beauty & simplicity: a closer look at the quaker process
by Trustees Rob Lippincott and Rory Eakin, Board Co-Clerk Maureen McAvoy, and SFFS Director of Community Engagement Guybe Slangen
Quakers are known (and sometimes misunderstood) for many things. For example, they are pacifists, they worship in silence but are also vocal activists, and they also make decisions based on consensus as opposed to majority rule. As an independent Quaker school, San Francisco Friends School is built on and governs itself in this Quaker tradition. Quaker tradition informs daily life in our school and how we make decisions as a community. In this issue of Among Friends, we wanted to share more about the Quaker decision-making process and highlight a few examples of how that decision making process brings our Quaker values to life in meaningful ways. Quakerism (more formally known as the Religious Society of Friends) is a Protestant, Christian movement that began in England in the 17th Century. In its early days, Quakerism faced opposition and persecution. However, it continued to expand, extending into many parts of the world, especially the
among friends: winter 2022
Americas and most recently in Africa. Today there are estimated to be 300,000 active Quakers around the globe.
gather in silent reflection. ––––––––––
Early Quakers revered simplicity in dress, action, and speech. Now archaic “plain language” included the use of thee, thy and thine in place of you, your and yours. They believed so strongly in equality, they addressed even nobility or royalty in this familiar way—sometimes to their peril, losing a tongue, their freedom, or their very lives. They were also widely viewed as pacifists, rooted in the radical Peace Testimony of 1660, the legal recognition of Conscientious Objector status, and their ongoing lobbying and demonstrations against war and gun violence.
Similar to the Meeting for Worship, Quakerism utilizes a Meeting for Business as a general forum for decision-making, tapping into many Quaker beliefs and practices to reach a shared outcome.
Our school adopts these broader Quaker traditions in our Quaker Testimonies: Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Community, Equality, and Stewardship (SPICES). We have also adopted the practice of Meeting for Worship, a weekly opportunity for the community to
Quaker Decision Making Process
Meetings for Business begin with a period of silence, providing a moment for reflection and grounding before issues are raised. “Claiming a moment” provides a pause before individuals start in on their discussion and discernment. As Quakerism stresses equality, traditional meetings have no positional authority from title or tenure. Central to the process is the belief that “there is that of God in everyone,” (Note: many schools today, including SFFS, use Light or Inner Light here instead of “God”). Leaders are clerks of meetings, not chairs, and they attempt to guide the collective body toward unity.
