Affirmation: A legal declaration provided for Friends and others who conscientiously refuse to take or swear judicial oaths.

Birthright Friend: An individual whose parents were both members of a Friends Meeting. Early on, the child automatically became a member, but today the parent or parents decide on the membership status of their newborn child.

Book of Discipline: A book describing a yearly meeting's history, structures, and procedures, including advices, queries, and often quotations, or extracts, from the experience of Friends. Faith and Practice is such a book.

Breaking Meeting: When a designated person brings a meeting to a close by shaking hands with his or her neighbor.

Called Session: A meeting of the monthly, quarterly, or yearly meeting specially called by its clerk to address some concern or item of business.

Centering: The initial stage of worship when Friends clear their minds and settle down to achieve a spiritual focus.

Clearness: Confidence that an action is consistent with the divine will.

Clerk: The person responsible for the administration of a Friends body and sensitive to the guidance of the Spirit in the conduct of the business of that body.

Concern: A quickening sense of the need to do something about a situation or issue in response to what is felt to be a direct intimation of God's will.

Conscientious Objection: A principled refusal to participate in certain social or political practices, such as the refusal to undertake military service or pay war taxes.

Continuing Revelation: A central Quaker belief that the revelation of God's will is an ongoing process.

Convinced Friend: A person who, after deciding that the Religious Society of Friends provides the most promising home for spiritual enlightenment and growth, becomes a member of a monthly meeting.

Elder: Friends use the verb to elder to support and encourage members or attenders in their ministry or to question or discourage an individual whose behavior is deemed inappropriate.

Facing Benches: In older Friends meeting houses, rising tiers of benches facing the meeting, traditionally occupied by older persons and weighty Friends.

First Day School: Friends' designation for the Sunday school program provided by a monthly meeting for children and adults.

Friends General Conference (FGC): An association of unprogrammed yearly meetings in North America, whose purpose is to nurture its members by developing and providing resources and opportunities for spiritual growth.

Gathered Meeting: A meeting for worship or for business in which those present feel deeply united in the divine presence.

Hold in the Light: To desire that divine guidance and healing will be present to an individual who is in distress or faces a difficult situation; also, to give prayerful consideration to an idea.

Inner Light/The Light Within: Terms which represent for Friends the direct, unmediated experience of the Divine.

Integrity: One of the basic testimonies of Friends, involving both a wholeness and harmony of the various parts of a person’s life and truthfulness in whatever that person says and does. Friends commonly link this principle with the testimony of simplicity.

Interim Meeting: In Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, a broadly representative body meeting to conduct the business of the yearly meeting between its annual sessions.

Laying Down: A decision to discontinue a committee when its work is complete.

Laying Over: To postpone the discussion of an issue or the presentation of a report from one meeting for business to another.

Leading: A sense of being called by God to undertake a specific course of action. A leading often arises from a concern.

Lift Up: To emphasize or make explicit a particular point or concern.

Meeting for Worship: A gathering of individuals in quiet waiting upon the enlightening and empowering presence of the Divine.

Meeting for Worship for Business: A meeting for worship, often referred to as meeting for business, during which the meeting conducts its organizational business.

Mind the Light: An admonition to attend to the Light Within for guidance in a person's life. It means both active obedience to divine leadings and careful nurturing of a person's openness to the Light.

Ministry: Sharing or acting upon one's gifts, whether in service to individuals, to the meeting, or to the larger community.

Minute: The record of a corporate decision reached during a meeting for worship for business, or the account of a single transaction in the written record of a meeting for business or committee.

Monthly Meeting: A congregation of Friends who meet regularly for worship and to conduct corporate business, as well as a monthly gathering of such a body the same.

Opening: A termn used by early Friends to designate a spiritual opportunity or leading.

Overseers: Meeting appoints members to give pastoral care and nurture to all members and attenders.

Pacifist: A person who renounces war and any use of violence and seeks to resolve conflicts peacefully.

