Drafted May 1, 2026.
Revised May 6-8, and May 20-22, 2026.

Part 1 of How I Became a Quaker can be read here.

The process in my yearly meeting for officially becoming a member of an affiliated monthly meeting is that you write a letter to Ministry and Counsel, which is the committee that oversees the spiritual health of the meeting. Since liberal unprogrammed Quaker meetings like mine do not have paid clergy, Ministry and Counsel provides much of the formal pastoral care of the meeting. When my appendix burst, I contacted M&C to alert them so they could ensure I had someone from the meeting visit me while I was hospitalized for several days.

As part of the membership process, Ministry and Counsel then forms a clearness committee that will meet with you to discern moving forward with membership. Clearness committees are a fascinating part of Quaker process where someone can request a small circle of Friends to help them come to a decision about something important in their life. A clearness committee is required for all membership applications, and Quakers are encouraged to use the clearness committee process whenever they are deliberating a major life decision that would benefit from communal discernment. The other time I’ve used a clearness committee was when I was trying to decide whether to leave my previous university job and start my own business. The clearness committee does not give advice, but rather asks questions of the person who has requested the committee to help them discern what they think is the best path forward. In the case of clearness committees for membership, they basically vet that the person has made an educated decision and understands the commitments involved with Quaker membership.

Assuming the clearness committee feels “clear” on proceeding with the applicant's membership, the clearness committee will then follow up with Ministry and Counsel. Ministry and Counsel will then recommend the member for approval at the monthly business meeting. The prospective member is then typically approved at the following monthly business meeting. I can’t speak for other meetings, but at ours we also usually organize a “welcoming committee” to welcome the new member into the meeting in whatever manner they wish. Some new members want to have a small private gathering at their home, others have a larger gathering open to the whole meeting at the meeting house (this is what I did, since two other members joined around the same time as myself so we combined forces).

I sent my letter for membership on October 6, 2023. I sent it that day because I was about to head out on a long set of flights across the ocean, which always bring out my inner catastrophizer (one of my biggest fears is plunging to my death in an airplane crash over water), and there was a part of me that thought “well if something horrible happens to me, I want the Quakers to know how committed I was to them.” As it turned out, I sent my letter the day before the October 7 attacks which really brought home to me the futility and madness of war and armed conflict. A hell of a time to officially join a peace church! Here was the letter I sent:

October 6, 2023

Dear Ministry and Counsel,

After several years of attending Community Friends Meeting, it is with great joy that I send this letter to request a clearness committee for membership in the monthly meeting.

Since attending Community Friends and developing a Quaker identity, I have found that the Religious Society of Friends has provided me with three major gifts. These include a history, a vocabulary, and a map.

Although I do not have any direct familial connections to Quakerism, my teenage years of activism and witness against the Iraq War made me generally aware of the enduring peace commitments of Quakers. Following the shooting of teenager Mike Brown and the lack of justice demonstrated by the system in allowing the police officer who killed Brown to walk free, I was consumed by my anger and anguish at such an incredibly violent and racist system. I knew I needed to find a spiritual home that would allow me to channel those feelings into something that would help me move forward rather than be consumed by a totalizing and destructive rage. While Quakers have not always lived up to their own professed values, the history of the courageous witness of many Friends provides enormous inspiration and sustenance to me.

Quakers have given me an entire vocabulary to describe and name the phenomena around me. This language infuses much of my life in the secular world as well. I have a monthly standing phone call with a friend (who has occasionally attended a Quaker meeting) and instead of our calendar appointment being labeled as “Call with María” it is labeled “Friend speaks my mind.” Even fleeting moments in meeting for worship have had long-lasting impacts. Many years ago when flowers were still given out on Mother’s Day, I was touched that flowers were given out to everyone to celebrate a “mothering spirit.” As someone who has decided not to have children of my own but often feels a sense of familial responsibility, a gentle phrase like “mothering spirit” signaled to me early on the Quaker values of inclusion and recognition that we are not defined so much by our specific identities as we are by the spiritual values we embody and practice. At its best, the language of Quakerism reflects those values and ways of being.

Finally, as someone who has an eternal obsession with geography, directions, and knowing where to go or turn (or reverse) to next, Quakers have provided me with a map to figure out how to get to where I’m supposed to go. All good maps will show multiple routes to a destination - and ideally they’ll provide context about the surroundings and clues along the way. It took me some time to wrap my head around the idea of testimonies, but once it clicked it felt like the right fit. I appreciate that like a map, the testimonies do not mandate that there is only one correct direction, but that there are multiple routes to get there. Trying to find a destination without a map is a sorry and lonely path, and the navigational aid of the Religious Society of Friends feels essential to charting out the wild and unknown terrain of life.

I look forward to discussing my application for membership further with Ministry and Counsel.

In friendship,
Eira Tansey

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