Originally Written by Carolyn Lejuste and David Etheridge | Originally Published November 02, 2020 | Updated by FGC Ministry on Racism Staff on December 12, 2025

This guide helps Quaker meetings begin and sustain the journey of becoming an anti-racist Quaker meeting. Becoming anti-racist is more than a single action or statement. It is an ongoing transformation that shapes how meetings worship, make decisions, and live in community. Below, Friends will find practical steps, examples, and guidance for this important work.

Part One: Understanding the Call to Become an Anti-Racist Quaker Meeting

Why This Work Matters

For over 400 years, the United States and the Religious Society of Friends have both carried the harms of systemic racism. In the past, some Quakers owned enslaved Black people. Others fought as abolitionists against the institution of slavery. Some supported segregation. Others became civil rights activists. Quakers have not been “one or the other.” Friends have been all of these things.

Today, some Quakers speak out against racism, police violence against Black and Brown bodies, and systems that perpetuate inequality. However, Friends hold different understandings of how and where to stand up, speak up, and resist. Is it enough to believe one is not racist? Or, as author Ibram X. Kendi states in How to Be an Antiracist, do we actively work to end racism?

The FGC Anti-Racism Query

Since 2016, Friends General Conference (FGC) has used an anti-racism query to guide its transformation. Meetings can adopt this same query for their own discernment:

How does this decision support our meeting in its goal to transform into an actively anti-racist faith community?

By asking this question consistently, meetings begin to hold themselves accountable to their stated commitments. The query invites ongoing reflection at every level of meeting life.

Questions for Reflection

The testimonies of integrity, equality, community, and peace guide anti-racism actions. However, Friends understand the Quaker testimonies differently. Meetings may find themselves grappling with difficult questions:

  • What does it mean for white Quakers to align with People of Color who find it necessary to have armed security at their rallies?
  • What does it mean to challenge Quaker traditions when they often work better for white Friends than for Friends of Color?
  • What obligations come from examining white privilege and the lie of white supremacy?
  • Would this be an individual obligation, a communal obligation, or both?

Becoming an anti-racist Quaker meeting requires sitting with these questions. There may not be easy answers. However, the willingness to ask them opens the path forward.

Part Two: Preparing to Become an Anti-Racist Quaker Meeting

The Work of Preparation

Before a meeting can write a public statement or take visible action, it must do the preparatory work. Becoming an anti-racist Quaker meeting begins with education, self-examination, and building trust. This foundation makes later steps more sustainable.

The Ministry on Racism program supports meetings at every stage of this journey. The program offers technical support, facilitated learning experiences, connections to resources, and opportunities for thought partnership and mentorship. Meetings do not have to do this work alone.

Education and Discussion

Meetings can begin their journey through learning together:

  • View and discuss films made by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) filmmakers. The Ministry on Racism can recommend films and provide discussion guides.
  • Hold monthly education conversations where Friends learn about racism and how it works in this country. Ministry on Racism staff and volunteers can serve as thought partners in designing these conversations.
  • Create a book group to discuss Black Fire or other books by People of Color. The Ministry on Racism offers reading lists and resources to support book discussions.
  • Add information to the newsletter about activities from Friends of African Descent and the FGC Ministry on Racism. Staff can provide content and updates for meeting newsletters.
  • Request a facilitated learning experience. The Ministry on Racism can connect meetings with other Friends and resources that can facilitate workshops, presentations, or guided discussions tailored to a meeting’s needs and readiness. This network includes experienced facilitators, meeting committees, and partner organizations working on anti-racism. Additionally, the Ministry on Racism staff can partner with meetings to offer these learning experiences.

Training and Assessment

Deeper preparation involves training and honest self-assessment:

  • Hire an outside facilitator to lead anti-racism workshops for the entire meeting. The Ministry on Racism can connect meetings with experienced facilitators and with training organizations such as Crossroads Antiracism Organizing and Training and The Center for the Study of White American Culture (CSWAC)
  • Create a meeting-wide Inclusion Assessment and seek feedback from Friends of Color. Ministry on Racism staff and volunteers can provide technical support in designing and implementing assessments.
  • Sit with that feedback before moving forward. The Ministry on Racism offers thought partnership to help meetings process difficult feedback and discern next steps.
  • Apply the anti-racism query to meeting decisions during this preparatory phase. Ministry on Racism staff and volunteers can mentor clerks and committees in integrating the query into discernment processes.
  • Send Friends to anti-racism trainings and conferences. The Ministry on Racism provides some financial support for Friends of Color. It can help meetings identify aligned learning opportunities, including the White Privilege Conference and Center for the Study of White American Culture workshops.

