Quakers - Membership

Membership

A Friend is a member of a Yearly Meeting, usually beginning with membership in a local monthly meeting. Methods for acquiring membership vary—for example, in most Kenyan yearly meetings, attenders who wish to become members are required to take part in around two years of adult education, memorising key Bible passages and learning about the history of Christianity and Quakerism. Within Britain Yearly Meeting, membership is acquired through a process of peer review where a potential member is visited by several members who present a report to the other members of the monthly meeting before a decision is reached.

Within some Friends Churches in the Evangelical Friends Church, in particular in Rwanda, Burundi and parts of the USA, an adult believers' baptism with water is optional. Within the liberal, conservative and pastoral traditions, Friends do not practice water baptism, Christening or other initiation ceremonies to admit a new member or a newborn. Children are often welcomed into the meeting at their first attendance. Formerly, children born to Quaker parents automatically became members (sometimes called Birthright membership), but this is no longer the case in many areas. Some parents apply for membership on behalf of their children, while others allow the child to decide whether to become a member when they are ready. Some meetings adopt a policy that children, some time after becoming young adults, must apply independently for membership.