Do the Quaker church believe that Jesus Christ is the way of salvation?

Answer 1

Not all Quakers believe in Jesus now.
Originally, all Quakers believed in Jesus Christ. George Fox, a famous early Quaker, and viewed by many as the founder of 'Religious Society of Friends' as Quakers came to be known, was clearly a believer in Jesus. He urged people to turn from sin, put their trust in Jesus, and allow the Holy Spirit to cleanse and instruct their hearts. It is often said that Quakers got their name because they 'quaked' with the power of the Holy Spirit as they prayed in Jesus name. They rejected priests and pastors because they believed everyone could know Jesus and God directly, nor did they think ritual useful for the same reason. In time it became the accepted practice to sit and wait for Jesus to do things among them by the Holy Spirit; people would preach or pray as the Spirit moved them. As time went on, the 'Society of Friends' meetings became gradually quieter, often consisting mainly of waiting and reflection. When things did happen, however, it would usually be Christian in nature. This would have been the emphasis of most Quaker meeting houses, and their associated group of friends, into the 20th Century.
However, early on, Quakers were persecuted by other people who quoted The Bible as a justification for their actions. Apparently in reaction to this, the Quakers came to a general decision not to write down a Creed (a list of Beliefs that everyone can agree on) and to put the Bible beneath their experience of Jesus and God's Love and the Holy Spirit. This lack of a written Creed means that you can be a Quaker and not believe in Jesus, but at the outset all Quakers would have preached from the Bible under the 'inspiration of the Holy Spirit'.
Over the years, there have become distinct groupings of Quakers , who all seem to have inherited a similar outlook on life, but clearly do not have the same belief systems. Some have become more like other Christian groups. As they found people among them no longer believing in Jesus, they started to write down what they believed in order to preserve and define their belief in Jesus. Others have taken the attitude that they only need an 'inner light' to guide them, and this has led some to teach Transcendental Meditation and encourage the study of other Hindu and non-Christian beliefs. Still others have a humanistic world view, in which meditation is a way to find peace to think through difficult issues and find meaning in life, with no reference to a Christian God.
The experience of many people now is that if they are a Christian, they will not find any common experience of Jesus with many Quakers, nor would their Quaker friends know or understand the Bible.
There are however, Quakers who are still believers in Jesus, and whether they do or not will depend greatly on where they are in the world and what tradition they belong to.