can i ask about your experience as a quaker (or growing up as one? i just saw you mention bein one in some tags)

i jus don't know much about them

so i was not raised quaker, i was raised baptist. which was. 0/10, do not recommend. all the guilt of catholicism with none of the stained glass lmaooo

like, i did resinate with the idea of there being some sort of higher power and i liked the idea of getting together with other believers to discuss spiritual matters but as i got older and started thinking for myself i realized i really didn't like a lot of things about the church. i hated the bigoted beliefs of its members. i hated the emphasis on blind obedience to authority. i didn't believe that the whole literal truth could be found within one book, specifically one group's interpretation of said book. and the idea that people were born inherently bad and sinful and that a supposedly kind and just god would condemn people to eternal suffering just for not believing the "right" things just did not sit well with me at all

when i went off to college i decided to try out a few different churches around town. i ended up settling on a progressive presbyterian church. the community was great and very accepting of queer people. i had some minor qualms with the theology but it wasn't like with my parents' church where every sermon made me feel increasingly nauseous, and i generally felt *good* during and after the services

and then covid hit and while they did stream their sermons, i lost that sense of community and just kinda... fell away

throughout all this i was researching different faiths online, both christian and non-christian. and one faith that kept popping up a lot that i liked the sound of was quakerism. like at one point i remember taking some online quiz of like "what religion do your values most align with" and quakerism was very in the lead. (before this, i'd only really been exposed to quakerism in history textbooks and assumed the religion died out alongside puritanism)

in the end what got me really interested was actually a video by a youtuber i liked, a queer/disability advocate and historical fashion enjoyer who also happened to be quaker

and after looking more into it, i decided to try attending a quaker meeting. which was easier due to covid cuz i could find a church online (located physically hundreds of miles from me) that did their sunday services over zoom

and so i attended and the people there were great and were doing actual good in their communities. and the way services were run, and their beliefs about what god *was* and all of that just hit me with an intense feeling of like. holy shit this is what i've always wanted from religion.

the video explains the sort of core beliefs and practices of quakerism better than i can but the main belief is that like. every person is godly. as such, it's our job to treat all living people as equally and kindly as possible. additionally, since we all have god inside of us, we need to look inwards and come to our own conclusions about our own religious beliefs and practices (and generally respect other people's religious beliefs even if they differ from our own, so long as they're not causing real tangible harm)

i haven't attended any meetings in a while, due to that group going back to semi in person (they still stream it out but it feels more like being a spectator than a member) and there being no quaker meetinghouses in the tiny town i currently live in, coinciding with me being too depressed to regularly attend anything. but i'm planning to start attending quaker meetings again once i move to a real city