Structural Changes

Becoming an anti-racist Quaker meeting also requires examining structures.

  • Establish a working group to eliminate racial barriers that prevent involvement in the meeting. The Ministry on Racism can connect meetings with Friends doing similar work in other meetings and provide mentorship to working groups.
  • Offer financial support to Friends who attend anti-racism conferences and workshops. The Ministry on Racism can connect meetings to resources that are adept at creating scholarship funds and identifying priority learning opportunities.
  • Establish a space for Friends to bring information back to meeting after trainings. Ministry on Racism staff and volunteers can serve as thought-partners for meetings to help design these sharing structures and provide follow-up resources.
  • Review meeting policies and practices using an anti-racist framework. The Ministry on Racism can connect meetings with other meetings doing similar work, and offers technical support in conducting policy reviews.
  • Connect with other meetings on the same journey. The Ministry on Racism can facilitate connections between meetings to support shared learning, accountability, and mutual support.

Ongoing Thought Partnership and Mentorship

The Ministry on Racism program offers ongoing support beyond initial preparation:

  • Thought partnership: Ministry on Racism staff and volunteers can serve as thinking partners for clerks, committee members, and individuals navigating complex situations. Staff bring experience from working with meetings and can offer perspective without imposing solutions.
  • Mentorship: Friends seeking to deepen their anti-racism leadership can connect with experienced mentors through the Ministry on Racism network. This includes connections to the Quaker Coalition for Uprooting Racism community.
  • Technical support: The Ministry on Racism provides practical assistance with planning, facilitation design, resource identification, and troubleshooting challenges that arise in the work.
  • Connection to resources: Staff and volunteers maintain relationships with trainers, facilitators, and organizations doing anti-racism work. They can connect meetings to the robust resources for their specific needs and context.

To request support from the Ministry on Racism program, email alician@fgcquaker.org or shainar@fgcquaker.org.

The Work Requires Humility

The work of becoming an anti-racist Quaker meeting requires a willingness to learn and admit mistakes. For white people, it may require new humility. Looking directly at the roots of racism and how white people perpetuate it is challenging. However, when Friends examine their lives through the lens of testimonies, the experience of God within grows.

The Ministry on Racism program accompanies meetings through this challenging work. Staff and volunteers understand that transformation takes time. They offer support without judgment, meeting Friends where they are while encouraging continued growth.

Part Three: Writing an Anti-Racist Minute of Concern

The Role of a Minute of Concern in Becoming Anti-Racist

Since the times of George Fox, the Religious Society of Friends has acted at the intersection of internal spirituality and social action. In worship, Friends seek moral guidance for how to live their lives and “let their lives speak.”

When a meeting intends to become an anti-racist Quaker meeting, it often records a minute of concern. A minute of concern is a public statement written by a Quaker body as a whole. However, the minute is not the end of the journey. It marks a commitment to ongoing transformation.

Before speaking together publicly, meetings must take steps to move together in unity. The preparation described above helps build that unity.

Elements of a Strong Anti-Racist Minute

A strong anti-racist minute includes several parts. The following elements come from Philadelphia Yearly Meeting’s Faith and Practice (2018).

1. A Description of the Issue

This description often has an emotional impact on the reader. It may draw people to want to join the project. It is a plain statement of the truth.

Example from Red Cedar Monthly Meeting:

America has never repented of its original sin: genocide and slavery.

Example from Hopewell Centre Friends Meeting:

We abhor the death of so many people of color. We abhor the constant diminishment of the humanity of people of color…We believe we are in a revolutionary moment where change is possible and justice may be realized. We must recognize that our history and our culture have betrayed us, and we must take steps to build a Beloved Community.

2. A Specific Request for Public Bodies

In the request, name public officials if applicable. State what change the meeting prefers.

