By RICHARD PEARSALL
Courier-Post Staff

Cheering for a football team called the "Quakers" may seem incongruous "Fight, Quakers, Fight?''

But that's the nickname that teams at Moorestown's public high school carry into battle. It is just one indication, among many, that the group that founded this town more than 300 years ago still has considerable influence here.

Attendance at meetings for worship at the Moorestown meetinghouse is up, and membership is growing now for the first time in more than a decade.

And the Moorestown Friends School, the most visible reminder of the Quaker presence here, is more visible than ever with a major construction program under way and a growing student body.

Small in numbers, members of the Religious Society of Friends, as the Quakers are known, "tend to be aware of social and political issues and to get involved in community activities," as Mary Frintner, a member of the monthly meeting puts it.

The Moorestown Friends School, which has been educating children from its prominent location at the intersection of Main Street and Chester Avenue since the 18th century, has added to its student body in each of the last four years.

For the first time in years, it has a head of school, Laurence Van Meter, who is both a Quaker and a Moorestown native.

While less than 10 percent of the student body are Quakers, students are exposed to Quaker ways and values.

"Quite a few students find their way across the drive and into the meeting house," says Frintner, who serves as clerk of overseers, a position that involves coordinating pastoral care.

Like the school, the meeting itself has become more visible in recent years, according to Marty Smith, a former clerk of the meeting.

The clerk of the meeting, in the absence of clergy, serves as a "facilitator" at meetings for worship and at the monthly business meetings.

"We've made an effort to welcome new people to the meeting," Smith said, with good results.

Membership in the monthly meeting, which now stands at roughly 450, grew in the past year for the first time in over a decade, reflecting a trend among Quakers throughout the four-state area that compromises the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting.

The size of the increase in the Moorestown meeting was small 11 new members.

More significant, Frintner says, is the "increase in interest and the growth in attendance."

"As people have children they may look for a spiritual home."

This growth is coming to a large extent from people raised in other religious traditions finding that spiritual home in meeting.

"I think people recognize we are not just some wishy washy group," Smith said. "We stand up for what we believe and get involved."

Quakers have long been active in anti-slavery and anti-war causes.

The meeting's reaction to the terrorism attacks recently was to gather in meeting the night they happened.

"We gathered in grief and disbelief," said Jane Cleaver, the clerk of the meeting, and, in the course of sharing their thoughts "became a little more compassionate, a little more aware of the problems others face and even more determined to continue in our search for a peaceful world."

Betsy Anderson, a public relations person for the Moorestown Friends Schools, says she has no doubt that Quaker values have and continue to shape the "character" of the town, right down to the "beautiful simplicity of the downtown."

She describes the Friends as having a "ripple effect."

Individual members have influence through their involvement in protests against the death penalty, work in prisons, efforts at conflict resolution.

Affordable housing has long been one of the local causes that Friends have been actively engaged in promoting, with mixed results. Friends were instrumental in forming MEND, the ecumenical, religious-backed, non-

profit that has been providing affordable housing since the early 70s.

But they were overridden three years ago by a township council bent on shipping some of the township's affordable housing obligation and housing money out of town.

Mayor Howard Miller and other local politicians pride themselves on what they call "the Moorestown way" of doing things, which in large part reflects the "Quaker way" the attempt to reach consensus through discussion.