Friends United Meeting

Friends United Meeting
ClassificationProtestant
OrientationCentrist (Mixed)
TheologyQuaker and Evangelical
AssociationsNational Council of Churches, World Council of Churches, Friends World Committee for Consultation
RegionWorldwide
HeadquartersRichmond, Indiana, USA
Origin1902
Congregations258 in US (2010)
Members24,826 in US (2010)
170,600 Globally
Official websitehttps://www.friendsunitedmeeting.org/

Friends United Meeting (FUM) is an association of twenty-six yearly meetings of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in North America, Africa, and the Caribbean. Its home pages states that it is "a collection of Christ-centered Quakers, embracing 34 yearly meetings and associations, thousands of local gatherings and hundreds of thousands of individuals". In addition there are several individual monthly meetings and organizations that are members of FUM; FUM's headquarters is in Richmond, Indiana, with offices in Kisumu, Kenya. Friends United Meeting is a member of the National Council of Churches in the United States of America, and is a global member of the World Council of Churches.[1]

There are five other branches within American Quakerism, two of them represented by parallel organizations[citation needed] (Friends General Conference and Evangelical Friends Church International), the third (Central Yearly Meeting of Friends), the fourth (Conservative Friends), and the fifth (Beanite Quakerism), the fourth and the fifth having no single unifying organization.

After the switching of around 7,000 Friends in California to the EFCI,[2] FUM is the second largest association of Friends in the United States. As of 2010, there were 24,826 members in 258 congregations in the United States.[3] The Friends United Meeting is responsible for much of the growth of Quakerism in Africa and Latin America. Globally, FUM has over 170,000 members, with 75 percent of the Monthly meetings being in Kenya.

FUM has meetings in the United States, Canada, Belize, Cuba, Jamaica, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. FUM is also affiliated with the only Quaker meeting in Palestine, the Ramallah Friends Meeting.[4]

  1. ^ "World Council of Churches - Religious Society of Friends: Friends United Meeting".
  2. ^ "Friends Journal - A Snapshot of Friends in the Americas". October 1, 2007.
  3. ^ "US Religious Census - Single-year report - all denominations - 2010".
  4. ^ "Middle East". Friends United Meeting.