‘Quaker’: what does it mean to the outside world?
Geoffrey Durham explains how and why Quaker Quest has enlisted professional market research help to find out more about Quakers
I know all sorts of Quakers who know all sorts of things, but I’ve never met a single one who has a clue what the word ‘Quaker’ means to people who aren’t Quakers. I find it curious that we remain so ignorant. I hear stories every week of members of the public who think Quakers have died out, or that we are exclusively American, or that we wear black hats. There’s hearsay evidence that we are widely thought to be an occult society with funny handshakes. And what do we do to scotch such ideas? Very little, it seems to me. Can it really be that we aren’t interested in what people know about us? Do we think it doesn’t matter?
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