Quakers in Britain think this is radical

The Good Protestants as they were known in Ireland during the Great Hunger. The other ones being only so-so I guess.
Isn't the astronomer Jocelyn Bell Burnell a Quaker? Strikes me as a formidable woman.

Apologies if I’m not up to date. You certainly used to have to believe in God… Maybe not any more.

Moreover, when you applied for membership, you are supposed to believe in God, as an absolute minimum. If they are letting atheists in, they’re simply a club for people who want to be in that club.

"All Quakers are equal, but some are more equal than others"

I'm another former Quaker who left because I couldn't bare the blatant hypocrisy around this issue.

Exactly so.
And in my experience a lot of Quakers are ex-Anglicans who finally admitted they didn't believe in god, but felt guilty and lost if they didn't go somewhere on a Sunday morning.
On the other hand, some beautiful Christian Quakers I knew used to skip Meeting when the weather was nice and go out in nature. They called it "Blue Doming".

Many Quakers feel that the essence of Quakerism is a kind of commitment to Truth

If Quaker HQ thinks that men can become women and that single sex facilities are not a basic safeguarding measure, then they and Truth parted company some time ago.

I am thinking it is a way of being able to change their minds but claiming they are doing it under protest.

With Quakerism it's not really the same thing.

Many Quakers feel that the essence of Quakerism is a kind of commitment to Truth and certain principles that can be held within the group but do not necessarily need to include anything to do with the Bible or the basic beliefs of traditional Christianity as found in the creeds.

It reminds me a lot of secular humanism actually, there is a set of beliefs which emerged from a particular set of first principles, but they've kept the beliefs while rejecting the first principles they emerged from.

So not really shocking that it might lose it's bearings.

Why indeed…institutional capture?

Women should not have to individually and repeatedly disclose traumas/crimes/assaults perpetuated agaisnt them to have access to single sex spaces.

We know the VAST majority of violence/sexual assaults are against women and perpetrated by men. That should be enough.

I'm still completely horrifed that Darlington nurse Karen felt she had to disclose the horrors inflicted upon her. Of course women are accused of weaponising trauma if they do this - so lose lose for women.

Quakers have lost their minds and have sold women & girls out along the way.

Why are all these institutions and associations spending time and money putting out these statements that say 'we're not going follow the law because the guidance is only interim' when the EHRC have said that the final guidance will not substantially change?

The atheist Quakers I have known would call themselves universalist Quakers and would say something like their concept of being God was more like a concept of common experience of transcendence in all humans. They continued to go to meeting.

I'm an atheist, 100%, but I'm an Irish Catholic atheist
By that I mean that I retain the cultural background, the knowledge, the history and some of the values that were central to my life as a child and adolescent.

I suppose somebody who was brought up in the Quaker, or Jewish, or other religions, can stop believing in the basis of that religion, but may wish to acknowledge its formative role in their life story.

Irish Catholic atheists [of a certain vintage] can make long car journeys seem shorter by singing as much of the Gregorian chant Missa de Angelis as they can remember.
Now ask a Quaker atheist how much of the Missa de Angelis they can remember...

Quakers are such a small world that I'm going to be purposely vague, but knowing a trans Quaker and having known some Quakers all my life, I also fear for their future over this.

There is to me a negative side to the way Quakers operate which boils down to this outsider to a tendency to behave as if strong feelings can be reasoned away. But only certain strong feelings. It sounds as if they have decided that people's strong feelings over their behaviours trump other people's strong feelings about how that affects them. I have seen that in other contexts. I remember a female Young Quaker at a questioners weekend I went to explaining that she would talk to her multiple partners about the importance to her of loving multiple people and of total honesty about ut as a Quaker value, but sadly they still had strong feelings of jealousy and rejection. I thought about her definition of love, and what it means to love someone but still do things that they have said hurt them, and to prioritise honesty but not listen to what people say back to you when you tell them things.

This worries me with Quaker education on the face of it appearing like a good option for neurodivergent children and young people

If you're atheist, why on earth call yourself an atheist Quaker? People are odd.

Oh my God! I hope the woman is okay.

This really does stun me. I'd had a lot of respect for Quakers prior to the genderpish. It really does undermine organisations, somehow. Extraordinary.

A group for “atheist Quakers” says it all really. They are no longer a group that share Christian values, or indeed anything. When you remove the entire basis of your faith and what brings you together, then you can easily become unmoored from everything else.

I had a conversation recently with someone who’s been a Quaker a long time and who I suspect would support men who claim they are women over women. I was shocked to hear what he had to say over his faith. Though it angered him when I pointed it out, he is no longer Christian, but has wandered into some pseudo religion which believes in itself and not much else.

I felt the same in a church I currently attend. Desperate to get new, young people into the church, the minister seems to be thinking that what is needed is root and branch change. The irony is that Roman Catholicism has actually surged recently. I suspect what people need is a rock to cling to in changing times and not yet another trend trying to capture the zeitgeist.

ReligIon is not for all, but if you follow a religion that’s 2000 years old, then studying the 2000 year old text the whole thing is based on and trying to follow what it says, rather than rejecting huge portions of it as they don’t fit with our modern views is surely counterproductive?

Anyway, this is truly a sad day as I believed when I was young that Quakerism was something special. Now it seems to have been infiltrated and the open minds at the top have become so open that there is now no real faith left.

Just to reiterate: Not All Quakers - there's a lot of sex-realist Quakers whose voices have been suppressed, and even more Quakers who support the concept that Quakers are not a monolith and need not all believe the same thing. It's the group who believe themselves to be some sort of "leadership" (Quakers shouldn't have leaders) that have in the main created this problem, among other problems they've also created.

So it's radical for women to be recognised as a sex class seperate from men inlaw is it? Despite every single human on this planet being created and birthed by a woman, it's extremist to recognise them? The quakers can go suck a girl-dick, hateful little misogynists.

"The Quakers are like the Lib Dems at prayer."

sadly @Shortshriftandlethal these days more like the Green party meditating.

Many uncritically embrace the omnicause and the idea that there is only one "correct" opinion on those issues (environment, Gaza, Trans) - and a significant number of them don't believe in a god to pray to......

It would be interesting to investigate the overlaps of those two groups. I suspect it's substantial.

The Quakers are like the Lib Dems at prayer.

Indeed.

a group of us contacted PP back in 2018 and asked for dialogue on this issue. We have been gaslit and marginalised ever since. Every attempt to engage has been blocked.

There is an officially recognised Quaker group for atheist Quakers (?) but we were not allowed one for sex realist Quakers 🤨

along with a number of other GC Quakers I was banned from Quaker Facebook pages, accused of “acting in bad faith” by raising the issue.

the centre is thoroughly captured I’m afraid and most Quakers in meetings don’t have a clue about what’s going on because all dissenting voices are being silenced.

after 36 yrs of membership I recently resigned mine.

in my view Paul Parker has been the worst thing to happen to Quakers - even the actual Pope is more collegiate and open to dialogue. Everything which attracted me to Quakers, especially the bottom up, slow, considered, way of making decisions, has been replaced by an autocratic and manipulative man. Manipulative because, to me, he pretends that the traditional process are still working - but actually they are just being used to rubber stamp what he wants. Eg the infamous minute 31 “affirming” trans identities - and how it’s being used to close down discussion.