Does a faith have to advertise to stay alive these days? Zoe Williams on the quiet "rebranding" of Quakerism

It's like playing an obscure kind of parlour game, having a conversation with advertising guys where they're not allowed to use the word "branding". Sorry, to elaborate: Hoop Associates has been charged with the job of re-"We're not allowed to use the B word"-ing the Quakers. Paul Nunneley, the designer of the material, insists: "We're not branding them. We're just helping them speak with one voice."

A lot of it is the basic work of standardising headed paper since, with 500 meeting houses in England, and myriad projects abroad, the work of unifying the Quakers visually has never been at the top of anyone's agenda. Hoop has also come up with a new Quaker-appropriate colour palette for posters (full of words from the natural world - sunset, sky, fern, heather. It's hard to discuss marketing of any kind without wanting to take the mick, a tiny bit); but there's a much more ideologically delicate task going on here.

Many religions, or branches thereof, have no problem advertising themselves; Alpha courses, for example, are flagged up on the backs of buses. However, advertising is pretty much anathema to the spirit of Quakerism: its keywords are restraint, simplicity, stillness. Broadly, Quakers are anti-materialistic. Trying to look modern or fashionable would run counter to their principles, as would trying to attract people with noisy promises and self-congratulation. And yet, for a whole raft of reasons, it is time for them to start making a noise.

First, as Rachel Rees, who prefers to be called an attender (but is actually head of communications and fundraising) points out, there is a large gap between the public perception of the Quakers and the reality. "People think that Quakers are dead, that we're a thing of the past. We have hidden our light beneath a fairly big bushel." Second, while most organised religions line up as opponents, tolerating one another to a greater or lesser degree depending on their place on the spectrum, Quakers inhabit the space you might think you have to be an atheist to occupy. They reject any understanding of faith where for yours to be right, everyone else's must be wrong; they don't believe in hell; they are staunchly pacifist; they are natural environmentalists. As Rees says: "You see articles in the newspaper about people who eat organic chocolates and knit and go quite a long way to recycle. And it's presented as a style statement, rather than an ideological one. It's 'cool' to go to Planet Organic. But it doesn't have to be about that. You can put these choices into a spiritual context."

There are so many movements, from anti-globalisation to the anti-war effort, which - give or take blocs of card-carrying socialists - have no structural identity, no uniting precepts beyond: "Surely there's a better way of doing things than the way we're doing it at the moment?" Quaker ism, had it a higher profile, could provide a network for the armies (peaceful armies, mind you) of people who have faith enough to believe that things could be different, and that it would be a difference worth trying to make, but are quite often appalled by organised religion. Having made this point, very convincingly, Rees looks momentarily horrified by herself, and says: "But we don't necessarily want to translate all this to bums on benches."

This tension - between wanting to be inclusive and communicative, and not wanting to proselytise - does leave a lot of grey areas. This new-look Quakerism isn't going to do anything so vulgar as advertise, although it has spruced up its Euston Road headquarters. There is a debate about whether you can be a Quaker and an Anglican, or even an atheist (to which, provisionally, the answer is: an atheist could usefully attend meetings, but Quakers nevertheless do believe in God). The adage is, if you get a bunch of Quakers in a room, the first thing they do is rearrange the furniture (a Quaker meeting consists of sitting in a circle, contemplating, and if a spiritual aperçu occurs to you, you might share it with the group), and then they find something to disagree about. But they are the very opposite of the depressing norm, where any statement of ideology or belief is a statement of self-assertion, the ring-fencing of one's individual rights, a prelude to combat.

The discursive element of Quakerism has, as its end point, unity - it has one aim, which is to look for God in all things. As Nunneley says: "The more we worked with them, the more we respected them and the more intriguing we found them."

This is the most natural spiritual hearth of the left wing. Now if I could just find it in myself to believe in God . . .

Zoe Williams writes for the Guardian

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