The Still Silent Voice of The Religious Society of
Friends
Setting: Oliver
Cromwell’s England; 1652 – 56
Evolution of worship:
Catholicism, Anglicanism,
Presbyterianism, Congregationalism, the Baptists, the Quakers, and the Ranters.
From the days of Henry VIII, as
people were becoming literate and the Bible was become increasingly known in
England, it was also becoming clear that many aspects of the religious
practices and beliefs had been added on.
There was a movement to purify Christianity to its earlier New Testament
days by many sects at the time.
The Puritans rejected the
Catholic Pope, the Mass, images and 5 of the 7 sacraments to become the Church
of England
Presbyterianism subtracted
the rule of Bishops and substituted the authority of presbyters or elders.
The Independents or
Congregationalists subtracted the centralized church government, which had not
existed in New Testament times, substituting a decentralized, more democratic
procedure.
Baptists substituted infant
baptism and made church membership dependent on conversion and the gift of the
Spirit as described in the New Testament.
The Quakers subtracted all
ritual, all programmed arrangement in worship and the professional ministry,
allowing for no outward expression except the prophetic voice, which had been
heard in the New Testament Church at the beginning. They endowed no officials with religious or
administrative duties. Worship and
administration were considered the responsibility of the local group or meeting
as a whole. Elders exercised an advisory
function, not over the meeting, but under it as the instruments of its will.
The Conventical Act of 1664
forbade groups of more than five to worship outside a church. Quakers had no use for this limitation. The book of Matthew stated, “where 2 or 3 are
gathered….”
Historic and Present Day Quaker Nutshell:
Delivered
first century Christianity to present day with
DIVINE
JUSTICE and the Living Light of Christ
CONTINUED
REVELATION - Spiritual authority and leadership over human leadership. Still,
Small Voice of Spirit
Challenges
the Status Quo – Not invested in personal salvation, status, wealth, growth;
only loving, equitable, just community
Peace
Testimony - “Take away the occasion for war” with justice, equity and non-violent
means. Take away the reasons that people
engage in conflict to begin with.
Quakers were/are God's shock troops; challenging and
speaking TRUTH TO POWER; advocating and transforming prison, mental, and
educational institutions. George Fox
spoke Truth to Power when he spoke
directly to Oliver Cromwell.
Well-lit Quaker Hall of Humble Fame
George Fox was born in Drayton-in-the-Clay, Leicestershire, England. Eldest
of four children of Christopher Fox (a successful weaver) and his wife, Mary
née Lago, George had religious leanings. "When I was a child, the Lord
taught me to be faithful, in all things, and to act faithfully inwardly to God,
and outwardly to man.” Fox pursued "simplicity"
in life and thoroughly studied the Bible,
George Fox knew people who were "professors"
(followers of the standard religion), but at 19, had begun to look down on
their behavior, in particular their alcohol consumption.
Driven by his "inner voice", Fox left home and travelled
around the country looking for faith communities that he could relate to. He was advised to take tobacco
and sing psalms In Coventry. A priest lost his temper when Fox accidentally stood on a flowerbed
in his garden. A third religious leader
suggested bloodletting for his struggling soul. He fell out with one group because he
maintained that women had souls.
I had forsaken the priests and preachers, and those esteemed the
most experienced people; for I saw there was none among them all that could
speak to my condition. And when all my hopes in them and in all men were gone, then,
oh, then, I heard a voice which said, "There is one, even Christ Jesus,
that can speak to thy condition"; and when I heard it my heart did leap
for joy. Then the Lord let me see why there was none upon the 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 as I had been, that Jesus Christ
might have the pre-eminence who enlightens, and gives grace, and faith, and
power. And this I knew.
He drew strength from this conviction. In prayer and meditation
he came to a greater understanding of his own beliefs.
·
Qualification for ministry is given by the Holy Spirit; not by ecclesiastical study. Anyone has the right to
minister, assuming the Spirit guides them, including women and children
·
God "dwells in the hearts of his obedient people":
religious experience is not confined to a church building. Fox refused to apply the word "church" to a
building, using instead the name "steeple-house". Fox would just as
soon worship in fields and orchards, believing that God's presence could be
felt anywhere.