Passing Meeting: Acceptance by a monthly meeting of a written request, usually for membership or for marriage under its care.

Peace Testimony: The corporate commitment of Friends to pacifism and nonviolence.

Preparative Meeting: An-organized group of members of an established monthly meeting which ordinarily gathers for worship at another place.

Proceed as the Way Opens: To undertake a service or course of action without prior clarity about all the details but with confidence that divine guidance will make these apparent and assure an appropriate outcome.

Quaker: Originally, a derogatory term applied to Friends who expressed their excitement of spirit when led to speak in a meeting for worship in a shaking or quaking motion. Today, it refers to an alternative designation for a member of the Religious Society of Friends.

Quarterly Meeting: A regional gathering of members of constituent monthly meetings, traditionally on four occasions each year.

Queries: A set of questions, based on Friends' practices and testimonies, which are considered by Meetings and individuals as a way of both guiding and examining individual and corporate lives and actions. As such, they are a means of self examination. Queries to be considered regularly are included in Faith and Practice; others may be formulated by a committee or Meeting that seeks to clarify for itself an issue it needs to address.

Recorder: The person appointed by a Meeting to maintain statistics of the members and attenders of that Meeting.

Recording Clerk: The person appointed to take minutes at regular and called meetings for business of a Meeting or other Friends body.

Released Friend: A Friend whose leading to carry out a particular course of action has met with approval from a Meeting which then promises to pro-vide such support as would enable the Friend to follow that leading.

Rightly Ordered: Those procedures for the conduct of Friends business that encourage a meeting to carry out its corporate activities under divine leading.

Sense of the Meeting: An expression of the unity of a meeting for worship for business on some issue or concern. The general recognition, articulated by the clerk or some other person, that a given decision is in accordance with the divine will.

Simplicity: One of the traditional Quaker testimonies that’s closely associated with integrity, equality, and stewardship. Essentially, to limit the material circumstances of one's life in a way that allows/enables one to follow divine leadings.

Speaking to a Friend’s Condition: The conviction that a message, whether directly from God or through the words or actions of another, meets a Friend’s deepest needs and purposes.

Standing Aside: An action taken by an individual who has genuine reservations about a particular decision, but who also recognizes that the weight of the meeting clearly supports of the Meeting. The action of standing aside allows the Meeting to reach unity.

Stewardship: For Friends, stewardship is an element of integrity. Good stewardship directs Friends' investment of time and money in sustainable and renewable resources and in work that supports Quaker values and beliefs.

Testimony: A guiding principle of conduct that bears witness to the presence of God in the world and in our lives. Though there is no official list of such testimonies, Friends have traditionally identified peace and nonviolence, equality, simplicity, stewardship, community, and integrity as their practical principles.

Threshing Session: A gathering of Friends to consider in depth a controversial issue but in a way that is free from the necessity of reaching a decision.

Truth: The revealed will of God, as experienced in communion with the Inner Light or Inward Christ. Early Quakers called themselves the Religious Society of Friends of the Truth.

Under the Care Of: Describes an activity, program, or event for which a Meeting takes responsibility and to which it gives oversight, for instance, a marriage, a preparative meeting, and a school might all be said to be under the care of a monthly meeting.

Unity: The spiritual oneness and harmony whose realization is a primary objective of a meeting for worship or a meeting for business.

Unprogrammed Meeting: A meeting for worship based on quiet waiting for the presence of God revealed through spirit-led vocal ministry and the gathered communion.

Vocal Ministry: The sharing of a message or prayer during a meeting for worship.

Weighty Friend: An informal term for a Friend who is respected for spiritual depth, wisdom, and long service to the Religious Society of Friends.

Worship Sharing: A group practice in which participants share personal and spiritual experiences, thoughts, and feelings, often in response to a prearranged theme or questions, and in a manner that acknowledges the presence of God.