Example of language a minute might use:

Our Quaker Meeting demands that Congress pass the Justice in Policing Act. We demand that you curtail the protections that shield police officers accused of misconduct from being prosecuted, and that you impose a new set of restrictions for law enforcement officers to prevent them from using deadly force.

An example from Santa Barbara Friends Meeting:

[We call] on our elected officials, including the mayor and city council of Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara County Supervisors, State Assembly, and Senate members, to prohibit the use of lethal and non-lethal weapons by the police against demonstrators and the continuing disproportionate use of violence against Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. We call on our leaders to redirect police funding toward new investment in communities of color, toward mandatory civilian oversight, and toward alternative emergency response programs.

Another example from Sierra Cascades Yearly Meeting:

We call for the immediate end to police violence…We demand the dismantling of current policing and criminal justice systems that enable and perpetuate racism.

3. A Set of One or More Action Steps

The actions can have both internal and external focus. The steps might address both individual and corporate action.

Example from Sierra Cascades Yearly Meeting:

We recognize that our peace testimony cannot mean passivity, that we will stand up in advocacy and not remain silent on issues of injustice…We recognize the unequal burden Black, Indigenous, and people of color have suffered historically and presently in this racist society. We commit to providing reparative funds to begin to compensate for this inequity…We commit to promoting, supporting and participating in individual, local, and yearly meeting wide continuing education about Black history, colonialism, white privilege, and police violence…We recognize that words without action accomplish little. We commit to taking tangible action. We proclaim with American Friends Service Committee that ​we won’t stop until we dismantle the whole racist system​.

4. A Statement of Accountability

Becoming an anti-racist Quaker meeting requires ongoing accountability. In 2020, few anti-racism minutes reviewed for this article included accountability statements. Here are some ways to keep the work actively visible:

Committee-Level Accountability
  • Direct each committee to answer: “How does this decision support our intent to become an anti-racist faith community?”
  • Read through committee minutes for evidence and ideas about answering that question
Meeting-Wide Accountability
  • Include anti-racist activities and actions in the annual State of the Meeting report
  • Publicize community anti-racist activities in the meeting newsletter
  • Include a report of anti-racist activities at each Meeting for Business
Personal Accountability
  • Encourage individuals or groups to form “anti-racism buddies”
  • Friends can share their leadings and encourage each other to act upon them
Ongoing Assessment
  • The committee that proposed the anti-racist minute should return to Meeting for Business six months or a year later
  • This return visit assesses how the meeting and its members have fulfilled the commitments made
Sharing the Minute

A public declaration of moral concern may include several forms of sharing:

  • Publish the minute in a local newspaper or post it on social media
  • Share it with other Quaker meetings within the yearly meeting
  • Use it to speak to representatives in state or national governing bodies
  • Offer it to Friends Committee on National Legislation for national advocacy efforts

Additionally, the minute could commit a meeting to seek alliances with community organizations that share the same concern. It opens a path to live into the testimony of equality and stand with BIPOC communities.

Part Four: Navigating What Comes Next – Living Into Transformation

Expect Troubled Waters

God sometimes takes us into troubled waters not to drown us, but to cleanse us.

LeCrea, Christian Hip Hop Artist

When Quakers respond to Spirit’s call to become an anti-racist Quaker meeting, the waters will be troubled. This work is difficult and chaotic for both Friends of Color and white Friends. Predictable responses and behaviors will occur.

What to Expect

Difficult Emotions and Behaviors: Shame and bullying may arise among Friends. It is important to interrupt these behaviors. Encourage everyone to use “I statements” when sharing thoughts and feelings. Some Friends will step away from meeting, including both Friends of Color and white Friends.

Conflicting Understandings: Friends may discover that their understanding of Quaker testimonies differs from others. These differences can feel surprising and painful. Discernment may also seep into social media. Social media works better for education than for decision-making processes.

Rumors and Resistance: In times of struggle, spreading rumors becomes surprisingly easy. Leaders may face attacks. White fragility may stop progress. None of these challenges are fatal. Friends owe it to loved ones who suffer most from racism to work through them.

Building Trust and Navigating Conflict

Becoming an anti-racist Quaker meeting will expose important topics meetings may have avoided. It may help to view these conversations through the lenses of trust and conflict.

