Quaker After-Life Studies Group
Are you concerned with issues of death and after-death?
Do you find it hard to explore such topics in Quaker circles?

The After-Life Studies Group aims to:-
study Christian, Quaker and other sources which encourage a view of God’s creation going far beyond this physical world; provide a forum for discussion, to include such topics as other worlds, reincarnation, and all issues relating to development beyond physical death; explore evidence for survival and learn from and support those with psychic gifts and experiences; focus on the spiritual dimension of such experience, so as to integrate it with our Meetings for Worship.

Early Friends, like all Christians, believed that death was the gateway to eternal life; we can reach out to those who have gone before us, and they can help us, only if we believe that this life is far from all there is. The ‘Communion of Saints’, or of Souls, or Soul-friends, as we might prefer to say, recognises no barrier in death, and such a communion was a fundamental part of the message of the great Quaker Thomas Kelly in this century.

The Quaker After-Life Studies Group, (formed in July 2000), aims to open up discussion of death and immortality, which current Quakerism hardly tolerates, though many passages in Quaker Faith and Practice testify to its importance.

Such discussion can draw on spiritual writings from early Christian times onwards, as well as evidence from Spiritualism and the psychic experiences of gifted individuals. We would like to see the growth of an atmosphere in the Society of Friends in which an open and sympathetic attitude allowed those with experience or concerns in these areas to speak to Friends about them, and to minister in Meeting for Worship if called to do so.

Perhaps we should also think of following the Eastern Orthodox practice of welcoming the presence of the departed in all acts of corporate worship. This can only encourage the growth of the spirit of hope, which we need in our Meetings.

The bereaved in our Meetings need sensitive support during the grieving process and sources of knowledge concerning the afterlife should be available. Bereaved people will sometimes feel the need to speak of their condition, and of their experiences, but are often discouraged from doing so by a prohibitive atmosphere. We aim to reduce such fears, for all in our Meetings.

As part of such an aim, we want to avoid the unhealthy polarisation of spiritual and psychic concerns. We would like to bring together again the spiritual search for God and the discovery of our own immortal being.
(We would also like to encourage support for each other in Soul friendship, to include talking to each other about death and after, and which could be a friendship unto death, as practise by the ancient Celtic Church in this country.) Not sure this is appropriate to embark on such a new idea at this point.