I have an Ask Me Any­thing request from read­er Ruby M:

Hel­lo! I’m study­ing The Friends Church for aca­d­e­m­ic pur­pos­es and I’d love to hear from some­one with first­hand expe­ri­ence. How easy is it to become a quak­er? Do you ever feel peo­ple treat you dif­fer­ent­ly because you’re a quak­er? Do you think there should be more rep­re­sen­ta­tion of quak­ers in the media? Thank you so much for your time. I’m very eager to hear back from you!

Since my expe­ri­ence is just one data point, I hope oth­ers will use the com­ment sec­tion below to add their stories.

I found becom­ing a Quak­er to be some­thing of a spi­ral process. I first walked into a Friends meet­ing­house at the age of 20 and only slow­ly took on an iden­ti­ty as a Friend. At each step of the process, I learned more clear­ly what that might mean and have strived to grow into deep­er faith­ful­ness. I didn’t for­mal­ly apply for mem­ber­ship until a decade or so after I became a reg­u­lar atten­der. This time lag is not unheard of but I don’t think it’s usu­al. It’s more of an insight into my own care­ful­ness and ret­i­cence about join­ing things than it is an indi­ca­tion of any­thing the meet­ings I attend­ed required. When I did final­ly apply for mem­ber­ship I was quite qual­i­fied and want­ed the clear­ness process to be exact­ing: again, this is an insight into my psyche!

Most peo­ple on the street don’t quite know what Quak­ers are so I can’t say I’m always treat­ed dif­fer­ent­ly. I guess see­ing more Quak­ers in the media would be help­ful, though giv­en our over­all small num­bers I sus­pect even our fleet­ing appear­ances in TV shows and movies are more than we might pro­por­tion­al­ly expect.

I’m inter­est­ed to hear how oth­er Friends would answer Ruby’s question.

Update: reader answers by email and commentary

Jes­si­ca F: I’ve want­ed to be a Quak­er since I learned about the Abo­li­tion­ists who helped with the Under­ground Rail­road and prison reform. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the movie Gen­tle Per­sua­sion pre­sent­ed Quak­ers as being against music so I became a Uni­tar­i­an instead. Even­tu­al­ly I learned that wasn’t true for many Quak­ers and I found that all of the val­ues I had devel­oped through the years were also Quak­er val­ues and so becom­ing a Quak­er gave me a sup­port sys­tem and a com­mu­ni­ty of like minds.