Equality
The Quaker tenet of equality leads to actions that address racial justice, immigration issues, incarceration involvement, and LGBTQ+ rights and acceptance.
Racial Justice
“There are numerous Quaker testimonies, including—in alphabetical order—anti-racism, appreciation of grace, community building, equality, integrity, love, optimism, peacemaking, and social justice. They are as interrelated as the ecological system of an orchard.”
Antiracism is part of our interrelated Quaker testimonies | Dwight L. Wilson, “The Social Justice Testimony”, Friends Journal, October 1, 2014
Many Quakers in NYC have participated in antiracism trainings. A Transforming White Organizational Culture workshop in early 2025 drew over 100 Friends from New York Yearly Meeting, including many NYC Friends.
People of Color Worship and Reflection Group
The People of Color Worship & Reflection Group (“POC”) is a worship group conducted in the manner of the Religious Society of Friends and is under the care of Manhattan Monthly Meeting. POC is committed to the “open, expectant religion” envisioned by the original founders of Quakerism with an emphasis on exploring the rich spiritual heritage and traditions of People of Color in America. They currently meet monthly at Flushing Meeting.
Immigrants and Displaced persons
The Quaker Meetings on the East Coast, including NYC Quakers, recently won an injunction against the United States Department of Homeland Security. The lawsuit sought to reverse the January 2025 decision allowing ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) operations to take place inside houses of worship without a warrant. The monthly meetings in New York Yearly Meeting, including the meetings in NYC, are now protected from unwarranted ICE actions in or near their worship spaces. We hope that the Freedom of Religion rights of all faiths will soon be equally respected.
The New Sanctuary Coalition meets weekly at the Brooklyn Meetinghouse, under the care of Brooklyn's Peace and Social Action Committee. Participants learn how to develop ways to face what is threatening immigrant communities. Ravi Ragbir, immigration rights activist, lays out the issues for group discussion and brainstorming. These weekly gatherings are a place to come together, share information, and plan actions.
Incarceration
Quaker meetings for worship meetings are held in many prisons in New York State. NYC Friends help support formerly incarcerated Friends as they return home after incarceration. The Landing Strip, a program from the Quaker-originated Alternatives to Violence Project, meets monthly at Brooklyn Meeting. The group offers a welcoming hand to those who are going through the transition back to society.
Many NYC Friends are active with the New York Yearly Meeting Prisons Committee, which keeps track of the Quaker worship groups inside, arranges mailings to incarcerated Friends, and supports organizations that provide educational and reentry services to those impacted by incarceration. One of those organizations, Echoes of Incarceration, holds its afterschool and summer camp meetings in the 15th Street Meetinghouse complex.
LGBTQ+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and more)
NYC Quakers cared for rioters during the Stonewall uprising in 1969 and have been participating in the NYC Pride March every year since its beginning. Bayard Rustin, a gay civil rights activist who was an advisor to Martin Luther King, Jr., and the key organizer of the 1963 March on Washington, was an active member of the 15th Street Friends Meeting in Manhattan. In the 1990s Quakers founded the 50-bed Friends House in Rose Hill to serve people with HIV and AIDS. Morningside Meeting, the Quaker congregation that meets in the bell tower of Riverside Church, was one of the first congregations to marry a same sex couple — in 1987.
More recently, NYC Quakers united behind this statement defending transgender rights, which was sent to our legislators and to other Quaker groups:
As Friends we embrace that of God and the Light in every person and respond with dismay to the current wave of legislation that seeks to demonize trans people and deprive them of life-giving treatment and their basic human rights. We urge our representatives and politicians to support legislation protecting the rights, safety, and human dignity of trans people.
Women's Equality
Quakerism has encouraged the equal participation of men and women in its worship meetings since its founding.
Those that speak against the power of the Lord, and the Spirit of the Lord speaking in a woman, simply by reason of her sex or because she is a woman, not regarding the Seed, the Spirit, and power that speaks in her: such speak against Christ and his Church.
Margaret Fell | Womens Speaking Justified, 1666
From New York Yearly Meeting's Faith and Practice:
Friends invite everyone to participate in corporate fellowship and to share in the vocal ministry in full equality. We encourage a relationship of mutuality between men and women. We continue Friends’ witness to work for the rights of all women and men to dignity, safety, and political and economic equality.
God gives us tenderness, gentleness, strength, and courage without regard to sex. We try to sustain and bless spiritual leadings and calls to minister, regardless of gender, in all aspects of our lives. We should not allow traditional roles at work and home to interfere with such leadings.
Reproductive Rights
In July 2023, several of our meetings approved minutes (statements) on women's reproductive health issues.
An excerpt from Morningside Meeting's minute:
Friends believe that every individual has direct access to the Inward Light, which shows us our motivations and true selves, corrects us, guides us, leads us, and gives us strength to act on this guidance. We respect an individual’s decisions made in response to the promptings of the Inward Light. We acknowledge that decisions regarding family planning may be complex and should not be taken lightly. We believe that those decisions are private and to be made through individual discernment and perhaps the testing of a leading with other Friends and medical providers.
Brooklyn Meeting's minute:
After thoughtful and prayerful reflection, we approve the right of pregnant individuals to make their own decisions about whether or not to bear a child. We support the right to an abortion and birth control, which means access to the full range of reproductive health care services, regardless of ability to pay, and the right to bear and raise a child, which means the necessary economic and social policies that enable all families to raise their children well. We affirm that sexuality is a normal, healthy expression of life and God’s grace — to be treated respectfully and with loving support.
In February, 2024, Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL), after hearing from over 300 Quaker meetings (including NYC Quakers), was able to approve this statement, a new section in FCNL's World We Seek: Statement of Legislative Priorities:
III.2.7. Reproductive health and abortion. Quakers recognize that human life is sacred, and that Spirit can guide us individually and collectively. Based on these beliefs, members of the Religious Society of Friends have come to different conclusions regarding abortion. FCNL supports individual discernment in a spirit of love and truth in making reproductive healthcare decisions, as we do in other areas of conscientious moral choice. Government must ensure that people have the legal right to make these decisions. We oppose the criminalization of people seeking, undergoing, or involved in abortion services. We support equitable access to abortion services. FCNL also supports policies that reduce unwanted pregnancies by ensuring equitable access to contraception, sex education, family planning, fertility and adoption services, and support for all who decide to have children.
