Nontheist Quakers

Nontheist Quakers (also known by NtFs as nontheist Friends or NtFs) are those who affiliate with, identify with, engage in, or affirm Quaker practices and processes, but who do not necessarily believe in a theistic God, a Supreme Being, the divine, the soul or the supernatural. Like traditional Friends, nontheist Friends are interested in realizing centered peace, simplicity, integrity, community, equality, love, joy, and social justice in the Society of Friends and beyond.

Quakers in the unprogrammed tradition have recently begun to examine the significance of nontheistic beliefs in the Society of Friends, in the tradition of seeking truth. 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. The term "non-theistic" was first written in a Quaker publication in 1952 on conscientious objection. As early as 1976, a Friends General Conference Gathering hosted a well-attended Workshop for Nontheistic Friends (Quakers).

There is a nontheist Friends' website and there are nontheist Quaker study groups. Os Cresson began a recent consideration of this issue from behaviorist, natural history, materialist and environmentalist perspectives. Roots and Flowers of Quaker Nontheism is one history. Friendly nontheism also draws on Quaker humanist and universalist traditions. The book Godless for God's Sake: Nontheism in Contemporary Quakerism offers recent, critical contributions by Quakers. Some Friends engage the implications of human evolution, cognitive anthropology, evolutionary psychology, bodymind questions (esp. the 'relaxation response'), primatology, evolutionary history, evolutionary biology, biology and consensus decision-making, online especially, in terms of Quaker nontheism.

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