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Religious important for life

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The Religious Society of Friends is a worldwide religious movement, members of which are formally known as Friends or informally known as Quakers. It is based on the idea that individuals can have a personal relationship with the divine without the need for intermediaries, such as priests, rituals or sacraments. It is historically rooted in interpretations of the reported teachings of Jesus Christ, and many would regard it as a denomination of Christianity.

At Quakers' meeting for worship, any member may give vocal ministry if called to do so by God. Within some Quaker traditions (particularly in the United Kingdom, New England and Europe), these meetings are predominantly silent, with any vocal ministry given by Friends in an unplanned and spontaneous way when called to do so by God; whilst in other Quaker traditions (particularly in mid and west USA, Africa, and Asia), there is a pastor who prepares part of the meeting for worship, called the message, in advance.

The Religious Society of Friends developed out of a Christian movement of people who were dissatisfied with the existing denominations and sects of Christianity in England in the 17th century, and wished to return to a way of life based on their interpretations of early Christian communities. There were many involved at the start of this movement, and there is no single founder or leader. Some influential early figures include Edward Burrough, Roger Brearley, Richard Farnsworth, Margaret Fell, Francis Howgill, George Fox, James Naylor, Isaac Penington and many others. Today, George Fox is probably the most well-known of these early figures, sometimes referred to as the "leader rather than the founder" of the movement. There are now national organisations of Friends (Yearly Meetings) in Africa, Asia, North America, Central America, Australia and Europe.

History

Main article: Quaker history

The examples and perspective in this article may not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please improve this article or discuss the issue on the talk page.

Quaker William Penn founded Pennsylvania

English dissenter George Fox played an important part in founding the Religious Society of Friends in the 1650s.

Beginnings

The Religious Society of Friends began in England in the 1650s, as a Nonconformist breakaway movement from English Puritanism. As the movement expanded, it faced opposition and persecution. Friends were imprisoned and beaten in both Great Britain, Ireland and the British colonies. William Penn was imprisoned in England on a number of occasions. In the 1670 "Hay-market case", William Penn was accused of the crime of 'preaching Quakerism to an unlawful assembly', and while he freely admitted his guilt he challenged the righteousness of such a law. The jury, recognizing that William Penn clearly had been preaching in public, but refusing to find him guilty of speaking to an unlawful assembly, attempted to find Penn guilty of "speaking in Gracechurch-street". The judge, unsatisfied with this decision, withheld food, water, and toilet facilities from the jurors for three days. The jurors finally decided to return a not guilty verdict overall, and while the decision was accepted, the jurors were fined. One of the jurors appealed this fine, and Chief Justice Sir John Vaughn issued an historically-important ruling: that jurors could not be punished for their verdicts. This case is considered significant milestone in the history of jury nullification.

In the Massachusetts Bay colony, Friends were banished on pain of death — some (most famously Mary Dyer) were hanged on Boston Common for returning to preach their beliefs. In England Friends were effectively banned from sitting in Parliament at Westminster from 1698-1833. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania was founded by William Penn, as a safe place for Friends to live and practice their faith. Despite persecution, the movement grew steadily.

During the 19th century Friends in Ireland and the United States suffered a number of separations.

Names

Various names have been used for the Friends movement and its adherents. These include:

Children of the Light
Friends
Friends Among Friends
Friends of the Truth
Publishers of Truth
Quakers
Quiet Helpers
Religious Society of Friends
Saints
Seekers of Truth
Society of Friends

In the first few years of the movement, Quakers thought of themselves as part of the restoration of the true Christian church after centuries of apostasy. For this reason, during this period they often referred to themselves as simply the "saints". Other common names in the early days were "Children of the Light" and "Friends of the Truth", reflecting the central importance in early Quaker theology of Christ as an Inner light that shows you your true condition.

The name "Quaker" was first used in 1650, when George Fox was brought before Justice Bennet of Derby on a charge of blasphemy. According to Fox's journal, Bennet "called us Quakers because we bid them tremble at the word of God"^[3], a scriptural reference (e.g., Isaiah 66:2, Ezra 9:4). Therefore, what began apparently as a way to make fun of Fox's admonition by those outside the Society of Friends became a nickname that even Friends use for themselves.

The name "Religious Society of Friends" came many years later, in the 18th century. This remains the most widely-accepted name to this day, although often "Quakers" is added in parentheses for the sake of clarity. However, there are some Friends who prefer other names: some evangelical Friends' organizations use the term "Friends Church", and some Friends (usually in unprogrammed meetings) object to the word "religious" and refer to themselves as part of the "Society of Friends". There are some monthly meetings that for this reason do not include "religious" in their name, while most larger Quaker organizations, such as yearly meetings, use the full name.

Hicksite-Orthodox split

In 1827 a division occurred within Philadelphia Yearly Meeting when its members could not agree on who was to be clerk. The issue involved the visits and preaching of Elias Hicks in violation of the will of numerous meetings; they claimed his views were universalist and contradicted the historical tradition of Friends. The same year, a number of Friends in sympathy with him separated to form a parallel system of yearly meetings in America, referred to as Hicksite and those who did not were called Orthodox; ultimately five yearly meetings divided.

The splits in New York and Philadelphia Yearly Meetings were overcome in 1955 when in each yearly meeting the Orthodox and Hicksite meetings merged; Baltimore's division ended a decade later.

Beaconite Controversy

The Beaconite Controversy arose from the book "A Beacon to the Society of Friends," published in 1835 by Isaac Crewdson. He was a minister in the Manchester Meeting. The controversy arose in 1831 when doctrinal differences amongst the Friends culminated in the winter of 1836-1837 with the resignation of Isaac Crewdson and of 48 fellow members of the Manchester Meeting. About 250 others left in various localities in England including prominent members. A number of these joined themselves to the Plymouth Brethren and brought influences of simplicity of worship to that society. Notable among the Plymouthists who were former Quakers included John Elliot Howard of Tottenham and Robert Mackenzie Beverley.

Gurneyite-Wilburite split

The Orthodox Friends in America were exercised by a transatlantic dispute between Joseph John Gurney of England and John Wilbur of Rhode Island. Gurney emphasized scriptural authority and favored working closely with other Christian groups. Wilbur, in response, defended the authority of the Holy Spirit as primary, and worked to prevent what he saw as the dilution of Friends tradition of Spirit-led ministry. Wilbur was expelled from his yearly meeting in a questionable proceeding in 1842. Over the next several decades, a number of Wilburite-Gurneyite separations occurred. The Wilburite tradition is carried on today to varying degrees by the conservative yearly meetings of Ohio, Iowa, and North Carolina; Ohio Yearly Meeting (Conservative) is generally considered the most traditional in this regard, retaining more rural Quakers who use the plain language and continue wearing plain dress more than the other two.

Beanites

Joel Bean was an Orthodox Friend who opposed the extreme evangelicalism that was creeping into his branch of Quakerism. He formed a new branch of Quakerism in the western part of the United States when his membership was terminated and his meeting was laid down by Iowa Yearly Meeting.

The "Beanite", or independent, Quakers resemble an amalgam of Hicksite and Wilburite Quakerism. During the 1980s some of them adopted the label "Christ-Centered Universalism".

Beliefs and testimonies

It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Testimony of Simplicity, Testimony of Integrity, Peace Testimony, Testimony of Equality, Quaker views of women and Religious Society of Friends#Beliefs and practices of Friends (Discuss)

George Fox and the other early Quakers believed that direct experience of God was available to all people, without mediation (e.g., through hired clergy, or through outward sacraments). Fox described this by writing that "Christ has come to teach His people Himself."

Modern Friends often express this belief in many ways, including the attitude of trying to see/appeal to "[the light] of God in everyone"; finding and relating to "the Inner light", "the inward Christ", or "the spirit of Christ within."Early Friends more often used terms such as "Truth", "the Seed", and "the Pure Principle", from the principle that each person would be transformed as Christ formed and grew in them. The intention to "see the light" or see "that of God in everyone" is an effort in Quakers to cast aside more superficial differences and focus on the good that they believe to be in all people.

Since Friends believe that each contains God, much of the Quaker perspective is based on trying to hear God and to allow God's Spirit free action in the heart. Isaac Penington wrote in 1670: "It is not enough to hear of Christ, or read of Christ, but this is the thing — to feel him my root, my life, my foundation..."

Quakers try to bear witness or testify to their beliefs in their every day life - an expression of "spirituality in action". These ways in which they testify are often known as Quaker testimonies or Friends' testimonies - these are not a formal, static set of words, but rather a shared view or attitude of how many Quakers relate to God and the world. This leads to each Quaker having a different understanding of what the testimonies are, and while the ideologies remain quite similar for all Quakers, they go by different names, and different values are included throughout the Religious Society of Friends. The Testimonies are interrelated and can be seen as a coherent philosophical system, even outside Christian theology. The testimonies have not always been consistent, but throughout their history they have challenged Friends and provided them guidance.

The list of testimonies is, like all aspects of Friends theology, continuously evolving — so as to be relevant to today, but the following are common:

Peace
Equality
Integrity (or sometimes Truth)
Simplicity

Some Friends also include other testimonies, such as Unity, Community, Compassion, Justice, Truth, Stewardship, Sustainability, and the testimony against time and season. In the USA, Children and Friends school students are often taught the acronym SPICES, which stands for Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Community, Equality and Stewardship. In the UK, the acronym STEP is used, or more affectionately, PEST, which includes the testimonies to Peace, Equality, Simplicity and Truth. Truth tends to be the more common name of the integrity testimony in the UK, although Integrity is also sometimes added as a fifth testimony. Similarly, in recent years the environment has also come to be regarded by some in the UK as an "emerging testimony", one that is respected and valued, but has not traditionally been prioritised.

An interesting example of Quaker attitudes is in the writings of William Penn, Some Fruits of Solitude In Reflections And Maxims, written in his retirement. An excerpt from this work is the following aphorism: "The Wise Man is Cautious, but not cunning; Judicious, but not Crafty; making Virtue the Measure of using his Excellent Understanding in the Conduct of his Life. "

Peace

Main article: Peace Testimony

Quakers in Pennsylvania meeting with Native Americans

In 1947, the Religious Society of Friends was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The peace testimony of Friends is their best known.

The Peace Testimony is probably the best known testimony of Friends. The belief that violence is wrong has persisted to this day, and many conscientious objectors, advocates of non-violence and anti-war activists are Friends. Because of their peace testimony, Friends are considered as one of the historic peace churches. In 1947 Friends as a worldwide religious group were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, which was accepted by the American Friends Service Committee and the then London Yearly Meeting's Friends Service Committee, now called Britain Yearly Meeting Peace & Social Witness on behalf of all Friends. The Peace Testimony has not always been well received in the world; on many occasions Friends have been imprisoned for refusing to serve in military activities.

Some Friends today regard the Peace Testimony in even a broader sense, refusing to pay the portion of the income tax that goes to fund the military. Yearly Meetings in the United States, Britain and other parts of the world endorse and support these Friends' actions.^[11] Quaker Council for European Affairs campaigns in the European Parliament for the right of conscientious objectors in Europe not to be made to pay for the military. It should be stressed that these Friends are not trying to get out of paying taxes and they would willingly give the money to peaceful purposes. Some do pay the money into peace charities and still get goods seized by bailiffs or money taken from their bank account.^{[citation needed]}

In America, others pay into an escrow account in the name of the Internal Revenue Service, which the IRS can only access if they give an assurance that the money will only be used for peaceful purposes. Some Yearly meetings in the US run escrow accounts for conscientious objectors, both within and outside the Society.

Many Friends engage in various non-governmental organizations such as Christian Peacemaker Teams serving in some of the most violent areas of the world. Quaker author Howard Brinton, for example, served in the American Friends Service Committee during World War I.

Equality

A female Quaker preaches at a meeting in London in the 18th century

Main article: Testimony of Equality

Friends believe that all people are created equal in the eyes of God. Since all people embody the same divine spark all people deserve equal treatment. Friends were some of the first to value women as important ministers and to campaign for women's rights; they became leaders in the anti-slavery movement, and were among the first to pioneer humane treatment for individuals with mental disorders, and for prisoners.

Quakers hold a strong sense of spiritual egalitarianism, including a belief in the spiritual equality of the sexes. From the beginning both women and men were granted equal authority to speak in meetings for worship. Margaret Fell-Fox was as vocal and literate as her husband, George Fox, publishing several tracts in the early days of Quakerism. Early Friends argued that inequality between men and women arose from the Fall from the Garden of Eden, but that since Christ has come to redeem our sins, this inequality should no longer stand. For example, George Fox wrote in 1674:

“

And some men say, “Men must have the Power and superiority over the woman, because God says, ‘The man must rule over his wife, and that man is not of woman, but the woman is of the man’” (Gen 3:16). Indeed, after man fell, that command was. But before man fell, there was no such command. For they were both meet-helps. They were both to have dominion over all that God made. . . And as man and woman are restored again, by Christ, up into the image of God, they both have dominion again in Righteousness and Holiness, and are helps-meet, as before they fell.

