lems have they per­haps created?

I’m hop­ing this issue will be espe­cial­ly help­ful for us all to think about includ­ing new vis­i­tors. And as always, the ideas we list here are just sug­ges­tions. We’re hap­py to read what­ev­er read­ers think about the issue of unnamed Quak­er creeds. Sub­mis­sions due Decem­ber 9, 2019.