BIO: George Fox, founder of the Quakers (13 Jan 1691) GEORGE FOX, FOUNDER OF THE QUAKERS (13 JAN 1691) A list of related biographies follows: MARY DYER, QUAKER MARTYR (1 JUN 1660) ROBERT BARCLAY, QUAKER THEOLOGIAN (3 OCT 1690) WILLIAM PENN, QUAKER STATESMAN (30 JUL 1718) JOHN WOOLMAN, QUAKER VOICE OF CONSCIENCE (7 OCT 1772) ELIZABETH GURNEY FRY, QUAKER HELPER OF PRISONERS (12 OCT 1845) JOSEPH JOHN GURNEY, EVANGELICAL QUAKER (4 JAN 1847) STEPHEN GRELLET, QUAKER ARISTOCRAT (16 NOV 1855) RUFUS JONES, QUAKER MYSTIC AND SOCIAL ACTIVIST (16 JUN 1948) KENNETH BOULDING, QUAKER ECONOMIST FOR PEACE (19 MAY 1993) (Many of the biographies have appended sections on aspects of the Quaker mvement.) $$$ GEORGE FOX George Fox begins his JOURNAL by declaring the purpose of his writing: That all men may know the dealings of the Lord with me, and the various exercises, trials, and troubles through which he led me, in order to prepare and fit me for the work unto which he had appointed me, and may thereby be drawn to admire and glorify His infinite wisdom and goodness.... The Quaker movement, founded by George Fox, came to birth in the years during, and just before and after, the Puritan Revolution in England <@ 52 N 1 W>, years when the established authorities of both Church and State were overthrown, the King and the Archbishop of Canterbury beheaded, and the people on every level much engaged in disputation about the proper foundations of civil and of Christian society. One group was called the Seekers. Its members said that they were Christians, but were not satisfied with any existing Christian group, and that they were seeking to know the will of God. Many of the regiments in Cromwell's army organized themselves into Churches, following one persuasive preacher or another in their midst. Most of these died out. Fox's movement did not. George Fox was born in 1624 in a village in Leicestershire called Drayton-in-the-Clay (now Fenny Drayton) <52:35 N 1:29 W>. In 1643, when he was nineteen, he began to experience spiritual anxieties which he did not understand. He went to the local clergy for advice, but they told him nothing that he found helpful. When he was twenty-three, in 1647, he experienced a sense of peace and reassurance that he spoke of as coming from a direct encounter with Christ, speaking from within him. He described his experience as follows: Now after I had that opening [Quaker term for "insight"] from the Lord, that to be bred at Oxford or Cambridge was not sufficient to fit a man to be a minister of Christ, I regarded the priests less, and looked more after the dissenting people [English term for Protestants not of the Church of England]. Among them I saw there was some tenderness [Quaker term for "receptiveness to the Quaker message and beliefs"], and many of them came afterwards to be convinced [Quaker term for "converted"], for they had some openings. But as I had forsaken the priests, so I left the Separate preachers also, and those called the most experienced people; for I saw there was none among them that could speak to my condition. And when all my hopes in them and in all men were gone, so that I had nothing outwardly to help me, nor could I tell what to do, then, Oh! then, I heard a voice which said, "There is one, even Jesus Christ, that can speak to thy condition;" and when I had heard it my heart did leap for joy. Then the Lord let me see why there was none upon earth that could speak to my condition, namely, that I might give him all the glory. For all are concluded under sin, and shut up in unbelief, that Jesus Christ might have the pre-eminence, who enlightens, and gives grace, faith, and power. Thus when God doth work, who shall let [=hinder] it? This I knew experimentally. My desires after the Lord grew stronger, and zeal in the pure knowledge of God, and of Christ alone, without the help of any man, book, or writing. For though I read the Scriptures that spake of Christ and of God, yet I knew him not by revelation, as he who hath the key did open, and as the Father of life drew me to his Son by his Spirit. The Lord led me gently along, and let me see his love, which was endless and eternal, surpassing all the knowledge that men have in the natural state, or can get by history or books. What transformed Fox was grasping the vast difference between "knowledge about" and "acquaintance with" (between "savoir" and "connaitre", between "saber" and "conocer", between "wissen" and "kennen", between (in King James English) "wit/wot" and "know"). Fox came to the conviction that faith means having not (only) information about Jesus, but (also) a direct, face-to-face knowledge of Jesus--that to be mighty in the Scriptures means not (only) to be well read and well schooled in the Scriptures, but (also) to participate in the same Spirit in which the Scriptures arose. A man who could, in the present, stand where the apostles and prophets once stood would shake the country for ten miles round. Pendle Hill <53:52 N 1:17 W>, a fairly steep hill (1827 feet high) in Lancashire, has a commanding view of the Irish Sea <@ 54 N 4 W>. When Fox traveled towards Yorkshire <@ 54 