SP was a practising Quaker. She first encountered Quakers when she went to college in Delaware. The simplicity, the dedication to kindness, and living one’s life as a ministry really spoke to her. She began taking me to Quaker meeting as soon as I was old enough to sit still in silence for an hour.
One of the nights I was staying with her in the hospital we had a long talk about her Quakerism and spiritual beliefs. She emphasised that while I didn’t call it Quaker, my views and the way I was trying to show up in the world was also Quakerly. During this conversation, she encouraged me to read the works written by the early founders of Quakerism. Over the next several posts, I’ll be sharing some of the history of this movement along with details of the lives of early Quakers.
The 1630s and 1640s in England were marked by profound changes in the religious landscape. This period witnessed intense conflicts, divergent religious beliefs, and struggles for religious freedom. The clashes between different religious factions set the stage for significant societal and political transformations.
George Fox is widely regarded as the founder of the Religious Society of Friends, more commonly known as Quakerism. Fox was born in 1624 in Fenny Drayton, Leicestershire, England. Fox’s family played a significant role in his life and the development of Quakerism. He was the son of devout Puritans, Christopher Fox and Mary Lago Fox, and their religious influence had a profound impact on his upbringing. Although not much is known about George Fox’s immediate family, his father and mother instilled in him a strong sense of religious devotion and a deep belief in personal spiritual experiences. These early influences likely contributed to his later rejection of established religious practices and his emphasis on direct communion with the divine.
Fox experienced a deep spiritual yearning from an early age, likely as a result of the religious turmoil in which he lived, and likely influenced by the Puritan views held by his parents. At the age of 19, dissatisfied with the world in which he lived, Fox left his apprenticeship, said farewell to his family, and embarked on a quest for answers and solace.
His quest was not without trials. Fox’s confrontational approach towards established religious authorities and his refusal to conform to societal norms attracted significant attention and scrutiny. His attitude and preachings led to numerous encounters with the law.
One of Fox’s most notable arrests occurred in 1650 when he was taken into custody in Derby, England. He was brought before magistrates and faced charges of blasphemy. Despite the severe consequences he faced, Fox fearlessly defended his beliefs and refused to recant. He proclaimed the existence of the “Inward Light” and argued for the right of every individual to have direct access to the divine.
During his imprisonment, which lasted over a year, Fox continued to spread his message and convert fellow prisoners and even some jailers to his cause. His resilience and unwavering faith in the face of adversity left a lasting impression on those around him.
He recounted in his journal that in 1652, after a period of intense post-imprisonment soul-searching, he had a profound spiritual awakening. While sitting in quiet contemplation on Pendle Hill, Fox recounted hearing a voice within him that said, “There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition.”
Inspired by his spiritual encounter, George Fox preached his radical beliefs with even more vigour, challenging the religious authorities and established doctrines of the time. He preached on how people did not need formalised religious ceremonies, and he emphasised the importance of direct personal experience with the divine. Fox told those who would listen that he believed all individuals had an inherent connection to the divine and could experience God’s presence without the need for intermediaries or hierarchical structures. As you can imagine, this set the Church of England and the Crown resolutely against Fox and his budding Quaker movement.
Fox’s teachings emphasised the concept of the “Inner Light” or “Inward Christ.” According to him, every person possessed an inner spiritual guide that could lead them to truth and righteousness. In today’s Quaker world, there are many terms we use, including “The Light,” “That of God,” and “The Divine Spark.” During a Quaker Meeting, we seek to tap into this Inner Light. We seek to make a connection to our bit of God, and let the Light guide us through our lives.
It is the belief in the Inner Light that laid the foundation for Quakerism’s egalitarianism. Quakers recognise the inherent worth and equality of all individuals, regardless of social status, gender, or race. Quakers played a pivotal role in promoting equality and justice, becoming known for their opposition to slavery, their stance on women’s rights, and their commitment to pacifism. They were among the first religious groups to advocate for the abolition of slavery and the equality of all individuals.
While in recent years Quakerism has become infiltrated by the radical left, there is a growing Quaker libertarian movement. In my mind, if one truly values the individual, the only option is to have as few restrictions imposed by hierarchical structures as possible.
Within all sects of Quakerism that I am familiar with (a topic for a future post) Fox’s legacy extends beyond his lifetime. His writings, including his influential journal, continue to inspire and guide Quakers.
