The Quakers began their presence and spiritual career in this world declaring that both Protestants and Catholics were apostate, and that their movement was the restoration of early Christianity. Yes, you Anabaptists are apostate, you Baptists are apostate, you Wesley methodists are apostate. All of you. Quakerism was launched in a great spirit of humility, it seems. The Christians of the ages until that time had all missed the Spirit of Christ, and now here was George Fox, his prophet.
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"The Quakers sought equality for women from their beginnings and had women teachers and circuit preachers known to abandon their large families at the start. In some of their earlier travels they appeared to enjoy arguing with young theologians and even went to such extremes as walking through the streets naked to oppose hypocrisy. Their acts were considered to be under the direct leading of the Holy Spirit. Some of their experiences were described as response to falling deeply in love and they would follow whatever the Spirit wanted. The nickname "Quaker" came from the shaking aroused by inner struggles of individuals facing their inner motives "under the Light" in the Quaker meetings. They believe they have revived true Christianity and all other religions are false.
In 1654 pairs of north-country farmers or women who had received calling from the Quaker Light, set out to reach all parts of England. Huge crowds gathered at a rented hall in a tavern in London and at an orchard in Bristol:
John Audland, who very much trembled…stood up, full of dread and shinning brightness on his countenance, lifted up his voice as a trumpet, and said "I proclaim spiritual war with the inhabitants of the earth, who are in separation from God."…some fell on the ground, others crying out under the sense of the opening of their (spiritual) states…Oh, the tears, sighs and groans, tremblings and mournings…in the sense of our spiritual wants and necessities…We are forced to meet without doors, and that in frost and snow, when several thousands have been assembled together.
Margaret Fell, wife of George Fox, instructed to "let the Eternal Light search you…for this …will rise up and lay you open…naked and bare before the Lord. …Keep down your Minds that questions and stumbles at the power of God.
Puritan Francis Higginson writes during the summer of 1652: Groups met in homes or on crags sometimes a hundred or two hundred in a swarm…..and continue all night long. They have no singing of psalms, no reading or exposition of Holy Scripture, no administration of sacraments"…
"They exhort people to mind the Light within, to hearken to the voice and follow the guide within them, to dwell within…The priests of the world (they say) do deceive them, ….they speak of living under the cross, and against pride in apparel and covetousness. (The Quakers by Hugh Barbour and J. William Frost, Greenwood Press, 1988, Westport, CT.)
"... the Quakers believed that Jesus Christ was the light within that everyone had the potential to experience. The "light" was always given a capital "L." He believed that "there was that of God" in all men, in the American Indian, the African Black, and in all men. We are all a "holy community" where no one has dominance over another and where there is no reason for war. For a long time Fox had been promoting equality of men and women. In 1648 he stood up and opposed a meeting of Presbyterians, Independents, Baptists, and Anglicans when a woman was silenced and not allowed to speak in the church. Fox said that because the church is a spiritual household in which Christ is the head that women may be allowed to prophecy and speak. In 1656 He wrote a tract called The Women Learning in Silence: or the Mysterie of the woman's Subjection to her husband, as also, the Daughter prophesying, wherein the Lord hath, and is fulfilling that he spake by the Prophet Joel, I will pour out my Spirit unto all Flesh. Fox explained that he thought that people respond "to a certain measure" of their attained "Light" of the teaching of Christ in their heart. He taught that 1 and 2 Timothy, where Paul writes that women are to keep silent in churches, is only "Paul's attained level of knowledge on the subject."
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness. 2 Timothy 3:16
Every Word of God is flawless; He is a shield to those who take refuge in Him. Do not add to His words, or He will rebuke you and prove you a liar. Proverbs 30:5-6
In his second tract he believed Paul was merely speaking to a particular group of unsaved women who had not been raised to that "certain level of understanding" so he did not actually condemn the preaching of all women. He continued to write and defend women and stated that the Holy Spirit is available to everyone and no one had the right to stop it. As his followers turned to him for advice and counsel, Fox was compelled to bring others to the liberating experience he knew and to also confound false teachings. He likened the experience of the Holy Spirit as to that of mother nurturing her baby at her breast. In 1652, in Lancashire, Fox converted a large group of seekers. This was the beginning of the Society of Friends once called the Children of the Light.
In 1669 when he married a convert he was determined to exemplify marriage as a union of equals. Their marriage was considered a spiritual partnership and neither hindered the other's leading of the Spirit. After his death his wife, Margaret Fell, traveled and counseled until her death.