·
Though Fox used the Bible to support his views, Fox reasoned
that, because God was within the faithful, believers could follow their own
inner guide rather than rely on a strict reading of Scripture or the word of
clerics.
·
Fox made no distinction between Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
In 1647 Fox began to preach in market places, fields, appointed
meetings or in "steeple-houses" after the service. His powerful preaching
attracted a following. Fox had no desire to found a sect but only to proclaim
what he saw as the pure and genuine principles of Christianity in their original simplicity.
As his followers began to travel together, they referred to themselves
as Children of the Light, Followers of Truth and Friends (from John in the New
Testament). A judge who was making fun
of their “trembling Spirit” called the following Quakers.
An uncompromising preacher, Fox hurled disputation and
contradiction to the faces of his opponents. When people did not welcome Fox’s
words, he was sometimes beaten or driven away.
He campaigned against the paying of tithes, which funded the
established church and often went into the pockets of absentee landlords or
religious colleges far away from the paying parishioners. In his view, as God
was everywhere and anyone could preach, the established church was unnecessary.
Fox was imprisoned many times for this “blasphemy”. A judge mocked Fox's exhortation to "tremble at the word of the
Lord", calling him and his followers "Quakers". His refusal
to swear oaths or take up arms
came to be a much more important part of his public statements. While
imprisoned at Launceston Fox wrote, "Christ our Lord and master says,
'Swear not at all, but let your communications be yea, yea, and nay, nay, for
whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.' ... the Apostle James
saith, 'My brethren, above all things swear not, neither by heaven, nor by
earth, nor by any other oath.'
Refusal to take oaths meant that Quakers could be prosecuted
under laws compelling subjects to pledge allegiance, as well as making testifying
in court problematic.
In June 1652, God led Fox to Pendle Hill where he had a vision of many souls coming to Christ; speaking
directly to Spirit. Margaret Fell and her barrister husband, Thomas fell,
welcomed George to live with them during this time in Cumbria, the north west
part of England. Margaret was stirred by
Fox’ ministry, convinced, and eventually became one of the most important
Quaker people from the early years.
Quakers were held in contempt for holding unauthorized worship
(Conventical Act) and for refusing to use or acknowledge titles, take hats off
in court or bow to those who considered themselves socially superior, were seen
as disrespectful. Fox was once again imprisoned.
In prison George Fox continued writing and preaching. Prison brought him in contact with the
jailers as well as his fellow prisoners. In his journal, he told his
magistrate, "God dwells not in temples made with hands." He sought to
set an example by his actions, turning the other cheek when being beaten.
Parliamentarians
grew suspicious and fearful that the group travelling with Fox aimed to
overthrow the government: by this time his meetings were regularly attracting
crowds of over a thousand. In early 1655 he was arrested and taken to London
under armed guard. He was brought before
the Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell. After
affirming that he had no intention of taking up arms Fox was able to speak with
Cromwell for most of the morning about the Friends and advised him to listen to
God's voice and obey it so that, as Fox left, Cromwell "with tears in his
eyes said, 'Come again to my house; for if thou and I were but an hour of a day
together, we should be nearer one to the other'; adding that he wished [Fox] no
more ill than he did to his own soul. Cromwell was sympathetic
to Fox and almost agreed to follow his teaching—but persecution of Quakers
continued.
This is an example of "speaking
truth to power", a way for Quakers to influence the powerful.
In late June 1652, George Fox visited Swarthmoor Hall. Margaret heard the ministry of George Fox and she was so stirred by the beginning of his speech, she stood
up in her pew and questioned his doctrine. Over the next weeks she and many of
her household became convinced.
Swarthmoor Hall became a center of Quaker activity. She wrote many epistles herself and collected and disbursed funds for those on missions.
