Quakers in Europe
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Belgium and Luxembourg
Quaker Meetings are held in Brussels and Luxembourg, with occasional meetings in Antwerp and Ghent. The first Meeting for Business was held in Brussels in March 1975.[1]
Quaker Council for European Affairs
The Quaker Council for European Affairs (QCEA) is an international not-for-profit organisation which seeks to promote the values and political concerns of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) at the European level. It undertakes research and advocacy in the fields of peacebuilding and human rights policy, notably in relation to the European Union and the Council of Europe. Founded in 1979 by Quakers who worked in the European institutions, it is based in Brussels, Belgium, and is registered under Belgian law.
Quaker House Brussels
Quaker House, located on the Square Ambiorix, Brussels, was acquired shortly after QCEA's foundation. Quaker House Brussels serves as the main Meeting House for Quakers in Belgium and Luxembourg. The building itself, built in the 1890s by the architect Georges Hobé, is a well-preserved example of
Britain
There were 23,860 Quakers in Britain in 2015.
Well-known British Quakers: See: List of British Quakers
Denmark
Finland
France
Well-known French Quakers include: Ferdinand Barlow, Stephen Grellet and Jeanne Henriette Louis
Germany
Well-known German Quakers include:
Hungary
Ireland
Italy
Well-known Italian Quakers include: Pier Cesare Bori
Netherlands
Seventeenth century
Quakers first arrived in the Netherlands in 1655 when the nephew of William Ames and Margaret Fell, William Caton, took up residence in Amsterdam. The Netherlands were seen by Quakers as a refuge from persecution in England and they perceived themselves to have affinities with the Dutch Collegiants and Mennonites who had sought sanctuary in the country. However, Quakers still encountered persecution similar to that from which they had hoped to escape in England. This did not prevent the start of preaching tours however, and in 1661, Ames and Caton visited the County Palatine of the Rhine and met with Charles I Louis, Elector Palatine at Heidelberg.
Eighteenth century
The attraction of a life free from persecution in the New World led to a gradual Dutch Quaker migration. English Quakers in Rotterdam were permitted to transport people and cargo by ship to English colonies without restriction and throughout the 18th century many Dutch Quakers emigrated to Pennsylvania. There were an estimated 500 Quaker families in Amsterdam in 1710, but by 1797 there were only seven Quakers left in the city. Isabella Maria Gouda (1745–1832), a granddaughter of Jan Claus, took care of the meeting house on Keizersgracht, but was evicted shortly afterwards.
The Quaker presence disappeared from Dutch life by the early 1800s until its re-emergence the 1920s, with Netherlands Yearly Meeting established in 1931.
Well-known Dutch Quakers include:
Norway
There is a vibrant history of Quakerism in Norway. Unlike in many other European countries Quaker communities survived migration and persecution for over three hundred years. Norway Yearly Meeting holds meetings in
.Early beginnings
Quakers first visited Norway in the 1650s when Quaker faith was still in its infancy. British Quakers record a ship stranded in Bergen in 1666 which was deporting Quakers to British colonies. Laurence Fullove, one of the Quakers aboard the ship reports that tracts were handed out to curious citizens of Bergen. That same year, in 1666, the first Quaker tract in Danish and Norwegian was published: John Higgin's The Lord's Message to All Persons who confess their faith in God.[3]
Nineteenth century
The Society of Friends in Norway started in 1814, with the highest concentration of Quakers living in and around Stavanger. In 1819, Quakers Knut and Anne Halvorsen had their marriage recognised and were allowed to reside in Norway. Other named Quakers were allowed to live in the Stavanger area by the Norwegian Royal Decrees of 1826 and 1828, on the condition that they reported births, deaths, and marriages to the authorities and did not proselytise. During this time two Quakers, Elias Tastad and Knut Halvorsen, were prosecuted for burying their deceased family members in un-consecrated soil. During the 1825 mass migration of Norwegians to America, the numbers of Norwegian Quakers in the country diminished by a third.
