Iowa City Friends Meeting
Our History in a Nutshell
The Quaker movement began in England in the mid-seventeenth century as a religious protest against the hollow formalism which many saw in the established Church of the time. George Fox, born in 1624, was the first leader of the movement. Early Quakers rejected outward aids to worship: rituals, music, and elaborately decorated churches.They believed that the love and power of God were available to all people without the help of clergy or sacraments. They stressed the potential good, the "Light of Christ" in all persons. They lived simply. Since they believed acts should be in harmony with principles, they refused military service, strove to practice absolute integrity, and refused to give false honor to any person. They called themselves the Religious Society of Friends.
In 1656, the first Friends arrived in the American Colonies seeking freedom from persecution and a chance to spread the truth they had found. Friends began settling in Iowa before the Civil War, gradually organizing themselves according to tradition, into Monthly Meetings and quarterly Meetings under an "umbrella" Yearly Meeting. In the 1860's a group of Friends withdrew from Iowa Yearly Meeting and became the Iowa Yearly Meeting (Conservative), thus creating two yearly Meetings. Iowa Yearly Meeting (Conservative) now reaches beyond Iowa to Minnesota, Wisconsin, Nebraska, and Missouri. The Iowa City Monthly Meeting belongs to Iowa Yearly Meeting (Conservative) along with ten other Monthly Meetings in the region.
Iowa City Monthly Meeting was organized in 1950, by the Kuhn and Michener families. For many years, the group met in The University of Iowa Memorial Union. In 1965, the Monthly Meeting joined Iowa Yearly Meeting's Hickory Grove Quarter which included the West Branch and Whittier meetings. Although there is no longer a formal Quarterly Meeting, Friends in the region still meet twice yearly for worship and fellowship at one of three locations. This group is now called The Eastern Iowa Gathering of Friends.
| We
are a
member of the Iowa Yearly Meeting (Conservative) |