New Bedford Friends Meeting

02/13/2026

On this date in 1759 (Feb. 8th), Benjamin Lay died. (His date of birth is unknown, but it was probably in 1682.)

Quaker. Pacifist. Abolitionist. Pamphleteer. Beekeeper. Advocate for simple lifestyle. Opponent of capital punishment. Critic of the wealthy Pennsylvania Quaker elite. A man given to dramatic actions and provocative demonstrations.

Benjamin was one of the earliest and most zealous opponents of slavery in America. In 1738 he appeared at Philadelphia Yearly Meeting and interrupted the proceedings. He launched into a rant against slavery, after which he plunged a dagger into a Bible containing a bladder of pokeberry juice, splattering those nearby with red liquid.

Another time he stood outside the Abington Meeting House in deep snow with his right leg bare. When Friends expressed concern, he said "You pretend compassion for me, but you do not feel for the poor slaves in your fields who go all winter half clad."

Benjamin was forcibly evicted from many Quaker Meetings. One time he was kicked out of the Market Street Meeting and he allowed himself to fall in the gutter, remaining there until the meeting ended. When Friends asked if he required assistance, he replied: "Let those who cast me here raise me up."

In spite of it all, he had many friends, including Benjamin Franklin, who published some of his tracts and broadsides.

Born in Copford, England. Died in Abington, Pennsylvania. Buried in Abington Friends Cemetery, Greenwood Avenue & Meeting House Road, Jenkintown, Pennsylvania. His wife Sarah preceded him in death, having passed away around 1742.

~The Marginal Mennonite Society Heroes Series

01/25/2026

Happy birthday, Rufus M. Jones (Jan. 25, 1863 - June 16, 1948).

Quaker. Pacifist. Mystic. Philosopher. Historian. Graduate of Haverford College (1885). Master's degree from Haverford (1886). Master's degree from Harvard (1901). Longtime professor at Haverford (1893 to 1934).

In 1917, Rufus co-founded (with Henry Cadbury) the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). The work of AFSC made an impression on Mennonites, who formed the Mennonite Central Committee three years later, in 1920.

At a World Missionary Conference in Jerusalem in the late 1920s, Jones urged attendees to be open to the positive influences of all world religions, "gladly recognizing the good they contain."

Author of "Studies in Mystical Religion" (1909), "Finding the Trail of Life" (1926), and "The Faith and Practice of the Quakers" (1927), among other works. In his 1914 work, "Spiritual Reformers in the 16th and 17th Centuries," Rufus devoted a chapter to Anabaptist leader Hans Denck and his belief in the priority of the "inner word" over the "outer word."

Born into a Gurneyite Quaker family in South China, Maine. Died in Haverford, Pennsylvania. Buried in the Haverford Meeting Burial Ground, alongside his wife, Elizabeth Bartram Cadbury Jones.

~The Marginal Mennonite Society Heroes Series

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01/19/2026

06/13/2023

Join us this Wed. 6/14 as New Bedford Friends Meeting & Veterans For Peace as we welcome The Golden Rule boat to New Bedford! Originally captained by the late South Coast Quaker Albert Bigelow, The Golden Rule sailed in the 1950s to protest US nuclear weapons testing in the Marshall Islands. (Bigelow went on to become one of the original Freedom Riders in the Civil Rights Movement and got beat up with later-Congressman John Lewis while nonviolently protesting segregation in a South Carolina bus station.)

Today, Veterans for Peace is sailing the boat again to remind us of the dangers that nuclear weapons pose. Meet the crew and make peace flags at Pope's Island Marina from 12-4 p.m on Wed. Then at 5 p.m. on Wed. 6/14, join us at the Friends (Quaker) Meeting House at 83 Spring St. in NB for a free viewing of the 25-minute documentary "Making Waves" about the Golden Rule, followed by conversation with the crew & a light supper.

12/21/2022

Inner silence, calming the agitations of our hearts and minds, letting go of all that is stubborn and grasping, is essentially an expression of the
love of truth.

03/31/2022

Truth will not lose ground by being tried.
~ Isaac Penington

03/09/2022

For here's Quaker Alice Paul's 1920 statement. 102 years later little has changed. The Equal Rights Amendment written by Alice Paul has yet to be passed and therefore the U.S. Constitution still fails to expressly guarantee gender equality.

[text from image: "It is incredible to me that any woman should consider the fight for full equality won. It has just begun. There is hardly a field, economic or political, in which the natural and unaccustomed policy is not to ignore women. Unless women are prepared to fight politically they must be content to be ignored politically." - Alice Paul, 1920, Women's Rights Activist/Quaker]

03/09/2022

I long for the day my sisters will rise, and occupy the sphere to which they are called by their high nature and destiny.

12/13/2021

A message from the Barclay Room at New Bedford Meeting (83 Spring St.), where New Bedford Friends gather in the winter for worship on Sunday mornings at 10.

10/06/2021

“Spirit is not a supernatural force that goes against the grain of our nature. It is not irrational feeling or magical manipulation. It is our own deep nature, so that when we get in touch with it we experience it as something entirely natural.” Rex Ambler

03/08/2021

Happy International Women's Day! Today, we honor the faith and fearlessness of Quaker women in history and around the world right now. Here are seven Quaker women who were voices of change, from QuakerBooks of FGC: http://bit.ly/qbookswomenforchange

[Image description: An image of historic Friend Lucretia Mott, next to her quote - "If our principles are right, why should we be cowards?"]