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Short answer to the question: Do Quakers always meet in silence?


Very short answer: Yes.  (But spoken ministry is often also contributed.)
(This applies to British Quakers; in some other parts of the world Quaker meetings are quite organised and full of activity - they are called "programmed" meetings - but even then there is some space for silence.)

The final sentence of Advices & Queries number 8 reads:
"We seek a gathered stillness in our meetings for worship so that all may feel the power of God's love drawing us together and leading us."

The book Quaker Faith & Practice has much to say about silence. Two short extracts follow here. See more under the question about Quaker "meeting for worship".

2.16: [The early Friends] made the discovery that silence is one of the best preparations for communion [with God] and for the reception of inspiration and guidance. Silence itself, of course, has no magic. It may be just sheer emptiness, absence of words or noise or music. It may be an occasion for slumber, or it may be a dead form. But it may be an intensified pause, a vitalised hush, a creative quiet, an actual moment of mutual and reciprocal correspondence with God. Rufus Jones, 1937

2.01: Worship is the response of the human spirit to the presence of the divine and eternal, to the God who first seeks us. The sense of wonder and awe of the finite before the infinite leads naturally to thanksgiving and adoration. Silent worship and the spoken word are both parts of Quaker ministry. The ministry of silence demands the faithful activity of every member in the meeting. As, together, we enter the depths of a living silence, the stillness of God, we find one another in 'the things that are eternal', upholding and strengthening one another.



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