Twin Cities Monthly Meeting (Society of Friends : Saint Paul, Minn.)

The Twin Cities Friends Meeting started in 1949 as an informal group of University of Minnesota students and staff members known as the University Friends Meeting. In 1953 they formalized their status, becoming a "preparative meeting" under the guidance of the Minneapolis Monthly Meeting and adopting the name Church Street Meeting. By early 1954 it became clear that the Meeting was no longer really a student organization and affiliation with the University was no longer appropriate. The tie to the school was discontinued and a lengthy debate began about the Meeting's place in the wider Society of Friends.

Although the Church Street Meeting enjoyed a warm relationship with the Minneapolis Meeting and its pastor, Richard Newby, many in the Church Street group had reservations about joining the Iowa Yearly Meeting, with which the Minneapolis group was affiliated. While the Iowa Yearly Meeting consisted primarily of pastoral groups with a strong Christian identification, many in the Church Street group felt a much stronger affinity for the universalist-liberal tradition that characterized the Illinois Yearly Meeting. Reluctant to break ties with the Minneapolis Meeting, the Church Street group applied for monthly meeting status in 1955 under the Iowa Yearly Meeting and requested dual membership in the Illinois Yearly Meeting. Iowa, however, refused to recognize the dual membership so in 1956 the Church Street Meeting affiliated with the Fox Valley Quarter of the Illinois Yearly Meeting.

Although the Twin Cities group felt spiritually closer to the Illinois group, geographic isolation from the other member groups made active participation in the Yearly Meeting difficult. In 1960 an attempt was made to solve the problem of distance by holding a half-yearly gathering of Illinois Yearly Meeting Friends in central Wisconsin and Minnesota. The Northern Half-Yearly became the core from which a new yearly meeting, the Northern Yearly, formed in 1975.

Having long since left Church Street, the Church Street Meeting changed its name to Twin Cities Friends Meeting in 1960. The question of finding a meeting house had arisen as early as 1957, but there was strong opposition from several leading members who dreaded a focus on raising money and owning property. The need for space and facilities for First Day school created increasing pressure to acquire a building, and slowly a consensus was reached. In 1969, after several years of searching, the Twin Cities Friends purchased its first meetinghouse, an old mansion at 295 Summit Avenue in St. Paul. In 1984, having outgrown the space and facing ever increasing maintenance costs, the meeting sold the Summit Avenue building and moved to temporary quarters at St. John's Methodist Church on Hamline Avenue and then to the Lutheran Campus Ministry on Cleveland Avenue. In 1987, a new meetinghouse at 1725 Grand Avenue was purchased.

Historical information was taken from the materials in the collection, particularly Rhoda Gilman's essay, "Quakers in Minnesota and the Upper Midwest."