On Saturday 16th September South Belfast Friends Meeting held an Open Day to celebrate the meeting’s 60th anniversary.
Quakers (or the Religious Society of Friends) have held Meetings for Worship in Ireland since 1654. The first permanent Belfast Quaker Meeting was established in 1799 in North Belfast. In 1957 approval was given for a second Meeting for Friends who lived in Belfast, this time based in the south of the city. South Belfast Meeting House is an active Meeting with approximately 50 adult members and attenders and 15 children, who worship together each Sunday.
As part of the Open Day, South Belfast Friends’ Meeting displayed a range of posters promoting aspects of their meeting – Quaker Testimonies, history of Quakers in Ireland, amongst other themes. There were copious amounts of tea, coffee and homemade buns available and the opportunity to talk with members of the Meeting. During the course of the day, there was a brisk flow of people through the doors, from a range of backgrounds, some friends of friends, some local politicians and others completely new to Quakers, who had seen the publicity in the paper and decided to find out more. The day finished with a meal together that was supplied by Root Soup, a local social enterprise catering group in south Belfast.
South Belfast Quakers have a very strong commitment to eco issues with lots of practical recycling going on in the meeting house – recycling printer cartridges, clothing, bric a brac, spectacles, through Quaker Care charity shop, composting, low watt LED lights, etc, as well as eco issues featuring quite regularly in Meetings for Worship. Last year all Quaker Meetings we asked by Ireland Yearly Meeting (the umbrella body for the Religious Society of Friends in Ireland) to develop a Sustainability Plan for their Meeting. South Belfast held an afternoon discussion event to gather the opinion and support of all the members and produced a comprehensive sustainability plan of what it has done to date and what it still would like to work towards. They received their Eco-Congregation Ireland award in 2014.
The South Belfast Quaker Meeting’s 60th celebrations were reported in the Newsletter here – Biggest Quaker Congregation Marking 60 Years in Existence.