”

Friends' attitude towards egalitarianism is also demonstrated by their refusal to practice "hat honour" (Quakers refused to take their hats off or bow to anyone regardless of title or rank), and their rejection of styles and titles (such as Mr, Mrs, Lord, Dr, etc), simply calling everyone by their first and last name only (ie John Smith rather than Mr Smith or Sir John). This testified to the Friends' understanding that, in the eyes of God, there was no hierarchy based on birth, wealth, or political power—such honours they reserved only for God. This practice was not considered by Friends to be anti-authoritarian in nature, but instead as a rebuke against human pretense and ego.

Today, resistance to "hat honour" does not prevail as it once did—most hat customs are not practiced in contemporary daily life—and the individual Friend is left to decide whether or not to practice "hat honour" as a matter of conscience.

Abolition of Slavery

With the beliefs and growth of the Quakers in America and around the world, there was also the growth of slavery. Many Quakers owned slaves when they first came to America; author Betty Wood said that "slavery was perfectly acceptable provided that slave owners attended to the spiritual and material needs of those they enslaved." This is how the Quakers first viewed slavery. It wasn't until about 1688 that Quakers began to study the evils of slavery.

The first two prominent Friends to denounce slavery were Anthony Benezet and John Woolman. They asked the Quakers, "What thing in the world can be done worse towards us, than if men should rob or steal us away and sell us for slaves to strange countries". In that same year, a group of Quakers along with some German Mennonites met at the meeting house in Germantown, Pennsylvania to discuss why they were distancing themselves from slavery. Four of them signed a document written by Francis Daniel Pastorius that stated, "To bring men hither, or to rob and sell them against their will, we stand against."

From 1755-1776, the Quakers worked at freeing slaves, and became the first western organization in history to ban slaveholding. They also created societies to promote the emancipation of slaves.From the efforts of the Quakers, Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were able to convince the Continental Congress to ban the importation of slaves into America as of December 1, 1775. Pennsylvania was the strongest anti-slavery state at the time, and with Franklin's help they led "The Pennsylvania Society for Promoting The Abolition of Slavery, The Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage, and for Improving the Condition of the African Race" . In November 1775, Virginia's former royal governor claimed that all slaves would be freed if they were willing to fight for Great Britain. This subsequently forced George Washington to allow slaves in the colonies to enlist as well so that they all did not try to run away and fight in Great Britain to get their freedom. Because George Washington passed this law, about 5 thousand African Americans served for the constitutional forces, and gained their freedom when they were done with their service. By 1792 states from Massachusetts to Virginia all had similar anti-slavery groups. From 1780-1804, slavery was largely abolished in all of New England, the Middle Atlantic states, and the North West territories.

The Southern states, however, were still very prominent in keeping slavery running. Because of this, an informal network of safe houses and escape routes--called the Underground Railroad--developed across the United States to get enslaved people out of America and into Canada or the free states. The Quakers were a very prominent force in the Underground Railroad, and their efforts helped free many slaves. Immediately north of the Mason-Dixon line, the Quaker settlement of Chester County, Pennsylvania--one of the early hubs of the Underground Railroad--was considered a “hotbed of abolition." However, not all Quakers were of the same opinion regarding the Underground Railroad: because slavery was still legal in many states, it was therefore illegal for anyone to help a slave escape and gain freedom. Many Quakers, who saw slaves as equals, felt it was proper to help free slaves and thought that it was unjust to keep someone as a slave; many Quakers would “lie” to slave hunters when asked if they were keeping slaves in their house, they would say “no” because in their mind there was no such thing as a slave. Other Quakers saw this as breaking the law and thereby disrupting the peace, both of which go against Quaker values thus breaking Quaker belief in being pacifistic. Furthermore, involvement with the law and the government was something from which the Quakers had tried to separate themselves. This divisiveness caused the formation of smaller, more independent branches of Quakers, who shared similar beliefs and views.

However there were many prominent Quakers who stuck to the belief that slavery was wrong, and were even arrested for helping the slaves out and breaking the law. Richard Dillingham, a school teacher from Ohio, was arrested because he was found helping three slaves escape in 1848. Thomas Garrett had an Underground Railroad stop at his house in Delaware and was found guilty in 1848 of helping a family of slaves escape. Garrett was also said to have helped and worked with Harriet Tubman, who was a very well known slave who worked to help other slaves get their freedom. Educator Levi Coffin and his wife Catherine were Quakers who lived in Indiana and helped the Underground Railroad by hiding slaves in their house for over 21 years. They claimed to have helped 3,000 slaves gain their freedom.Susan B. Anthony was also a Quaker, and did a lot of antislavery work hand in hand with her work with women’s rights.

Integrity and truth

Main article: Testimony of Integrity

Also known as the Testimony of Truth, or Truth Testimony, the essence of the Testimony of Integrity is placing God at the center of one's life. To Friends, integrity is in choosing to follow the leading of the Spirit despite the challenges and urges to do otherwise.

This testimony has led to Friends having a reputation for being honest and fair in their dealings with others. It has led them to give proper credit to others for their contributions and to accept responsibility for their own actions. In those legal systems where it is allowed, rather than swearing oaths in a court of law Friends will prefer to affirm — in England this has been the case since 1695.

Among some early Friends this testimony led them to refuse to participate in drama, stating that to pretend they were someone else was to deny their integrity.

Oaths and fair-dealing

Early Friends believed that an important part of Jesus' message was how we treat our fellow human beings. They felt that honest dealing with others meant more than avoiding direct lies. Friends continue to believe that it is important not to mislead others, even if the words used are all technically truthful. Early Friends refused to swear oaths, even in courtrooms, believing that one must speak truth at all times, and the act of swearing to it implied different standards of truth with and without oaths; this doctrine is attributed to Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount (specifically Matthew 5:34-37).

Some Friends have accepted the use of "affirmations" rather than oaths, believing that "taking oaths implies a double standard of truth".

Simplicity and plainness

Main article: Testimony of Simplicity

Since their beginnings, Friends have practised "plainness" in how they dress and speak. This has come to be known as their testimony of simplicity.

Plain dress

Traditionally, wearing plain clothes was an answer to a number of Friends' concerns. Expensive styles were used to show social inequality and make statements about wealth. Only a select few could afford expensive adornments, which could then be used to exacerbate differences between people based on class, where people in fancy clothing would not want to be seen socializing with others dressed tattily. This was inspired by the Quaker testimony to equality. In addition, the frequent buying of expensive new styles and discarding what had recently been bought, was considered wasteful and self-seeking, where Friends instead aimed to focus on simplicity, and the important things in life. Notably, Friends did not consider it right to judge people on their material possessions, but this could not be achieved in a society which placed an emphasis on keeping up to date with inconsequential but expensive new trends. At the time, this practice of plainness meant Friends were obviously identifiable.

As fashions changed over time, the Quaker ideal of plain dress stood out against contemporary clothing. As a result, the traditional forms of this practice were dropped by most Friends. Today, it is more likely that Friends will try to put their faith into action by dressing in a plain version of current fashions — such as avoiding clothing displaying designer labels. They may also try to buy only the clothing they need, and pay more for fairly traded clothing that has been made ethically.

As the Quaker Oats brand shares the Quaker name, despite having no links with the Society of Friends, there is now a somewhat popular misconception that Friends today still wear the traditional clothing. A very small minority of contemporary Friends have taken up the traditional dress once again,but they are in the tens.

Plain speech

Plainness in speech addressed other concerns to materialism: honesty, avoiding class distinction and vestiges of paganism, and the speaking of truth. These principles were put into practice by affirming rather than making an oath or shaking hands to agree upon a deal, setting fixed prices for goods, avoiding the use of honorific titles and using familiar forms for the second person pronoun. Early Friends also objected to the names of the days and months in the English language, because many of them referred to Roman or Norse gods, such as Mars (March) and Thor (Thursday), and Roman emperors, such as Julius (July). As a result, the days of the week were known as "First Day" for Sunday, "Second Day" for Monday, and so forth. Similarly, the months of the year were "First Month" for January, "Second Month" for February, and so forth. For many Friends today, this is no longer a priority, though the tradition is still upkept by some.

Material possessions

Like many aspects of Quaker life, the practice of plainness has evolved over time, although it is based on principles that have been a lasting part of Quaker thought. These principles now form part of the Quaker testimonies. Plainness is an extension of the testimony of simplicity and can still be observed today among modern Friends who do not follow fashion trends or purchase extravagant clothing. Simplicity to Friends has generally been a reference to material possessions (see plainness above). Friends traditionally limited their possessions to what they needed to live their lives, rather than pursuing luxuries. Recently this testimony is often taken to have an ecological dimension: that Friends should not use more than their fair share of the Earth's resources.

This testimony is largely responsible for the tradition of plain walls and functional furniture in meetinghouses.

Theological beliefs

Unlike other Christian denominations, Quakers completely reject all forms of religious symbolism and outward sacraments, such as baptism or celebrating the Eucharist. Quakers also believe in continuing revelation, with the idea that God speaks directly to any person, without the need for any intermediary. For this reason, they reject the idea of priests or holy people, but believe in the priesthood of all believers, and reject the doctrine of sola scriptura. The idea of an inner light, or inward light of Christ is important to many Quakers: the idea that there is that of God within everyone, guiding them through their lives.

The Bible

Early Friends rejected the mainstream Protestant idea of sola scriptura, that the Bible is God's written word and therefore self-authenticating, clear and its own interpreter; instead, they believed that Christ, instead of the Bible, is the Word of God. Robert Barclay wrote in his Apology that the scriptures "are only a declaration of the fountain, and not the fountain itself, therefore they are not to be esteemed the principal ground of all Truth and knowledge, nor yet the adequate primary rule of faith and manners".Similarly, George Fox recounted an incident in his Journal in which when a minister claimed that the scriptures were authoritative, Fox "...was commanded to tell them God did not dwell in temples made with hands. But I told them what it was, namely, the Holy Spirit, by which the holy men of God gave forth the scriptures, whereby opinions, religions and judgments were to be tried; for it led into all Truth, and so gave the knowledge of all Truth".

Early Friends believed that Christ would never lead them in ways that contradicted the Bible; this belief prevented conflicts between Friends' leadings and their understanding of the Bible.

As time passed, conflicts began to arise between what the Bible appeared to teach and how many Friends believed they were being led by the Spirit. Some Friends^[who?] decided that the Bible should be authoritative in these cases.

Other Friends, partly under the influence of movements such as liberal Protestantism, decided that it was possible to be truly led in ways contrary to scripture, and that in such cases scripture should give way. Still other Friends rejected (or neglected) the Bible altogether; hence in many liberal Friends meetings one might encounter non-Christian Friends or those who question some or all of the traditional doctrines of Christianity. In nearly all cases, modern Friends believe in the necessity of being continually guided by God. Divine revelation is therefore not restricted to the Bible, but rather continues even today; this doctrine is known as continuing revelation.

A common set of practices emerged which spoke of key principles and beliefs held by Friends. These are "testimonies", for Friends believe these principles and practices should be expressed (testified as truth) among Friends as well as to others, in both words and deeds. (See Testimonies for a list and description of several testimonies.) Rooted in the immediate experience of the community of Friends, for many Friends these values are verified by the Bible, especially in the life and teachings of Jesus.

Creeds

Generally, Quakerism has had no creed but always had doctrines. George Fox dismissed theologians as "notionists" but accepted the Catechism and Confession of Faith by Robert Barclay. Some modern Quakers are generally little concerned with theology and more concerned with acting in accordance with the leading of the Spirit. Quakers historically have expressed a preference for understanding coming from God's Spirit over the knowledge derived from objective logic or systematic theology. Eschewing notions of "authoritative" doctrines, diverse statements of "faith and practice" and diverse understandings of the "leading of the spirit" have always existed among Friends. The leading to lay down all sense of authoritative theology (notions thereof) results in broad tolerance within the Society for earnest expressions of "the light within".

Liberal Friends believe a formal creed would be an obstacle—both to authentic listening and to the recognition of new insight. On the other hand, Orthodox Friends have enumerated and subscribed to a set of doctrines, such as the Richmond Declaration or the "Beliefs of Friends" stated by Evangelical Friends International, both of which are comparable to mainstream Christianity confessions of faith.

Robert Griswold's pamphlet on this subject expounds Friends' historic witness against creeds—not just as a principle of individual religious integrity, but as an implied statement that Friends, having encountered and experienced God, found creeds not just pernicious, but irrelevant. Doctrinal statements which seek to objectify deity fail to communicate the essence of the "holy spirit", "inner light", or "that of God within us" that "speaks to us" and can also compel "witness".

As a public statement of faith, many Yearly Meetings publish their own version of a Book of Discipline - often called Faith and Practice - which expresses their sense of truth and purpose; these documents generally are revised every few years.

Sacraments

Early Friends did not believe in the reliance upon practice of the outward rites and sacraments, believing that holiness can exist in all the activities of one's life—all of life is sacred. They experienced baptism by the Holy Spirit as an inward, transforming experience and knew communion with Christ in the midst of gathered worship in the expectant silence. Thus they did not perform baptism as a rite of membership. These Friends also believed that any meal with others could be a form of communion.