Thanks for this, WebDom. I know nothing (well, a little more now) about Quakerism and am looking forward to the rest of your series.
The bastards are everywhere. Glad to hear there’s a growing libertarian movement.
“Thanks for this, WebDom.”
Concur.
Going back to read now.
Ditto. I think this article is all I have ever read about the faith.
This is very cool and I can’t wait for the next one. I like reading about spiritual stuff.
Very cool. I look forward to learning more.
The role of religion (vice spirituality) is to establish and enforce a conformity of belief. Perhaps Quakerism simply never grew to the point of serving that function.
You hit me hard with the second paragraph.
*fixed
😐
Yeah, really hoping he meant that in the ‘hit me hard in the feels’ sense.
“social status, gender, or race”
I usually flinch at the use of “gender” as a totalizing replacement for “sex”, but here I think it is appropriate, even correct.
I’m really looking forward to the rest of this. The idea that the divine will only deign to interact with a hierarchical priesthood always struck as farcical. Now, that said, I see value in ritual, uncorrupted texts, and some of the other regalia of organized religion.
Thanks (again) for this, WebDom.
took me 11 minutes longer to say it worser
this set the Church of England and the Crown resolutely against
Why is this so? is/was the CoE protestant or not? did the clerics stand in for the pope?
I never thought about it but naively presumed that the CoE went on some classically Reformed arc whereby local clerics were more friends and administrators than ordained passers of judgment and absolution….or is there some intermediate step I never knew to care about and Anglicans/Presbers/Lutherans are merely Catholic-lite.
many know: I was raised KJV Primitive Baptist, almost Calvinist compared to other Baptist movements. I have almost no idea what other Protestants believe because I was raised to stay on my own damned hill and read my own damned Bible and not care about anything else in the world.
honest question….any help much appreciated
https://www.churchofengland.org/prayer-and-worship/worship-texts-and-resources/book-common-prayer/catechism
I went digging around in there and didn’t figure it out, but the current CoE and the old might not even be much related * shrugs *
There’s a high church and low church tradition, but more than that there’s a modernist tradition in Anglican (and Episcopal) Church.
Much of what is considered mainline Protestantism here and now comes from either Continental Protestantism, either via England or via immigrants, or from Dissenters that felt the CofE wasn’t doing it right.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Dissenters
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecclesiastical_polity
I did find this. Anglicans apparently follow episcopal polity whereby a bishop matters.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishop
apparently some bishops claim a legacy from the Apostles, so I’d read that as very similar to papacy
Also found this: congregational polity; it’s a long-winded way to say Fuck Off; it’s a polity of essentially no polity. That would be us Primitives. I was bred to be libertarian and never was not one in church or out.
The thing to remember about the Church of England is that Henry VIII was a very devout catholic up until the issue with Catherine of Aragon, and the schism with Rome started as a political one. So theologically, he did not initially change much. It was largely Catherine Parr who influenced the shift towards a protestant direction, and the Advisors to Edward VI pushed it further. Mary I Was a hard Catholic, and the rift really began to show when she pushed back towards Rome. The infighting between Papal and anti-Papal influences during her and Elizabeth’s reigns solidly defined points of separation.
So yes, they started as Catholic Lite and wandered from there.
I see
sounds like being anti-pope only accidentally led to becoming protestant eventually
That’s a fair assessment.
So many hard people tonight
…and so many people hard tonight…
blockuqote> So many hard people tonight
From what I’ve seen, they mostly wound up like this.
You might enjoy this. I thought it was pretty well done.
All Christian denominations explained in 12 minutes
Thanks—that was cool.
Church of England doesn’t recognize the Pope. The CoE is Protestant.
The break happened because Henry VIII wanted a divorce, which is not allowed in Catholicism. Annulments are allowed under limited circumstances, none of which applied to Henry VIII.
The head of the Church of England is the monarch (currently Charles III), who is largely ceremonial. The Archbishop of Canterbury is effectively the real head.
I am not sure of the relation of CoE priests to congregation and how that is different/the same from Catholicism. Though as I understand it High Anglican is very close to Catholicism.
