By Gilbert George,
Operations Manager
Every 10 years the American Association of Religious Statisticians takes a census of all the religious bodies in the United States. FWCC collects data on Quaker Meetings and Friends’ churches so that our presence, in all its multifaceted beauty, can be accurately included in the religious landscape.
We want to thank all of the Yearly Meeting, Monthly Meeting, and Church staff and volunteers who provided us with data. We deeply appreciate your cooperation and commitment. Because of your participation we delivered data on location and membership numbers in late February, and you will have access to the full US Religions Census report in early summer of 2022.
In early October, we created a project plan and hired Keenan Lorenzato of Pacific Yearly Meeting and Philip Maurer of New England Yearly Meeting to collect the data as quickly and accurately as possible. To all the Friends who were praying for our discernment process, Thank You! These two Friends collected membership and attendance numbers from almost the entirety of Friends in the US in less than 3 months. They also helped reestablish contact with Yearly Meetings, individual meetings, and churches we had not been in contact with since before the pandemic.
The last decade has seen seismic shifts across the religious landscape in the United States, and our Society has not been immune from the cultural and economic pressures bearing down on the World. Over 1,000 Friends Meetings and Quaker Churches in the United States remain active, shining their Light in the unique way their location and call to faithfulness requires of them. If you would like to see where they are, check out FWCC Section of the Americas’ “Find Friends” page. My hope is that with your support we can extend this directory to cover our entire Section, and maybe even the World, so that we can find each other when traveling and seekers can find a meeting near them.