At various times some individuals or small groups of Friends have published corrective cautions against adopting the prohibition of some rite as itself being creedal. The focus should be upon God as Present Teacher, rather than on some human ritual, or the absence of a ritual. Most Friends therefore do not prohibit rites or ceremonies, but they do counsel against allowing these human inventions to take the place of direct experience and leading by God.

Holy days and church calendar

Friends have traditionally eschewed the traditional church calendar, not observing religious festivals such as Christmas, Lent, or Easter at particular times of the year, but instead believing that Christ's birth, crucifixion and resurrection should be commemorated every day of the year, not just on certain days, and that if something should or should not be done on certain days, this should be done all the year around and not just on those days. For example, many Quakers feel that fasting at Lent but then eating in excess at other times of the year is a hypocrisy, and therefore many Quakers, rather than observing Lent, live a simple lifestyle all the year round (see Testimony of Simplicity). These beliefs tie in with Quakers' beliefs on sacraments and the belief that all of life is sacred.

Similarly, Friends traditionally are non-Sabbatarians, holding that "every day is the Lord's day", and that what should be done on a First Day (Sunday) should be done every day of the week. Meeting for Worship is often held on a First Day (Sunday), however this is more because of convenience rather than because it is believed that Sunday is Sabbath, and many Friends hold Meeting for Worship on other days of the week.

These beliefs are often referred to as the testimony against time and season.

Mysticism

Quakerism is unusual because of its emphasis on the personal experience of God. However, it differs from other mystical religions in at least two important ways. For one, Quaker mysticism is primarily group-oriented rather than focused on the individual. The Friends' traditional meeting for worship may be considered an expression of that group mysticism, where all the members of the meeting listen together for the Spirit of God, speaking when that Spirit moves them. On the other hand it is also possible to consider the Quakers as a special kind of religious order (like the Franciscans, who also practise group mysticism), living the mystic and monastic tradition in their own way. For example this idea is represented by the Anglican minister and Quaker, Paul Oestreicher. Additionally, Quaker mysticism as it has been expressed after the late 19th century includes a strong emphasis on its outwardly-directed witness. Rather than seeking withdrawal from the world, the Quaker mystic translates his or her mysticism into action. They believe this action leads to greater spiritual understanding — both by individuals and by the Meeting as a whole. It is also possible to consider the Quakers as a kind of humanistic religion in the sense of Erich Fromm.^{[citation needed]} In this view mysticism includes social and political activities. For instance the German quaker Heinz Röhr saw himself as a Friend between Marx and mysticism.^{[citation needed]}

Worship

Friends Meeting House, Manchester.

Friends treat all functions of the church as a form of worship, including business, marriage, and memorial services, in addition to regular meeting for worship. The two main forms of Quaker worship are often referred to as "programmed" and "unprogrammed".

While the different styles of worship generally reflect the theological splits, with unprogrammed meetings generally being more theologically liberal and programmed Friends churches more theologically conservative, this is not a strict rule. Many meetings hold both programmed and unprogrammed services or other activities. Some "Conservative" meetings are unprogrammed yet would be generally considered to be theologically closer to most programmed meetings.

Unprogrammed worship

The interior of an old meeting house in the United States

Unprogrammed worship is the more traditional style of worship among Friends and remains the norm in Britain, Ireland, continental Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and parts of the United States. During an unprogrammed meeting for worship, Friends gather together in "expectant waiting" for divine leadings. Sometimes a meeting is entirely silent, sometimes quite a few people speak. Meeting for Worship generally lasts about an hour.

When they feel they are led by the spirit a participant will rise and share a message (give "vocal ministry") with those gathered. Typically, messages, testimonies, ministry, or other speech are not prepared as a "speech". Speakers are expected to discern the source of their inspiration — whether divine or self. After someone has spoken, it is expected that more than a few moments will pass in silence before further Ministry; there should be no spirit of debate.

Unprogrammed worship is generally deemed to start as soon as the first participant is seated, the others entering the room in silence. The Meeting for Worship ends when one person (usually predetermined) shakes the hand of another person present. All the members of the assembly then shake hands with their neighbours, after which one member usually rises and extends greetings and makes announcements.

Programmed worship

Programmed worship resembles a typical Protestant worship service in the United States. This tradition arose among Friends in the United States in the 19th century in response to large numbers of converts to Quakerism during the national spiritual revivalism of the time. Typically there are readings from scripture, hymns, and a sermon from the pastor. A period of silence (similar in practice to that of unprogrammed meetings, though generally shorter) is included in some Programmed Friends worship services. Most Friends in the southern and central United States worship in this way.

The Friends meetings started in Africa and Latin America were generally started by Friends from programmed elements of the society, therefore most African and Latin American Friends worship in a programmed style.

Some Friends also hold what is termed Semi-Programmed Worship, which brings programmed elements like hymns and readings into an otherwise unprogrammed worship service.

Rites of passage

Birth

Quakers do not practice any form of water baptism, Christening ceremony or other ceremony for the birth of a child. The child is welcomed into the meeting by everyone present at their first attendance. Formerly, it was the practice that children born to Quaker parents automatically became members of the the Religious Society of Friends (sometimes called Birthright membership), however this is no longer the case in most areas, and most parents now leave it up to the child to decide whether to become a member when they are an older child or adult.

Marriage

Main article: Quaker wedding

Memorial services

Traditional Quaker memorial services are also held as a form of worship and are known as memorial meetings. Friends gather for worship and offer remembrances about the person who has died. Because Friends believe that the spirit is more important than the body, the coffin or ashes of the deceased are not present, rather burial takes place separately. Memorial meetings can last over an hour, particularly if there are a large number of people in attendance. Memorial services give everyone a chance to remember the lost individual in their own way, thus bringing comfort to those present, and re-affirmation of the larger community of Friends.

Decision making among Friends

Quaker Business Meeting in York

Business decisions on a local level are conducted at a monthly "Meeting for Worship with a Concern for Business", or simply "Business Meeting". A business meeting is a form of worship, and all decisions are reached so that they are consistent with the guidance of the Spirit.

Instead of voting, the Meeting attempts to gain a sense of God's will for the community. Each member of the meeting is expected to listen to that of God within themselves and, if led, to contribute it to the group for reflection and consideration. Each member listens to others' contributions carefully, in an attitude of seeking Truth rather than of attempting to prevail or to debate.

A decision is reached when the Meeting, as a whole, feels that the "way forward" has been discerned (also called "coming to unity") or there is a consensus. On some occasions a single Friend will hold up a decision because they feel the meeting is not following God's will; occasionally, some members of the Meeting will "stand aside" on an issue, meaning that these members do not share in the general sense of the meeting but are willing to allow the group to move forward.

Many Quakers describe the search for unity as the gathering of believers who "wait upon the Lord" to discover God's will. When seeking unity, Friends are not attempting to seek a position with which everyone is willing to live (as is often the case in consensual models) but in determining God's will. It is assumed that if everyone is listening to God's Spirit, the way forward will become clear.

The business conducted "in the manner of Friends" can seem time-consuming and impractical. The process can be frustrating and slow, but Friends believe it works well, allowing the group to come to decisions even around the most difficult matters. By the time a decision is recognized, the important issues have been worked out and the group supports the decision; there is no "losing" side.

Many non-Friends express doubts as to whether this process of decision making can work in a large group, although many yearly meetings have successfully employed this practice for generations. Some Quaker-related organizations, such as Haverford College in Philadelphia and Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, also use traditional Quaker form practices of governance.

National and international divisions and organization

Like many movements, the Religious Society of Friends has evolved, changed, and split into various smaller subgroups.

Since its beginnings in the United Kingdom, Quakerism has spread to other countries, chiefly Australia, Bolivia, Burundi, Costa Rica, Ireland, Japan, Kenya, Philippines, Rwanda, South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan, Uganda, and the United States. Although the total number of Quakers is relatively small, around 360,000 worldwide, there are places, such as Philadelphia, Pennsylvania;Kaimosi, Kenya; Newberg, Oregon; Greenleaf, Idaho; Whittier, California; Richmond, Indiana; Friendswood, Texas; Birmingham, UK; and Greensboro, North Carolina in which Quaker influence is concentrated.

Unlike many other groups that emerged within Christianity, the Religious Society of Friends has tended away from creeds, and away from hierarchical structure.

The various branches have widely divergent beliefs and practices, but the central concept to most Friends is the "Inner Light" or "Light of Christ within". Accordingly, individual Quakers may develop individual religious beliefs arising from their personal conscience and revelation coming from "God within"; Quakers feel compelled to live by such individual religious beliefs and inner revelations. Throughout their history, Quakers have also founded other charities or organizations for many causes they felt are in keeping with their faith. Within the last century there have been some 100 organizations founded by either individual Friends, groups of Friends or Friends working with others - amongst others: Amnesty International, Greenpeace, OXFAM, Peace Action, WILPF. (SEE List of Quaker Businesses)

International organisation

Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC) is the international Quaker organization which loosely unifies the diverse groups of Friends; FWCC brings together the largest variety of Friends in the world.

There are various organizations associated with Friends including a U.S. lobbying organization based in Washington, D.C. called the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL); several service organizations like the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), the Quaker United Nations Offices, Quaker Peace and Social Witness, Friends Committee on Scouting, the Quaker Peace Centre in Cape Town, South Africa and the Alternatives to Violence Project.

Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC) - 4 Sections Globally

FWCC is divided into four Sections to represent different regions of the world. The four FWCC Sections are:

1. Africa Section 2. Asia West Pacific Section 3. Europe and Middle East Section 4. Section of the Americas

For details about FWCC see the official website: http://fwccworld.org/

A brief description of each FWCC Section is provided below:

1. Africa Section Africa Section represents Friends throughout the continent of Africa. Most African Friends are from the evangelical programmed tradition. However, a significant minority are from the unprogrammed tradition. South Africa Yearly Meeting is principally an unprogrammed Yearly Meeting and there are unprogrammed Meetings elsewhere in Africa, notably in Kenya. Africa Section is numerically the most numerous of the Sections and the administrative headquarters are in Nairobi, Kenya. The 2012 Friends World Conference will be held in Kenya. For Africa Section's official website, see: http://fwccafrica.org/

2. Asia West Pacific Section (AWPS) Asia West Pacific Section is geographically the largest FWCC Section stretching from Japan in the North to New Zealand and Australia in the South and from the Philippines in the East to India in the West. Asia West Pacific Section is growing significantly and recently welcomed into Membership the Philippine Evangelical Friends Church, a Filipino programmed and evangelical Friends Meeting; Marble Rock Friends and Mahoba Yearly Meeting in India. Some AWPS Friends Meetings are numerically small, e.g. those in Korea and Hong Kong but nonetheless give generously to Friends work internationally and contribute a lot to the life of Friends. Other Friends Meetings in the Section are relatively large with several thousand Friends. The geographical area of the AWPS region includes numerically numerous Friends Meetings of the evangelical programmed tradition which have not as yet affiliated with FWCC, although friendly relations are maintained locally. AWPS has led the way among Friends for action on what Friends call "Global Change" which we define as: “The unity, integration and the inter-connection of all change. Seemingly different or unrelated changes are in fact aspects of facets of a single greater change.” (Quoted from Julian Stargardt: "Friends and Global Change", AWPS, 2008.) In 2008 AWPS established a Global Change Committee to network, research and work on the subject, the AWPS Global Change Committee is currently Clerked by Jo Valentine of Australia and Julian Stargardt of Hong Kong. AWPS also asked FWCC to take up this subject on behalf of Friends worldwide which FWCC is doing, see: http://fwccglobalchange.org/. For AWPS's official website, see: http://fwccawps.org/

3. Europe and Middle East Section (EMES) Europe and Middle East Section is numerically the smallest of the Quaker Sections but historically the oldest and is growing in former East Block countries, though declining in so called Western countries. EMES includes Britain Yearly Meeting, the mother Meeting of Friends, being the heir to the former London Yearly Meeting. Britain Yearly Meeting's "Faith and Practice" or book of discipline is used by many Friends around the world as a guide to Friends' practices and procedures. Britain Yearly Meeting is the largest Meeting in the Section with aproximately 16,000 Members, followed by Ireland Yearly Meeting with around 1,000 Members. Other Yearly Meetings in Europe are small, in some cases smaller than Monthly Meetings in Asia but retain the name and form of Yearly Meetings for historical reasons. Friends have a long standing presence in the Middle East and the Holy Land, dating back to Ottoman times. For example, Friends School, Ramalla, is a noted educational centre and Friends are active in attempts to build peace at the grass roots in this troubled area. Britain Yearly Meeting's Quaker Peace and Social Witness (QPSW) is one of the significant international Friends agencies. The FWCC Quaker United Nations Office (QUNO) in Geneva is partly supported by Britain Yearly Meeting. Friends presence at the United Nations has engaged and continues to engage in much quiet diplomacy to reduce violence and build peace around the world. Friends House in Geneva is a quiet haven in a busy international city and hosts Geneva Meeting. For EMES's official website, see: http://fwccemes.org/

4. Section of the Americas Section of the Americas is numerically the second largest section and includes Friends from all Friends traditions in both North and South America as well as in the Carribean and Central America. Section of the Americas is officially bi-lingual in Spanish and English, though Canada Yearly Meeting also operates in both English and French. FWCC's other QUNO branch is located adjacent to the New York UN Building and is closely connected with the quasi-Quaker organisation American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). AFSC was founded by Friends and still has a substantially Friends Board of Trustees, however, only the Director of AFSC is required to be a Friend and the vast majority of AFSC staff, including senior staff, are not Friends and are not familiar with Friends worship or testimonies leading to some Friends' Meetings distancing themselves from AFSC and its activities. In 1947 the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Friends for 300 years of work for peace and received on behalf of Friends by AFSC and its London counterpart, the Friends Service Committee, now known as Quaker Peace and Social Witness. Aproximately 160,000 Friends live in the USA and some 300,000 live in Latin America. US Friends are often relatively affluent whereas many Latin American Friends come from relatively impoverished and oppressed indigenous communities. As in Asia and Africa, in Latin America, Friends are a growing church. Section of the Americas Friends have a long history dating back to the mid-17th Century. Friends founded or helped found a number of the US States, notably Pennsylvania, named after distinguished 17th Century English Friend, William Penn; Rhode Island; New Jersey and Delaware all had substantial Friends' contirbutions in their founding. William Penn's constitutional documents for Pennsylvania formed an important and influential source for the later United States Constitution, for a detailed discussion see: http://www.constitution.org/bcp/frampenn.htm In the early colonial period Friends were persecuted in Massachussets and New York. Friends also had a substantial impact in the early days of colonisation of the Carribean, for example in the 17th and early 18th centuries 25% of the population of Barbados was Friends. The history of suffering is a uniting factor with Latin American Friends, many of whom live in difficult circumstances and find living the transformative Peace Testimony a daily committment.

