If you are looking for a community that welcomes everyone fully into community life, including marriage between any loving couples, one without hierarchical leadership, and/or a nurturing home for your family, we hope you find a home with us.
A fellowship of the Spirit
Central Philadelphia Meeting tries to be a true, equal, and loving fellowship of the Spirit for folks of all races, social circumstances, sexual orientations, gender identities, and spiritual temperaments.
By a fellowship of the Spirit we mean a community that seeks to nurture the spiritual lives of its members, in which we make our decisions under the leadership of the Holy Spirit free of human hierarchies, and we meet each other in the arms of a transcendental Presence in our worship. We don’t always succeed at these things, of course, but we earnestly try.
A spiritual home
We hope you will find with us a sense of home and spiritual belonging, a safe place to raise your family, a grounding base for your presence in the world and for your efforts to make it a better place. Learn more.
Families
We warmly welcome families. For our youngest members, we offer childcare during our worship and other activities. For school-aged children, we offer age-appropriate religious education that seeks to open children’s hearts to the Spirit within them in an environment that nurtures Spirit-affirming and life-affirming values. Learn more.
Leadership and governance
We have no professional clergy. We worship in silent expectant waiting on the Spirit without someone leading a programmed service. We manage our affairs through committees and conduct our business meetings as meetings for worship seeking unity about our decisions under God’s guidance.
Deeper communion
Sometimes our worship reaches a deep and transcendental state in which we come to know each other “in what is eternal,” as early Quakers put it, and beyond even that, sense something greater than the sum of our individual lights, call it what you will. We emerge from such a meeting spiritually refreshed, renewed in faith, and full of love and joy. Learn more.