After her husband's death in 1658, she retained control of Swarthmore Hall,
which remained a meeting place and haven from persecution. In the 1660s, government forces raided
Swarthmoor Hall.
A member of the Religious Society of Friends and an established
member of the gentry, she was frequently called upon
to intercede in cases of persecution or arrest. Margaret Fell traveled from Lancashire to London
to petition King Charles II and his parliament in 1660 and 1662 for
freedom of conscience in religious matters. A submission signed by George Fox
and other prominent (male) Quakers was only made subsequently in November 1660.
Although the structure and phraseology of these submissions were quite
different, the import was similar, arguing that, although Friends wished to see
the world changed, they would use persuasion rather than violence towards what
they regarded as a "heavenly" end.
In 1664 Margaret Fell was arrested for failing to take an oath
and for allowing Quaker Meetings to be held in her home. She was sentenced to
life imprisonment and forfeiture of her property. She remained in prison until
1668, during which time she wrote religious pamphlets and epistles. Perhaps her
most famous work is "Women's Speaking Justified", a scripture-based
argument for women's ministry, and one of the major texts on women's religious
leadership in the 17th century. While in prison, she taught the children to
read and ministered to those around her.
Having been released by order of the King and council, she
married George Fox in 1669. For much of their married life, they were
imprisoned or advocating for the other to be released from prison.
In
1681, King Charles II handed over a large piece of his American land holdings
to William Penn to satisfy a debt the king owed to Penn's father. This land included present-day Pennsylvania and Delaware. Penn
immediately sailed to America and his first step on American soil took place in New Castle in 1682. The colonists pledged allegiance to Penn
as their new proprietor, and the first general
assembly was held in the colony. Afterwards, Penn journeyed up river
and founded Philadelphia.
However, Penn's Quaker government was not
viewed favorably by the Dutch, Swedish, and English settlers in what is now Delaware. They had no "historical"
allegiance to Pennsylvania, so they almost immediately began petitioning for
their own assembly. In 1704 they achieved their goal when the three
southernmost counties of Pennsylvania were permitted to split off and become
the new semi-autonomous colony of Lower Delaware.
As the most prominent, prosperous and influential "city" in the new
colony, New Castle became the capital.
As
one of the earlier supporters of colonial unification, Penn wrote and urged for
a union of all the English
colonies in what was to become the United States of America. The
democratic principles that he set forth in the Pennsylvania Frame of Government served as an inspiration for the United States
Constitution. As a pacifist Quaker, Penn
considered the problems of war and peace deeply. He developed a forward-looking
project for a United States of Europe through the creation of a European Assembly made of deputies
that could discuss and adjudicate controversies peacefully. He is therefore
considered the very first thinker to suggest the creation of a European Parliament [2]
A
man of profound religious convictions, Penn wrote numerous writings in which he
exhorted believers to adhere to the spirit of Primitive Christianity. He was
imprisoned several times in the Tower of London due
to his faith, and his book No
Cross, No Crown (1669), which
he wrote while in prison, has become a Christian classic.[
Lucretia
Coffin was born in Nantucket, Massachusetts, into a Quaker family.
She was the second child of eight by Anna and Thomas Coffin. Her
interest in women's rights began when
she discovered that male teachers at the school where she taught were paid
three times as much as the female staff.
On April 10, 1811, Lucretia Coffin married James Mott at Pine Street Meeting in Philadelphia. Their children all
became active in the anti-slavery and other reform movements.
Like many Quakers, Mott
considered slavery to be evil. She and other Quakers refused to use cotton
cloth, cane sugar, and other slavery-produced goods. In 1821 Mott became a
Quaker minister; a Public Friend. With her husband's support, she traveled
extensively; her sermons emphasized the Quaker inward light, the presence of
the Divine within every individual, and anti-slavery sentiment. Lucretia Mott
tested the language of the Constitution and bolstered support when many
delegates were precarious. Days after the conclusion of the convention, Mott
and other women founded the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society. Integrated from its founding, the organization opposed
both slavery and racism, and developed close ties to Philadelphia's Black
community. Mott herself often preached at Black parishes.
