Our History

NEK Quaker Meeting was started in 1980 by three couples who were connected in various ways. We felt disillusioned by the conventions of our upbringing and wanted to find our own way to live, so we moved to the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont as part of the “Back to the Land” movement. We started by physically building our homes.

The impetus for starting the group came when we were having children. The first born was invited by a neighbor playmate to her Sunday School class. While appreciating the developing friendship, the parents did not feel comfortable with the rather prescriptive Christian doctrine that their child was being exposed to. We all had at least some connection with Quaker thought and practice and felt that would better fit for what we wanted for our children. Some among us had practiced meditation, so we were all comfortable with gathering in silence. We began meeting in one another’s homes on Sunday mornings in the tradition of Quaker Meeting for Worship, although not in any official way. Children were our main focus, and the adults took turns conducting what became First Day School.

A fourth couple with their two children joined the group within a month and we continued to meet in one another’s homes. In our early years, we decided to publicly witness our concern about a fundamentalist church community in Island Pond that had allegedly been using corporal punishment in the indoctrination of their children. Our action got the attention of the Quaker community. and we received visitation and encouragement from Burlington Friends Meeting to become Quaker Worship Group.

Occasionally we were visited by a kind and insightful Quaker, mother of the one and only Quaker among us, who saw the group as growing in the depth of our meditation group, and she also encouraged us to think of ourselves as a Quaker Worship Group.

We started attending Quarterly Meetings, which took place at Farm and Wilderness in Plymouth, Vermont. We especially appreciated the programs set up for children during those weekend gatherings. Several became increasingly involved in the Quarter — one serving as co-chair of Ministry and Counsel, another taking on the role of recording clerk — even though neither were official Quakers.

In 1985, Burlington Monthly Meeting offered to oversee us if we wished to become a preparatory Monthly Meeting. We decided that was the path we would take. This was the origin of Barton/Glover Monthly Meeting, now NEK Quaker Meeting. We became part of the Northwest Quarter and New England Yearly Meeting.

Our Meeting is made up of both members and attenders. Both are active and dedicated, so we decided we would make no distinction — in terms of participation and holding of offices — between members and attenders. This continues to the present.

Over the years attendance grew, ebbed and grew again. Today, it is common to have 20 attenders at Meeting from numerous towns in the NEK. With our zoom connection started during Covid, our attenders join us from as far away as Mexico, Texas, Colorado, and Virginia. We offer a First Day school when children attend. We are still located in the Barton Library, which was our first home decades ago, when we finally decided that alternating houses was no longer workable. It had been a deliberated decision by our Meeting not to purchase land to build a Meeting House. By renting a modest local space, we are able to dedicate more of our funds to help those in need in our local community, and to support greater Quaker Social Justice causes. We still hold to that decision.

We are a “universal” Quaker Meeting, meaning that people from all paths have been part of the life of our Meeting. You are welcome to join us!