Mental Health and Quaker Theology | Quakers & Mental Health

Early Quakers did not call themselves Quakers; they called themselves the Religious Society of Friends in the Truth (now usually shortened to the Society of Friends). The term Quaker started as a derogatory one, referencing the way that some Quakers shook while worshipping. By the nineteenth century, the term Quaker was no longer a negative one, but had become the main name that people used to refer to members of the Religious Society of Friends. However, Quakers were more likely to refer to themselves as Friends than Quakers. By the nineteenth century, Quakers had become much more respectable. As part of this transformation, the more extreme parts of early Friends’ witness disappeared from Quaker worship. The structures of Quaker Meetings and communities worked to contain and shape Friends' leadings. Especially in the 1810s and 1820s, Quakers struggled to determine the right balance between Inner Light-led worship, which could look extreme, and the more orderly worship they had begun

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• Elena Churilov