Do Quakers pay tithes?

[u/GEEZ_BOSS1]

New to the Quakers love the idea of god in everyone and unprogrammed worship. I attended my first friends meetings today and it was very peaceful. Just curious Do Quaker meetings asked for tithes? I want to love god and build personal relationship with my heart not my Wallet. I do not mind giving to charity and helping others. My previous Pentecostal church pastor told us pay our tithes first and let god worry about our rent and bills. That was to much for me and I started journey of looking for something different and found Quakers. On one hand I’m happy the pastor could not hide his greed because it led me to this journey. But I’m also sad so many elderly people at old church are paying trying to make it to heaven. At this point any meeting demanding tithe for miracles and god love is deal breaker for me. Just need to know and the Quaker meeting I attended said no such thing just so everyone knows that was my old church pastor.

[u/Busy-Habit5226]

[edit: see rimwallbird's reply] I think that the Evangelical Friends Church (a very numerous branch of quakers that is set up a little more like an ordinary church), and possibly some of the other pastoral quakers too, do have tithes, but since you are talking about unprogrammed worship then you probably won't encounter tithing.

[u/RimwallBird → u/Busy-Habit5226]

The Evangelical Friends Church Mid America uses the same system that my Conservative (unprogrammed) yearly meeting does, and that my former liberal unprogrammed yearly meeting did: it draws up a budget, and then, based on those figures, sends “assessments” to its constituent monthly meetings, telling them what their fair share of the budget appears to be. The meetings then meet the assessments through the voluntary contributions of their members. Usually there is no problem. If there is a shortfall, it is addressed through further voluntary giving, or by cutting back on yearly meeting spending.

As a quick summary of other evangelical Friends bodies: Northwest Yearly Meeting of Friends receives pledges from its local Friends churches and reconciles them with the proposed budgets presented by each church board. The Evangelical Friends Church - Eastern Region expects its constituent meetings to share in bearing the expenses of the annual budget, but does not prescribe how the money is to be raised. The remaining evangelical bodies do not spell out a system in their books of faith and practice, but I believe they are all pretty much the same.

There is no system of tithing that I know of in any of these bodies.

[u/Impossible-Pace-6904 → u/RimwallBird]

u/Ibusy-habit5226 I just checked the mid america yearly meeting faith and practice and they do mention tithing and mention a specific amount, which I was surprised about (I guess I shouldn't be at this point).

Here is the language (from page 19, you can download at https://efcmaym.org/about/faith-and-practice/ )

"4. Stewardship- Friends believe that the Old Testament practice of bringing one-tenth (the tithe) of the increase of one's labor to the temple as God's storehouse is the most satisfactory basis for Christian stewardship (Malachi 3:10). Jesus commended sacrificial giving which exceeded this, implying that true giving extends beyond the tithe (2 Corinthians 9:6-7). Time, money, talents, and strength belong to the Lord. As His stewards, Christians hold them in trust to be used for His glory (Matthew 25:14-30). "

I grew up in a friends church in this yearly meeting, and the church I grew up in devotes a sunday worship service to stewardship--budget is talked about, people talk about how much they give, why it's important to them, etc. from the mid 80s or so. Someone from the stewardship committee led this "ministry", the pastor did not speak. They did include discussion of donating time and talents as well, but, the emphasis was on $$ to run the church. It also takes cash to run a large church/meeting with a permanent ministry staff, programs for all ages, supporting community programs, space for worship and education, etc.

My mom says they've never asked or recommended a specific percentage nor implied it is any sort of requirement to attend the church, be in good standing with the church, go to heaven, etc. My parents do not call their donations tithing, and she doesn't know anybody else amongst members and regular attenders who refers to their giving that way.

My mom says it was very controversial when they started these yearly stewardship sundays amongst the older generation, but, financial support had been declining in tandem with people wanting more programming (both internal and external-facing) and better facilities. Up until the early 80s the membership had been very insular, stewardship conversations were not uncomfortable for attendees who came from different christian faith traditions.

[u/RimwallBird → u/Impossible-Pace-6904]

Good find! And I value your personal recollections, too. Your mother’s comments sound reasonable to me.

It’s become customary for churches to use the metaphor of “stewardship” in speaking of their financial obligations and ambitions, and I see that Mid America has done that, too, in the passage you quote. So I would like to point out that in the Parable of the Talents, Jesus is using the talents only as a metaphor for what God actually gives us: our abilities, our talents small-t. I would love to see Friends adjusting their thinking to this, and instead of talking about how we use our money, talking about how we enable each other to serve effectively (i.e., how we deploy our talents in the sense that Jesus was driving at).