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Society of Friends
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Painting depicting a Quaker meeting around 1839, with men and women in plain clothing and hats seated on wooden benches in a simple meeting room. George Fox preaching Mary Dyer Portrait of William Penn wearing a black wide-brimmed hat, white cravat, and brown coat, with shoulder-length white hair, shown from the chest up. Elias Hicks Exterior of a yellow house with one white house on either side. George Fox
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Illustration. Montage of Independence Hall, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Constitution of the United States and headshots of Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington.
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Painting depicting a Quaker meeting around 1839, with men and women in plain clothing and hats seated on wooden benches in a simple meeting room.
Quaker meeting Quaker worship meeting, painting c. 1839.

Society of Friends

religious group
Also known as: Friends Church, Quakers
Written by
Richard T. Vann
Professor of History and Letters, Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut; Senior Editor, History and Theory. Author of The Social Development of English Quakerism, 1655–1755 and others.
Richard T. Vann
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Britannica Editors
Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree....
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Society of Friends, Christian group that arose in mid-17th-century England, dedicated to living in accordance with the “Inner Light,” or direct inward apprehension of God, without creeds, clergy, or other ecclesiastical forms. As most powerfully expressed by the movement’s founder George Fox (1624–91), Friends felt that their “experimental” discovery of God would lead to the purification of all of Christendom. It did not. But Friends founded one American colony (Pennsylvania) and were dominant for a...

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