Questions About Trust

  • Can Friends trust each other to do their own work, especially when that work looks different from mine?
  • Can you trust that when I challenge a statement, I am not calling you a racist?
  • Can Friends commit to open conversation where both sides listen to and hear one another’s experiences, even when they disagree?
  • Can Friends trust that a third way might emerge if they turn to Spirit?

Questions About Conflict

  • Can Friends find ways to engage in conflict without demeaning each other?
  • Can Friends agree that change requires becoming comfortable with conflict?
  • Can Friends listen to anger without becoming defensive?
  • Can Friends stay at the table when things get emotional?

A Word for White Friends

White Friends, this section is particularly for you. Can white Friends:

  • Listen to and hear the experience of Friends of Color without defensiveness?
  • Understand that what they think of as normal life experience is not necessarily the normal experience of Friends of Color?
  • Receive the telling of that experience as a sacred gift?

White people live with a kind of cognitive dissonance. Society has lied to white people about racism in this country. This fragility makes white people ambivalent about practicing anti-racism. It is easier to profess “I am not a racist” than to integrate anti-racist action into everyday life.

If you are white, there is work to do. This is true whether you are just beginning to notice racism or whether you have worked on race and racism much of your life. It takes humility to do this work. Once a white person recognizes how they have been deluded by myths of equality and justice, they know their very soul is at stake if they don’t do the work.

The Path for Friends of Color

At the same time, Friends of Color have their own paths to follow. They have their own work to do. As Malcolm X said:

America’s greatest crime against the Black man was not slavery or lynching but that he was taught to wear a mask of self-hate and self-doubt.

People of Color are not divorced from the damaging influences of white supremacy culture. This is true both within and outside the Religious Society of Friends. Healing from internalized oppression, understanding intersectionality, and surviving institutional inequality happen when people with shared experiences listen to and hear each other.

In sacred faith community, Friends of Color sometimes ask for a space of their own for worship and fellowship. This may be virtual or in-person. All Friends must respect and protect that space. Learn about worship spaces for Friends of Color offered through FGC.

Multiple Pathways for Engagement

Becoming an anti-racist Quaker meeting requires providing multiple ways for Friends to engage. Different Friends will find different entry points meaningful:

Pastoral Care might offer individual conversations with Friends who are struggling. It might also help form care committees. Be appreciative of Friends who courageously engage with this work, no matter where they begin.

Remember Isaac Penington’s Words

…praying one for another and holding one another up with a tender hand.

Transformation is not orderly or neat. God will begin working with each person where they are. Friends’ “learning edges” are wildly divergent. Something that’s new and tender for one person will blunder into something uncomfortably obvious to another.

The challenges Friends present to each other will threaten identities. These identities—professional, personal, and relational—were built over lifetimes following what many now recognize as mistaken assumptions. The tenderness and patience to accompany each other in frightening inner work must be balanced with urgency. The need to end newly glimpsed injustice is pressing.

Finding Your Tools

A recent message given in meeting speaks to understanding racism as a chronic disease. A Friend spoke of her teenage boy with asthma. He is an athlete who runs cross country. Running is his passion. To do this, he must use the medical tools at hand. He must always carry an inhaler to use before and after a run.

Like this beloved child of the meeting, Friends must find their inhalers. These are the tools available to become anti-racist. It takes inner strength of courage, trust, and love to build muscles. It takes effort to paddle hard through troubled waters to find justice in meetings. This work, done with integrity, will deepen the spiritual life of individual Friends and of beloved community.

Friends, the momentum for white people in this country to find a way through the fog of racism is upon us. Let us join this “second wave” of abolition, where our lives speak of justice lived into the Light.

About the Authors

Carolyn Lejuste is a member of Red Cedar Friends Meeting in Lansing, Michigan. She served on FGC’s Institutional Assessment on Systemic Racism Task Force from 2016 to 2018. She also served on the Institutional Assessment Implementation Committee from 2019 to 2020.

David Etheridge is a member of Friends Meeting of Washington in Washington, D.C. He served on the Friends General Conference Institutional Assessment Implementation Committee.

Additional Resources

For more guidance on becoming an anti-racist Quaker meeting:

Get Involved

Please email the Ministry on Racism team at alician@fgcquaker.org or shainar@fgcquaker.org to learn more about becoming an anti-racist Quaker meeting or to get involved with the Ministry on Racism program.

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