It is difficult to speak about American Friends as a whole because they represent such a broad and diverse range of Friends traditions, however, it is a tribute to their committment to Friends beliefs that they respect each other and work together. For Section of the Americas official website, see: http://fwccamericas.org/

In Africa

Main article: Quakers in Kenya

The highest concentration of Quakers is in Africa.The Friends of East Africa were at one time part of a single East Africa Yearly Meeting, then the largest Yearly Meeting in the world. Today, this region is served by several distinct Yearly Meetings. Most of these are affiliated with the Friends United Meeting, practice programmed worship, and employ pastors. There are also Friends meetings in Rwanda and Burundi, as well as new work beginning in North Africa. Small unprogrammed meetings exist also in Botswana, Ghana, Lesotho, Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa and Zimbabwe.

In Canada

Quakers can be found throughout the provinces of Canada, with some of the largest concentrations of Quakers in Southern Ontario.

In Australia

Considerable distances between the colonies, and a low immigration of Quakers, meant that the organization of Friends in Australia was quite dependent on London until the twentieth century. The Society has remained unprogrammed and is constituted as the Australia Yearly Meeting, with local organization around seven Regional Meetings: Canberra (which extends into southern New South Wales), New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia (which extends into Northern Territory), Tasmania, Victoria and Western Australia. There is an annual meeting each January hosted by a different Regional Meeting over a seven year cycle, with a Standing Committee each July or August. The 2006 Australian Census recorded 1984 Quakers in Australia, which was an increase of 11% since the 2001 Census.

In the United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom, Quakers follow unprogrammed worship and are part of Britain Yearly Meeting, where there are 25,000 worshippers in around 500 Local Meetings.

These meetings used to be called Preparative Meetings, and the groups they formed were previously known as Monthly Meetings: now they are Area Meetings. This change, made in Britain Yearly Meeting 2007, was intended to simplify Quaker jargon. The structure extends into several Area Meetings becoming a General Meeting — formerly Quarterly Meeting — Some General Meetings now call themselves Regional Gatherings (e.g.-Bristol & Wessex Regional Gathering, was Bristol & Somerset GM) which each continue to meet up to three times per year, but now play no direct role in church government. Instead, Area Meetings are represented directly in Meeting for Sufferings, which meets in between Yearly meetings.

In addition to Britain Yearly Meeting, there is also a very small minority of independent 'Christian Quakers' who follow Ohio Yearly Meeting's conservative discipline.

[edit] In the United States

Friends in the United States have diverse practices, though united by many common bonds. Along with the division of worship style (see "Quaker Worship" above) come several differences of theology, vocabulary and practice.

A local congregation in the unprogrammed tradition is called a meeting, or a monthly meeting (e.g., Smalltown Meeting or Smalltown Monthly Meeting). The reference to "monthly" is because the meeting meets monthly to conduct the business of the meeting. Most "monthly meetings" meet for worship at least once a week; some meetings have several worship meetings during the week. In programmed traditions, the local congregations are often referred to as "Friends Churches".

Several local monthly meetings are often part of a regional group called a quarterly meeting, which is usually part of an even larger group called a yearly meeting. Again, quarterly or yearly refers to the frequency of "meetings for worship with a concern for business."

Some yearly meetings belong to larger organizations to help maintain order and communication within the society, the three chief ones being Friends General Conference (FGC), Friends United Meeting (FUM), Wider Fellowship of Conservative Friends (WFCF), and Evangelical Friends Church International (ECFI) (in all three groups, most member organizations, though not necessarily people are from the United States). FGC is theologically the most Liberal of the four groups, while EFI is the most Evangelical (of course WFCF is the Conservative one). FUM is the largest of the four. Friends United Meeting was originally known as "Five Years Meeting." Some monthly meetings belong to more than one of these larger organizations, while others are independent, not joining any.

Education

Friends have founded many schools and colleges around the world; however Friends have often cautioned against the admission of education credentials as either a form of honouring humans instead of God or as a substitute for a relationship with God^{[citation needed]}. Several organizations centered on education have continued amongst Friends, including Friends Council on Education (FCE) an organization supporting Friends schools (typically primary through secondary, often boarding) and Friends Association for Higher Education (FAHE) which supports Friends post-secondary institutions and those who resonate with Friends' teaching and traditions who serve in higher education.

The Religious Society of Friends within the wider Christian community

Many Quakers feel their faith does not fit within traditional Christian categories of Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant, but is another way of experiencing God.

Although all Quakers in previous centuries, and most today, recognize Quakerism as a Christian movement, a few Friends (principally in some Liberal Meetings in the United States and the United Kingdom) now consider themselves universalist, agnostic, atheist, secular humanist, postchristian, or Nontheist Friend, or do not accept any religious label. Calls for Quakerism to include non-Christians go back at least as far as 1870, but this phenomenon has become increasingly evident during the latter half of the 20th century and the opening years of the 21st century, and is still controversial among Friends. An especially notable example of this is that of Friends who actively identify as members of a faith other than Christianity, such as Islam or Buddhism.

[edit] Quaker terminology

This section does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed. (April 2009)

Birthright Friend: a historical term for those Friends born into families that are members of a Friends Meeting. (This term is not always officially recognized by Friends.)
Clearness: a process undergone to discern the true leading of the Spirit of God, especially in ambiguous or complicated situations. Friends often work with clearness committees when struggling with a difficult issue.
Clerk: the only officer of most meetings (as there are no clergy); the person charged with making and keeping the records of the meeting (including the records of births, marriages, and deaths). The clerk's role is to serve—as an honoured servant of the meeting—and, whilst revered, is not an authoritarian position.
Concern: Friends believe that anyone may feel called by God. Friends consider carrying out a concern to be a form of ministry. Often there may be a meeting for clearness to test the concern after which the meeting may well support the person in their concern. Many well-known organisations, such as the American Friends Service Committee, Don't Make a Wave Committee (the predecessor organisation to Greenpeace), Oxfam and Amnesty International, have been founded by Friends "acting under concern".
Convinced Friend: a historical term for those Friends who were not born into Quaker families, but who came to Friends because of the Truth of Quaker teaching and practice. The process of deciding to become a Friend is known as "convincement."
Gathered Meeting: A meeting for worship, where those present feel that they were particularly in tune with the leadings of the Spirit.
Facing Benches: Older meetinghouses often have benches on a raised platform which face the rest of the congregation where Weighty Friends (see below) who might be expected to speak would sit. Historically (and in some meetings still) these would be the recorded ministers and elders.
Hold in the Light: To recognize concern in one's self for another person or situation. This is often considered to be synonymous with praying for someone.
I hope so: (British term) during a meeting for worship for business, when the clerk asks those present if they agree with a minute, Friends will usually say "I hope so" rather than "yes". It is meant in the sense of “I hope that this is the true guidance of the Holy Spirit”.
Lay down: the action properly taken upon a committee, meeting or ministry that is no longer needed; "to lay down" a meeting is to disband it.
Lay over: to allow time to pass before action on a consideration, in hopes of obtaining clearness; "the transfer of Mary's membership has lain over for one month"
Leading: a course of action, belief or conviction that a Friend feels is divinely inspired.
Ministry: the act of speaking during a meeting for worship. (Many Friends use the term more broadly to mean living their testimonies in everyday life). "Vocal" or "proclamational" refer to ministries that are verbal.
Notion: An unfounded, unspiritual position. (Used by George Fox, often to refer to teachings or doctrines that were expressed but not fully understood or experienced.)
Proceed as Way Opens: to undertake a service or course of action without prior clarity about all the details but with confidence that divine guidance will make these apparent and assure an appropriate outcome.
Recorded Minister: A person whose vocal ministry (spoken contribution in meeting)—or another spiritual gift—is recognised as helpful and probably faithful to Divine leading, by the body of Friends to which they belong and formally recorded by that body. Not all Friends' organisations record ministers. Other Friends have adopted a defined process prerequisite for "recording."
Right ordering: has to do with proper conduct of a meeting for business. The term is often used in the negative, that is, if someone senses that something about the conduct of the meeting is not proper, they may object that "this meeting is not in right ordering."
Speaks to my condition or Friend speaks my mind: Commonly used during meetings for business to express that another Friend has spoken what is in the mind of the speaker; used to help add weight to the statements of others.
That of God in everyone: the belief in the presence of God within all people. Also referred to as the Inner Light.
Weighty Friend: a Friend, respected for their experience and ability over their history of participation with Friends, whose opinion or ministry is especially valued.

Football Description

2009-06-25T11:18:00.000+07:00

Football is the word given to a number of similar team sports, all of which involve (to varying degrees) kicking a ball with the foot in an attempt to score a goal. The most popular of these sports worldwide is association football, more commonly known as just "football" or "soccer". The English language word "football" is also applied to "gridiron football" (a name associated with the North American sports, especially American football and Canadian football), Australian football, Gaelic football, rugby football (rugby league and rugby union), and related games. Each of these codes (specific sets of rules, or the games defined by them) is referred to as "football".

These games involve:

Two teams of usually between 11 and 18 players; some variations that have fewer players (five or more per team) are also popular
a clearly defined area in which to play the game;
scoring goals and/or points, by moving the ball to an opposing team's end of the field and either into a goal area, or over a line;
goals and/or points resulting from players putting the ball between two goalposts
the goal and/or line being defended by the opposing team;
players being required to move the ball—depending on the code—by kicking, carrying and/or hand passing the ball; and
players using only their body to move the ball.

In most codes, there are rules restricting the movement of players offside, and players scoring a goal must put the ball either under or over a crossbar between the goalposts. Other features common to several football codes include: points being mostly scored by players carrying the ball across the goal line and; players receiving a free kick after they take a mark/make a fair catch.

Peoples from around the world have played games which involved kicking and/or carrying a ball, since ancient times. However, most of the modern codes of football have their origins in England.

Etymology

Main article: Football (word)

While it is widely believed that the word "football" (or "foot ball") originated in reference to the action of the foot kicking a ball, there is a rival explanation, which has it that football originally referred to a variety of games in medieval Europe, which were played on foot.^[1] These games were usually played by peasants, as opposed to the horse-riding sports often played by aristocrats. While there is no conclusive evidence for this explanation, the word football has always implied a variety of games played on foot, not just those that involved kicking a ball. In some cases, the word football has even been applied to games which have specifically outlawed kicking the ball.

History

Early history

Ancient games

Ancient Greek football player balancing the ball. Depiction on an Attic Lekythos.

The Ancient Greeks and Romans are known to have played many ball games, some of which involved the use of the feet. The Roman game harpastum is believed to have been adapted from a team game known as "επισκυρος" (episkyros) or phaininda, which is mentioned by a Greek playwright, Antiphanes (388–311 BC) and later referred to by the Christian theologian Clement of Alexandria (c.150-c.215 AD). The Roman politician Cicero (106-43 BC) describes the case of a man who was killed whilst having a shave when a ball was kicked into a barber's shop. These games appear to have resembled rugby football. Roman ball games already knew the air-filled ball, the follis.^[2]^[3]

Documented evidence of an activity resembling football can be found in the Chinese military manual Zhan Guo Ce compiled between the 3rd century and 1st century BC.^[4] It describes a practice known as cuju (蹴鞠, literally "kick ball"), which originally involved kicking a leather ball through a small hole in a piece of silk cloth which was fixed on bamboo canes and hung about 9 m above ground. During the Han Dynasty (206 BC–220 AD), cuju games were standardized and rules were established. Variations of this game later spread to Japan and Korea, known as kemari and chuk-guk respectively. By the Chinese Tang Dynasty (618–907), the feather-stuffed ball was replaced by an air-filled ball and cuju games had become professionalized, with many players making a living playing cuju.^{[citation needed]} Also, two different types of goal posts emerged: One was made by setting up posts with a net between them and the other consisted of just one goal post in the middle of the field.

