What are the principal concerns and activities of Friends?
The belief that there is potential for good in all persons – as indeed also the capacity for evil – makes Friends sensitive to human degradation, ignorance, superstition, suffering, injustice, and exploitation. Under a sense of concern – inner prompting, divine obedience, urgency – Friends are drawn to humanitarian callings and to programs of education and evangelism, to projects of service and constructive action. Early Friends went out with the Good News of their quickened faith to the American Colonies, and they bore their message of Truth to Czar, Sultan and Pope. With changed perspectives, this missionary witness for Christ continues under several Quaker bodies, in Alaska, in Latin America, in Africa, in Asia. There is a concern, too, for sharing of human resources with the developing peoples, and transnational programs are encouraged. Many Friends today are pressing for social change by nonviolent means; for reform of the present system of criminal justice; for real equality of o
