ABSTRACT
This chapter summarizes the extent of Quakerism in the early twenty-first century and then works its way around the world from Africa to Latin America, Asia and the Pacific, Europe, and North America. It traces the twentieth-century expansion of the Religious Society of Friends in different parts of the world and describes the distinctive ways in which Quakerism has developed in different cultural contexts. North American Quakerism in the twenty-first century has been marked by conflicting patterns of separations and consolidations revolving around questions of authority. Some Friends have placed more authority in the hands of church leadership as a way to promote a uniform theology and practice. Three and a half centuries after its origins as a profoundly prophetic movement that stressed the unity of the Spirit and the potential for every individual to hear the voice of Christ within, Friends have found that even within their small numbers they encompass much of the range of North American Christianity.