Some Lutheran sects have similar beliefs to Catholicism. Some distant relatives of mine converted from Catholicism to one of those Lutheran sects, and according to them it was basically Catholicism stripped of many rituals. I attended a funeral service for one of those relatives and I thought of what those relatives told me. The service was similar to a Catholic funeral Mass but with less ceremony and fewer rituals.
As for the resolutely against, my recollection of early Quakers is that they would not go along with certain social norms of the times and certain laws of the times because of their belief in equality. An example is hat courtesy. At the time, if you were not a noble you were required to doff your cap to a noble. Quakers were beaten, charged, etc. for not doing so.
Puritans especially had a hatred of Quakers. Quakers in Massachusetts were often persecuted and sometimes killed.
Interestingly, Charles II gave William Penn, a Quaker, Pennsylvania. The official reason is William Penn’s father, Admiral William Penn, was instrumental in the Restoration. Charles II owed the Penn family. William Penn the son collected the debt, receiving Pennsylvania as a proprietary colony. I think the real reason is Charles wanted to be rid of the Quakers and figured this new colony would be a good dumping ground for them.
And the CofE until recently didn’t allow divorcées to remarry in the church.
The other interesting bit about the Penns – after William, Thomas reverted to CoE while still being proprietor of the colony. Ben Franklin wanted the colony to revert to the Crown for better treatment and was unsuccessful and humiliated in the attempt.
are merely Catholic-lite
The Bee did it best…
Anglicans: Kirkland brand Catholics
Episcopalians: Kirkland brand Anglicans
Kirkland?
Costco house brand.
Costco.
A large part of the problem came from the intertwining of church and state. Since the state was God’s expression of order on earth, and since the church was, in some ways, the spiritual expression of the state, challenging the hierarchical structure of the church was tantamount to challenging the hierarchical structure of the state. IOW, challenging the church was not much different to challenging the monarch.
This was also what motivated Louis XIV to revoke the Edict of Nantes, arguing “one king, one law, one faith.”
https://www.richlandquakers.org/
Right in town.
there is a growing Quaker libertarian movement.
Good.
Yeah..but how are they on guns?
The first Quaker, George Fox, condemned hunting and hawking. Some Quakers are Anti-Vivisectionists, however, they generally agree that men have a right to take the lives of animals, wild or tame, for their food. Quakers also can own guns and they may use them for hunting for food and to keep away predators like coyotes that consume livestock.
Source.
Source without the fuck up, I hope.
Officially, Quakers are pacifists.
Unofficially… consider these jokes:
A Quaker wakes up to find a burglar in his house. The Quaker gets his gun and confronts the burglar. The Quaker tells the burglar, “Sir, I’m going to shoot the wall behind you whether or not you move out of the way.”
A man hits a Quaker. The Quaker turns his head. The man hits the Quaker again. The starts taking off his jacket and says, “Now Sir that I have turned the other cheek, I have complied with Scripture and will now proceed to beat the Hell out of thee.”
Nixon was a Quaker and get the US out of Vietnam but authorized incursions into Laos and Cambodia.
Incursions = bombing the fuck out of them
“Sir, I’m going to shoot the wall behind you whether or not you move out of the way.”
thou standeth where I intend to shooteth
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZSoJDUD_bU
I get my new SUV tomorrow. Still keeping the GTI.
🙂
This is the way.
The Quakers in Delaware and Chester County, PA are in the forefront of the hard left progressive movement.
One spewed so much vulgarity and hate toward the Tea Party that I was able to embarrass her in a letter to editor that shut her up for six months or so. I heard she is “back in town” but so far has refrained from attacking MAGA. though some of her minions are very active in gun-grabbing groups and the like.
Thanks, WebDom. I know absolutely nothing about the Quakers so this will be very interesting!
Thanks Webdom. I regret not having met your Mom in real life.
And what Tundra said
Me toosy!!
Namesake of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Fox_University
Hoover went there before attending Stanford.
I’ll be very interested in your future post re: the various sects of Quakers. As I’ve mentioned, the Rev. GT attended a Quaker seminary in Indiana, though he became a Unitarian Universalist minister. In that part of the country at least, our experience was that even in that small city, the Quakers there were a mixed bag. The Good Rev said that when someone told you they were a Quaker, you didn’t really get a good idea of where they were “coming from” spiritually/religiously until you asked a few more questions.
