Meeting for Sufferings

Meeting for Sufferings is an executive committee of Britain Yearly Meeting, the body which acts on behalf of members of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Great Britain and the Crown Dependencies. It has about 200 members who meet five times a year to make decisions when the Yearly Meeting is not in session.

Meeting for Sufferings was originally established to assess the persecution of Friends and attempt to obtain redress. Morning Meeting, a now-obsolete body of London Quakers, agreed in October 1675 to commission certain local Friends to meet four times a year for this purpose. Their efforts were mainly directed towards the suffering of imprisoned Quakers, but they also lobbied Parliament to reduce the burden of tithes and oaths. (The refusal of Friends to take oaths, based on Jesus Christ's words "Swear not at all" (Matthew 5:33 – 37), caused great difficulties with the government and courts.) Smaller weekly meetings, which continued until 1798, helped to push this process forward.

In the eighteenth century, the Meeting began to broaden its interests, campaigning against the slave trade; a Slave Trade Committee between 1783 and 1792 helped prepare the way for the Slave Trade Act 1807. Other legislative successes included the Affirmation Acts, which allowed Quakers to avoid oath-taking; however, attempts to put forward a "Quakers Tithes Bill" were fruitless.

The beginning of the nineteenth century saw a renewed interest in contact with other Quaker groups around the world, especially in continental Europe, Calcutta, and southern Africa. Even so, Meeting for Sufferings remained a London-based body until the expansion of the railways allowed Quakers from more remote parts of the country to participate. The larger membership meant that even more subcommittees could form, covering administration, libraries, and printing; and lobbying against gambling, opium and war.

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