Quakers Society of Friends Springfield

09/21/2026

🕊🕊🕊 For Quakers, commitment to peace is one of the Testimonies of our faith. Quaker pacifism is active, not passive, resisting war, oppression, and injustice through peaceful means. Friends have long held that the peaceable kingdom of heaven is possible on earth, but that it can only be brought about through love, not violence.

Every year on September 21, the United Nations' International Day of Peace brings people around the world together. Participants share a commitment to strengthen the ideals of peace within and among all nations and peoples.

One way to participate in today's International Day of Peace is to join in a minute of silence at noon. Seeing this post too late? Take a minute of silence at the start of any hour, and your prayers or thoughts for those affected by war and violence will join those of others in another time zone.

Quakers gather in silent worship year round. On Peace Day, that silence can connect us with millions of people around the world seeking the same thing.

08/25/2026

Honor her legacy of childhood literacy, mutual aid, and a deep belief in science and medicine

06/30/2026

06/29/2026

Betsy Ross, known as the woman who sewed the first American flag, was born into a Quaker family in Philadelphia and educated at a Friends school.

To her family’s dismay, she fell in love with a fellow apprentice upholsterer and eloped at the age of 21. Her husband was not Quaker, and so Ross was read out of meeting, according to the custom of the Society of Friends at that time. When her husband passed away a few years later, Ross managed their upholstery business alone, making tents, flags, and uniforms for the Continental Army. And, according to the oral history of the Ross family, George Washington brought her an unfinished design for an American flag, which she completed and sewed with stripes and stars for each of the 13 colonies.

Ross joined the Free Quakers (or Fighting Quakers), a group of Friends who set aside the pacifism of mainstream Friends in order to support the Revolution. She was originally buried at the Free Quaker burial ground on North 5th Street, then moved to another cemetery 20 years later, then moved one final time in 1975 to rest in the courtyard of what is thought to be her former home to mark America’s bicentennial.

Betsy Ross House

05/27/2026

What Ms Rachel said. 💯

To follow Jesus is to love our neighbors, feed the hungry, care for the sick, welcome the stranger, and speak the truth.

📣 Are you a Christian ready to reclaim our faith as a force for love, justice, and dignity for all?

🔗 Join us at bit.ly/ISAIAHchristian

05/04/2026

Gary Kurtz, producer of the Star Wars movies “A New Hope” and “The Empire Strikes Back”, has been called the “father of the Force.” Over the course of many late-night conversations with George Lucas, the two determined that in Star Wars, the Force would be an all-encompassing, metaphysical energy that emanates from people and binds the galaxy together. Does that sound a bit like the Inner Light to my Quaker Friends? Well, Kurtz was a Quaker!

Kurtz was raised in a Quaker family and enlisted as a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War. He served in the Marines as a combat cameraman and refused to carry a weapon.

Star Wars fans, what do you think? Are there similarities between the Force and the Inner Light? Is there anything else that’s Quaker about the Star Wars movies? May the fourth be with you!

04/16/2026

Pastor calls out mixing faith with politics amid Trump–Pope clash ⛪⚖️

Benjamin Cremer weighed in after Donald Trump’s recent attacks on Pope Leo XIV, raising questions about the role of Christianity in political loyalty.

“If our Christianity causes us to defend the president rather than the poor, the powerless… that’s when we know we are following someone other than Jesus,” he said.

His remarks are fueling a broader debate about whether faith should guide political decisions—or stand apart from them.

👉 Is faith being used to justify politics… or challenge it?

04/08/2026

The occasion of war, and war itself (wherein envious men, who are lovers of themselves more than lovers of God, lust, kill, and desire to have men's lives or estates) ariseth from lust.

All bloody principles and practices, as to our own particulars, we utterly deny; with all outward wars and strife, and fightings with outward weapons, for any end, or under any pretense whatsoever; this is our testimony to the whole world.