Loud worship and other contrasts set apart Kenya’s large community of Quakers

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KAIMOSI, Kenya (AP) — A choir blasts a local hymn complete with musical instruments as congregants, mostly women clad in white dresses, dance and clap along. The Quaker meeting house in western Kenya is a sharp contrast to the deafening silence that is the norm among practitioners of the faith in the United States.

The atmosphere feels similar to Pentecostal churches, with the hymns and spiritual declarations very familiar to those sung in other churches. But the Friends Church in Cheptulu bears no sign of the cross, paintings or sculptures of Jesus Christ, which is the norm in most Christian churches.

Quakerism originated in 17th-century England when George Fox, who objected to the Anglican emphasis on ceremony, founded the group. In the 1640s, he said he heard a voice that led him to develop a personal relationship with Christ, described as the Inner Light.

There are an estimated 400,000 members worldwide of the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers. About half live in Africa with most in Kenya, where Americans introduced the religion. Quakers in the U.S. believe in the Inner Light…