American Friends, along with Friends everywhere, join in the activities of the Friends World Committee for Consultation, founded at a world conference at Swarthmore and Haverford Colleges in Pennsylvania in 1937. The Committee encourages communication and intervisitation among Friends around the world, who now number 200,000 in more than 85 yearly meetings in 37 countries. World gatherings are held every few years at locations all over the globe.
REUNION
Informal cooperation in these agencies and in other ways has, in some instances, led to reunion of some of the the yearly meetings that split in the 1800s: New England, Canada, Philadelphia, New York, and Baltimore. Except for Philadelphia, these reunited meetings now affiliate with both the Friends General Conference and Friends United Meeting.
The reunion of the two New York Yearly Meetings--Hicksite and Orthodox--took place in 1955. It soon included the few Friends living in New York State who were members of the Canada Conservative Yearly Meeting and Genesee Yearly Meeting, a meeting set up in 1834 to include Hicksite meetings in Western New York and in Canada. The epistle of the reunited yearly meeting, announcing our longed-for healing, follows:
GENERAL EPISTLE TO FRIENDS EVERYWHERE
Dear Friends:
This is the message of our love.
We have been united with you this week in closer fellowship which transcended our diversity, as New York Yearly Meeting became again one body of Friends.
We wish to share with you our joy that the way to unity has been found.