Tag: god

British Quaker, American Friend: Reflections on BYM from across the Atlantic

Teran Chapis: British Quaker; American Friend, shares an extract of their report to Hartford Monthly Meeting in Connecticut, United States regarding Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM), which took place over four days in May.

A recurring theme in conversations between Friends [at BYM] was our different understandings of God. Friends identified themselves as atheist or theist Quakers, and asked each other about their individual unique beliefs. One Friend from North Scotland said goodbye to me in the wee hours of Saturday morning by passionately declaring that I should minister the next day because: “I am excited to hear the Lord speak through you.” When he left the room I thought about it for a moment and said: “He doesn’t believe in God.”

At Meeting for Worship at Friends House the Sunday before Yearly Meeting, a Friend ministered that when she described a conference about God to a fellow Quaker, where a group of Friends organised all their thoughts about how they understand God as a concept, he asked her: “Well does God understand you as a concept? Does God believe in you?”

The following evening, on the walk home from a British Sign Language event, a Friend asked me “why are you crying?”

And I told them: “I promise these are happy tears. I’ve just been thinking about how you said tonight that you don’t believe in God because you don’t believe that help will ever come. Because people like you are my proof of God. You are the help that came. You, my Friend, are my evidence for God.”

I thought about the ministry that I had heard at Friends House the previous morning, and told them: “Maybe asking the right question is more important than having the right answer. Maybe the question isn’t whether or not we believe in God, but whether or not people see God in you.”

And through a combination of American Sign Language, British Sign Language, lip reading, telepathy, and hugs, we cried and discussed this as we made the trek home through the dark and the rain of North London.

It felt like a prank from the universe when my first Deaf friend after studying ASL uses British Sign Language. But I’m slowly relearning to sign with a different grammar structure and with lip patterns. When learning to sign BSL with fellow signing Friends in London, I learned that 1.) the request for a sign language interpreter at Britain Yearly Meeting this year was denied, and 2.) there aren’t widely used official signs for the word “Quaker” or Quaker concepts. To fill in the gaps, we signed “Quaker” by shaking the BSL fingerspelling sign for Q, or sometimes, inspired by the name and profile picture of a Quaker groupchat, we use the BSL sign for geese… meaning “Quacker.”

When I recounted the events of BYM to a lowercase f-friend, he said that once again, the strangest coincidences seem to happen to me. Years ago, before I ever stepped foot into a Quaker meeting, developing a disability inspired me to spend some forced sick time studying ASL. Little did I know what I was really preparing for.

Inspired by conversations at Britain Yearly Meeting 2026, I am currently researching the history, experiences, and signs used by Deaf and signing Friends in Britain and the United States (including hearing, nonverbal Friends), and working on research proposals for research master’s/fellowships to conduct a formal study. If anyone is interested in connecting with me about this topic, or connecting with Deaf/signing Friends, don’t hesitate to reach out to me at teranriley@gmail.com!”

– Teran Chapis

London Young Adult Quaker Meeting, Young Friends in Britain

Inspired to attend Yearly Meeting? Yearly meeting now takes place over multiple sessions, with the most recent having taken place in Manchester last month. The last session for 2026 scheduled for 21 November in London. You can register to attend here: https://www.quaker.org.uk/ym/bookings. We hope to see you there!

12 August, 2026
Online Worship In North Wales

Could London Have an Online Quaker Meeting? Lessons from Around the World

When North Wales Quakers recently set up a fully online Local Meeting, it raised an intriguing possibility. If a Quaker meeting can exist entirely online in North Wales, could the same idea work in London?

At first glance it might seem unnecessary. London already has many meetings. But what opportunities could something like that unlock? Ressearch into digital worship suggests that there’s lot’s to be excited about when exploring new ways to grow and support our faith.

What other traditions have discovered

Across faith communities, a clear pattern has emerged. VR Church – a congregation that meets entirely in virtual reality – draws people with disabilities, social anxiety, and participants from dozens of countries. Many report that the anonymity of avatars makes spiritual conversation easier, not harder. Jewish communities experimenting with online minyanim during the pandemic found that participants joined from across different countries, creating global prayer communities that would never have existed in a physical synagogue. Buddhist groups like Triratna have run online meditation and study groups for years, finding that digital spaces help people build strong practice habits even when they live far from centres.

There’s a common thread through these examples: online worship tends to reach people who struggle to access physical congregations – those with disabilities, carers, people in remote locations, and those exploring faith cautiously or privately.

But it also has real limits. Informal conversation, spontaneous pastoral care, and the emotional texture of physical presence are harder to replicate online.

Why Quakers may be unusually well suited to digital worship

Among religious traditions, Quaker worship may be particularly compatible with online space. Meeting for Worship relies on shared silence, reflection, and attentiveness to the Spirit – minimal ritual, no performance. During the pandemic, many Friends discovered these elements translated surprisingly well to Zoom. Quakerism is an “experimental,” religion, and there are suprising ways to find the spirit of God in the every day.

Online Quaker worship may not feel like a diluted version of the real thing. It may simply be a different way of gathering in the same silence.

A quiet opportunity for London

In a city as large and fast-moving as London, geography is a real barrier. A meeting that requires an hour of travel each way is simply inaccessible to many people: frequent travellers, those on the edges of the city, people with caring responsibilities, or seekers who want a low-threshold way to explore Quakerism.

The North Wales experiment invites London Friends to ask if we could we do something similar. Not as a replacement for our meeting houses, but as an additional doorway into our shared, simple testimony.

If this idea interests you, or if you’d like to explore what starting an online Local Meeting in London might involve, then challenge yourself to live adventurously. What could you create?

10 March, 2026

Tag: god

British Quaker, American Friend: Reflections on BYM from across the Atlantic

Online Worship In North Wales