Welcome to the Schenectady Friends Meeting  (Quakers) 

 

427 Franklin Street, Schenectady NY

Meeting for Worship — First Day (Sunday) at 9 am (May–October); 10 am (November–April)

Co-Clerks:
Ruth Olmsted and
Larry Syzdek

 

For information, please telephone
(518) 383-3482 (Olmsted/Syzdek)
or (518) 374-2166 (Gerhan/Paul)
or (518) 377-5502 (Johnson)

or email rolmsted@excelsior.edu
or syzdeklarry@yahoo.com

  


Quakerism: a Simple Faith,

a Radical Witness

  

Wheelchair access is provided, and parking is readily available behind the Meetinghouse and on the street.

From John 15:15:
   "I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to   you."

All are welcome :

We are a welcoming congregation. Our meeting was one of the first to join the Schenectady Congregations for Sexual Inclusiveness. 

 

   Children are of course welcome.  Our meeting has space and supplies to give children an hour of supervised, meaningful activity while parents attend the meeting for worship.  Newcomers with children are urged to phone one of the above numbers ahead of time.   We are committed to building bridges among all groups of people in Schenectady.  Our meeting belongs to SICM, the Schenectady Inner City Ministry.  We support the Center for Community Justice.

  About Quakers:              

The Religious Society of Friends (also called Quakers) believes that there is that of the Divine in everyone.  It is our experience that God is present among us to teach us directly.  The Quaker way of worship originates in these beliefs.

Meeting for worship is at the center of Quaker life.  Because we rely on direct experience of the Divine, our meetings have neither a pastor nor a program.  We gather to worship in expectant silence, centering on God--the Divine Presence, the Spirit, the Seed, the Christ Within, the Inward Light --and by this we are nourished and led.

Quakerism as a lived faith finds expression in our testimonies and our practices.  Both spring from a belief that there is that of God in every person and that it illumines for us every aspect of life.

To bring all areas of our lives under the ordering of the Spirit, we try to follow these practices in relationships and in society at large: simplicity, peace, integrity, community, equality, and stewardship.

(extracted from literature of New York Yearly Meeting Advancement Committee) 

We urge you to visit these other Quaker Web-sites to learn more:

 The Peace Testimony at Schenectady Meeting

"... I lived in the virtue of that life and power that takes away the occasion of all wars." -George Fox

 

From terrorist attacks on New York and Washington to bloodshed in the Middle East to wars in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq to the tragic killings at Columbine and Virginia Tech, violence unquestionably plagues our world and its people.  Members and attenders of our Friends Meeting play various active roles in the anti-war and pro-peace cause.   As a body the Meeting has two formal minutes on the subject:

 

Our meeting's minute on torture (2007):

Torture is wrong.  It is never justifiable.  It is soul-destroying for both the tortured and the torturer and is morally corrupting to the country that sponsors it.  Therefore we urge the United States government to cease all torture.

Selections from our meeting's minute on non-violence (1999):

The United States has just declared victory in Yugoslavia, even as it continues to mourn the dead children of Littleton, Colorado. We debate gun control, we castigate the mass media for promoting violence and we put killers to death. What we are not doing is making a connection between all these issues.

This Meeting believes that violence is wrong. Conflict is unavoidable, but how we act in the presence of conflict is a matter of choice. We believe that we must always choose non-violence and that we must teach the rest of the world to choose non-violence also.

We must choose it in the home, where we seek to speak non-violently to our children... in the schools...in our communities...in our prisons...in our governments... And we must choose it between nations as we share this world and its resources; we must seek to do so equitably.

...We must sever the chains of violence that bind us. We must "just say no" to violence.

Instead, we must seek creative ways to relate to each other...To quote New York Yearly Meeting's Faith and Practice (1998), "When we act in the humble recognition that every party to a problem or dispute has some portion of the truth, our object becomes not winning but reconciliation." Our Meeting wishes to explore a leading to eliminate violence in our society.

Contacting Government and Media

 "Speak truth to power" to government officials:

The best resource for contacting the President and members of Congress is the FCNL Web site listed above.

Send letters to the editor:

 Gazette Newspapers -- 2345 Maxon Rd., Schenectady, NY 12308

 Times Union -- News Plaza, Colonie, NY 12211

 The Record -- 501 Broadway, Troy, NY 12180 

 

Further Web-sites promoting nonviolence, peace and justice:

Peace around the world

Peace at home : nonviolence in our daily lives

Taking action for peace:

Let us try, then, what love can do.
                 William Penn

 

Web-site created September, 1996. Most recent revision, September 2011.