A revived version of Kemari being played at the Tanzan Shrine.

The Japanese version of cuju is kemari (蹴鞠), and was developed during the Asuka period. This is known to have been played within the Japanese imperial court in Kyoto from about 600 AD. In kemari several people stand in a circle and kick a ball to each other, trying not to let the ball drop to the ground (much like keepie uppie). The game appears to have died out sometime before the mid-19th century. It was revived in 1903 and is now played at a number of festivals.

An illustration from the 1850s of Australian Aboriginal hunter gatherers. Children in the background are playing a football game, possibly Marn Grook.^[5]

There are a number of references to traditional, ancient, and/or prehistoric ball games, played by indigenous peoples in many different parts of the world. For example, in 1586, men from a ship commanded by an English explorer named John Davis, went ashore to play a form of football with Inuit (Eskimo) people in Greenland.^[6] There are later accounts of an Inuit game played on ice, called Aqsaqtuk. Each match began with two teams facing each other in parallel lines, before attempting to kick the ball through each other team's line and then at a goal. In 1610, William Strachey of the Jamestown settlement, Virginia recorded a game played by Native Americans, called Pahsaheman. In Victoria, Australia, indigenous people played a game called Marn Grook ("ball game"). An 1878 book by Robert Brough-Smyth, The Aborigines of Victoria, quotes a man called Richard Thomas as saying, in about 1841, that he had witnessed Aboriginal people playing the game: "Mr Thomas describes how the foremost player will drop kick a ball made from the skin of a possum and how other players leap into the air in order to catch it." It is widely believed that Marn Grook had an influence on the development of Australian rules football (see below).

Games played in Mesoamerica with rubber balls by indigenous peoples are also well-documented as existing since before this time, but these had more similarities to basketball or volleyball, and since their influence on modern football games is minimal, most do not class them as football.

These games and others may well go far back into antiquity and may have felt the growing pains of the elected officials also influenced which later affected football games. However, the main sources of modern football codes appear to lie in western Europe, especially England.

Medieval and early modern Europe

Further information: Medieval football

The Middle Ages saw a huge rise in popularity of annual Shrovetide football matches throughout Europe, particularly in England. The game played in England at this time may have arrived with the Roman occupation, but the only pre-Norman reference is to boys playing "ball games" in the ninth century Historia Brittonum. Reports of a game played in Brittany, Normandy, and Picardy, known as La Soule or Choule, suggest that some of these football games could have arrived in England as a result of the Norman Conquest.

An illustration of so-called "mob football".

These forms of football, sometimes referred to as "mob football", would be played between neighbouring towns and villages, involving an unlimited number of players on opposing teams, who would clash in a heaving mass of people, struggling to move an item such as an inflated pig's bladder, to particular geographical points, such as their opponents' church. Shrovetide games have survived into the modern era in a number of English towns (see below).

The first detailed description of what was almost certainly football in England was given by William FitzStephen in about 1174–1183. He described the activities of London youths during the annual festival of Shrove Tuesday:

After lunch all the youth of the city go out into the fields to take part in a ball game. The students of each school have their own ball; the workers from each city craft are also carrying their balls. Older citizens, fathers, and wealthy citizens come on horseback to watch their juniors competing, and to relive their own youth vicariously: you can see their inner passions aroused as they watch the action and get caught up in the fun being had by the carefree adolescents.^[7]

Most of the very early references to the game speak simply of "ball play" or "playing at ball". This reinforces the idea that the games played at the time did not necessarily involve a ball being kicked.

An early reference to a ball game that was probably football comes from 1280 at Ulgham, Northumberland, England: "Henry... while playing at ball.. ran against David"^[8]. The first definite reference to a football game comes in 1321 at Shouldham, Norfolk, England: "[d]uring the game at ball as he kicked the ball, a lay friend of his... ran against him and wounded himself".^[8]

In 1314, Nicholas de Farndone, Lord Mayor of the City of London issued a decree banning football in the French used by the English upper classes at the time. A translation reads: "[f]orasmuch as there is great noise in the city caused by hustling over large foot balls [rageries de grosses pelotes de pee] in the fields of the public from which many evils might arise which God forbid: we command and forbid on behalf of the king, on pain of imprisonment, such game to be used in the city in the future." This is the earliest reference to football.

In 1363, King Edward III of England issued a proclamation banning "...handball, football, or hockey; coursing and cock-fighting, or other such idle games", showing that "football" — whatever its exact form in this case — was being differentiated from games involving other parts of the body, such as handball.

King Henry IV of England also presented one of the earliest documented uses of the English word "football", in 1409, when he issued a proclamation forbidding the levying of money for "foteball".^[8]^[9]

There is also an account in Latin from the end of the 15th century of football being played at Cawston, Nottinghamshire. This is the first description of a "kicking game" and the first description of dribbling: "[t]he game at which they had met for common recreation is called by some the foot-ball game. It is one in which young men, in country sport, propel a huge ball not by throwing it into the air but by striking it and rolling it along the ground, and that not with their hands but with their feet... kicking in opposite directions" The chronicler gives the earliest reference to a football pitch, stating that: "[t]he boundaries have been marked and the game had started.^[8]

Other firsts in the mediæval and early modern eras:

"a football", in the sense of a ball rather than a game, was first mentioned in 1486.^[9] This reference is in Dame Juliana Berners' Book of St Albans. It states: "a certain rounde instrument to play with ...it is an instrument for the foote and then it is calde in Latyn 'pila pedalis', a fotebal."^[8]
a pair of football boots was ordered by King Henry VIII of England in 1526.^[10]
women playing a form of football was in 1580, when Sir Philip Sidney described it in one of his poems: "[a] tyme there is for all, my mother often sayes, When she, with skirts tuckt very hy, with girles at football playes."^[11]
the first references to goals are in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. In 1584 and 1602 respectively, John Norden and Richard Carew referred to "goals" in Cornish hurling. Carew described how goals were made: "they pitch two bushes in the ground, some eight or ten foote asunder; and directly against them, ten or twelue [twelve] score off, other twayne in like distance, which they terme their Goales".^[12] He is also the first to describe goalkeepers and passing of the ball between players.
the first direct reference to scoring a goal is in John Day's play The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green (performed circa 1600; published 1659): "I'll play a gole at camp-ball" (an extremely violent variety of football, which was popular in East Anglia). Similarly in a poem in 1613, Michael Drayton refers to "when the Ball to throw, And drive it to the Gole, in squadrons forth they goe".

Calcio Fiorentino

An illustration of the Calcio Fiorentino field and starting positions, from a 1688 book by Pietro di Lorenzo Bini.

Main article: Calcio Fiorentino

In the 16th century, the city of Florence celebrated the period between Epiphany and Lent by playing a game which today is known as "calcio storico" ("historic kickball") in the Piazza della Novere or the Piazza Santa Croce. The young aristocrats of the city would dress up in fine silk costumes and embroil themselves in a violent form of football. For example, calcio players could punch, shoulder charge, and kick opponents. Blows below the belt were allowed. The game is said to have originated as a military training exercise. In 1580, Count Giovanni de' Bardi di Vernio wrote Discorso sopra 'l giuoco del Calcio Fiorentino. This is sometimes said to be the earliest code of rules for any football game. The game was not played after January 1739 (until it was revived in May 1930).

Official disapproval and attempts to ban football

Main article: Attempts to ban football games

Numerous attempts have been made to ban football games, particularly the most rowdy and disruptive forms. This was especially the case in England and in other parts of Europe, during the Middle Ages and early modern period. Between 1324 and 1667, football was banned in England alone by more than 30 royal and local laws. The need to repeatedly proclaim such laws demonstrated the difficulty in enforcing bans on popular games. King Edward II was so troubled by the unruliness of football in London that on April 13, 1314 he issued a proclamation banning it: "Forasmuch as there is great noise in the city caused by hustling over large balls from which many evils may arise which God forbid; we command and forbid, on behalf of the King, on pain of imprisonment, such game to be used in the city in the future."

The reasons for the ban by Edward III, on June 12, 1349, were explicit: football and other recreations distracted the populace from practicing archery, which was necessary for war. In 1424, the Parliament of Scotland passed a Football Act that stated it is statut and the king forbiddis that na man play at the fut ball under the payne of iiij d - in other words, playing football was made illegal, and punishable by a fine of four pence.

By 1608, the local authorities in Manchester were complaining that: "With the ffotebale...[there] hath beene greate disorder in our towne of Manchester we are told, and glasse windowes broken yearlye and spoyled by a companie of lewd and disordered persons ..."^[13] That same year, the word "football" was used disapprovingly by William Shakespeare. Shakespeare's play King Lear contains the line: "Nor tripped neither, you base football player" (Act I, Scene 4). Shakespeare also mentions the game in A Comedy of Errors (Act II, Scene 1):

Am I so round with you as you with me,

That like a football you do spurn me thus?

You spurn me hence, and he will spurn me hither:

If I last in this service, you must case me in leather.

"Spurn" literally means to kick away, thus implying that the game involved kicking a ball between players.

King James I of England's Book of Sports (1618) however, instructs Christians to play at football every Sunday afternoon after worship.^[14] The book's aim appears to be an attempt to offset the strictness of the Puritans regarding the keeping of the Sabbath.^[15]

Establishment of modern codes

English public schools

Main article: English public school football games

While football continued to be played in various forms throughout Britain, its public schools (known as private schools in other countries) are widely credited with four key achievements in the creation of modern football codes. First of all, the evidence suggests that they were important in taking football away from its "mob" form and turning it into an organised team sport. Second, many early descriptions of football and references to it were recorded by people who had studied at these schools. Third, it was teachers, students and former students from these schools who first codified football games, to enable matches to be played between schools. Finally, it was at English public schools that the division between "kicking" and "running" (or "carrying") games first became clear.

The earliest evidence that games resembling football were being played at English public schools — mainly attended by boys from the upper, upper-middle and professional classes — comes from the Vulgaria by William Horman in 1519. Horman had been headmaster at Eton and Winchester colleges and his Latin textbook includes a translation exercise with the phrase "We wyll playe with a ball full of wynde".^{[citation needed]}

Richard Mulcaster, a student at Eton College in the early 16th century and later headmaster at other English schools, has been described as "the greatest sixteenth Century advocate of football".^[16] Among his contributions are the earliest evidence of organised team football. Mulcaster's writings refer to teams ("sides" and "parties"), positions ("standings"), a referee ("judge over the parties") and a coach "(trayning maister)". Mulcaster's "footeball" had evolved from the disordered and violent forms of traditional football:

[s]ome smaller number with such overlooking, sorted into sides and standings, not meeting with their bodies so boisterously to trie their strength: nor shouldring or shuffing one an other so barbarously ... may use footeball for as much good to the body, by the chiefe use of the legges.

—^{[citation needed]}

In 1633, David Wedderburn, a teacher from Aberdeen, mentioned elements of modern football games in a short Latin textbook called "Vocabula." Wedderburn refers to what has been translated into modern English as "keeping goal" and makes an allusion to passing the ball ("strike it here"). There is a reference to "get hold of the ball", suggesting that some handling was allowed. It is clear that the tackles allowed included the charging and holding of opposing players ("drive that man back").^{[citation needed]}

A more detailed description of football is given in Francis Willughby's Book of Games, written in about 1660.^[17] Willughby, who had studied at Sutton Coldfield School, is the first to describe goals and a distinct playing field: "a close that has a gate at either end. The gates are called Goals." His book includes a diagram illustrating a football field. He also mentions tactics ("leaving some of their best players to guard the goal"); scoring ("they that can strike the ball through their opponents' goal first win") and the way teams were selected ("the players being equally divided according to their strength and nimbleness"). He is the first to describe a "law" of football: "they must not strike [an opponent's leg] higher than the ball".^{[citation needed]}

English public schools were the first to codify football games (in particular Eton (1815)^[18] and Aldenham (1825)^[19]) They also devised the first offside rules, during the late 18th century.^[20] In the earliest manifestations of these rules, players were "off their side" if they simply stood between the ball and the goal which was their objective. Players were not allowed to pass the ball forward, either by foot or by hand. They could only dribble with their feet, or advance the ball in a scrum or similar formation. However, offside laws began to diverge and develop differently at the each school, as is shown by the rules of football from Winchester, Rugby, Harrow and Cheltenham, during in the period of 1810–1850.^[20]

By the early 19th century, (before the Factory Act of 1850), most working class people in Britain had to work six days a week, often for over twelve hours a day. They had neither the time nor the inclination to engage in sport for recreation and, at the time, many children were part of the labour force. Feast day football played on the streets was in decline. Public school boys, who enjoyed some freedom from work, became the inventors of organised football games with formal codes of rules.

