There's at least a couple of kinds of Quakers: ones with ministers and ones without. My wife belongs to a Meeting that doesn't have a minister. Instead of h

There's at least a couple of kinds of Quakers: ones with ministers and ones without. My wife belongs to a Meeting that doesn't have a minister. Instead of having someone preach, the attenders sit silently in a circle. If someone is moved to say something, they stand up and say it. Sometimes one or more people will respond. Meeting decisions have to be unanimous. It's a real source of frustration at times trying to convince the last holdout. Instead of a minister, they have a clerk. The clerk is elected and coordinates the church for a year. Before we were married, we had to meet several times with a clearance committee that had to say that we were ready to marry. I understand many ministers do something similar but this was a great thing. One of the members said it used to be a way that parents could stall a marriage - things were different 200 years ago with teenagers wanting to get married. (My wife and I were 33 and 39.) I remember reading an article about calling "root" "clerk" as a way to deter your boss from asking for root privileges.