Quaker Schools Based on 300-Year Tradition : First Family: Chelsea Clinton will enter an institution that remains committed to the Society of Friends’ ideals of peace, justice, equality and community service.

When Secret Service agents deliver Chelsea Clinton to the Sidwell Friends School for her first day of classes as the daughter of President Bill Clinton, she will be entering a unique educational-religious tradition extending back 300 years.

Sidwell, founded in 1883 by educator Thomas W. Sidwell, is a Society of Friends school and, like the other 78 Quaker schools across the nation, remains firmly fixed in a small denomination’s religious principles and its commitment to ideals of peace, justice, equality and community service.

Chelsea, who has a Southern Baptist father and a United Methodist mother, will find herself in one of the more religiously pluralistic and ethnically diverse schools in the nation’s capital.

“In the early days, Quakers were known as ‘seekers after truth,’ and there was a recognition that in order for truth to be found, there needed to be a diverse group of people to be with--people of different religions, colors, and socioeconomic classes,” said Kay Edstene of the Friends Council on Education. The council is the coordinating and support agency for the 79 schools, a network with historic ties to the first American Quaker school in the 17th Century.

Overall, Edstene said, of the 16,442 students at Quaker schools, more than 18% are students of color and about 20% receive some form of tuition aid. About 8% come from Quaker homes.

The Quaker movement developed as a religious reform movement in England around an itinerant preacher, George Fox (1624-91), who denounced all creeds and ecclesiastical customs, as well as political conventions. He was imprisoned eight times.

The movement, which quickly spread to British colonies in America, took its name “Friends” from John 15:14, “You are my friends if you do what I command you.”

The word Quaker, now an even more common designation than Friends and used by members of the group, was originally pejorative, referring to the emotional tremblings of worshipers.

Increasingly, the movement has commanded respect for its openness to diversity and pluralism and its commitment to democracy in church and society. Friends were among the early opponents of slavery, are generally known as pacifists and are committed to improving society. Although only about 110,000 strong in the United States, Quakers are influential well beyond their small presence.

“Friends are very welcoming of other religious traditions, and there is no attempt at spiritual proselytizing,” Edstene said. “Friends believe there are many ways of being spiritual.”

In addition to regular classes, the 12-year-old Chelsea will also be expected to attend Quaker worship once a week. “All Quaker schools have the requirement to attend worship,” Edstene said. But there is no “Quaker theology” to teach, she said.

Historically, Quakers have taught that only beliefs and practices recorded in the New Testament should be permitted. They rejected hierarchy, creeds and even the Bible as the basis for church authority, preferring to rely on a divine, immediate revelation, or “inner light.”

As a result, Quakers tolerated and even encouraged a variety of beliefs to develop and have no formal liturgy. They gather for worship in silence--the most striking feature of a Quaker meeting--and rise to speak as they feel moved.

If Chelsea stays at Sidwell Friends until graduation, she will study comparative religion, learning Quaker history along with the traditions of the other world religions.

Community service is also required of students.