Could London Have an Online Quaker Meeting? Lessons from Around the World
When North Wales Quakers recently set up a fully online Local Meeting, it raised an intriguing possibility. If a Quaker meeting can exist entirely online in North Wales, could the same idea work in London?
At first glance it might seem unnecessary. London already has many meetings. But what opportunities could something like that unlock? Ressearch into digital worship suggests that there’s lot’s to be excited about when exploring new ways to grow and support our faith.
What other traditions have discovered
Across faith communities, a clear pattern has emerged. VR Church – a congregation that meets entirely in virtual reality – draws people with disabilities, social anxiety, and participants from dozens of countries. Many report that the anonymity of avatars makes spiritual conversation easier, not harder. Jewish communities experimenting with online minyanim during the pandemic found that participants joined from across different countries, creating global prayer communities that would never have existed in a physical synagogue. Buddhist groups like Triratna have run online meditation and study groups for years, finding that digital spaces help people build strong practice habits even when they live far from centres.
There’s a common thread through these examples: online worship tends to reach people who struggle to access physical congregations – those with disabilities, carers, people in remote locations, and those exploring faith cautiously or privately.
But it also has real limits. Informal conversation, spontaneous pastoral care, and the emotional texture of physical presence are harder to replicate online.
Why Quakers may be unusually well suited to digital worship
Among religious traditions, Quaker worship may be particularly compatible with online space. Meeting for Worship relies on shared silence, reflection, and attentiveness to the Spirit – minimal ritual, no performance. During the pandemic, many Friends discovered these elements translated surprisingly well to Zoom. Quakerism is an “experimental,” religion, and there are suprising ways to find the spirit of God in the every day.
Online Quaker worship may not feel like a diluted version of the real thing. It may simply be a different way of gathering in the same silence.
A quiet opportunity for London
In a city as large and fast-moving as London, geography is a real barrier. A meeting that requires an hour of travel each way is simply inaccessible to many people: frequent travellers, those on the edges of the city, people with caring responsibilities, or seekers who want a low-threshold way to explore Quakerism.
The North Wales experiment invites London Friends to ask if we could we do something similar. Not as a replacement for our meeting houses, but as an additional doorway into our shared, simple testimony.
If this idea interests you, or if you’d like to explore what starting an online Local Meeting in London might involve, then challenge yourself to live adventurously. What could you create?
