Via Community News Service, a University of Vermont journalism internship
BURLINGTON – Nestled between dense trees on North Prospect Street and down a gravel driveway stand two houses: one smaller, with large windows and a wooden door, and another with green shutters and a white fence. From the outside, a passerby might not look twice, believing they are simply residential homes.
These unassuming houses serve as a meeting space for several different Burlington groups, both religious and secular. Inside their walls, yoga is practiced, small business owners make ice cream and Jewish groups host mindfulness retreats.
This property is the Burlington Friends Meeting House, owned by the local chapter of the Religious Society of Friends, also known as the Quakers. This religious group, known for its commitment to pacifism, has established a uniquely accessible place in Burlington that has become not only a gathering space for Quakers but for many others.
“One of our missions is to have this be like a community center,” said Catherine Bock, the lead scheduler for the group.
About 81,000 Quakers live in the United States and Canada today, according to Friends General Conference. New England has a particularly high density of Friends — what Quakers call each other — said treasurer of Burlington Friends Meeting Linda McKenna.
The six core beliefs of Quakerism, co-clerk of the Meeting James Rider explained, are summed up by the acronym SPICES: simplicity, peacekeeping, integrity, community-building, equality, and stewardship.
There is no hierarchy within a Quaker house, Rider said, as everyone’s voice is considered important. Rider and his fellow clerk Susan Wilson emphasize that they do not make decisions on behalf of the Burlington Friends but instead facilitate discussion and reach consensus.
Quakers believe in the existence of God in everyone, inspiring their long history of supporting nonviolent movements, abolition, and women’s suffrage.
“If I’m doing violence onto someone else, I am doing violence onto the divine,” Rider explained.
A significant practice of Quakerism is worshipful silence, where Friends gather in silence and wait for a message to arrive from God. Anyone can stand and speak to the group as they feel spiritually led to do so.
“There’s a process of centering yourself and opening yourself up to a message from the divine source and thinking, really pondering, is this meant for me? How is God guiding me?” Rider said.
The group meets for worship twice weekly with an additional monthly meeting where they discuss practical matters such as finances, but also consider public statements to sign onto. For example, on September 14, Burlington Friends Meeting signed onto the Northwest Quarterly Meeting of Friends’ statement calling for peace in Palestine and Israel.
However, it wasn’t until the 1960s that Burlington-based Quakers had a physical place to worship.
According to Bob Fisher, member and former clerk of the group, the Quakers met in various buildings on the University of Vermont campus through the 1950s. In the early 1960s, the Bassett family — former owners of the current property — offered their home to host meetings. The Quakers accepted and began gathering at what is now the meeting house.
In 1993, the Bassett family offered to sell their second house to the Burlington Quakers. McKenna said it took members about a year and a half to decide to make the purchase.
“We weighed: could we really be good stewards of this property? What is the mission of holding this property?” she said. “We came to a common agreement that we could only do this if we could fulfill the mission of making this centrally-located property one of a community resource.”
Reaching a collective decision is an important aspect of the Quaker tradition.
“We believe that decisions come from within, and that if we as a group are in harmony, then we can move forward on a decision together. That often makes the process very slow, but it also makes it very honest and authentic,” McKenna said.
By renting the Bassett house kitchen to food start-ups starting at $20 per hour, Burlington Friends Meeting is addressing the gap in the availability of local, accessible commercial kitchens.
They rent out the house to about 20 external groups, ranging from small businesses and meditation groups to Narcotics Anonymous and Climate Action Collective, according to Bock.
Climate Action Collective, a grassroots environmental activism group with students from UVM, Champlain College, and St. Michael’s College has gathered every Wednesday at the meeting house since 2023.
The garden kept behind the meeting house is reflective of another cornerstone to Quakerism: stewardship. Climate Action Collective helps tend to the garden in exchange for discounted rent.
“[Burlington Friends Meeting] has become a large component of who we are and our identity as Climate Action Collective,” said Emma Townsend, the group’s policy co-director. “It really creates this sense of community, and feels like a very cozy space to us… Being able to work there and garden has been a big contribution [to that feeling] as well.”
Members of Ohavi Zedek, a synagogue across the street, have also joined with Burlington Friends Meeting to run Bread for Peace, an interfaith volunteer group that bakes and sells bread to fundraise for humanitarian aid in Palestine and Israel.
Scott Silverstein of Ohavi Zedek started Bread for Peace out of his house in Richmond, donating money from his homemade loaves to two Palestinian and Israeli organizations that assist in getting children hospital care and training first responders, respectively.
When demand for bread increased beyond Silverstein’s capacity, Bock reached out with an invitation to work with the Burlington Friends.
She noted that this is the first significant joint effort between Burlington Friends Meeting and the synagogue, despite their close proximity.
Some members of Burlington Friends were initially nervous to go to the synagogue where the Quakers’ staunch anti-war position and the recent war in Gaza—which has now reached a ceasefire—may have caused tension, Bock said.
Instead, they found community and collaboration for a mutual cause that transcended any potential disagreement.
“We endeavor to be a place where people can come who might not be welcome elsewhere,” Wilson said.