Periodically, the Athens Friends Meeting wants to make it known that all who wish to are welcome to join us in worship. We affirm that people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender are welcome at the Athens Friends Meeting. All are invited to attend and, if so led, request membership. Membership includes the privilege of marriage under the care of the Meeting.
The Athens Friends Meeting is part of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). From the Society’s beginnings in the 1600s, Friends have sought a religious experience that is personal — free of doctrinal creeds, of institutional hierarchy and of ceremony.
For Friends, religion is more than believing: It is doing. Actions that Friends have taken and are taking include: supporting peace and non-violence and opposing war; supporting prison reform, freedom, and universal suffrage and opposing slavery and institutional racism; supporting earth care and opposing destruction of nature and the gifts of the world. Friends recognize that religious understandings are not static, but that they grow deeper over time and with experience.
Athens Friends’ Sunday worship begins with group singing at 9:45 a.m. and is followed at 10 a.m. by unprogrammed worship, during which people share out of the silence as they are led by the Spirit. Meetings are held at the Meeting House, 22 Birge Drive, Chauncey, Ohio. Childcare is provided.
Over the course of each month, the worship hour is followed by either a discussion forum, a business meeting or a potluck lunch.
Beth is clerk for the Athens Friends.
