‘Doing Belief’: British Quakers in the Twenty-First-Century Workplace

This article draws on data acquired for doctoral research into how Quakers live out their religious claims in the twenty-first-century workplace. It depicts Quaker everyday practice in the work setting based on the accounts of 20 interviewees. These Quakers tended to be drawn to the movement in adulthood, attracted by its heterodox, post-Christian (Dandelion 1996) claims of religious engagement with the everyday. The research participants also espoused an impulse to improve the world through their workaday participation and, in these ambitious terms, Quakers in the work organisation are framed as ‘doing belief’ (Day 2011: 191). ‘Doing belief’ in the everyday, however, was depicted by the research participants as more than a simple process of engagement co-equivalent to their claims. Indeed, ‘doing belief’ in the workaday was not viewed by the cohort in ‘dichotomous’ religious or secular terms (Collins 2008b: 143). Quakers saw their aspirations to improve the world as harmonious with the espoused intentions of their work organisations. The work organisation, however, set out and policed the terms upon which the research participants’ ambitions were pursued, shaping how the contemporary Quaker tradition was expedited in the workaday setting.