Short answer to: Who can come to a Quaker meeting?

Very short answer: Anyone who is interested in a basically silent meeting for worship.

The newcomer needs to understand what will happen at the meeting (see here for an introduction to the Meeting for Worship). At every meeting there will be someone at the door to greet those who come in, and make sure that visitors and newcomers are shown around and given sufficient information to enable them to understand what will take place in the next hour or so.

A fundamental Quaker commitment is to respond to "that of God in everyone" which of course includes visitors.

A few short sentences from Quaker Faith & Practice illustrate this openness:

One of life's hardest lessons is that there is no justification for expecting that our neighbour is to traverse precisely the same path as that which we ourselves have followed... (10.26)

Our vision of the truth has to be big enough to include other people's truth as well as our own. (10.28)

Friends are not about building walls but about taking them down. (10.31)

Why, I ask myself, did I go to worship with those rather small and not very distinguished groups of people? Surely it was that sitting among these quite ordinary people, to most of whom I remained a stranger and a foreigner for some months, I sensed an experience of belonging - of community. A true Friends' meeting for worship - drawing individuals with varieties of temperament, talent and background - always manages to engender a climate of belonging, of community, which is infectious and creative... (10.32)

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