N 1:30 W> in 1652, he felt moved to climb the hill. There (as William Penn writes in his introduction to Fox's JOURNAL), he "had a vision of the great work of God in the earth, and of the way that he was to go forth in a public ministry, to begin it. He saw people thick as motes in the sun, that should in time be brought home to the Lord, that there might be but one Shepherd and one sheepfold in all the earth." Soon after his Pendle Hill experience, he arrived at Preston-Patrick <54:08 N 2:37 W>, where the Seekers were holding a morning service of preaching. After the service, he invited them all to hear him that afternoon at a desolate place called Firbank Fell , where there was a meadow with a natural rock pulpit. (A fell is an elevated wild field, a mountain moor or meadow.) There, after meditating in silence, he spoke for more than three hours to an audience of more than a thousand. He told the crowd that they "might all come to know Christ, their teacher, their counsellor, their shepherd to feed them, and their bishop to oversee them, and to know their bodies to be the temples of God and Christ for them to dwell in." Many of the Seekers were immediately convinced and became his followers. Shortly after, he preached at Sedbergh <54:20 N 2:31 W>. He writes: There I declared the everlasting Truth of the Lord and the word of life for several hours, and that the Lord Jesus Christ was come to teach his people himself, and bring them off all the world's ways and teachers to Christ their way to God. Fox and his followers were vehement in declaring that outward forms were worthless, and in denouncing the existing religious bodies, whether Roman, Anglican, Puritan, Baptist, or otherwise, for clinging to them. Thus in one Quaker document (sorry, I have garbled my notes and am not sure of the source here) we read: Q: What is a Christian? A: A Christian is one whose life has been changed, who is on fire with God. Hence, outward ceremonies (such as baptism) are irrelevant. Q: What is a minister? A: A minister is one who ministers. One who is on fire with God will ignite others. Nothing matters but the fire. Hence, credentials, education, certification, human authorization, and ceremonies (such as laying on of hands) are irrelevant. Q: What is the Church? A: The Church is the dwelling place of God. He dwells in the hearts of Christians, and not in temples made with hands. Hence church-buildings ("steeple-houses") are irrelevant. Q: How can I know the truth of God? A: Christ is always present to the believer, and will teach him as directly as He taught Peter and the other disciples in Galilee. Hence the learning of the clergy is irrelevant. Here is part of a sermon by Fox: Sound, sound abroad, you faithful servants of the Lord, and witnesses in His name...and prophets of the Highest, and angels of the Lord! Sound ye all abroad in the world, to the awakening and raising of the dead, that they may be awakened, and raised up out of the grave, to hear the voice that is living. For the dead have long heard the dead, and the blind have long wandered among the blind, and the deaf amongst the deaf. Therefore sound, sound ye servants and prophets and angels of the Lord, ye trumpets of the Lord, that ye may awaken the dead, and awaken them that be asleep in their graves of sin, death and hell, and sepulchres and sea and earth, and who lie in the tombs. Sound, sound abroad, ye trumpets, and raise up the dead, that the dead may hear the voice of the Son of God, the voice of the second Adam that never fell; the voice of the Light, and the voice of the Life; the voice of the Power, and the voice of the Truth; the voice of the Righteous, and the voice of the Just. Sound, sound the pleasant and melodious sound; sound, sound ye the trumpets, the melodious sound abroad, that all the deaf ears may be opened to hear the pleasant sound of the trumpet to judgement and Life, to condemnation and Light. Fox often said that, once heard, his message could not be denied, and he did everything in his power to let the message be heard, whether people wanted to listen or not. Wherever he could find an audience, he preached, and those who received his message became preachers likewise. They came to call themselves Friends, taking the name from John 15:15-- "Henceforth I call you not servants, for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth; but I have called you friends." How they acquired the nickname "Quaker" is uncertain. In the earliest years of the movement, some members shook in the throes of religious excitement, and Barclay says that this gave rise to the term. But Fox reports that in 1650, having been haled into court on a charge of disturbing the peace, he said to the judge, one Justice Gervase Bennet, "I bid thee tremble before the word of God!" to which the judge replied, "I bid thee quake before the law." In any event, the term originated outside the movement, but is freely used by Quakers themselves, and is not considered offensive. An observer writes: And his companions, how they multiply, how they develop into lesser replicas of himself! They go everywhere; they try to convert the