In 1846, the Society of Friends became the first officially registered and legal religious society outside the state church of Norway. It was not until 1956 that other groups (the
during the 1840s. Still a relatively small population, Quakers numbered 473 in the 1865 census.During the latter half of the nineteenth century, Quakers were very active in the Norwegian peace movement, which threatened their status as an organisation. After the Napoleonic wars, Norway maintained conscription,
In 1898, the Norwegian Society of Friends became a private religious organisation, which meant that the organisation was no longer subject to the act on dissenters. The society accepted new members and was able to continue to carry out funerals and marriages.
Twentieth century
In 1909, a group of Norwegian Friends attended London Yearly Meeting and in 1920, several Norwegian Friends attended the first worldwide conference of Friends. The peace testimonies prompted a new movement of collections and campaigning in Norway, which has continued to the present day. In 1937, Ole Olden established the periodical Kvekeren which was issued across Scandinavian countries.
During World War II a number of Norwegian Quakers, including Olden and Lund, were imprisoned by the occupying German forces for resistance work. Lund was active in the Norwegian underground movement protecting Norwegian Jews and refugees and in 1947 she became the first member of the Oslo Worship Group to become a Quaker. Olden was later nominated for the 1957 Nobel Peace Prize. Lindgrov School was established by Norwegian Friends in 1959, contributing ideas to national policies concerning training and work as aspects of care for people with learning disabilities. In 1975, a Monthly Meeting was established in Kristiansand.
Notable Quakers
Well-known Norwegian Quakers include Elise M. Boulding, Asbjørn Kloster, and Sigrid Helliesen Lund.
Russia
There are weekly Quaker meetings in
First Quakerism and Persecution
The first Quaker connection to Russia came in 1656 when British Quaker
Further formal Quaker contact with Russia came in the 1760s, when
Nineteenth century
When
In 1854, British Friends sent a mission to
An important facet of Quaker involvement with Russia which began at this time was war and famine relief, first carried out in the Russian
Nineteenth century culture
The image of the Pietist "good Quaker" lingered in the Russian cultural imagination well into the nineteenth century and became especially noticeable in the second half of the reign of Alexander I, when the emperor was increasingly involved in mysticism. The view of the "good Quaker" marked a religious awakening, fully manifested in Russian Martinism, it found increased development in the 1820s.[10]
Onegin, the protagonist of Alexander Pushkin's 1823 novel Eugene Onegin refers to the Quakers as one of a multitude of social guises he may adopt:
'Has he grown tame at last, and mellow? / Or does he follow his old bent / And as of yore play the odd fellow? / Pray whom now does he represent? / Would he be Melmoth or Childe Harold, / Or as a Quaker go appareled, / A bigot seem – a patriot – / A cosmopolitan – or what?'[11]
Twentieth century
During and after
The small Quaker office set up in Moscow in connection with these activities managed to maintain cooperation with the new Soviet authorities in the field of health through the 1920s, and survived until 1931. It became the last representative of any Western religious organisation in Moscow as
A remarkable pictorial record survives from this period in the sketches made in 1923 by Richard Kilbey of Wells-next-the Sea Meeting, when he and his brother Ernest were relief workers in South-Eastern Russia, in the town of Buzuluk. One sketch shows the Quaker team arriving back on a sledge at the house headquarters of the Quaker unit. Across the road was a malaria clinic in a building showing the marks of recent fighting between Red and White units in the Civil War.[16]
Under Stalin, Friends were able to make formal visits to the Soviet Union in 1930, 1948 and 1949; otherwise contacts were limited to a few unusual and energetic individuals. After
The present (2015) Moscow Monthly Meeting grew out of a small local group which began to meet in Moscow in the manner of Friends in the late 1980s. In 1983, Russian historian Tatiana Pavlova had come into contact with British Quakers. Over the next few years, occasional visits and meetings for worship gradually developed into a worship group initially hosted in Tatiana's apartment.[15] After the fall of the Soviet Union the meeting outgrew her home; it moved to the basement of a Russian Orthodox church, later to a school, to the premises of Friends House Moscow, and eventually to larger and more public quarters. It is now (2015) the largest Quaker group in Russia.[15]
The dissolution of the Soviet Union and the great hardships suffered by the Russian people in the 1990s offered new challenges to Western Friends. Moscow Representatives of Quaker Peace and Service (Britain) were re-appointed in 1991, and in 1992 Pacific Yearly Meeting (USA) asked representatives to consider the Russian relationship. A few years later, Friends from Alaska Yearly Meeting began pastoral visits to their ethnic brothers and sisters in eastern Siberia, and American Friends participated in the material aid programme of the ecumenical Alaskan Friends of Chukotka. Friends House Moscow opened on 1 January 1996.
