Zillah Scott gave a presentation on Quaker Origins recently as part of our 'Quaker Basics' series. This is her written version of the talk:
My first real encounter
with Quakerism came through its history. I was an undergraduate
studying history, I'd been brought up as an atheist and had never
(knowingly!) met a Quaker. I had some stereotypical ideas about what
a Quaker was - quiet, rather well-behaved, a bit straight-laced. I
knew they didn't wear bonnets and say 'thee' and 'thou' any more, but
I knew that they were the people who had done those things. When I
came to study the Civil War and Interregnum I was bowled over by the
contrast between my image of the Quakers and their radical,
proselytising, fervent origins. I have been fascinated by Quaker
history ever since. Many Quakers today, and the Society of Friends
as a body, have a strong relationship with their historical
antecedents. Quaker Faith and Practice is full of writings
from Quakers of the last four hundred years, and they are a source of
inspiration, contemplation and affection.
English society in the
seventeenth century, from which Quakerism emerged, was a mostly rural
one - around ninety percent of people lived in the countryside. That
rural society was slowly changing, for example, there were
developments in the market economy and the spread of enclosures, in
ways that were making the poor more vulnerable. They were less able
to weather bad harvests or economic crises, leading to more poverty,
unemployment and vagrancy. There was also a growing and visible gap
between rich and poor; a few people were making a great deal of money
out of these changes. Why are these changes important when we are
thinking about the birth of a religious group? Most people in the
seventeenth century saw religion as bound together with economic,
social and political life in a way that we do not today. Many
people, such as Gerrard Winstanley, whose primary focus during the
years surrounding Civil War is seen as political or economic, joined
the Quakers, attracted by their message of equality and bringing
their own ideas and influences to the growing church.
English religious
observance before the Civil War was dominated by the Church of
England. The Established Church, which was the only legal expression
of religious life, reflected the social norms of the time. Only a
very few held power, women had almost no voice in the church and many
areas - especially in the north - were ill-served by inadequate
parishes. Yet the tithe system meant that funding the Church was
compulsory, even by those who did not wish to be part of it or who
felt abandoned by it.
There was opposition to
the Established Church. Since Wycliffe translated the Bible into
English so that all could read the Gospel for themselves and sent out
his Lollard priests to minister to the poor, there had been
periodically resurfacing opposition to the monolith of the
Established Church, its wealth and privilege. During the seventeenth
century many of those who dissented were Puritans, that is, they
believed that the basis of the church should be the Bible. They
opposed the English style of state church, as the king and parliament
could influence what happened in worship. Puritans believed that
worship should be only apostolic - things that were not mentioned in
the New Testament should be rejected. However, most Puritans
believed in a reformed national church; they felt that the state had
a duty to ensure that all were ministered to. Many believed that the
Church of England could be reformed from within. A good example of
this form of dissent was found at Fenny Drayton, birthplace of George
Fox, where a Puritan lord of the manor was able to appoint a Puritan
minister and try to protect his parishioners from the legal system.
However, some Puritans
believed that a true national church was not possible. They felt
that a church should be built of individually convinced members in a
gathering of believers. These Separatists felt that the national
church must be abolished in order for true churches to exist. The
most well known Separatist congregation is that which was based at
Scrooby and eventually travelled to America in the Mayflower,
known today as the Pilgrim Fathers. They would rather face
prosecution or emigration than attend their parish church. The
Seekers are a more elusive group of dissenters from the Established
Church. Existing mainly as isolated individuals, small groups or
loose networks which have left little evidence, they believed in the
primacy of the spirit within and found it absent in most existing
churches, Established or Separatist. These people were to find a
natural home in Quaker Meetings. Many were influenced by radical
religious ideas from northern Europe and brought those ideas to the
nascent church. Although Seekers are the clearest antecedents to the
Quaker movement, Separatism and Puritanism also provided many early
adherents.
The
Civil War, which broke out in England in 1642, cannot be seen as a
class war - there were people from all strata of society in both the
Royalist and the Parliamentary armies. However, in the Parliamentary
armies a gathering of individuals with radical ideas led to a general
atmosphere of radicalism - social, economic and religious. Many in
the country felt shock and fear at these ideas and believed, in the
words of a ballad from the time, that it was 'The World Turned Upside
Down'.