Amidst social persecution Mott continued her work. She extended
hospitality to guests, including fugitive slaves. Mott was praised for her ability to maintain her
household while contributing to the cause. In the words of one editor,
"She is proof that it is possible for a woman to widen her sphere without
deserting it." Mott and other female abolitionists also organized fairs to raise awareness and revenue, providing much of the
funding for the anti-slavery movement.
Women's participation in the anti-slavery movement threatened
societal norms. Many members of the abolitionist movement opposed public
activities by women, especially public speaking. At the Congregational
Church General Assembly,
delegates agreed on a pastoral letter warning women that lecturing directly
defied St.
Paul's instruction for women to keep
quiet in church.(1Timothy 2:12) Other people opposed women's speaking to mixed
crowds of men and women, which they called "promiscuous." Others were
uncertain about what was proper, as the rising popularity of the Grimké sisters and other women speakers attracted support for abolition.
During the 1838 convention in Philadelphia, a mob destroyed Pennsylvania Hall, a newly opened meeting place built by abolitionists.
Mott and the white and black women delegates linked arms to exit the building
safely through the crowd. Afterward, the mob targeted her home and Black
institutions and neighborhoods in Philadelphia. As a friend redirected the mob,
Mott waited in her parlor, willing to face her violent opponents.[
Susan B.
Anthony was born on February 15, 1820 in Adams, Massachusetts, into a
Quaker family. Susan
B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were pioneers in the women’s rights
movement in 1852. Ignoring opposition and abuse, Anthony traveled, lectured, and
canvassed across the nation for the vote. She also campaigned for the abolition
of slavery, the right for women to own their own property and retain their
earnings, and she advocated for women's labor organizations. In 1900, Anthony
persuaded the University of Rochester to admit women. She moved to Rochester in 1845, where the Anthony
family was active in the anti-slavery movement. Anti-slavery Quakers met at
their farm almost every Sunday, where they were sometimes joined by Frederick
Douglass.
Anthony met with hostile mobs and armed threats. She was
hung in effigy, her image dragged through the streets. In 1863 Anthony and Stanton
organized a Women's National Loyal League to support and petition for the
Thirteenth Amendment outlawing slavery. They went on to campaign for full
citizenship for women and people of any race, including the right to vote, in
the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. They were bitterly disappointed when
women were excluded.
At age 26, Susan B. Anthony took the position of head of
the girls' department at Canajoharie Academy, her first paid position. She
taught there for two years, earning $110 a year. In 1853 at the state teachers' convention
Anthony called for women to be admitted to the professions and for better pay
for women teachers. Anthony spoke before the state teachers' convention at
Troy, N.Y. and at the Massachusetts teachers' convention, arguing for
coeducation (boys and girls together) and claiming there were no differences
between the minds of men and women.
In the 1890s Anthony raised $50,000 in pledges to ensure
the admittance of women to the University of Rochester. In a last-minute effort
to meet the deadline she put up the cash value of her life insurance policy.
The University was forced to make good its promise and women were admitted for
the first time in 1900.
Susan B. Anthony's paper The Revolution, first
published in 1868, advocated an eight-hour work day and equal pay for equal
work. It promoted a policy of purchasing American-made goods and encouraging
immigration to rebuild the South and settle the entire country. Publishing The Revolution in
New York brought her in contact with women in the printing trades.
Anthony campaigned for women's property rights in New
York State, speaking at meetings, collecting signatures for petitions, and
lobbying the state legislature. In 1860, largely as the result of her efforts,
the New York State Married Women's Property Bill became law, allowing married
women to own property, keep their own wages, and have custody of their
children. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton campaigned for more liberal
divorce laws in New York.
In 1869 the suffrage movement split, with Anthony and
Stanton's National Association continuing to campaign for a constitutional
amendment, and the American Woman Suffrage Association adopting a strategy of
getting the vote for women on a state-by-state basis. Wyoming became the first
territory to give women the vote in 1869.