Football was adopted by a number of public schools as a way of encouraging competitiveness and keeping youths fit. Each school drafted its own rules, which varied widely between different schools and were changed over time with each new intake of pupils. Two schools of thought developed regarding rules. Some schools favoured a game in which the ball could be carried (as at Rugby, Marlborough and Cheltenham), while others preferred a game where kicking and dribbling the ball was promoted (as at Eton, Harrow, Westminster and Charterhouse). The division into these two camps was partly the result of circumstances in which the games were played. For example, Charterhouse and Westminster at the time had restricted playing areas; the boys were confined to playing their ball game within the school cloisters, making it difficult for them to adopt rough and tumble running games.^{[citation needed]}

Rugby School

William Webb Ellis, a pupil at Rugby School, is said to have "with a fine disregard for the rules of football, as played in his time [emphasis added], first took tha ball in his arms and ran with it, thus creating the distinctive feature of the rugby game." in 1823. This act is usually said to be the beginning of Rugby football, but there is little evidence that it occurred, and most sports historians believe the story to be apocryphal. The act of 'taking the ball in is arms' is often misinterpreted as 'picking the ball up' as it is widely believed that Webb Ellis' 'crime' was handling the ball, as in modern soccer, however handling the ball as the time was often permitted and in some cases compulsory,^[21] the rule for which Webb Ellis showed disregard was running forward with it as the rules of his time only allowed a player to retreat backwards or kick forwards.

The boom in rail transport in Britain during the 1840s meant that people were able to travel further and with less inconvenience than they ever had before. Inter-school sporting competitions became possible. However, it was difficult for schools to play each other at football, as each school played by its own rules. The solution to this problem was usually that the match be divided into two halves, one half played by the rules of the host "home" school, and the other half by the visiting "away" school.

Apart from Rugby football, the public school codes have barely been played beyond the confines of each school's playing fields. However, many of them are still played at the schools which created them (see Surviving public school games below).

Firsts

Clubs

Main article: Oldest football clubs

The first documented club to bear the title "football club" is one in Edinburgh, Scotland, during the period 1824-41, and associated with a man named John Hope. Several documents relating to this "Foot Ball Club" exist.^[22]^[23]

Two clubs which claim to be the world's first and/or oldest football club, in the sense of a club which is not part of a school or university, are strongholds of rugby football: the Barnes Club, said to have been founded in 1839, and Guy's Hospital Football Club, in 1843. Neither date nor the variety of football played is well-documented, but such claims nevertheless allude to the popularity of rugby before other modern codes emerged.

In 1845, three boys at Rugby school were tasked with codifying the rules then being used at the school. These were the first set of written rules (or code) for any form of football.^[24] This further assisted the spread of the Rugby game. For instance, Dublin University Football Club—founded at Trinity College, Dublin in 1854 and later famous as a bastion of the Rugby School game—is the world's oldest documented football club in any code.

Competitions

Main article: Oldest football competitions

One of the longest running football fixture is the Cordner-Eggleston Cup, contested between Melbourne Grammar School and Scotch College, Melbourne every year since 1858. It is believed by many to also be the first match of Australian rules football, although it was played under experimental rules in its first year. The first football trophy tournament was the Caledonian Challenge Cup, donated by the Royal Caledonian Society of Melbourne, played in 1861 under the Melbourne Rules.^[25] The oldest football league is a rugby football competition, the United Hospitals Challenge Cup (1874), while the oldest rugby trophy is the Rugby League Challenge Cup (1897). The South Australian Football Association (30 April 1877) is the oldest surviving Australian rules football competition. The oldest surviving soccer trophy is the Youdan Cup (1867) and the oldest national soccer competition is the English FA Cup (1871). The Football League (1888) is recognised as the longest running Association Football league. The first ever international football match took place between sides representing England and Scotland on March 5th 1870 at the Oval under the authority of the FA. The first Rugby international took place in 1871.

Modern balls

Main article: football (ball)

Richard Lindon (seen in 1880) is believed to have invented the first footballs with rubber bladders.

In Europe, early footballs were made out of animal bladders, more specifically pig's bladders, which were inflated. Later leather coverings were introduced to allow the ball to keep their shape.^[26] However, in 1851, Richard Lindon and William Gilbert, both shoemakers from the town of Rugby (near the school), exhibited both round and oval-shaped balls at the Great Exhibition in London. Richard Lindon's wife is said to have died of lung disease caused by blowing up pig's bladders.^[27] Lindon also won medals for the invention of the "Rubber inflatable Bladder" and the "Brass Hand Pump".

In 1855, the U.S. inventor Charles Goodyear — who had patented vulcanized rubber — exhibited a spherical football, with an exterior of vulcanized rubber panels, at the Paris Exhibition Universelle. The ball was to prove popular in early forms of football in the U.S.A.^[28]

Modern ball passing tactics

Main article: Passing (association football)

"Scientific" football is first recorded in 1839 from Lancashire^[29] and in the modern game in Rugby football from 1862^[30] and from Sheffield FC as early as 1865^[31]^[32] . The first side to play a passing combination game was the Royal Engineers AFC in 1869/70^[33]^[34]^[35] By 1869 they were "work[ing] well together", "backing up" and benefiting from "cooperation"^[36]. By 1870 the Engineers were passing the ball: "Lieut. Creswell, who having brought the ball up the side then kicked it into the middle to another of his side, who kicked it through the posts the minute before time was called"^[37] Passing was a regular feature of their style^[38] By early 1872 the Engineers were the first football team renowned for "play[ing] beautifully together"^[39] A double pass is first reported from Derby school against Nottingham Forest in March 1872, the first of which is irrefutably a short pass: "Mr Absey dribbling the ball half the length of the field delivered it to Wallis, who kicking it cleverly in front of the goal, sent it to the captain who drove it at once between the Nottingham posts"^[40] The first side to have perfected the modern formation was Cambridge University AFC^[41]^[42]^[43]

Cambridge rules

Main article: Cambridge rules

In 1848, at Cambridge University, Mr. H. de Winton and Mr. J.C. Thring, who were both formerly at Shrewsbury School, called a meeting at Trinity College, Cambridge with 12 other representatives from Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Winchester and Shrewsbury. An eight-hour meeting produced what amounted to the first set of modern rules, known as the Cambridge rules. No copy of these rules now exists, but a revised version from circa 1856 is held in the library of Shrewsbury School. The rules clearly favour the kicking game. Handling was only allowed for a player to take a clean catch entitling them to a free kick and there was a primitive offside rule, disallowing players from "loitering" around the opponents' goal. The Cambridge rules were not widely adopted outside English public schools and universities (but it was arguably the most significant influence on the Football Association committee members responsible for formulating the rules of Association football).

Sheffield rules

Main article: Sheffield rules

By the late 1850s, many football clubs had been formed throughout the English-speaking world, to play various codes of football. Sheffield Football Club, founded in 1857 in the English city of Sheffield by Nathaniel Creswick and William Prest, was later recognised as the world's oldest club playing association football.^[44] However, the club initially played its own code of football: the Sheffield rules. The code was largly independent of the public school rules the most significant difference being the lack of an offside rule.

The code was responsible for many innovations that later spread to association football. These included free kicks^{[disambiguation needed]}, corner kicks, handball, throw-ins and the crossbar.^[45] By the 1870s they became the dominant code in the north and midlands of England. At this time series of rule changes by both the London and Sheffield FAs gradually eroded the differences between the two games until the adoption of a common code in 1877.

Australian rules

An Australian rules football match at the Richmond Paddock, Melbourne, in 1866. (A wood engraving by Robert Bruce.)

Main article: Australian rules football

Various forms of football were played in Australia during the Victorian gold rush, from which emerged a distinct and locally popular sport. While these origins are still the subject of much debate the popularisation of the code that is known today as Australian Rules Football is currently attributed to Tom Wills.

Wills wrote a letter to Bell's Life in Victoria & Sporting Chronicle, on July 10, 1858, calling for a "foot-ball club" with a "code of laws" to keep cricketers fit during winter^[46]. This is considered by historians to be a defining moment in the creation of the new sport. Through publicity and personal contacts Wills was able to co-ordinate football matches in Melbourne that experimented with various rules^[47] , the first recorded of which occurred on July 31, 1858. On 7 August 1858, Wills umpired a relatively well documented schoolboys match between Melbourne Grammar School and Scotch College. Following these matches, organised football matches rapidly increased in popularity.

Wills and others involved in these early matches formed the Melbourne Football Club (the oldest surviving Australian football club) on May 17, 1859. The first members included Wills, William Hammersley, J.B. Thompson and Thomas H. Smith. They met with the intention of forming a set of rules that would be widely adopted by other clubs.

The backgrounds of the original rule makers makes for interesting speculation as to the influences on the rules. Wills, an Australian of convict heritage was educated in England. He was a rugby footballer, a cricketer and had strong links to indigenous Australians. At first he desired to introduce rugby school rules. Hammersley was a cricketer and journalist who emigrated from England. Thomas Smith was a school teacher who emigrated from Ireland. The committee members debated several rules including those of English public school games. Despite including aspects similar to other forms of football there is no conclusive evidence to point to any single influence. Instead the committee decided on a game that was more suited to Australian conditions and Wills is documented to have made the declaration "No, we shall have a game of our own".^[48] The code was distinctive in the prevalence of the mark, free kick, tackling, lack of an offside rule and that players were specifically penalised for throwing the ball.

The Melbourne football rules were widely distributed and gradually adopted by the other Victorian clubs. They were redrafting several times during the 1860s to accommodate the rules of other influential Victorian football clubs. A significant re-write in 1866 by H C A Harrison's committee to accommodate rules from the Geelong Football Club made the game, which had become known as "Victorian Rules", increasingly distinct from other codes. It used cricket fields, a rugby ball, specialised goal and behind posts, bouncing with the ball while running and later spectacular high marking. The form of football spread quickly to other other Australian colonies. Outside of its heartland in southern Australia the code experienced a significant period of decline following World War I but has since grown other parts of the world at an amateur level and the Australian Football League emerged as the dominant professional competition.

Football Association

The first football international, Scotland versus England. Once kept by the Rugby Football Union as an early example of rugby football.

Main article: The Football Association#History

During the early 1860s, there were increasing attempts in England to unify and reconcile the various public school games. In 1862, J. C. Thring, who had been one of the driving forces behind the original Cambridge Rules, was a master at Uppingham School and he issued his own rules of what he called "The Simplest Game" (these are also known as the Uppingham Rules). In early October 1863 another new revised version of the Cambridge Rules was drawn up by a seven member committee representing former pupils from Harrow, Shrewsbury, Eton, Rugby, Marlborough and Westminster.

At the Freemasons' Tavern, Great Queen Street, London on the evening of October 26, 1863, representatives of several football clubs in the London Metropolitan area met for the inaugural meeting of The Football Association (FA). The aim of the Association was to establish a single unifying code and regulate the playing of the game among its members. Following the first meeting, the public schools were invited to join the association. All of them declined, except Charterhouse and Uppingham. In total, six meetings of the FA were held between October and December 1863. After the third meeting, a draft set of rules were published. However, at the beginning of the fourth meeting, attention was drawn to the recently published Cambridge Rules of 1863. The Cambridge rules differed from the draft FA rules in two significant areas; namely running with (carrying) the ball and hacking (kicking opposing players in the shins). The two contentious FA rules were as follows:

IX. A player shall be entitled to run with the ball towards his adversaries' goal if he makes a fair catch, or catches the ball on the first bound; but in case of a fair catch, if he makes his mark he shall not run.

X. If any player shall run with the ball towards his adversaries' goal, any player on the opposite side shall be at liberty to charge, hold, trip or hack him, or to wrest the ball from him, but no player shall be held and hacked at the same time.

—^[49]^[50]

At the fifth meeting it was proposed that these two rules be removed. Most of the delegates supported this, but F. W. Campbell, the representative from Blackheath and the first FA treasurer, objected. He said: "hacking is the true football". However, the motion to ban hacking was carried and Blackheath withdrew from the FA. After the final meeting on 8 December, the FA published the "Laws of Football", the first comprehensive set of rules for the game later known as football (later known in some countries as soccer).

The first FA rules still contained elements that are no longer part of association football, but which are still recognisable in other games (most notably Australian football): for instance, a player could make a fair catch and claim a mark, which entitled him to a free kick, and; if a player touched the ball behind the opponents' goal line, his side was entitled to a free kick at goal, from 15 yards in front of the goal line.

Rugby football

Main article: History of rugby union

A rugby scrum in 1871.

In Britain, by 1870, there were about 75 clubs playing variations of the Rugby school game. There were also "rugby" clubs in Ireland, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. However, there was no generally accepted set of rules for rugby until 1871, when 21 clubs from London came together to form the Rugby Football Union (RFU). (Ironically, Blackheath now lobbied to ban hacking.^{[neutrality disputed]}) The first official RFU rules were adopted in June 1871. These rules allowed passing the ball. They also included the try, where touching the ball over the line allowed an attempt at goal, though drop-goals from marks and general play, and penalty conversions were still the main form of contest.

