Location, Schedule and Contacts
Who are Quakers?
What to expect in Meeting for Worship
Quaker Principles and Testimonies
Other Quaker Web Sites
Contact Us
Please contact us at (507) 452-0803.
Send email to
troberts
@hbci.com
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Winona Friends Meeting (Preparative)
(Religious Society of Friends),
Winona, MN
Quaker Principles and Testimonies
- God is directly accessible to all persons without the need of an intermediary priest
or ritual;
- There is in all persons an in-dwelling Seed or Christ or Light (early Quakers used
all these metaphors) which is of God and which, if they will but heed it, will guide them
and shape their lives in accordance with the will of God;
- True religion cannot be learned from books or set prayers, words or rituals, which
early Quakers called "empty forms," but comes only from direct experience of God, known
through the Seed or Christ or Light within;
- The Scriptures can be understood only as one enters into the Spirit which gave them
forth;
- There is an ocean of darkness and death--of sin and misery--over the world but also
an ocean of light and love, which flows over the ocean of darkness, revealing the infinite
love of God;
- The power and love of God are over all, erasing the artificial division between the
secular and religious so that all of life, when lived in the Spirit, becomes sacramental.
The traditional outward sacraments, again characterized as empty forms, are to be discarded
in favor of the spiritual reality they symbolize.
Out of the general Quaker principles enunciated above have grown some specific
applications which Friends call their testimonies. Though they manifest themselves in
a variety of ways, the testimonies are basically four:
* Equality * Peace * Simplicity * Community *
Quaker Principles as defined by George Fox, an early Quaker
(adapted from Introducing Quakers by Gordon Browne)
Excerpted from Eau Claire (WI) Monthly Meeting web page at
http://infinitejoy.com/friends
on Feb 25, 1999
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