Are you a Quaker but do not know it?
Come experience Quaker meeting for worship and find out! We gather together for a traditional Quaker meeting for worship on Sunday mornings at 10 a.m. and Wednesday evenings at 6 p.m. at our historic meeting house in downtown New Bedford. We welcome visitors, and you don’t have to dress up.
Quakers, formally known as the Religious Society of Friends, are a denomination committed to peace, simplicity, integrity, equality, and sustainability. We believe in listening for inward guidance and seeking a direct experience of the Divine through worship that is mostly, but not entirely, silent.
There is no pastor at a traditional, “unprogrammed” Quaker meeting like ours, and the silence during meeting for worship is broken only when a Friend feels a Divine prompting to give a spontaneous vocal message to the group (or when someone forgot to turn their cellphone off). Because it includes no preplanned sermon or series of rituals, Quaker meeting is always an adventure!
Quakers have a long history in New Bedford; our meeting was launched in 1792, but Quakers were living in what is now New Bedford even before the town was formally established.
Our address:
83 Spring Street,
New Bedford, MA 02740
Our meetings for worship are held every
SUNDAY from 10-11 AM
WEDNESDAY from 6-7 PM
Come discover Quakerism!
A group of New Bedford Quakers
Quotes By and About Quakers
“Walk cheerfully over the earth, answering that of God in every one.”–George Fox, founder of Quakerism, writing in 1656
“Deep within us all there is an amazing inner sanctuary of the soul, a holy place, a Divine Center, a speaking Voice, to which we may continually return….It is a dynamic center, a creative Life that presses to birth within us. It is a Light Within that illumines the face of God and casts new shadows and new glories upon the human face. It is a seed stirring to life if we do not choke it. It is the Shekinah of the soul, the Presence in the midst. Here is the Slumbering Christ, stirring to be awakened, to become the soul we clothe in earthly form and action.” —Quaker writer Thomas R. Kelly, in A Testament of Devotion
“One never-to-be-forgotten Sunday morning, I found myself one of a company of silent worshipers, who were content to sit down together without words, that each one might feel after and draw near to the divine Presence….My whole soul was filled with the unutterable peace of the undisturbed opportunity for communion with God…”– Quaker writer Caroline Stephen, in Quaker Strongholds
“My first afternoon, on reaching New Bedford, was spent in visiting the wharves and viewing the shipping. The sight of the broad brim and the plain, Quaker dress, which met me at every turn, greatly increased my sense of freedom and security. “I am among the Quakers,” thought I, “ and am safe.”-–Frederick Douglass, describing his arrival in New Bedford in 1838 after escaping enslavement. In Douglass’ day, Quakers were known for their staunch anti-slavery stance, and that contributed to his sense of safety in New Bedford.