North American football codes

This article is missing citations or needs footnotes. Please help add inline citations to guard against copyright violations and factual inaccuracies. (December 2007)

Main articles: History of American football and Canadian football#History

As was the case in Britain, by the early 19th century, North American schools and universities played their own local games, between sides made up of students. Students at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire played a game called Old division football, a variant of the association football codes, as early as the 1820s.

The "Tigers" of Hamilton, Ontario, circa 1906. Founded 1869 as the Hamilton Foot Ball Club, they eventually merged with the Hamilton Flying Wildcats to form the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, a team still active in the Canadian Football League.^[51]

The first game of rugby in Canada is generally said to have taken place in Montreal, in 1865, when British Army officers played local civilians. The game gradually gained a following, and the Montreal Football Club was formed in 1868, the first recorded football club in Canada.

In 1869, the first game played in the United States under rules based on the FA code occurred, between Princeton and Rutgers. This is also often considered to be the first US game of college football, in the sense of a game between colleges (although the eventual form of American football would come from rugby, not association football).

Modern American football grew out of a match between McGill University of Montreal, and Harvard University in 1874. At the time, Harvard students are reported to have played the Boston Game — a running code — rather than the FA-based kicking games favored by US universities. This made it easy for Harvard to adapt to the rugby-based game played by McGill and the two teams alternated between their respective sets of rules. Within a few years, however, Harvard had both adopted McGill's rugby rules and had persuaded other US university teams to do the same. In 1876, at the Massasoit Convention, it was agreed by these universities to adopt most of the Rugby Football Union rules, with some variations. Princeton, Rutgers and others continued to compete using soccer-based rules for a few years before switching to the rugby-based rules of Harvard and its competitors. US colleges did not generally return to soccer until the early twentieth century.

Rutgers College Football Team, 1882

In 1880, Yale coach Walter Camp, devised a number of major changes to the American game. Camp's two most important rule innovations in establishing American football as distinct from the rugby football games on which it is based are scrimmage and down-and-distance rules.

Scrimmage refers to the practice of starting action by delivering the ball from the ground to another player's hand. Camp's original rule allowed this delivery to be done only with the feet; the rule was soon changed to allow the ball to be passed by hand. The rule also established a distinct line of scrimmage which separates the two teams from each other. When a player is tackled, he is ruled down and play stops, while the teams reset on either side of the line of scrimmage. Play then resumes with the delivery of the ball. Teams are given a limited number of downs to achieve a certain distance (always measured in yards). In American football, teams are given four downs to advance the ball ten yards, after which possession of the ball changes. In Canadian football, teams are allowed three downs to advance ten yards. These rules created a fundamental distinction between the North American codes and rugby codes. Rugby is still fundamentally a continuous-action game, while North American codes are organized around running discrete "plays", as defined as starting with the delivery from "scrimmage" and ending with the "down".

American football, in its early years, was an excessively violent game, plagued with several deaths and life-changing injuries every year. The violence became so drastic that President Theodore Roosevelt threatened to shut down the game in 1905, should rules not be changed to minimize this violence. Several rule changes were put into place that year, but the most enduring has been the introduction of the legal forward pass, which, like Camp's rule changes of the 1880s, fundamentally changed the nature of the sport. When it became legal to throw the ball forward, an entire new method of advancing the ball emerged. As a result, players became more specialized in their roles, as the different positions on the team required different skill sets. Thus, some players are primarily involved in running with the ball (the running back) while others specialize in throwing (the quarterback), catching (the wide receiver), or blocking (the offensive line). With the advent of free substitution rules in the 1940s and 1950s, teams could deploy separate offensive and defensive "platoons" which led to even greater specialization.

Over the years Canadian football absorbed some developments in American football, but also retained many unique characteristics. One of these was that Canadian football, for many years, did not officially distinguish itself from rugby. For example, the Canadian Rugby Football Union, founded in 1884 was the forerunner of the Canadian Football League, rather than a rugby union body. (The Canadian Rugby Union, today known as Rugby Canada, was not formed until 1965.) American football was also frequently described as "rugby" in the 1880s.

Gaelic football

Main article: History of Gaelic football

In the mid-19th century, various traditional football games, referred to collectively as caid, remained popular in Ireland, especially in County Kerry. One observer, Father W. Ferris, described two main forms of caid during this period: the "field game" in which the object was to put the ball through arch-like goals, formed from the boughs of two trees, and; the epic "cross-country game" which took up most of the daylight hours of a Sunday on which it was played, and was won by one team taking the ball across a parish boundary. "Wrestling", "holding" opposing players, and carrying the ball were all allowed.

By the 1870s, Rugby and Association football had started to become popular in Ireland. Trinity College, Dublin was an early stronghold of Rugby (see the Developments in the 1850s section, above). The rules of the English FA were being distributed widely. Traditional forms of caid had begun to give way to a "rough-and-tumble game" which allowed tripping.

There was no serious attempt to unify and codify Irish varieties of football, until the establishment of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) in 1884. The GAA sought to promote traditional Irish sports, such as hurling and to reject imported games like Rugby and Association football. The first Gaelic football rules were drawn up by Maurice Davin and published in the United Ireland magazine on February 7, 1887. Davin's rules showed the influence of games such as hurling and a desire to formalise a distinctly Irish code of football. The prime example of this differentiation was the lack of an offside rule (an attribute which, for many years, was shared only by other Irish games like hurling, and by Australian rules football).

Split in Rugby football

An English cartoon from the 1890s lampooning the divide in rugby football which led to the formation of rugby league. The caricatures are of Rev. Frank Marshall, an arch-opponent of player payments, and James Miller, a long-time opponent of Marshall. The caption reads: Marshall: "Oh, fie, go away naughty boy, I don't play with boys who can’t afford to take a holiday for football any day they like!" Miller: "Yes, that's just you to a T; you’d make it so that no lad whose father wasn’t a millionaire could play at all in a really good team. For my part I see no reason why the men who make the money shouldn’t have a share in the spending of it."

Further information: History of rugby league

The International Rugby Football Board (IRFB) was founded in 1886, but rifts were beginning to emerge in the code. Professionalism was beginning to creep into the various codes of football.

In England, by the 1890s, a long-standing Rugby Football Union ban on professional players was causing regional tensions within rugby football, as many players in northern England were working class and could not afford to take time off to train, travel, play and recover from injuries. This was not very different from what had occurred ten years earlier in soccer in Northern England but the authorities reacted very differently in the RFU, attempting to alienate the working class support in Northern England. In 1895, following a dispute about a player being paid broken time payments, which replaced wages lost as a result of playing rugby, representatives of the northern clubs met in Huddersfield to form the Northern Rugby Football Union (NRFU). The new body initially permitted only various types of player wage replacements. However, within two years, NRFU players could be paid, but they were required to have a job outside sport.

The demands of a professional league dictated that rugby had to become a better "spectator" sport. Within a few years the NRFU rules had started to diverge from the RFU, most notably with the abolition of the line-out. This was followed by the replacement of the ruck with the "play-the-ball ruck", which allowed a two-player ruck contest between the tackler at marker and the player tackled. Mauls were stopped once the ball carrier was held, being replaced by a play-the ball-ruck. The separate Lancashire and Yorkshire competitions of the NRFU merged in 1901, forming the Northern Rugby League, the first time the name rugby league was used officially in England.

Over time, the RFU form of rugby, played by clubs which remained members of national federations affiliated to the IRFB, became known as rugby union.

Globalisation of Association football

Main article: History of FIFA

The need for a single body to oversee Association football had become apparent by the beginning of the 20th century, with the increasing popularity of international fixtures. The English Football Association had chaired many discussions on setting up an international body, but was perceived as making no progress. It fell to associations from seven other European countries: France, Belgium, Denmark, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland, to form an international association. The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) was founded in Paris on May 21, 1904. Its first president was Robert Guérin. The French name and acronym has remained, even outside French-speaking countries.

Reform of American football

Both forms of rugby and American football were noted at the time for serious injuries, as well as the deaths of a significant number of players. By the early 20th century in the USA, this had resulted in national controversy and American football was banned by a number of colleges. Consequently, a series of meetings was held by 19 colleges in 1905–06. This occurred reputedly at the behest of President Theodore Roosevelt. He was considered a fancier of the game, but he threatened to ban it unless the rules were modified to reduce the numbers of deaths and disabilities. The meetings are now considered to be the origin of the National Collegiate Athletic Association.

One proposed change was a widening of the playing field. However, Harvard University had just built a concrete stadium and therefore objected to widening, instead proposing legalisation of the forward pass. The report of the meetings introduced many restrictions on tackling and two more divergences from rugby: the forward pass and the banning of mass formation plays. The changes did not immediately have the desired effect, and 33 American football players were killed during 1908 alone. However, the number of deaths and injuries did gradually decline.

Further divergence of the two rugby codes

Rugby league rules diverged significantly from rugby union in 1906, with the reduction of the team from 15 to 13 players. In 1907, a New Zealand professional rugby team toured Australia and Britain, receiving an enthusiastic response, and professional rugby leagues were launched in Australia the following year. However, the rules of professional games varied from one country to another, and negotiations between various national bodies were required to fix the exact rules for each international match. This situation endured until 1948, when at the instigation of the French league, the Rugby League International Federation (RLIF) was formed at a meeting in Bordeaux.

During the second half of 20th century, the rules changed further. In 1966, rugby league officials borrowed the American football concept of downs: a team could retain possession of the ball for no more than four tackles. The maximum number of tackles was later increased to six (in 1971), and in rugby league this became known as the six tackle rule.

With the advent of full-time professionals in the early 1990s, and the consequent speeding up of the game, the five metre off-side distance between the two teams became 10 metres, and the replacement rule was superseded by various interchange rules, among other changes.

The laws of rugby union also changed significantly during the 20th century. In particular, goals from marks were abolished, kicks directly into touch from outside the 22 metre line were penalised, new laws were put in place to determine who had possession following an inconclusive ruck or maul, and the lifting of players in line-outs was legalised.

In 1995, rugby union became an "open" game, that is one which allowed professional players. Although the original dispute between the two codes has now disappeared — and despite the fact that officials from both forms of rugby football have sometimes mentioned the possibility of re-unification — the rules of both codes and their culture have diverged to such an extent that such an event is unlikely in the foreseeable future.

Football today

Players assemble at the line of scrimmage in an American Football game.

Use of the word "football" in English-speaking countries

Further information: Football (word)

The word "football", when used in reference to a specific game can mean any one of those described above. Because of this, much friendly controversy has occurred over the term football, primarily because it is used in different ways in different parts of the English-speaking world. Most often, the word "football" is used to refer to the code of football that is considered dominant within a particular region. So, effectively, what the word "football" means usually depends on where one says it.

The name "soccer" (or "soccer football") was originally a slang abbreviation of the word "association" from "association football" and is now the prevailing term in the United States, Canada, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand where other codes of football are dominant.

Of the 45 national FIFA affiliates in which English is an official or primary language, only three (Canada, Samoa and the United States) actually use "soccer" in their organizations' official names, while the rest use football (although the Samoan Federation actually uses both). However, in some countries, such as Australia and New Zealand, use of the word "football" by soccer bodies is a recent change and has been controversial. The governing body for Rugby Union in New Zealand changed its name from "New Zealand Rugby Football Union" to "New Zealand Rugby Union" in 2006.

Use of the word "football" in non-English-speaking countries

Generally around the world today the word "football" and direct translations as such (such as Spanish fútbol and German Fußball/Fussball) is in widespread use as the name for association football. In Francophone Quebec, where Canadian football is more popular, the sport of association football is known as le soccer and the Canadian code as le football.

Present day codes and families

Association football and descendants

An indoor soccer game at an open air venue in Mexico. The referee has just awarded the red team a free kick.

