Friends United Meeting (FUM) is an association of twenty-six

yearly meeting Yearly Meeting is a term used by members of the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers, to refer to an organization composed of constituent meetings or churches within a geographical area. The constituent meetings are called Monthly Meetings in ...

s of the

Religious Society of Friends Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belief in each human's abili ...

(Quakers) in

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and th ...

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

, and the

Caribbean The Caribbean (, ) ( es, El Caribe; french: la Caraïbe; ht, Karayib; nl, De Caraïben) is a region of the Americas that consists of the Caribbean Sea, its islands (some surrounded by the Caribbean Sea and some bordering both the Caribbean ...

. Its home pages states that it is "a collection of Christ-centered Quakers, embracing 34 yearly meetings and associations, thousands of local gatherings and hundreds of thousands of individuals." In addition there are several individual

monthly meetings In the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), a monthly meeting or area meeting is the basic governing body, a congregation which holds regular meetings for business for Quakers in a given area. The monthly meeting is responsible for the administ ...

and organizations that are members of FUM; FUM's headquarters is in

Richmond, Indiana Richmond is a city in eastern Wayne County, Indiana. Bordering the state of Ohio, it is the county seat of Wayne County and is part of the Dayton, OH Metropolitan Statistical Area In the 2010 census, the city had a population of 36,812. Situ ...

, and has offices in

Kisumu Kisumu ( ) is the third-largest city in Kenya after the capital, Nairobi, and the coastal city of Mombasa (census 2019). It is the third-largest city after Kampala and Mwanza in the Lake Victoria Basin. Apart from being an important p ...

Kenya ) , national_anthem = " Ee Mungu Nguvu Yetu"() , image_map = , map_caption = , image_map2 = , capital = Nairobi , coordinates = , largest_city = Nairobi , ...

. Friends United Meeting is a member of the National Council of Churches in the United States of America. There are five other branches within American Quakerism, two of them represented by parallel organizations ( Friends General Conference and Evangelical Friends Church International), the third ( Central Yearly Meeting of Friends), the fourth ( Conservative Friends), and the fifth (

Beanite Quakerism Beanite Quakerism refers to the independent tradition of Quakerism started by Quaker ministers Joel and Hannah Bean in the western United States in the late 19th century, and in a more specific sense refers to the three Western yearly meetings th ...

), the fourth and the fifth having no single unifying organization. Of these six branches, FUM has the largest number of individual members. In 2005, there were 42,680 members in 427 congregations in the United States. The Friends United Meeting is responsible for much of the growth of Quakerism in

and

Latin America Latin America or * french: Amérique Latine, link=no * ht, Amerik Latin, link=no * pt, América Latina, link=no, name=a, sometimes referred to as LatAm is a large cultural region in the Americas where Romance languages — languages derived ...

History

15 years after the signing on the Richmond Declaration in 1887, Five Years Meeting was established in 1902 by a collection of orthodox yearly meetings. After

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

, growing desire for a more fundamentalist approach began to split Five Years Meeting. in 1926, Northwest Yearly Meeting withdrew from the organization, leading several other yearly meetings and scattered monthly meetings. In 1947, the

Association of Evangelical Friends Association may refer to: *Club (organization), an association of two or more people united by a common interest or goal * Trade association, an organization founded and funded by businesses that operate in a specific industry *Voluntary associati ...

was formed, which led in turn to the 1965 formation of the Evangelical Friends Association, a precursor to today's Evangelical Friends International, formed in 1989.http://www.nwfriends.org/what-friends-believe/historical-statement/ Northwest Yearly Meeting Historical Statement During the 1950s many yearly meetings in

reunited and became joint members of Five Years Meeting and Friends General Conference. In 1963 Five Years Meeting was renamed Friends United Meeting.

Beliefs and worship

There are two other similar organizations within Quakerism, Friends General Conference and Evangelical Friends Church International; each of these three organizations represent different branches within Quakerism, with the FGC occupying a more liberal universalist theological viewpoint and the EFCI representing an admixture of Quakerism and conservative

evangelicalism Evangelicalism (), also called evangelical Christianity or evangelical Protestantism, is a worldwide interdenominational movement within Protestant Christianity that affirms the centrality of being " born again", in which an individual expe ...

. As the largest organization of Quakers, Friends United Meeting is decidedly centrist and contains a wide range of Christian Quaker theological outlooks from very progressive and inclusive views to very conservative and traditional beliefs among individual members, Monthly Meetings or Churches, and affiliated Yearly Meetings within FUM. This has historically led to some friction within the larger organization. FUM also serves a wide range of Quaker worship styles in their Meetings for worship from unprogrammed, which is lay-led and on the basis of silence, to semi-programmed, which is pastor-led and include some elements of a traditional church service in addition to a period of open worship, to completely programmed. Friends United Meeting considers itself to be noncreedal which allows it to embrace a wide range of Christian Quaker theological viewpoints.

Friends have no creeds—no official words can substitute for a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ. These unofficial statements give a general sense of Friends’ faith. God is love and wants to communicate inwardly with everyone who is willing. Worship is spiritual and must be Spirit-led. All people are equal before God and may minister as they are led by God. Jesus Christ is our present Teacher and Lord, and we seek to conduct church affairs in unity under his guidance The Spirit of God gives guidance that is consistent with the Bible. As people respond to the Light of Christ within, their lives begin to reflect Jesus’ peace, integrity, simplicity and moral purity.

References

External links

Friends United Meeting
(Official website)
Quaker Life: - Official publication of Friends United MeetingFriends United Meeting Press:- Friends United Meeting Publishing HouseFriends United Meeting:- Association of Religion Data Archives
{{Authority control Christian organizations established in 1902 Richmond, Indiana Quaker organizations established in the 20th century Members of the National Council of Churches International bodies of Protestant denominations Members of the World Council of Churches 1902 establishments in the United States