Nontheist Quakers
People who engage in Quaker practices but who do not believe in the supernatural
Nontheist Quakers (also known as nontheist Friends) are those who engage in Quaker practices and processes, but who do not necessarily believe in a theistic God or Supreme Being, the divine, the soul or the supernatural. Like traditional Quakers, also known as Friends, nontheist Friends are interested in realizing peace, simplicity, integrity, community, equality, and social justice in the Society of Friends and beyond.
Beliefs
Quakers in the unprogrammed or "silent worship" tradition of Quaker practice began to examine the significance of nontheistic beliefs in the Society of Friends during the 20th century. Non-theism among Quakers probably dates to the 1930s, when some Quakers in California branched off to form the Humanist Society of Friends (today part of the American Humanist Association), and when Henry Cadbury professed agnosticism in a 1936 lecture to Harvard Divinity School students. In 1976, a Friends General Conference Gathering hosted a Workshop for Nontheistic Friends (Quakers).
A nontheist Friends' website and nontheist Quaker study groups exist. Os Cresson began a consideration of this issue from behaviorist, natural history, materialist and environmentalist perspectives. Roots and Flowers of Quaker Nontheism is one history. Nontheist Friends draw on Quaker humanist and universalist traditions. The book Godless for God's Sake: Nontheism in Contemporary Quakerism offers critical contributions by Quakers.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Nontheist Quakers” as people who engage in Quaker practices but who do not believe in the supernatural. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as people who engage in Quaker practices but who do not believe in the supernatural. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Oct 12, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q7049628. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1936 and 1976.
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This entry incorporates text from “Nontheist Quakers” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.