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Contemporary Challenges
The Religious Society of Friends, as almost every other religion, has had several challenges that need to be overcome in order for the religious group to survive. Hamm lists seven contemporary challenges that trouble the religious group of Quakers today, of which two are especially important. The first issue mentioned by Hamm is the declining membership of the faith. The current number of Quakers, which is around 100,000, is even less than a few hundred years back. The steep decline in membership that happened by the beginning of the twenty-first century cannot be completely explained with social change that drove the majority of Quakers away from rural territories to the cities. Hamm cites the worshippers’ eagerness to keep their meetings small in number as one of the reasons for membership decline (153). Keeping members’ children within the faith has been also found extremely difficult. Current estimates state that approximately three quarters of Quaker children choose to leave the Church, which shows that the Religious Society of Friends has a pressing matter in connection to attracting worshippers. The second important issue of the recent decades is about sexuality, especially homosexuality. Quakers’ views on the topic depend on the particular branch of the faith; for example the Evangelical Friends (they have programmed meetings), who are the most conservative of Quakers, are vehemently opposing homosexuality (138). Unprogrammed meetings, however, are more open-minded and supportive of the issue. By 1980 the majority of unprogrammed meetings embraced gay rights. Of course, there is a connection between the aforementioned attitude and the traditional “Quaker sympathy for victims of misapplied power” (138). The same Quaker sympathy played a significant role in the way Pennsylvanian colonists approached Native Americans in the eighteenth century or in the Quaker participation concerning the abolitionist movement of the nineteenth century, not to mention the achievements of Quaker women during the first wave of feminism.
Dating back to the seventeenth century, the Religious Society of Friends has been a prominent religious group in America, having taken part in such important matters such as American-Indian affairs, abolition, or feminism. Despite contemporary challenges, this religion is here to stay and will probably continue being a quite simplistic and anti-hierarchical religious group.