A journey of faith is a pilgrimage. It is not standing still, but moving to new places with new perspectives. It involves making changes in believing, belonging and behaving. As a teenager I made the transition from the unbelief of my parents to journey into faith. I liked the sense of belonging not only to my own parish church community, but also the wider community of Anglicans. I was challenged in various ways about choices and behaviours for one who had made a Christian commitment. I sought to understand, in order to be able to explain to others, the doctrines I was taught.

During more than 40 years of believing, belonging and behaving in the Anglican tradition, it was the theology that I found the most difficult. I questioned, explored, doubted, and looked for explanations that satisfied me. In the end, it was my failure to find that satisfaction, and other people's behaviour, that caused me to look elsewhere for the next stage of my journey in faith.

I moved to the Quakers. The open, accepting attitude which is typical of belonging to most Quaker meetings is heartwarming, refreshing and unusual among faith communities. Quakers are often prepared to accept ex-offenders (with appropriate safeguards) at meetings, and help them rebuild their lives; most accept and celebrate committed relationships – including second marriages and same-sex relationships.

Quakers are strong too on behaving. Quaker testimonies to peace, simplicity, equality, integrity, to the sustainable environment, and a concern for people who are poor, treated unjustly or vulnerable, are daily lived out by Quakers.

Quakers are less clear about believing, with a traditional refusal to have a creed that all members must subscribe to. The community coheres around a common tradition and way of doing things rather than a common way of describing beliefs: orthopraxy rather than orthodoxy.

While some British Quakers have a concept of the divine which is close to the classical orthodoxy of Christian tradition, many have difficulty in agreeing the words that adequately describe their experience of the numinous. Christ is the divine saviour for some, whereas perhaps the majority of British Quakers value Jesus as an inspiring teacher, an outstanding prophet, and source of the values that characterise the Quaker way.

Quakers deeply value the experience of inspiration, insight, discernment, and shared experience of "the divine" we find in regular sharing in largely silent worship, interspersed with ministry from any person who feels drawn to speak.

The Quaker community is one in which I have been able to continue my journey of faith without the burden experienced by many in other churches who search beyond the bounds of a narrow orthodoxy. So many such searchers have been criticised, ostracised or silenced by those who feel threatened by their readiness to explore radical concepts.

Quakerism, which emerged as a Christian reform movement at the end of the Reformation, sought to shed the accretions of formal practice, abstract theology and hierarchical abuse in the churches of 17th-century England. Nowadays British Quakerism has a considerable contribution to make in different forms of practical service, whether in the criminal justice system, international peace work, or creative spiritual exploration.

I am grateful to have found a community of faith that can accept that my journey may be different from others, but is supportive, accepting, and open to fresh ideas – from whatever source.

In my theology, my spirituality and my attitudes and relationships, I am in a different place on my journey from where I was five or 10 years ago. I expect to have moved on, in ways I cannot anticipate, in the next five or 10 years. I am very glad to have a found the Quaker community in which that is understood, accepted and indeed encouraged.

Michael Wright is a Quaker