In a noisy world, more young adults turn to Quakers’ silent worship

At the Arch Street Meeting House in Philadelphia’s Old City, more and more young people are seeking respite from a clamorous technological age in the silent worship of a centuries-old faith.

- By Luis ANDRES HENAO

Like other Quaker houses of worship, it follows values of simplicity and equality. There’s no clergy, pulpit or altar. No statues of saints, no stained-glass windows. No one sings or chants, burns incense or lights candles. They simply sit in silence in 200-year-old wooden pews — and wait for a message from God to move through them until they speak.

“This feels different in that it’s so simple. It’s set up in a way that makes you feel like your internal world ... is equally as important as the space that youre in,” said Valerie Goodman, a pink-haired artist reading her Bible outside the meeting house on a recent Sunday before going inside. Goodman, 27, grew up Southern Baptist but left the evangelical church in college.

“It feels like I can have a minute to breathe. It’s different than having a moment of meditation in my apartment because there's still all of the distractions around. ... And it’s crazy being in a room full of other people that are all there to experience that themselves.”

It has been called the “Westminster Abbey of Quakerism.” Yet for years, attendance at Arch Street was so low, and its historic 300-seat West Room felt so empty, that the few people present began to meet in a smaller room. But recent years have produced an unprecedented surge in the number of attendees at Sunday worship — from about 25 before the COVID-19 pandemic to up to 100 today.

“One of the things that I’m very excited about is the number of people that we have coming to meeting, and the fact that the majority of them are young,” said Hazele Goodrich, Arch Street's clerk.

One couple’s journey

Among them: Emily Philbrook, 24, and Benjamin Barger, 27, who recently married at Arch Street in a traditional Quaker wedding. The couple moved from Washington to Philadelphia so he could attend veterinary school and began to worship at Arch Street three years ago.