Purpose

For nearly sixty years, Friends Conference on Religion and Psychology has gathered on Memorial Day Weekend to provide a respite for individuals of all spiritual and religious backgrounds who wish to delve more deeply into their inner world. FCRP is one of the oldest conferences in the U.S. dedicated to individual spiritual exploration with a focus on in-depth psychology, specifically Jungian psychology. For the better part of the last half-century our Conference was held at Haverford College. It now takes place in beautiful Central Pennsylvania on the campus of Lebanon Valley College.

As part of a spiritual community which meets annually, we seek

• to discover our own deepest process and nourish it.
• to uncover the ways in which our new insights can help us return to the everyday world more focused and grounded in our spiritual reality.
• to explore the dynamics of Quaker principles in group life and to apply them to our daily living.

Our guest speaker develops the Conference theme in four plenary sessions (informal talks) over the four-day period. Within our nonjudgmental and retreat-like environment, we can open ourselves to the speaker's message and its personal resonance in our lives. The small group workshops use discussion, art materials, writing, dreams, and body work to process and integrate insights. Throughout the weekend, community builds as well through informal sharing at meals and in free time.

Each morning of the weekend, everyone is welcome at Quaker meeting for worship where silence provides a container for reflection and participants are sometimes moved to share meaningful moments from their journey.

Organization

FCRP is not-for-profit and strives to keep its cost to members as low as as possible. The Conference is organized and administered entirely by its members who volunteer their services. Members who serve on the Planning Committee and who lead small groups enjoy the closer connection to the conference community such leadership affords, and seek to nurture the life of the Conference.

Membership

FCRP warmly welcomes new members whether they come for one Conference or choose to become a part of our ever-evolving community and network. Affiliation with the Religious Society of Friends is not necessary. Participants at the Annual Conference automatically become members for the following year when they register to attend. Members are eligible to borrow from the Dora Willson library, which provides books, pamphlets, and reading lists by mail on a variety of subjects pertaining to spiritual wholeness and personal growth.

Anyone unable to attend the Conference may continue membership by paying annual membership dues. Limited scholarship aid is available for those who need it. Parents for whom private weekend child care is a hardship are encouraged to apply for scholarship aid. We are not able to provide childcare or housing for children.

Origins of FCRP

The first Friends Conference on Religion and Psychology was held over Easter weekend in 1943 at the Friends Meeting House in Haddonfield, New Jersey. In the shadow of WWII, one of our founding members, Elined Kotschnig, wrote:

Gradually out of the very extremity of the darkness, pin-points of light and understanding were seen glimmering here and there in a counter movement to the vortex of devastation and degradation we had been sucked down into.

Mrs. Kotschnig was in analysis with C.G. Jung in Switzerland and started a study group to examine similarities between Quakerism and Jungian psychology. At a four-hour tea in his garden, Jung and the group discussed the affinity between Jung’s conviction that spiritual growth began with the journey inward to the unconscious and the Quaker conviction that focus on the Inner Light provided direction. This foundation continues to be a springboard for FCRP’s exploration of the Life of the Spirit through the inward journey - a journey which embraces disciplines beyond psychology and the Quaker faith.