April 26th 2026

In honor of the completion of the SCYM Faith and Practice this weeks’ reading is focused on…

1 Why a Faith and Practice for South Central Yearly Meeting?

The tradition of creating a document of guidance on how to live according to Quaker principles began in the late 17th century as a way to convey a yearly meeting’s decisions about how Quakers, also known as the Religious Society of Friends, should live and behave. 

By the mid 20th century almost every yearly meeting had their own Faith and Practice volume as a resource for meetings and their members on practicing the Quaker way. 

Members of the Religious Society of Friends who worship in the unprogrammed manner are relative newcomers to this South Central region of the United States, coming here in the mid and late 20th century from other yearly meetings in the East or Midwest who brought with them the faith and practice volumes of the yearly meeting from which they came.

They came to an area that extends through four states (Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas) over large geographical distances through at least 14 ecological regions. That physical diversity is matched by the diversity of culture, history, politics, and religion throughout the region, and by wide differences in population density and language.

Partly due to geography, we forged a distinctive kind of Quakerism, seeking to touch those in isolated communities as well as those in large, dynamic communities of faith while deepening our commitment to values that may seem out of step with our surrounding communities: nonviolence, peace, equality, inclusiveness, and gentleness.

South Central Yearly Meeting (SCYM) formally began as a yearly meeting in 1961 after existing as an association of Friends for 10 years before that. In the early 1990s Friends began the process of creating their own Faith and Practice document instead of relying on those of older yearly meetings, and what they discovered was that they wanted a procedures manual to guide them in managing yearly meeting processes.

Now thirty years further along, we are again seeking in this new Faith and Practice document, to describe who we are and aspire to become within the Religious Society of Friends worldwide and give voice to both our distinctiveness and how we fit into the Religious Society of Friends. 

This is a living document about who we are and aspire to become. As such, members of SCYM can ask for it to be revised and create a Faith and Practice revision committee to review it and discern what no longer serves and what new material is needed.

Other yearly meetings have engaged in this process over the years. Some yearly meetings have a standing committee to deal with changes, while others appoint a new committee every five to ten years.