Well-known Russian Quakers include: Nikolai Leskov and Tatiana Pavlova (Historian at the Russian Academy of Sciences).[17]
Sweden
As in all Scandinavian countries, there were Quaker settlements in Sweden from the 1660s well into the 1800s. Small groups of Friends are known to have existed in Sweden in the 19th century under the care of Norway Yearly Meeting. However, they were prohibited by the Swedish government during the nineteenth century, as no alternatives where allowed to the state church (the Church of Sweden). Sweden Yearly Meeting arose spontaneously from a small worship group which met during World War I. In 1937, a number of Swedish Quakers (including sv:Emilia Norlind) formed Sweden Yearly Meeting, which was recognised by the government as an independent religious society outside the State Church. Since 1956, Swedish Friends have had their own Meetinghouse in Stockholm called Kväkargården. About seventy kilometres Nirth of Stockholm, the rural Svartbäcken is used for general meetings for business, retreats and children's summer camps. Samfundsrådet, a general meeting for business, meets twice a year to carry on business between yearly meetings.[18]
Well-known Swedish Quakers include Emilia Fogelklou, Jeanna Oterdahl, Elin Wägner, Per Sundberg (sv), and Gunnar Sundberg (sv).
Switzerland
Swiss Quakers hold a Monthly Meeting in
.Quaker meetings in Switzerland began with individuals who discovered a close affinity to the spiritual quest and ideals of Quakers. They met through their involvement in peace and reconciliation,
Well-known Swiss Quakers include:
.Pan-European Quaker Organisation
Cross-continental organisation has been central to the spread and establishment of Quakerism. The early Quakers were prolific in communication and dissemination of Quaker material, which led to a significant number of European countries having some kind of Quaker presence in the seventeenth century, even if small in number.
In 1693 William Penn wrote an essay entitled Towards the Present and Future Peace of Europe by the Establishment of a European Diet, Parliament or Estate. In this early tract, Penn wrote:
- Peace in Europe may be maintained by forming a Sovereign Parliament of the European states to collectively decide disputes and unite as one strength in enforcing decisions.
- All of the European states including Russia and Turkey should be included in the Diet with votes equivalent to the value of their territory.
- States will still maintain their sovereignty over their internal affairs.
- Bloodshed would be prevented, and towns and property not destroyed.
- There must be a sovereign impartial authority to settle disputes which is greater than the parties in conflict.
- Travel between the states would be free and easy, and personal friendships could develop between peoples of different countries.
