Quaker Myth Busters

SOMETIMES Throughout the last three and a half centuries, there have been periods during which drinking alcohol was considered sinful by any number of religions. Quakerism is no exception. Drinking to excess or in the Meetinghouse are fairly consistently regarded as bad things, but the strict “no alcohol” rule some believe Quakers follow is a mostly-American and British phenomenon that has gone in and out of fashion a number of times and is currently out. Try telling a French Quaker not to have a glass of wine with dinner. Hearty laughter will follow.

Or, as one British Friend put it: So I’m sitting in a pub having a beer, and I mention I’m a Quaker. “Oh, are you teetotal?” they ask. Then I look back and forth between them and my beer a few times. “No?” (story recounted while in a bar having a beer)