Pope; they try to convert the Sultan. In a fury of disagreement with all they see around them they carry the stout protest of their covered heads before magistrates and councils, before kings and princes of the earth. Far from being a meek, passive lot, the early Quakers were a rowdy, noisy, assertive band. They had a vision of a transformed world, and they fully intended to convert the world to their vision without delay. They spoke at county fairs. They addressed crowds gathered to hear them, and crowds gathered to watch wrestling matches. They stood up in church and interrupted the preacher to give sermons of their own. They were disturbers of the peace. On several occasions, groups of Quakers took off their clothes and ran naked through the streets, "for a sign"--that is, announcing a Divine judgement to come. Fox writes defending the practice in 1652. In 1661, an outside source seems to say that it is a common sight in Yorkshire <@ 54 N 1:30 W>. In 1651 Fox had walked a great distance, and stopped to talk with some shepherds in a field. He says: "I lifted up my head and espied three steeple-house spires, and they struck at my life. I asked them what place that was, and they said, Lichfield <54:42 N 1:48 W>. Immediately the way of the Lord came to me that thither I must go." He took off his shoes, though it was winter, left them with the shepherds, and walked through the streets crying, "Woe to the bloody city of Lichfield." He saw what seemed a river of blood running down the street, and the market-place like a pool of blood. No one stopped him or questioned him, and he went back to the field and recovered his shoes. He tells us that when he got back to the shepherds, "the fire of the Lord was so in my feet and all over me, that I did not matter to put my shoes on again, and was at a stand whether I should do so or not, till I felt a freedom of the Lord to do so." He says that he had no idea at the time why Lichfield should be called the bloody city--he was simply obeying the Inner Light. Later, he was pleased to hear of a good reason--one that showed that he had responded to an authentic prompting, and not just his imagination. He learned (says one of my sources) that there had been fighting and bloodshed in the city during the Civil War between the Royalists and the Puritans, or (says another of my sources) that there had been an execution of about a thousand Christians in Lichfield under the Emperor Diocletian around 300 AD. Both bloodlettings are historical, and Fox may have heard of both. It is also possible that Fox had heard as a youth, but had forgotten, that one Edward Wrightman (probably a Seeker) had been burned at Lichfield for heresy in 1612, only a dozen years before Fox was born, perhaps the last person to be burned for heresy in England. In 1671-1673, Fox visited the West Indies <@ 22 N 72 W>, and colonies in North America from Rhode Island <@ 41:30 N 72:30 W> to the Carolinas <@ 35 N 80 W>, spending time chiefly in Maryland <@ 39:30 N 77 W> and Rhode Island, to encourage Quakers who had settled there, and to preach to those outside the movement. Fox was often ungentle with those who rejected his message. He wrote with relish of how those who persecuted or opposed him came to bad ends by the judgement of God. He debated with Roger Williams, founder of the colony of Rhode Island, and printed his account of the debate with the title, "The Boasting Baptist Badly Beaten." Another time, one of his followers, James Naylor, had been preaching in London, and had an enthusiastic following, some of whom declared him to be a greater vessel of the message than Fox himself. Fox heard of this, and thought Naylor given to pride and dissension. Naylor came to see Fox to mend matters. (This was before the Bristol Procession, described in the Barclay BIO under DANGERS OF SUBJECTIVISM.) He asked Fox for the kiss of Christian fellowship, and Fox offered his foot to be kissed; "so the Lord moved me to slight him, and to set the power of God over him." Says one biographer: "Impossible not to wish that Fox had resisted the Inner Light for once!" Some would argue that this harshness is an inevitable consequence of Fox's premises. If I believe that every man has an Inner Light, and that the Light guides every honest, sincere man into the Truth, and if I find that someone, even after I have conversed with him, persists in holding views incompatible with mine, then I must conclude that at least one of us is not honest and sincere. Chances are that I shall have no difficulty in identifying the logical suspect. On the other hand, we note that it is not only believers in the Inner Light that are in danger of falling into this trap. Suppose that I take reason, observation, and common sense as my guides to truth, and say that everyone ought to. I call this the scientific outlook. Now, suppose that on some question, I arrive at one conclusion, and Jones arrives at another, quite different one. What do I do? I call his attention to the observations that confirm my theory, and I go over the reasoning that leads from the observations to the conclusion. He remains unmoved. I am forced to