Association football, also known as football, soccer, footy and footie
Indoor/basketball court varieties of Football:
- Five-a-side football — played throughout the world under various rules including:
  - Futsal — the FIFA-approved five-a-side indoor game
  - Minivoetbal — the five-a-side indoor game played in East and West Flanders where it is hugely popular
  - Papi fut the five-a-side game played in outdoor basketball courts (built with goals) in Central America.
- Indoor soccer — the six-a-side indoor game, known in Latin America, where it is often played in open air venues, as fútbol rápido ("fast football")
- Masters Football six-a-side played in Europe by mature professionals (35 years and older)
Paralympic football — modified Football for athletes with a disability.^[52] Includes:
- Football 5-a-side — for visually impaired athletes
- Football 7-a-side — for athletes with cerebral palsy
- Amputee football — for athletes with amputations
- Deaf football — for athletes with hearing impairments
- Electric wheelchair soccer
Beach soccer — football played on sand, also known as beach football and sand soccer
Street football — encompasses a number of informal varieties of football
Rush goalie — is a variation of football in which the role of the goalkeeper is more flexible than normal
Headers and volleys — where the aim is to score goals against a goalkeeper using only headers and volleys
Crab football — players stand on their hands and feet and move around on their backs whilst playing football as normal
Swamp soccer — the game is played on a swamp or bog field

Rugby school football and descendants

Rugby football
- Rugby league — usually known simply as "football" or "footy" in the Australian states of New South Wales and Queensland, and by some followers of the game in England. Also often referred to simply as "league"
  - Rugby league nines (or sevens)
  - Touch football (rugby league) — a non-contact version of rugby league. In South Africa it is known as six down
  - Tag Rugby — a non-contact version of rugby league, in which a velcro tag is removed to indicate a tackle
- Rugby union
  - Rugby sevens
    
    Rugby sevens; Fiji v Cook Islands at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne
  - Tag rugby — a form of rugby union using the velcro tag
- Beach rugby — rugby played on sand
- Touch rugby — generic name for forms of rugby football which does not feature tackles
Gridiron football
- American football — called "football" in the United States and Canada, and "gridiron" in Australia and New Zealand. Sometimes called "tackle football" to distinguish it from the touch versions
- Indoor football, arena football — an indoor version of American football
- Nine-man football, eight-man football, six-man football — versions of tackle football, played primarily by smaller high schools that lack enough players to field full 11-man teams
- Touch football (American) — non-tackle American football
  - Flag football — non-tackle American football, like touch football, in which a flag that is held by velcro on a belt tied around the waist is pulled by defenders to indicate a tackle
- Street football (American) — American football played in backyards without equipment and with simplified rules
- Canadian football — called simply "football" in Canada; "football" in Canada can mean either Canadian or American football depending on context
  - Canadian flag football — non-tackle Canadian football
  - Nine-man football — similar to nine-man American football, but using Canadian rules; played by smaller schools in Saskatchewan that lack enough players to field full 12-man teams

Irish and Australian varieties

International rules football test match from the 2005 International Rules Series between Australia and Ireland at Telstra Dome, Melbourne, Australia.

These codes have in common the absence of an offside rule, the requirement to bounce or solo (toe-kick) the ball while running, handpassing by punching or tapping the ball rather than throwing it, and other traditions.

Australian rules football — officially known as "Australian football", and informally as "Aussie rules" or "footy". In some areas (erroneously) referred to as "AFL", which is the name of the main organising body and competition
- Auskick — a version of Australian rules designed by the AFL for young children
- Metro footy (or Metro rules footy) — a modified version invented by the USAFL, for use on gridiron fields in North American cities (which often lack grounds large enough for conventional Australian rules matches)
- Kick-to-kick
- 9-a-side footy — a more open, running variety of Australian rules, requiring 18 players in total and a proportionally smaller playing area (includes contact and non-contact varieties)
- Rec footy — "Recreational Football", a modified non-contact touch variation of Australian rules, created by the AFL, which replaces tackles with tags
- Touch Aussie Rules — a non-contact variation of Australian Rules played only in the United Kingdom
- Samoa rules — localised version adapted to Samoan conditions, such as the use of rugby football fields
- Masters Australian football (a.k.a. Superules) — reduced contact version introduced for competitions limited to players over 30 years of age
- Women's Australian rules football — played with a smaller ball and (sometimes) reduced contact version introduced for women's competition
Gaelic football — Played predominantly in Ireland. Sometimes referred to as "football" or "gaah" (from the acronym for Gaelic Athletic Association)
- Ladies Gaelic football
International rules football — a compromise code used for games between Gaelic and Australian Rules players

Surviving mediæval ball games

The ball is hit into the air at the 2006 Royal Shrovetide Football match. (Photographer: Gary Austin.)

Inside the UK

The Haxey Hood, played on Epiphany in Haxey, Lincolnshire
Shrove Tuesday games
In Scotland the Ba game ("Ball Game") is still popular around Christmas and Hogmanay at:
- Duns, Berwickshire
- Scone, Perthshire
- Kirkwall in the Orkney Islands

Outside the UK

Calcio Fiorentino — a modern revival of Renaissance football from 16th century Florence.

Surviving UK school games

Harrow football players after a game at Harrow School.

Games still played at UK public (independent) schools:

Recent inventions and hybrid games

Keepie uppie (keep up)
is the art of juggling with a football using feet, knees, chest, shoulders, and head.
- Footbag
  is a small bean bag or sand bag used as a ball in a number of keepie uppie variations, including hacky sack (which is a trade mark).
Freestyle football

a modern take on keepie uppie where freestylers are graded for their entertainment value and expression of skill.

Based on FA rules

Based on rugby

Scuffleball
Force ’em backs a.k.a. forcing back, forcemanback et c.

Hybrid games

Austus
a compromise between Australian rules and American football, invented in Melbourne during World War II.
Bossaball
mixes Association football and volleyball and gymnastics; played on inflatables and trampolines.
Footvolley
mixes Association football and beach volleyball; played on sand
Kickball
a hybrid of Association football and baseball, invented in the United States in about 1942.
Speedball (American)
a combination of American football, soccer, and basketball, devised in the United States in 1912.
Universal football
A hybrid of Australian rules and rugby league, trialled in Sydney in 1933.^[53]
Volata
a game resembling Association football and European handball, devised by Italian fascist leader, Augusto Turati, in the 1920s.
Wheelchair rugby
also known as Murderball, invented in Canada in 1977. Based on ice hockey and basketball rather than rugby.
- Wheelchair rugby league

Tabletop games and other recreations

Based on Football (soccer)

Subbuteo
Blow football
Table football — also known as foosball, table soccer, babyfoot, bar football or gettone)
Fantasy football (soccer)
Button football — also known as Futebol de Mesa, Jogo de Botões
Penny football

Based on rugby

Penny rugby

Based on American football

Based on Australian football

List of Australian rules football computer games
- AFL Premiership 2005

Definition of Friendster

2009-06-25T11:06:00.000+07:00

Friendster is a privately owned internet social networking website.^[3]^[4] Its headquarters are in Sydney.

Friendster is focused on helping people meet new friends, stay in touch with old ones and sharing online content and media.The website is also used for dating and discovering new events, bands, hobbies, and more. Users can share content including videos, photos, messages and comments with friends via their profile and their network.

Friendster has over 90 million registered users and over 61 million unique visitors a month globally. The website receives approximately 19 billion page views per month, and is in the top 100 global website based on web traffic.

Over 90% of Friendster's traffic comes from Asia. In Asia, Friendster has more monthly unique visitors than any other social network. The top 10 countries accessing Friendster, according to Alexa, as of May 7, 2009 are the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, South Korea, the United States, Singapore, China, Japan, Saudi Arabia and India.

History

Friendster was founded by computer programmer Jonathan Abrams in 2002 in Mountain View, California before the creation, launch and adoption of MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn and others.

Friendster was founded to create a safer, more effective environment for meeting new people by browsing user profiles and connecting to friends, friends of friends and so on, allowing members to expand their network of friends more rapidly than in real life, face-to-face scenarios.

Friendster.com went live in March 2003 and was quickly adopted by three million users within the first few months.Publications including Time, Esquire, Vanity Fair, Entertainment Weekly, US Weekly and Spin wrote about Friendster's success and the founder appeared on magazine covers and late-night talk shows.

Today, Friendster has a membership base of more than 90 million registered users and continues to grow, especially in Asia.

In August 2008, Friendster hired ex-Google executive Richard Kimber as the CEO.Kimber, who was previously the regional managing director of South Asia at Google, is focusing on Friendster's expansion in Asia.

Financial History

The company was originally funded in 2003 with a $12 million investment by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Benchmark Capital, and private investors.

In 2003, Friendster management received a $30 million buyout offer from Google, which they declined.

Friendster received another $3 million in funding in February 2006 led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Benchmark Capital.In August 2006, Friendster also received $10 million in funding in a round led by DAG Ventures, and Friendster announced in August 2008 that it had raised an additional $20 million in funding in a round led by IDG Ventures. Today, Friendster is backed by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Benchmark Capital, DAG Ventures, IDG Ventures and individual investors.

Users and traffic

Friendster is a top-50 global website serving more than 19 billion pages a month with over 90 million registered users globally, and 62 million in Asia. Friendster had over 61 million monthly unique visitors globally and 45 million monthly unique visitors from Asia in September 2008.

Friendster claims the website is the #1 social network in "user engagement" among the top 5 global social networks with about 200 minutes per visitor per month spent on the site.

From August 2007 to August 2008, Friendster gained more than 35 million registered users and had over 21 million monthly unique visitors. It is also the top social networking site in the Asia-Pacific region and one of the fastest growing social networks globally with over 150,000 new users registering each day.

Friendster is among the top 5 most popular websites in the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia, according to Alexa.com. However, among those top five countries, the Philippines had the highest participation; about 87% of the country's population use this kind of friendship site.

Items and services

A social profile page within Friendster

In 2007 Friendster added Fan Profiles, the Friendster Developer Program (open platform) and starting launching Friendster.com in 9 additional languages. In 2008, Friendster continued to launch the site in new languages and also launched Friendster Mobile which includes SMS text alerts.

Fan Profiles: Fan Profiles encompass over 40 different types of "entities"– including artists, celebrities, models, musicians and organizations. Such entities can create a "Fan Profile" which helps them promote themselves and build a fan base on Friendster. Fan Profiles are also accessible to non-Friendster members via search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and MSN. Friendster users can become fans of their favorite entities and keep up to date on all their latest news. There are over 40 million total fan connections to Fan Profiles on Friendster.

Friendster Mobile and Friendster Text Alerts: Friendster mobile (m.friendster.com) is free for users from any web-enabled mobile device and is available globally. Friendster mobile is available in several languages in addition to English (Indonesian, Malay, Korean, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese). Friendster users in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines can subscribe to and receive SMS text alerts on their mobile devices for network activity and friend related updates. This service is expected to roll out in more countries soon.

Languages: Languages include Tagalog, Thai, Malay, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Chinese (both Traditional and Simplified), Japanese, Korean, and Spanish.Until September 2007, Friendster was only available in English. 10 new languages were added in as many months from 2007 up to January 2009, with Tagalog being the newest language to be included.Users can also enter content on Friendster in any language.

Friendster launched all language support on a single domain - www.friendster.com. Friendster is the first global online social network to support Asian languages and others on a single domain – www.friendster.com – so that users from around the world can talk to each other.

Over 70% of the world's Internet users can now use Friendster.

Friendster Developer Program: Friendster has been an open site since August 2006 when it first began allowing widgets and content to be embedded in user profile pages.Roughly 39 percent of Friendster's users have widgets on their profile.

Friendster gives software developers access to APIs that utilize content and data within the Friendster network to build and deploy customizable applications on and off Friendster. Friendster's Developer Program is an open, non-proprietary platform with an open revenue model.

Friendster was the first to support both the OpenSocial and the Facebook Platform.

PATENTS

Friendster holds four fundamental online social networking patents for 'Connecting Users in an Online Computer System Based on Their Relationships within Social Networks,' 'Method of Inducing Content Uploads in a Social Network,' 'System and Method for Managing Connections in an Online Social Network' and 'Compatibility Scoring of Users in a Social Network.'

Pet Society - Tips

2009-06-25T11:02:00.000+07:00

A lot of people are interested in cheats for Pet Society. Sorry to say though, that there are no true cheats for Playfish’s Pet Society. Nope, there is no “god mode,” no infinite happiness, no unlimited coins, and no key press combinations of any sort during the start screen. However, that’s not to say there aren’t any tricks you could learn.

In a game like Pet Society, being able to cheat would virtually destroy the entire point of the game, and if you’re intending to cheat, be aware that Playfish is taking measures against it. Nevertheless, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t look for ways to better your avatar from more experienced players in a more “legal” fashion.

A common question people have is how do I earn a lot of money? Somehow, there are players that have multiple rooms, the most expensive items, and still have plenty to spare. So how do the rich do it?

Yes, you can clean and play with your pet, and you can run your daily races and try to win, but this is a social game, and what better way to earn money in a social game than… well, be social. The number one way to earn some extra cash in Pet Society (aside from flat out buying it) is to have friends (lots, and lots, and lots of friends). Most of the rich veteran players have over 100 different friends in their society, and this equates to lots of time spent grooming, feeding, and bathing those pets for money.

Too mundane you say? Well, another option is to earn those “Paw Points” and level up to unlock those new features and items. If you’ve heeded the above advice and have a number of friends, pick one that you know you can trust and send them the most expensive item you have as a gift. Sending gifts earns you a hefty portion of Paw Points, and once they receive it, have them send it right back (next, rinse and repeat). Now you both earn a little something and don’t loose anything.

However, if you do intend to utilize this particular method, you should be aware that like any other game, Pet Society is not free of bugs. There have been user reports of occasionally losing items via this method so proceed at your own risk. With that said, there have also been reports of this method accidentally duplicating sent gifts. Sometimes you’ll get lucky, sometimes not.

Of course, this is only the tip of the iceberg as far as this game goes. With a constantly growing and active community, there are always more tricks to learn, and forums to join. If you want to learn more, or just meet some new players, definitely check out Pet Society Chatter. It’s a great source of tips, strategies, contests, and an overall friendly and active community.