Our History

Pacific Yearly Meeting grew from a network of Friends scattered across the Pacific Coast who were finding ways to stay connected across enormous distances. In 1935, Friends formed the Pacific Coast Association of Friends, a deliberately broad fellowship open not only to Meetings, but also to individual Friends and “friends of Friends.” It was intended to strengthen relationships among Friends without requiring them to belong to the same branch or tradition of Quakerism.

By the mid-1940s, a number of established Monthly Meetings within that wider fellowship were ready to take another step. At the Pacific Coast Association’s annual gathering in Palo Alto in August 1947, Pacific Yearly Meeting was formed. Its first constituent Meetings stretched from Vancouver and Seattle through California to Mexico City and Honolulu — a geographic reach that tells us something about both the ambition and the challenge of the new Yearly Meeting.

The new Yearly Meeting did not replace the Pacific Coast Association. It was created within it. The Association remained the wider fellowship, making room for Friends who were not part of the new Yearly Meeting, for developing worship groups, and for Friends connected with other Yearly Meetings. The two bodies shared officers and continued to gather together.

The founders were wary of creating too much machinery. Their 1947 organization report said they wanted to avoid “burdensome organization” and expected the structure to change as the Yearly Meeting’s life developed. That flexibility became a recurring feature of Pacific Yearly Meeting’s history.

In 1958, Friends decided that the separate name Pacific Coast Association of Friends was no longer needed. But they were careful not to abandon the openness that the Association had represented: the same minute that dropped the name also affirmed that people who were not members of Pacific Yearly Meeting should continue to be encouraged to gather with it.

Growing across the West

For its first decades, Pacific Yearly Meeting covered an extraordinary territory. Its Meetings extended through the Pacific Northwest and the Intermountain West as well as California, Hawai‘i, Mexico, and other parts of the Southwest. As regional communities became stronger, the distances that had once made a single western Yearly Meeting useful increasingly made it unwieldy.

By 1972, Friends in the Northwest had formed North Pacific Yearly Meeting. The separation was not described in the records as a rupture. PacYM Friends spoke instead of growth, using the image of an old vine putting out new branches, and expressed a hope that the new yearly meetings would continue visiting, sharing concerns, and encouraging one another.

The transition happened gradually. Some Meetings separated from Pacific Yearly Meeting earlier than others, and some maintained relationships with more than one yearly meeting for a time. By 1973, PacYM’s own minutes described the change as the “spin-off” of North Pacific Yearly Meeting and noted that Friends in the Southwest and Intermountain region were gathering through Intermountain Friends Fellowship. PacYM’s number of Meetings had fallen from 46 to 33 as those regional structures developed.

Intermountain Friends Fellowship continued to grow, and in June 1974, Friends approved the founding minute of Intermountain Yearly Meeting. At PacYM’s Annual Session later that summer, the minutes simply reported the Fellowship’s “growth … into Intermountain Yearly Meeting.”

That leaves Pacific Yearly Meeting with a much smaller geographic footprint than the one imagined in 1947, but those later yearly meetings grew directly out of the relationships that PacYM had helped nurture.

Independent, but not isolated

From the beginning, Pacific Yearly Meeting understood itself as independent of the major Quaker branches, while still wanting close relationships with Friends everywhere. The 1947 organization report said that the new Yearly Meeting did not belong to a particular branch of the Religious Society of Friends, but would seek correspondence, fellowship, and appropriate relationships with other Quaker bodies.

That question — how to remain independent while participating fully in the wider Quaker world — surfaced repeatedly. As early as 1958, PacYM was studying possible relationships with Friends General Conference and other inter-Yearly Meeting organizations.

Decades later, the question returned in a more sustained way. Beginning at least by 2014, Pacific Yearly Meeting entered a long discernment about formal affiliation with Friends General Conference (FGC). By then, several PacYM Monthly Meetings had already affiliated with FGC on their own, and PacYM Friends were widely using FGC programs and resources. By 2019, five Meetings had independently affiliated.

That history shaped the eventual decision to affiliate: not as a sudden departure from PacYM’s past, but as another step in the long-running question of how this independent Yearly Meeting relates to the wider family of Friends.

Continuing to change

Pacific Yearly Meeting has never had a fixed form. From its beginnings within the Pacific Coast Association, through the creation of new yearly meetings in the Northwest and Intermountain West, and through repeated changes in how Friends organize their shared work, PacYM has continued to adapt as its community and circumstances have changed.

Some changes have altered its geographic reach; others have reshaped its relationships with the wider Quaker world or the structures through which Friends carry responsibility together. In each generation, Friends have had to ask again what forms of organization help the Yearly Meeting remain connected, responsive, and faithful to its purpose.

That question is still alive. Pacific Yearly Meeting today is smaller geographically than the body formed in 1947, but its community continues to include Friends connected through local Meetings and Worship Groups, as well as Friends who participate directly in the life of the Yearly Meeting. Its history is less a story of one settled structure than of a community repeatedly finding new ways to stay connected and carry its shared life forward.

Have a question about PacYM’s history, or information that could help preserve our record?
Contact our Historian at historian@pacificyearlymeeting.org or our Archivist at archivist@pacificyearlymeeting.org