Quakerism
emerged during the last years of the Civil War and the early part of
the Interregnum. I want to tell you about that through the lives of
three early Quakers. The first is George Fox, considered by many to
be the founder of Quakerism. He was born in 1624 in Fenny Drayton,
that Puritan parish in Leicestershire. His father was a weaver. He
was an educated man, reasonably wealthy and independent, and a
churchwarden in the Puritan parish church. His mother came from a
family which had seen martyrdoms for Protestantism during the
previous century. Young George Fox was apprenticed to a shoe maker.
However, in 1643, at the age of nineteen, he broke off his
apprenticeship and began a period of physical and spiritual wandering
and searching. Seeking answers to religious questions, he travelled
to London, through towns where the Parliamentary army was garrisoned,
and returned home, unsatisfied with what he had learnt. After a
period of despair he heard a message from God that 'there is one,
even Jesus Christ, that can speak to your condition.' For Fox this
was the answer to his spiritual search - he needed no preachers,
teachers or ministers, the Spirit within him was all that was
necessary.
He
began at once to preach in the counties surrounding his home, but
with limited success. He did make some important convincements, and
even experienced the first of many Quaker schisms, but there was no
mass-conversion at this stage. He then travelled north and, in 1652
after a vision on Pendle Hill, he began to preach to, and convince,
thousands. This period saw the birth of the Quaker church. Fox saw
that whilst his vision of the spirit within was all that was needed
for the individual spiritual journey, to be a church which would
endure these individuals must be organised into a community, a family
of believers. He began to put in place the organisational structures
which we still see the echoes of in Quaker Meetings today. Convinced
Quakers also began the work of spreading the message across the
country, going out in pairs to preach across England and beyond. For
Fox evangelism and the creation of settled Meetings were of prime
importance, but they also contained the seed of a conflict at the
heart of Quakerism, that between the needs of the group and the
individual. In the life of James Naylor we encounter the problem of
what happens when the message of God heard by one individual puts him
in conflict with the needs of the group.
James
Naylor was the son of an independent farmer. He fought in the
Parliamentary army and was a preacher there. Following a visionary
encounter with God whilst ploughing, he left his family and became an
itinerant preacher. In 1652 he met George Fox, and recongnised in
Fox's message similarities to his own ideas. He became a Quaker, a
friend of Fox and a pivotal figure in the early church. He was a
charismatic and appealing speaker, and in 1655 went to London to
spread the message of Quakerism there. He met with considerable
success. At that point, if you had asked a Londoner 'who is the
leader of the Quakers?', they would probably have answered 'James
Naylor'. However, there began to be serious disputes within the
London Meetings, with Naylor's supporters disrupting Meetings. It is
from this point that there began to be hostility from George Fox
towards James Naylor. Naylor travelled to the west country to visit
Fox, who has imprisoned there, but was himself arrested at Exeter.
He was then released and was moved to enact a sign. Many early
Quakers enacted signs from God. George Fox himself had walked
barefoot through the mud into Litchfield crying out to condemn the
people there for failing to support the Parliamentary army. Other
Quakers gave signs of the Second Coming - going naked, putting
burning coals on their heads. Naylor was inspired to re-enact the
entry of Christ into Jerusalem. He rode on a donkey into Bristol,
accompanied by his supporters. He was arrested at once, tried for
blasphemy, convicted, tortured and put into solitary confinement.
George Fox and the other Quaker leaders distanced themselves from
him. The Parliament was hostile to Quakers and a conviction for
blasphemy put the entire early church in serious jeopardy. In 1659
the more sympathetic Rump Parliament set all Quaker prisoners,
including Naylor, free. He was reconciled with Fox, but never fully
recovered from his ordeals and died a year later.
