Quaker Philosophies for Atheists

Staying open to religious ideas

My parents are firmly atheists and also very open to religious ideas. Both of them were raised Quaker and went to meeting every Sunday of their childhood. They met at a Quaker university and married in a Quaker ceremony in which they exchanged their own vows. They didn’t stick with it though. When they started their new lives away from their families, they moved from the East Coast to the West Coast and stopped going to meetings. By that time, my dad was an atheist and remains so to this day. He turned 80 this year. My mother is a bit more undecided but religion is not a big part of her life either.

While they no longer believe in God in a traditional way, and they didn’t raise me in the religion, the philosophies have stuck and been passed on to me. Even though I don’t identify myself as religious, I still adhere to the basic philosophies of Quakerism.

Quaker Philosophy: God is inside each and every human being, so every person is equal and you should never kill or harm another person; doing so is harming God.

When I really think about this, the idea of God becomes decentralized and I connect with that idea. Far from being the God in the paintings, you know the one with the gray beard who lives in Heaven, God is the sacred part of each of us, a part that recognizes the sacred in others and respects, everyone.

For me, that means I have a responsibility to do as little harm as I possibly can. I am a teacher, so when I teach, I need to honor the learners because I am, in fact, one of them.

I find this philosophy beautiful; it stops me from acting only in my own self-interest. We are not separate, we are part of a greater whole, when I harm someone else, I am actually harming myself.

So, whether you believe in God or not, you can believe in the sacredness that connects us all and makes us into a community.

Quaker Philosophy: Your morality should be based on your inner conscience.

Because God is not separate from me but rather a part of me, I am perfectly capable of figuring out what is right and what is wrong and acting accordingly.

I love this because it prevents me from outsourcing my morality. So many times we are asked to do things that we don’t agree with morally, but because we are taught that a higher being is telling us how to behave, we go along with it and even sometimes defend it.

This philosophy sometimes gets Quakers into trouble because they follow their conscience instead of the law. For example, they were really active in the Underground Railroad and helped slaves escape because slavery goes totally against the tenant that God is within all of us, and because of that, all of us are equal. Quakers continue to be active advocates for equality, defending immigrants regardless of the current political climate.

I don’t need to believe in God, to believe in following my conscience. I take responsibility for my actions because ultimately I am the one who is performing them. The government or some other powerful group can tell me what to do, but I am not simply a tool for that organization to use, I follow my own guidelines in life. Those guidelines are not written in stone, they change as I learn new things and my understanding of the world changes.

Quaker philosophy: You don’t need a priest or religious rituals to have a connection with God.

Sometimes I love rituals and ceremonies. I recently got to see the Semana Santa processions in Granada, Spain, and found them beautiful in their way. For me, however, they are not a religious experience, they are fascinating, but I don’t connect with them.

The things that make me feel connected to a greater whole are much more random and unpredictable.

Once, while sitting in a hidden grotto near a river bank, the cottonwood fluff mimicking snow, the sun illuminating the grass, water, and rocks, I felt that I was a part of everything around me. I was inextricably connected with the trees, the water, the insects, and the air.

Another time, while leading a discussion on plot arcs in my literature class, everyone became singularly focused. Ideas flowed, one connecting to another, as 26 brains worked together to understand the world more fully.

In these moments, I know that I am not alone.

It doesn’t matter if you believe in God or not. It doesn’t matter if you identify as Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Buddist, or any other faith, or atheist; there is no they, there is only we.

We do not have to agree. We do not have to believe the same thing. We do not have to do the same things, but we are not separate.

While researching and writing this article, I realized that while I have only been to Quaker meetings a dozen times in my life, I am not registered with any Quaker organization and I do not identify as religious, I firmly agree with the way Quakers see the world and try to conduct themselves within it.

For more information about Quakers, you can find a brief outline here:

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