My grandparents were Quakers. I’ve been to a few of their meetings. A Quaker meeting consists of everyone in the congregation sitting silently in a room, with individuals standing up to speak at irregular and unplanned intervals. In my experience, when people stand up to speak, they talk about the things that are important in their “spiritual” lives, which, in practice, means their emotional/moral lives. God was mentioned only in passing, and, aside from these mentions of God, I don’t remember anything mystical.
Quakers? What about the God and mysticism stuff? (I was going to mention technology, but I may be incorrectly equating them with the Amish.)
Edit: Also, don’t forget the Church of Bayes.
My grandparents were Quakers. I’ve been to a few of their meetings. A Quaker meeting consists of everyone in the congregation sitting silently in a room, with individuals standing up to speak at irregular and unplanned intervals. In my experience, when people stand up to speak, they talk about the things that are important in their “spiritual” lives, which, in practice, means their emotional/moral lives. God was mentioned only in passing, and, aside from these mentions of God, I don’t remember anything mystical.
Quakers run the gamut from very conservative to explicitly atheist.
Thanks for the information—I just assumed that the inner light could be interpreted as a neurologically based reward of meditation.
As with Unitarians, there are apparently some groups of Quakers that have relinquished belief in God.