Quakers are people who belong to the Religious Society of Friends, originally known as simply the Society of Friends, a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations. Members refer to each other as Friends after John 15:14 in the Bible. Originally, others referred to them as Quakers because the founder of the movement, George Fox, told a judge to "quake before the authority of God".
The Friends are generally united by a belief in each human's ability to be guided by the inward light to "make the witness of God" known to everyone. Quakers have traditionally professed a priesthood of all believers inspired by the First Epistle of Peter. To differing extents, the Friends avoid creeds and hierarchical structures. They include those with evangelical, holiness, liberal, orthodox, independent, and traditional Quaker understandings of Christianity. Especially since the 1960s, some Friends have approached spirituality from a universalist perspective rooted in religious pluralism, occasionally practicing multiple religious belonging, while others have approached the faith from nontheist perspectives. In 2017, there were an estimated 377,557 adult Quakers, 49% of them in Africa followed by 22% in North America.
Some 11% of Quakers worldwide practice waiting worship or unprogrammed worship (commonly Meeting for Worship), where the unplanned order of service is mainly silent and may include unprepared vocal ministry from those present. This form of worship originated with the practices of George Fox and the early Friends, and is the dominant form in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Southern Africa and parts of the United States. Some 40% of Quakers worldwide belong to the evangelical branch, which holds services with singing and a prepared Bible message coordinated by a pastor, with or without some period of silence. Their theology is largely consistent with evangelicalism framed in a Quaker context, and theirs is the dominant form of worship in most of Africa and parts of the United States, where it developed during the 19th Century in the context of the wider Second Great Awakening. Additionally, some 49% of worldwide Friends hold programmed or semi-programmed worship, which mix programmed elements such as hymns and readings with unprogrammed silence to varying degrees, but do not necessarily identify as evangelical.
The Christian movement dubbed Quakerism arose in mid-17th-century England from the Legatine-Arians and other dissenting Protestant groups breaking with the established Church of England (Anglicanism). The Quakers, especially the Valiant Sixty, sought to convert others by travelling through Britain and overseas preaching the Gospel; some early Quaker ministers were women. They based their message on a belief that "Christ has come to teach his people himself", stressing direct relations with God through Jesus Christ and belief in the universal priesthood of all believers. This personal religious experience of Christ was acquired by direct experience, as well as by reading and studying the Bible.