I don't mean for the title of this post to be inappropriate in any way. On the contrary, I think that Quaker oatmeal's advertising campaign is something that deserves some consideration. Now that I live in Southeastern PA I know that there are a good amount of Quakers and that they have really, really good schools...but the oatmeal guy was all I knew about the religion before I got here. Quite honestly it never occured to me that Quakers still existed - in my mind they'd gone the way of the Puritans (wow, this will be embarassing if there are still Puritans around). Quakerism is very much a regional religion. I've recently learned that there is a small meeting on N. San Pedro Road in San Rafael (very close to the Jewish Community Center, actually), but I'm sure that the Quaker community out West has a different feel than the community back East. Perhaps it's just the nature of religion in the Bay Area, but I've actually noticed the same thing with Jews on the East Coast vs. the West Coast.
Anyways. When I got to UC and heard about people who went to Quaker school I was surprised to hear that Quakerism was alive and well in the US. I think that this is telling about the religion - not at all intrusive, very respectful of others, and no need to show off their customs or religion. This also really set the tone for our visit yesterday morning...
Details about the field trip in the next post. I just wanted to give a little background about my (lack of) exposure to Quakers previous to our trip.
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