Anthony, three of her sisters, and other women were
arrested in Rochester in 1872 for voting. Anthony refused to pay her streetcar
fare to the police station. She was arraigned and the election inspectors who
had allowed her to vote in Rochester Common Council chambers. She refused to
pay bail and applied for habeas corpus, but her lawyer paid the bail, keeping
the case from the Supreme Court. She was indicted in Albany, and the Rochester
District Attorney asked for a change of venue because a jury might be
prejudiced in her favor. At her trial in Canandaigua in 1873, the judge
instructed the jury to find her guilty without discussion. (The jury didn't get
to discuss the verdict!) He fined her $100 and made her pay courtroom fees, but
did not imprison her when she refused to pay, therefore denying her the chance
to appeal.
In 1877, she gathered petitions from 26 states with
10,000 signatures, but Congress laughed at them. She appeared before every
congress from 1869 to 1906 to ask for passage of a suffrage amendment. Between
1881 and 1885 Anthony, Stanton and Matilda Joslin Gage collaborated on and
published the History of Woman Suffrage. The last volume, edited by Anthony and
Ida Husted Harper, was published in 1902.
In 1887 the two women's suffrage organizations merged as
the National American Woman Suffrage Association with Stanton as president and
Anthony as vice-president. Anthony became president in 1892 when Stanton
retired. Anthony campaigned in the West in the 1890s to make sure that
territories where women had the vote were not blocked from admission to the
Union. She attended the International Council of Women at the 1893 World's Fair
in Chicago.
Susan B. Anthony died in 1906 at her home on Madison
Street in Rochester. American women finally got the vote with the Nineteenth
Amendment, also known as the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, in 1920.
John Woolman (1720 – 1772) was a North
American merchant, tailor, journalist, and itinerant Quaker preacher, and an early abolitionist in the colonial era. Based in Mount Holly, New Jersey, near Philadelphia, PA, he traveled through frontier areas of British North America to preach Quaker beliefs, and advocate against slavery and the slave trade, cruelty to animals,
economic injustices and oppression, and conscription; from 1755 during the French and Indian War, he urged tax resistance to deny support to the military. In 1772, Woolman traveled to
England, where he urged Quakers to support abolition of slavery.
The
Grimke Sisters 1792/1796
Angelina Grimke and her sister Sarah Grimke were legends in
their own lifetimes. These South Carolina sisters made history: daring to speak
before “promiscuous” or mixed crowds of men and women, publishing some of the
most powerful anti-slavery tracts of the antebellum era, and stretching the
boundaries of women’s public role as the first women to testify before a state
legislature on the question of African American rights. Their crusade, which
was not only to free the enslaved but to end racial discrimination throughout
the United States, made them more radical than many of the reformers who
advocated an end to slavery but who could not envision true social and
political equality for the freedmen and women. The Grimke sisters were among
the first abolitionists to recognize the importance of women’s rights and to
speak and write about the cause of female equality.
What
made them exceptional was their first-hand experience with the institution of
slavery and with its daily horrors and injustices. Abolitionists like William
Lloyd Garrison, the editor of The
Liberator, and Theodore Weld, who Angelina married in 1838, could give
stirring speeches about the need to abolish slavery, but they could not testify
to its impact on African Americans or on their masters from personal knowledge.
William
Tuke
was born in York on 24 March 1732, into a leading Quaker family. He entered the
family tea and coffee merchant business at an early age. Alongside his
commercial responsibilities, he was able to devote much time to the pursuit of
philanthropy.
When a Quaker died in the squalid and inhumane
conditions of the York Asylum, William was invited to visit and was appalled by
what he saw there. In the spring of 1792, he appealed to the Society of Friends
to revolutionize the treatment of the insane. He collected sufficient funds to
open the York Retreat for the care of the insane in 1796. This was the first of
its kind in England, and pioneered new, more humane methods of treatment for
the mentally ill. These included removing inmates' chains, housing them in a
pleasant environment, with decent food and adopting a program involving the
therapeutic use of occupational tasks.
