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Short answer to the question: What do Quakers believe?


British Quakers have no creed. In the book "Quaker Faith & Practice" (QF&P) section 11.48 includes: "Membership, therefore, we see primarily in terms of discipleship, and so impose no clear-cut tests of doctrine or outward observance. Nevertheless those wishing to join the Society should recognise its Christian basis."

Among 21st century British Quakers there are many who, while acknowledging the Christian origins of Quakerism, now express interest in input from other faith traditions, and some question the existence and relevance of the supernatural. The majority of African Quakers and many North American Quakers are explicit Evangelical Christians.

The fundamental elements of being a Quaker are summarised in QF&P section 11.01:

the understanding of divine guidance, the manner of corporate worship and ordering of the meeting's business, the practical expression of inward convictions, and the equality of all before God.

The key common ground among the whole world family of Friends has recently been set out as:
(1) the centrality of inward encounter with God and revelation, and forms of worship
     that allow this to be experienced
(2) a way of doing church business based on the idea of corporate direct guidance
     rather than voting
(3) the spiritual equality of everyone
(4) the preference for peace and pacificism rather than war, and the commitment to
     other forms of social witness

(from Dandelion: The Quakers - A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press 2008)



You will find this question considered on many Quaker websites. British Yearly Meeting has an answer here.

There are more reflections on this question taken from the book Quaker Faith & Practice below.



QF&P Introduction (page 17)
In the Religious Society of Friends we commit ourselves not to words but to a way.


QF&P Introduction (page 16)
When three hundred Young Friends from thirty-four countries met in North Carolina in 1985, they were 'challenged, shaken up, at times even enraged by these differences in each other'. After much travail, they came through this experience and were able to say, in a final epistle:


We have wondered whether there is anything Quakers today can say as one. After much struggle we have discovered that we can proclaim this: there is a living God at the centre of all, who is available to each of us as a present teacher at the very heart of our lives. We seek as people of God to be worthy vessels to deliver the Lord's transforming word, to be prophets of joy who know from experience and can testify to the world, as George Fox did, 'that the Lord is at work in this thick night'.



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QF&P Introduction (page 13)
Words must not become barriers between us, for no one of us can ever adequately understand or express the truth about God. Yet words are our tools and we must not be afraid to express the truth we know in the best words we can. It is this conviction which has prompted the selection of a wide variety of extracts for inclusion in this book [i.e. Quaker Faith & Practice] confirming our testimony that truth cannot be confined within a creed.

QF&P 27.25
The Quaker objection to credal statements is not to beliefs as such but to the use of an officially sanctioned selection of them to impose a uniformity in things where the gospel proclaims freedom. 'Credo' is the Latin for 'I believe'. The meaning of the word is debased if you confine it to an act of the will giving intellectual assent to articles of faith. It is much better translated as 'I commit myself to...' in the sense that one is prepared to take the full consequences of the beliefs one has adopted. One adopts not so much a set of propositions as the discipline of working out in one's life and experience the consequences of the truth one has espoused. The value of the beliefs lies solely in their outworking. This I take to be the heart of the original Quaker message.
John Punshon, 1978

QF&P 23.11 
We are not for names, nor men, nor titles of Government, nor are we for this party nor against the other ... but we are for justice and mercy and truth and peace and true freedom, that these may be exalted in our nation, and that goodness, righteousness, meekness, temperance, peace and unity with God, and with one another, that these things may abound.
Edward Burrough, 1659

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