- Princes would not have to marry for political and diplomatic reasons but could establish unions based on sincere love.[1][20]
Since Penn's early attempts at proselytism for a pan-European organisation, (one of the
numerous Quaker organisations were created to bring Quakers across Europe together.In 1920, the first Worldwide Conference of Quakers was held in London, with 936 delegates in attendance from across the world. Subsequently, three organisations were established which continue to involve European Quakers to a great extent:
- Quaker United Nations Office in Geneva and New York (c. 1920)[23]
- Friends World Committee for Consultation (1937)
- Quaker Council for European Affairs (1979)
Clerk | Date | Yearly Meeting |
---|---|---|
Regnar Halfden-Neilsen | 1939–1948 | Denmark |
W. H. Marwick | 1949–1952 | Scotland |
Norah Douglas | 1953–1955 | Northern Ireland |
Sigrid H. Lund | 1956–1963 | Norway |
Heinrich Carstens | 1964–1970 | West Germany |
Gunnar Sundberg | 1971–1973 | Sweden |
Madelaine Jequier | 1974–1976 | Switzerland |
John Ward | 1977–1985 | Switzerland |
Erica Vere | 1986–1991 | Britain |
Ena McGeorge | 1992–1996 | Britain |
Egil Hovdenak | 1996–1997 | Norway |
Marianne Ijspeert | 1998–1999 | Netherlands |
Anita Wuyts | 2000–2006 | Belgium |
Marit Kromberg | Current | Norway |
See also
- Britain Yearly Meeting
- Yearly Meeting
- Quaker Council for European Affairs
- Quaker United Nations Office
References
- ^ a b Wuyts, Anita. (2004) From QIAR to QCEA: On the occasion of the 25th Anniversary of the Quaker Council for European Affairs 46.
- ^ "Patterns of Membership", Britain Yearly Meeting.
- ^ Aarek, Hans Eirik, (2002) "Quakers in Norway", Tidsskriftet Kvekeren, (1) 4.
- ^ "Forsvaret"
- ^ Aarek, Hans Eirek (2007). "Conscription and Conscientious Objection in the Experience of Norwegian Friends", Quaker Studies, 11(1).
- ^ JSTOR 24658426. p. 251.
- ^ Gur'ev, V. V. (1919) Russian Maidens who suffered as Quakers: a chapter in the religious history of Russia in the early XVIIIth century, London: Headley Bros.
- ^ Prodolzhenie Tserkovnago Slovaria, 122–126.
- ^ a b "Famine Relief Work in Russia 1891–1929", Quakers in the World.
- ^ Tsapina (1997), p. 277.
- ^ Eugene Onegin, VIII
- ^ Mahnke-Devlin, Julia (2005). "Britische Migration nach Russland im 19. Jahrhundert: Integration – Kultur – Alltagsleben", Otto Harrassowitz Verlag.
- ^ Tavis, Anna A. Rilke's Russia: A Cultural Encounter, Northwestern University Press, 67.
- JSTOR 41944423.
- ^ a b c d e "Quakers in Russia", Friends House Moscow.
- ^ "Exhibition of Richard Kilbey: Samara", FWCC: Europe and Middle East.
- ^ Spencer, M. (1995) "Interview with Tatiana Pavlova".
- ^ "Sweden Yearly Meeting"
- ^ "Switzerland Yearly Meeting"
- S2CID 41124474.
- ^ Penn, William; Andrew R. Murphy (2002). "The Political Writings of William Penn". Liberty Fund
- ^ Archibugi, Daniele. "William Penn: The Englishman who invented the European Parliament", openDemocracy.
- ^ "QUNO Timeline"
- ^ FWCC: "Friends Around the World", 95.
External links
Quaker groups in Europe with a web presence:
- Belgium and Luxemburg
- Denmark
- Finland
- France
- Germany and Quaekerhilfe service organisation
- Hungary
- Ireland including Northern Ireland
- Italy
- Netherlands
- Norway
- Russia
- Sweden
- Switzerland
- United Kingdom excluding Northern Ireland
- Europe & Middle East Young Friends
- Annual Report of FWCC/EMES for 2005
- Quaker Council for European Affairs: Brussels-based lobbying body: "The Quaker Council for European Affairs (QCEA) was founded in 1979 to promote the values of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in the European context. Our purpose is to express a Quaker vision in matters of peace, human rights, and economic justice."