Short answer to: Are Quakers a church?

Very short answer: Yes and No.

On the one hand, business meetings ('Meetings for Worship for Business' in the full terminology) are referred to e.g. in Advices & Queries 14 as 'meetings for church affairs', and the word 'church' occurs frequently in official writings up to the present.

On the other hand, local meetings in the UK tend to avoid the word 'church' at least partly because of its connections to traditional creeds and ceremonies.

The clear attitude of the first Quakers was that the church was the body of believers, not any building; and from the early days they refused to pay church tithes or make any contribution to the repair of 'steeplehouses' or the upkeep of the 'hireling ministry' (i.e. paid clergy). (From Dandelion, An Introduction to Quakerism, Cambridge 2007)

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