@WebDom
If you see this, could you please contact me at “myhandle13″ via outlook? I have some questions regarding my A109 account and am hoping you can point me in the right direction. Thanks!
We won’t have Sloop tomorrow morning to cover the San Francisco beat, so I’ll present you with a completely unexpected development.
That may have been the nicest mall I’ve visited. That city is screwed.
Malls have struggling for years.
Shoplifting deserts!
***WILD APPLAUSE!!!***
I am so glad I stopped following baseball a couple of decades ago.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/06/toronto-blue-jays-promote-commit-to-starting-minor-league-catcher-who-identifies-as-non-binary/?utm_source=recirc-mobile&utm_medium=blog-post&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=most-popular&utm_term=first
That article fooled a lot of folks.
I don’t think I really got suspicious until the 30 For 30 line at the end. All too believable, sadly.
I heard the Anthony Bass news today. Never apologize.
It’s pretty incredible. It’s as if MLB is trying to shrink its fan base.
Well, major sports teams are located largely in big cities, which have a disproportionate number of loud wokesters in them. Those types don’t tend to be fans of “sportsball,” yet they get an outsized say in how those teams are run.
I was a Redskins fan since I was a mere lad, for reasons that need not be gotten into here. And when I was ten, a new MLB franchise called the Blue Jays started doing spring training in my hometown. So I was a partisan of both franchises. It was pretty cool in the mid-eighties to early nineties, when both squads were title contenders (and won a few), but the last 30-ish years have been a lesson in humility — at least as much as one can be humble about the non-accomplishments of millionaire athletes that I’ve never met.
But the last couple of decades, where the boys from old DC were owned by a inept, grating jagoff and the Jays traded ownership to a series of conglomerates that didn’t give a flying fuck about on-field performance, have soured me.
Then the football team changed its name to mollify the non-consumers and the baseball team cashiered a player for not genuflecting hard enough to the twinks. Fuck it. Fuck those guys, fuck their woke leagues, and fuck pro sports in general.
And when my alma mater puts rainbows on their uniforms (you just know it’s coming within a couple of years), fuck them too.
/rantoff
He not only apologized, he groveled. For them that’s nothing but an admission of guilt-once he did that he could have fellated a half dozen preops on the outfield bigscreen and it still wouldn’t have saved him.
Happy Tuesday morning!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0edvU9PRSQk
🎶🎶
🌄
Good morning, Sean!
I like Tuesdays. After the mountain of mail we get at work on Mondays, there’s hardly any on Tuesdays.
Except Tuesdays after holidays… like next week. 😒
https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/news/what-we-know-about-the-capsized-cave-tour-boat-in-new-york-that-killed-1/ar-AA1csJ5r
😱😱
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gIIM1mHfJ0U
LOL we had to sing that in elementary school music class long after the Erie Canal was re-routed around my town.
I know several towns where the course of the old canal is marked by an Erie Boulevarde.
We got Broad Street and a trolley route/now interstate.
It still gets stuck in my head sometimes.
Classy.
https://nypost.com/2023/06/13/rose-montoya-exposes-breasts-during-white-house-pride-party-after-meeting-biden/
The point when “activists” show their true colors as publicity whores.
I try not to be a prude but what a wonderful society we’re building.
Conservatives pounce!
JFC we’re living in a giant therapy session.
LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT MEEEEE!!!!
No.
Ugh. Wearing white after Memeorial Day?
Naw, that’s Labor Day.
Jill always looks like a stale old piece of toast though, to quote Patsy Stone.
Thats fabulous. Absolutely.
Straight men watch that?
I love that show. Specially Bubble.
(Oh, intentional typo. Sorry, still dark here.)
I didn’t get it at first either.
I saw the added E but still can’t figure out what he meant.
Mornin’, reprobates!
Thanks for this, WebDom. I am intrigued and am looking forward to the next installment.
Good morning, ‘patzie!
Mornin’. Mets vs. Yankees this week, gearing up for humiliation since the Metsies are the most expensive disaster in MLB. A fitting representative of our fair city.
suh’ fam
whats goody
Yo!
Covfefe: Ethiopian Yirgacheffe
Smoke: Bayou Morning Flake
Life is good.
Ooh! I like Ethiopian Burger Chef! 😋☕