James
Naylor died in 1660, in the same year Charles II was restored to the
throne and the hopes of many Quakers that there would be a world-wide
movement of Quakerism, beginning with a general conversion of
Britain, were dashed. Although Charles II was personally sympathetic
to the Quakers, his parliament was not, and series of harsh laws were
passed against them. In spite of this, alone of all the radical
groupings of the previous twenty years, the Quakers survived. What
was it about Quakerism that enabled it to survive the difficult years
after the Restoration? First, was the very great depth of spiritual
need which was met by the radical religious message of Quakerism.
Secondly, the strength of church organisation enabled it to survive.
Central to this organisation was Margaret Fell. She was born in
1614, daughter of a wealthy landowner. She was married at seventeen
to Thomas Fell, a judge and politician. In 1652 she and her
household, apart from Thomas, were convinced by George Fox, and from
that moment she put her considerable personal, financial and social
resources to the use of the Quaker movement. Although Thomas Fell
never became a Quaker, he helped those Quakers who he encountered in
the legal system. Margaret Fell was a formidable organiser. For
example, from 1653 she established a fund to assist imprisoned
Quakers and their families; her home was the center of a postal
network keeping Quaker missinaries in touch with the leaders; and she
ensured that missionaries who passed through her home went on their
way well clothed and shod. However, it was not only as a organiser
that Fell served Quakerism. In 1660, whilst she was in prison, she
published Women's Speaking Justified
in which she argued that women should have an equal role in the
church. Her considerable stature within the Quaker movement greatly
aided those who were arguing for an active place for women within
Quakerism.
With
the Toleration Act of 1689 the legal position of the Quakers was
considerably eased, and the burden of persecution was for the most
part lifted. However, the things which had enabled the movement to
survive had transformed it. By the last decades of the seventeenth
century the fervour, passion and fire which had characterised the
early decades had been replaced by Quietism. For more than half a
century the Quakers became a separated sect. The deliberately hedged
themselves off; their dress, language, manners and behaviour marking
them as a people not of the world. There was a dominance of
discipline, the subsummation of the individual to the group.
Marriage out of the Society was forbidden and transgression of moral
codes could lead to expulsion. The close community, discipline,
group loyalty and communication which had enabled the Quaker church
to survive persecution meant that it spent decades in relative
isolation. From the middle of the eighteenth century Quakerism began
to emerge from this separation. The bridges to the world were built
by Quaker scientists and engineers, whose professional interests took
them into close contact with non-Quaker organisations and
individuals; by those campaigning on issues such as the abolition of
slavery, who began to work among broad-based campaigning groups; and
eventually by the return of an interest in evangelism amongst British
Friends.
A
few book recommendations.
John
Punshon Portrait in Grey. A short history of the Quakers
(2006). John Punshon's history is a excellent starting point for
those interested in the history of Quakerism. Fascinating, well
researched and affectionate.
Pink
Dandelion An Introduction to Quakerism (2007).
Woodbrook Programme Leader Pink Dandelion's take on Quaker history
is a more academically, theoretically focused one than Punshon's.
His examination of present day Quakerism in its varying, world-wide
manifestations forms the second half of the book.
Christopher
Hill The World Turned Upside Down (1991).
First published in the 1970s, Christopher Hill's seminal study of
radical ideas during the English Revolution is still compelling
today. A fascinating view from a non-Quaker historian of the world
from which Quakerism emerged.
Christine
Trevett Women and Quakerism in the 17th Century (1991).
Christine Trevett tells the story of early Quaker women - the appeal
of Quakerism, the impact they had upon it, the challenges they faced,
their lives and the unique opportunities they had as Quakers.
Rex
Ambler Truth of the Heart. An anthology of George Fox
(2007). This book came out of
Rex Ambler's undertaking to study all the available writings of
George Fox. He found strong themes emerging, which are perhaps hard
to appreciate from Fox's readily available works. This book presents
an annotated selection of Fox's writings, organised by theme, in both
Fox's original words and Ambler's sensitive 'translation' into modern
English.
Gerald
Hewitson Journey into life. Inheriting the story of early
Friends (2013). Gerald Hewitson
delivered the 2013 Swarthmore Lecture at Britain Yearly Meeting, and
this is the pamphlet version. An account of the transformative
effect of the writing of early Quakers on Hewitson's life and faith.
