Young adults turn to Quakers’ silent worship to offset — and cope with — a noisy world

At the Arch Street Meeting House in Philadelphia’s Old City, more and more young people are seeking respite from a clamorous technological age in the silent worship of a centuries-old faith.

Like other Quaker houses of worship, it follows values of simplicity and equality. There’s no clergy, pulpit or altar. No statues of saints, no stained-glass windows. No one sings or chants, burns incense or lights candles. They simply sit in silence in 200-year-old wooden pews — and wait for a message from God to move through them until they speak.

“This feels different in that it’s so simple. It’s set up in a way that makes you feel like your internal world … is equally as important as the space that you’re in,” says Valerie Goodman, a pink-haired artist reading her Bible outside the meeting house on a recent Sunday before going inside. Goodman, 27, grew up Southern