Quakers Trivia
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50 free Quakers trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Quakers trivia for history buffs, religious-studies students and anyone who has sat through a silent meeting for worship and wondered where it all came from. The quiz begins in 17th-century England with George Fox, the magistrate who coined the nickname, Pendle Hill, Margaret Fell at Swarthmoor Hall, the Valiant Sixty and James Nayler's ride into Bristol, then follows Friends to America: Mary Dyer on Boston Common, William Penn's holy experiment and his treaty with Tamanend, the Liberty Bell and the Quaker governors of Rhode Island. It also covers what Friends actually believe and do - the inward light, thee and thou, the plain calendar, declarations instead of vows, decisions without votes, SPICES - and their record on slavery, prison reform, women's rights and peace, from John Woolman and Levi Coffin to Elizabeth Fry, Lucretia Mott, Bayard Rustin and the 1947 Nobel Peace Prize. There is a business round too: Barclays, Cadbury, Clarks, Abraham Darby, and the truth about Quaker Oats. About a third of the questions are easy and the rest step up to hard. Every answer was checked against a reference page and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Oscar-winning British actress went to a Quaker school in York and has called the faith essential to her work?
Judi Dench
Judi Dench. A Quaker since her schooldays at the Mount School, she is best known as M, the spy chief who sends James Bond out with his licence to kill.
Q 02Who founded the Quaker movement in mid-17th-century England?
George Fox
George Fox, a weaver's son, preached that anyone could know Christ directly, with no need of ordained clergy, and was jailed again and again for it.
Q 03How did the founder say the nickname 'Quaker' began?
A magistrate he told to tremble at God's word
A magistrate he told to tremble at God's word coined it, by the founder's account: Justice Bennet 'was the first that called us Quakers'. The word had earlier been used for sects that shook in religious fervour.
Q 04On which English summit did the founder have his 1652 vision of 'a great people to be gathered'?
Pendle Hill
Pendle Hill. From its top he saw the sea bordering Lancashire, and within weeks he was preaching to a great crowd on Firbank Fell, winning the converts who carried the movement across England.
Q 05What name is given to the travelling preachers who spread Quakerism in the 1650s?
The Valiant Sixty
The Valiant Sixty, also called the Publishers of Truth, came mostly from the north of England and included women preachers, at a time when pulpits belonged to ordained men.
Q 06Which 'mother of Quakerism' hosted the early movement at Swarthmoor Hall and married the founder in 1669?
Margaret Fell
Margaret Fell. Jailed in Lancaster Castle from 1664 to 1668 for holding meetings at her house, she wrote 'Womens Speaking Justified' there, arguing that women had every right to preach.
Q 07Which preacher was tried by Parliament for blasphemy after entering Bristol in 1656 in imitation of Palm Sunday?
James Nayler
James Nayler. Parliament had him pilloried, branded on the forehead with a B for blasphemer and jailed; freed in 1659, he was reconciled with the movement's founder.
Q 08Under which king did the Toleration Act finally make Quaker worship legal in England?
William III
William III. The Act of 1689, passed months after he and Mary II took the throne, let dissenters worship openly after penal laws that had put thousands of Friends in jail.
Q 09What pronoun were Quakers famous for using as an ordinary form of address?
Thee
Thee. The founder wrote that he was 'required to Thee and Thou all men and women, without any respect to rich or poor', so Friends refused everyone the more deferential 'you'.
Q 10At a traditional Quaker wedding, who signs the couple's marriage certificate as witnesses?
Every guest in the room
Every guest in the room signs, children included. With no clergy to marry them, the couple declare their promises before the whole meeting, so the whole meeting witnesses the match.
Q 11What is Quaker unprogrammed worship, practised in Britain and by a minority of Friends worldwide, mainly made up of?
Silence
Silence. Friends sit waiting with no set programme, and anyone present may rise to speak briefly if they feel led; sometimes the whole hour passes without a word.
Q 12What does a Quaker 'clearness committee' help a member to do?
Weigh a big decision such as marriage
Weigh a big decision such as marriage. The committee does not hand down advice: it listens and questions, on the belief that the person can find the answer within.
Q 13How is a decision reached at a Quaker business meeting?
Q 21The 1827 Great Separation split American Quakers into Orthodox Friends and followers of which preacher?
Elias Hicks
Elias Hicks. The Long Island minister had urged a boycott of goods made by slave labour; opponents branded his followers Hicksites, though they called themselves the Liberal branch.
