Soulcatcher:
Actually... yes there is. While it's still "technically" doing it one by one, there is a quicker way.
I used to click on one, wait for his/her profile page to open, the remove them.Effective, but time consuming.
Go to your profile, and click on friends. Then you will still click on each friend you want to delete, but hold the CTRL button down as you do so. This should open several profile pages in separate tabs ... I keep it to 5 or 6 at a time. Then just click on each tab and remove.
Still one at a time, but saves a TON of time going back & forth from your profile page to theirs and then repeating the process all over.