conclude, however reluctantly, that Jones is being unscientific! Fox was a man of seemingly inexhaustible energy. It was rumored that he never slept at all. One man invited Fox home as his guest in the winter of 1651, and peered into his room that night just to see whether the rumor was true. In 1651 or 1652 Fox met Judge Thomas Fell (vice-chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster) and his wife Margaret Fell, of Swarthmore Hall in Ulverston <54:12 N 3:06 W>, Lancashire. They befriended him, and their house became a kind of base of Quaker operations. In 1658, Thomas died, and in 1669, Margaret married George Fox. Fox died 13 January 1691. At that time there were about 50,000 Quakers in England and Ireland <@ 53 N 7 W>, out of a population of about 5,000,000. In 1972 there were about 200,000 world-wide, distributed as follows: United States and Canada 119,000 Africa 45,000 Europe, including the British Isles 24,000 Latin America 6,000 Asia and elsewhere 6,000 (The last 6,000 is not given explicitly in my source, but was added by me to bring the total up to 200,000. On the other hand, it is possible that the 200,000 is a round number and should be 194,000.) Fox's Journal was published in 1694, edited by Thomas Ellwood (a friend of the Peningtons'--see Dyer file), with a preface by William Penn, called "Rise and Progress of the People Called Quakers." $$$ FOR FURTHER READING The addresses of two Quaker publishing houses are given below. The reader who wishes to wishes to read more might want to obtain a book catalog from one or both of them. Friends United is a Gurneyite (evangelical) publisher. I am not sure of Pendle Hill's position. Friends United Press 101 Quaker Hill Drive Richmond, Indiana 47374 Phone 800-573-8839 or 765-962-7573 Fax 765-966-1293 ISBN numbers begin 0-913408- or 0-944350- Pendle Hill Press 388 Plush Mill Road Wallingford, Pennsylvania 19086 Phone 800-742-3150 or 610-566-4514 Fax 610-566-3679 ISBN numbers begin 0-877574- (NOTE: Pendle Hill Press issues many $3 paperbacks. In my Quaker book lists, the Press will be abbreviated PH and only the last four digits of the ISBN number will be given. The first six digits are always 0-87574- . Some of the books I found in Whitaker's, the British Books in Print. These have prices in pounds, and 'L=' is my version of the British pound sign. A point is about $1.70, but sometimes books are cheaper than that rate would indicate. Some books listed in the British but not the American BIP are nonetheless available from American bookstores.) @@@ FOX, GEORGE GEORGE FOX SPEAKS FOR HIMSELF (ed. Hugh M. Ross) (1989) $30pb 1-85-72-081-9 W Sessions JOURNAL, Society of Friends (London Meeting) (1975) L=10 hc 0-900469-16-1 (or L=7p -28-5). TO ALL THAT WOULD KNOW THE WAY TO THE KINGDOM (1992) L=1.35 1-897702-03-5 Abel Press Douglas Gwyn, APOCALYPSE OF THE WORD: THE LIFE AND MESSAGE OF GEORGE FOX, Friends United Press, Richmond, Indiana, 1986, ISBN 0-913408-91-3. Gwyn is concerned to present the message of Fox, based on an analysis of some of his statements. He sees Fox's thought as based on the New Testament, in particular on the Book of Revelation. He explicitly disagrees with Rufus Jones, saying: "Jones's sense of the universal is tied to an understanding of human reason as a divine, saving faculty. But we shall see repeatedly in this study that Fox understands the light as inward but fundamentally alien to human nature." H Larry Ingle, FIRST AMONG FRIENDS: GEORGE FOX AND THE CREATION OF QUAKERISM (Illus) 424pp, 1996, $20pb, Oxford U Pr, 0-19-510117-0. Many biographies of Fox are concerned with him as a prophet with a message for the ages. They are content to say that he got his ideas from the Inner Light and leave it at that. This book undertakes to place Fox in the context of his time, and to understand the influence of the surrounding political and religious ideas and events on the development of his thought and the movement that he founded. @@@ QUAKERISM (GENERAL) D(avid) Elton Trueblood, THE PEOPLE CALLED QUAKERS, Friends United Press, Richmond, Indiana, ISBN 0-913408-02-6 pb (I have relied heavily on this book for information for all of my posts on Quakers and Quakerism. If I have a reservation about it, it is a suspicion that the author, who is himself a thoroughly evangelical Quaker, may not be doing justice to the strength of non-evangelical thought in some branches of Quakerism.) Horace Mather Lippincott, editor, THROUGH A QUAKER ARCHWAY, Thomas Yoseloff, 11 E 36th Street, NY, or 123 New Bond Street, London, Sagamore Press, Inc., Twenty-five essays by prominent Quakers on various aspects of Quaker life. The following volumes by Braithwaite and Jones are part of a series generally considered to be the standard history of the Quaker movement. William C Braithwaite, THE BEGINNINGS OF QUAKERISM, L=13.25, Sessions, York, England, 0-900657-25-1. William C Braithwaite, THE SECOND PERIOD OF QUAKERISM, L=13.25, Sessions, York, England, 0-900657-26-X. Rufus M Jones, THE LATER PERIODS OF QUAKERISM, 2 vols., $125 (1971) 0-8371-4248-2 Greenwood Rufus M Jones, THE QUAKERS IN THE AMERICAN COLONIES (out of print??)