Q 22Quaker schoolteacher John Dalton gave the first scientific account of which condition, one he had himself?
Colour blindness
Colour blindness. Dalton, best known for his atomic theory, guessed that the fluid in his eyes was tinted blue and asked that they be examined after his death; it proved perfectly clear.
Q 23Which ruler did Quaker missionary Mary Fisher, banished from Boston in 1656, later travel largely on foot to address?
Those present sense the way forward together
Those present sense the way forward together: no vote is taken, and the clerk records a decision only when the whole meeting feels it has come to unity.
Q 14What is the 'plain calendar' used by traditional Quakers?
Numbering months and days instead of naming them
Numbering months and days instead of naming them let Friends avoid names that honoured pagan gods, so Sunday became First Day and January First Month.
Q 15In SPICES, the acronym many American Quakers use for their testimonies, what does the E stand for?
Equality
Equality. The belief put women among the movement's preachers from the 1650s and made Friends early campaigners against slavery; the other letters are simplicity, peace, integrity, community and stewardship.
Q 16What is the Quaker term for the divine presence believed to guide each person?
The inward light
The inward light is why Friends saw no need for ordained clergy: if something of God is in everyone, anyone at a meeting may minister to the rest.
Q 17Early Quakers enraged judges by refusing to remove what in court?
Their hats
Their hats. The founder wrote that God 'forbade me to put off my hat to any, high or low'; magistrates read it as contempt, and it helped put thousands of Friends in jail.
Q 18Which American frontiersman, born in 1734, grew up in a family of Quakers?
Daniel Boone
Daniel Boone. His family moved to the North Carolina frontier in his teens, and he later helped blaze the trail through the Cumberland Gap into Kentucky.
Q 19Which East African country, where American Friends opened a mission in 1902, has more Quakers than any other nation?
Kenya
Kenya. Three Friends from Cleveland, Ohio, sailed for Mombasa in 1902 and built a mission at Kaimosi; by 2017 Kenya counted about 119,000 Quakers, far more than the United States.
Q 20Which branch of Quakerism holds services led by a pastor, with hymns and a prepared sermon?
Evangelical Friends
Evangelical Friends. Their services resemble Methodist or Baptist ones, a style that arose in 19th-century America, while Conservative Friends, despite the name, keep the older unprogrammed meeting.
The Ottoman sultan
The Ottoman sultan. Mehmed IV, camped with his army at Adrianople, heard her out through an interpreter and offered her an armed escort onward, which she declined.
Q 24Which Quaker, one of the 'Boston martyrs', was hanged in 1660 for defying a Puritan ban?
Mary Dyer
Mary Dyer. Banished on pain of death, she came back to Boston anyway; after her hanging the story reached Charles II, who ordered Massachusetts to stop executing Friends.
Q 25Charles II named Pennsylvania not for its Quaker founder, William Penn, but for which relative of his?
His father
His father, Admiral Sir William Penn. The founder had suggested plain 'Sylvania', Latin for woodland; the king added the Penn to honour the late admiral, to whom the Crown owed money.
Q 26With which Lenape chief is William Penn said to have made a treaty of friendship under an elm at Shackamaxon?
Tamanend
Tamanend. He became an American folk symbol of fair dealing between peoples, and New York's Tammany Hall political machine grew out of a society named after him.
Q 27Which New England colony became a refuge for Quakers driven out of Puritan Massachusetts?
Rhode Island
Rhode Island. Founded on freedom of conscience, which its 1663 royal charter guaranteed, the colony drew Jews as well as Quakers.
Q 28Which American icon did Quaker politician Isaac Norris order for the Pennsylvania State House in 1751?
The Liberty Bell
The Liberty Bell. Norris also chose its verse, 'Proclaim liberty throughout all the land'; the London-made bell cracked on its first test ring and local metalworkers recast it in Philadelphia.
Q 29Why did the Quakers behind Britain's 1787 abolition society need Wilberforce as their voice?
Barred from Parliament
Barred from Parliament by an oath Quakers would not swear, they needed an MP to carry the cause; no Quaker sat there until the 1830s, when one was at last allowed to affirm instead.
Q 30Which New Jersey tailor and Quaker preacher travelled the colonies urging Friends to free their slaves?
John Woolman
John Woolman. He made his journeys on foot where he could, wore undyed clothes and shunned goods tied to the slave trade, and he persuaded many Friends to free the people they held.