Religious Society of Friends, branch unspecified
Religious Society of Friends, branch unspecified belongs to the Friends (Quaker) family of churches.
Governance: congregational.
Religious Society of Friends, branch unspecified reports 1,028 congregations in the United States (RCMS 2020 (sum of 7 rows — our arithmetic, not an RCMS-published total), 2020).
Friends General Conference, Friends United Meeting, Evangelical Friends and Conservative Friends differ substantially; "quaker" names none of them.
Friends General Conference 374, Evangelical Friends Church International 235, Friends United Meeting 186, dually aligned meetings 130, Independent Yearly Meetings 65, Conservative Yearly Meetings 32, Unaffiliated Meetings 6.
The Religious Society of Friends: the movement George Fox began in 1650s England, convinced that Christ has come to teach his people himself — divided since the 1800s into branches whose worship ranges from total silence to gospel preaching.
Heritage
George Fox, despairing of the clergy of his day, heard in 1647 a voice saying there is one, even Christ Jesus, who can speak to thy condition, and from 1652 the movement spread from northwest England with astonishing speed despite brutal persecution. Friends reached America early — William Penn founded Pennsylvania in 1682 as a holy experiment in religious liberty. American Quakerism divided in the nineteenth century: the Hicksite separation of 1827, then Gurneyite and Wilburite partings, yielding today's branches — liberal unprogrammed Friends, pastoral Friends United Meeting, Evangelical Friends, and small Conservative yearly meetings. Together, RCMS 2020 rows for the seven Friends groupings sum to 1,028 congregations.
Theological family
The founding conviction is direct, unmediated encounter with the living Christ — the inward light — with no outward sacraments and no clergy-laity divide, expressed today across a spectrum from evangelical confession to liberal universalism depending on branch.
Who decides what
The meeting is the church: local monthly meetings, regional quarterly meetings, and yearly meetings, deciding not by vote but by discerning the sense of the meeting; associations (FGC, FUM, EFCI) serve the branches without ruling them.
What a first-time visitor would find
Depends entirely on the branch, and a visitor should know which door they are entering: unprogrammed meetings worship in open silence with no pastor, anyone speaking as led; programmed Friends churches have pastors, singing, and sermons like their evangelical neighbors, often with a held silence within the service.
What it has always cared about
The peace testimony, held through every American war; plain speech and integrity — Quaker fixed prices helped invent honest retail; equality — Friends women preached from the 1650s and Quakers stood early against slavery, with John Woolman's witness and Levi Coffin's Underground Railroad work; and silence as a form of prayer.
Its gift to the wider church
Conscience, centuries early: abolition, prison reform, women's ministry, and humanitarian relief — the American Friends Service Committee shared the 1947 Nobel Peace Prize — flowed from this small movement into the whole church's conscience, along with the recovered treasure of worshiping in silence.
Commonly confused with
The branches are confused with one another above all — "Quaker" alone reveals nothing about whether a meeting is silent or pastoral, liberal or evangelical; also confused with the Amish and Mennonites (plain peace churches of entirely different origin) and with the Shakers (unrelated); and the oatmeal trademark is not a church.
Range of views inside it
Wider than almost any family on this map: from Christ-centered evangelical Friends to nontheist members of liberal meetings, from total silence to revival preaching — the branches share history, testimonies, and method more than doctrine.
A note from the mapmakers: Nothing here may be asserted of a specific meeting, least of all which branch it belongs to — that must come from the meeting itself. The 1,028 figure is our own arithmetic across seven RCMS 2020 rows, not an RCMS-published total. Sentences drawn from this record hedge as "Friends meetings typically…" and specify the branch wherever possible.
Sources: The Quakers in America (Thomas D. Hamm, Columbia University Press) · Handbook of Denominations in the United States (Abingdon Press) · 2020 U.S. Religion Census (ASARB)
More of the Friends (Quaker) story · Find these churches on the map