Friends United Meeting (FUM) is an association of twenty-six yearly meetings of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in North America, Africa, and the Caribbean. In addition there are several individual Monthly meetings and organizations that are members of FUM. FUM's headquarters is in Richmond, Indiana, and has offices in Kisumu, Kenya.
There are three other main branches within Quakerism, two of them represented by parallel organizations (Friends General Conference and Evangelical Friends International); the third (Conservative Friends) has no single unifying organization. Of these four branches, FUM has the largest number of individual members.[citation needed] The Friends United Meeting is responsible for much of the growth of Quakerism in Africa and Latin America.
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History
Five years after the signing on the Richmond Declaration in 1887, Five Years Meeting was established in 1902 by a collection of orthodox yearly meetings.
After World War I, growing desire for a more fundamentalist approach began to split Five Years Meeting. in 1926, Northwest Yearly Meeting withdrew from the organization, leading several other yearly meetings and scattered monthly meetings. In 1947, the Association of Evangelical Friends was formed, which led in turn to the 1965 formation of the Evangelical Friends Association, a precursor to today's Evangelical Friends International, formed in 1989.[1]
During the 1950s many yearly meetings in North America reunited and became joint members of Five Years Meeting and Friends General Conference.
In 1963 Five Years Meeting was renamed Friends United Meeting.
Purpose Statement
Our purpose is "to energize and equip Friends through the power of the Holy Spirit to gather people into fellowships where Jesus Christ is known, loved and obeyed as Teacher and Lord."[2]
See also
- Religious Society of Friends
- Conservative Friends
- Evangelical Friends International
- Friends General Conference
References
- ^ http://www.nwfriends.org/what-friends-believe/historical-statement/ Northwest Yearly Meeting Historical Statement
- ^ Purpose statement as seen on the FUM website
External links
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