Newtown Friends Meeting

The place to find truth and inner peace is in your own heart and mind.  What we offer you here is the quiet of our historic meetinghouse and the companionship and vocal ministry of other sincere seekers.

Once a week we meet here as Friends or Quakers to worship—every Sunday morning between 11:00 and noon.  We meet in silence, not to meditate in the Eastern sense of that word, but rather to empty our minds of thoughts of self and the busy world in which we live, and to “wait on the Lord.”

If those in a meeting for worship are truly quieted, the Holy Spirit may speak through one or more of us, bringing comfort or joy, or perhaps needed counsel to someone in the Meeting.  The Spirit often makes itself known to Friends in physical ways—for example by a quickening of the heartbeat. This quickening signals that the message within you needs to be spoken aloud so others may profit from the word of God.

To become a Friend or Quaker is to embark on a voyage of continuing spiritual growth and deepening insights.  No two Friends agree on every aspect of our inner life.  Many accept Jesus as Christ, others do not.  The important thing is doing our best to walk in the way God shows us.

Faith without works is an unacceptable way of life in the Religious Society of Friends.  Once a month, one of the Queries in our book, “Faith and Practice,” is read during the meeting for worship.  Several Queries deal with spiritual matters but most ask challenging questions about our temporal lives.  These Queries have been called the Friends’ form of confession; they are not answered easily by us as individuals or as a corporate body.  Nor do they need to be answered verbally; they encourage us to think deeply about our lives and our place in the universe.

The Religious Society of Friends has existed since the 1650s without a formal creed or sacramental symbols.  Our meeting house itself, built in 1817, is evidence of this purity; there is no gilt, no cross, no wine.  Plain wooden benches face one another, and windows look out into the world.  But the true focus is within.  

Those whose spirits resonate with this experience of spiritual and temporal simplicity find something very precious here—a growing enrichment of their lives that gives them inner peace and fulfillment.