Puritan values were challenged as the Quakers pushed gender equality and disorder to the Puritan's reverence for order and the Scriptural role of the man as the sole authority of his household. William Penn, who believed that religious liberty must be available to everyone, helped the Quakers secure their own colony while remaining ambivalent to their roles of women. (Mothers of Feminism; The Story of Quaker Women in America by Margaret Hope Bacon, Harper & Row Publishers, 1986).
http://www.rapidnet.com/~jbeard/bdm/exposes/hybels/insider.htm
His central dogma was that of the "inner light", communicated directly to the individual soul by Christ "who enlightenth every man that cometh into the world". To walk in this light and obey the voice of Christspeaking within the soul was to Fox the supreme and sole duty of man. Creeds and churches, councils, rites, and sacraments were discarded as outward things. Even the Scriptures were to be interpreted by the inner light. This was surely carrying the Protestant doctrine of private judgment to its ultimate logical conclusion. Inconvenient passages of Holy Writ, such as those establishing Baptism and theEucharist, were expounded by Fox in an allegorical sense; whilst other passages were insisted upon with a literalness before unknown. Thus, from the text "Swear not at all", he drew the illicitness of oaths, even when demanded by the magistrate. Titles of honour, salutations, and all similar things conducive to vanity, such as doffing the hat or "scraping with the leg", were to be avoided even in the presence of the king. War, even if defensive, was declared unlawful. Art, music, drama, field-sports, and dancing were rejected as unbecoming the gravity of a Christian. As for attire, he pleaded for that simplicity of dress and absence of ornament which later became the most striking peculiarity of his followers. There was no room in his system for the ordained and salaried clergy of other religions, Fox proclaiming that every man, woman or child, when moved by the Spirit, had an equal right to prophesy and give testimony for the edification of the brethren. Two conclusions, with disagreeable consequence to the early Friends, were drawn from this rejection of a "priesthood"; the first was, that they refused to pay tithes or church rates; the second, that they celebrated marriage among themselves, without calling in the services of the legally appointed minister.
from http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06304b.htm
In 1654 pairs of north-country farmers or women who had received calling from the Quaker Light, set out to reach all parts of England. Huge crowds gathered at a rented hall in a tavern in London and at an orchard in Bristol:
John Audland, who very much trembled…stood up, full of dread and shinning brightness on his countenance, lifted up his voice as a trumpet, and said "I proclaim spiritual war with the inhabitants of the earth, who are in separation from God."…some fell on the ground, others crying out under the sense of the opening of their (spiritual) states…Oh, the tears, sighs and groans, tremblings and mournings…in the sense of our spiritual wants and necessities…We are forced to meet without doors, and that in frost and snow, when several thousands have been assembled together.
Margaret Fell, wife of George Fox, instructed to "let the Eternal Light search you…for this …will rise up and lay you open…naked and bare before the Lord. …Keep down your Minds that questions and stumbles at the power of God.
Puritan Francis Higginson writes during the summer of 1652: Groups met in homes or on crags sometimes a hundred or two hundred in a swarm…..and continue all night long. They have no singing of psalms, no reading or exposition of Holy Scripture, no administration of sacraments"…
"They exhort people to mind the Light within, to hearken to the voice and follow the guide within them, to dwell within…The priests of the world (they say) do deceive them, ….they speak of living under the cross, and against pride in apparel and covetousness. (The Quakers by Hugh Barbour and J. William Frost, Greenwood Press, 1988, Westport, CT.)
"... the Quakers believed that Jesus Christ was the light within that everyone had the potential to experience. The "light" was always given a capital "L." He believed that "there was that of God" in all men, in the American Indian, the African Black, and in all men. We are all a "holy community" where no one has dominance over another and where there is no reason for war. For a long time Fox had been promoting equality of men and women. In 1648 he stood up and opposed a meeting of Presbyterians, Independents, Baptists, and Anglicans when a woman was silenced and not allowed to speak in the church. Fox said that because the church is a spiritual household in which Christ is the head that women may be allowed to prophecy and speak. In 1656 He wrote a tract called The Women Learning in Silence: or the Mysterie of the woman's Subjection to her husband, as also, the Daughter prophesying, wherein the Lord hath, and is fulfilling that he spake by the Prophet Joel, I will pour out my Spirit unto all Flesh. Fox explained that he thought that people respond "to a certain measure" of their attained "Light" of the teaching of Christ in their heart. He taught that 1 and 2 Timothy, where Paul writes that women are to keep silent in churches, is only "Paul's attained level of knowledge on the subject."
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness. 2 Timothy 3:16
Every Word of God is flawless; He is a shield to those who take refuge in Him. Do not add to His words, or He will rebuke you and prove you a liar. Proverbs 30:5-6
In his second tract he believed Paul was merely speaking to a particular group of unsaved women who had not been raised to that "certain level of understanding" so he did not actually condemn the preaching of all women. He continued to write and defend women and stated that the Holy Spirit is available to everyone and no one had the right to stop it. As his followers turned to him for advice and counsel, Fox was compelled to bring others to the liberating experience he knew and to also confound false teachings. He likened the experience of the Holy Spirit as to that of mother nurturing her baby at her breast. In 1652, in Lancashire, Fox converted a large group of seekers. This was the beginning of the Society of Friends once called the Children of the Light.
In 1669 when he married a convert he was determined to exemplify marriage as a union of equals. Their marriage was considered a spiritual partnership and neither hindered the other's leading of the Spirit. After his death his wife, Margaret Fell, traveled and counseled until her death.
Puritan values were challenged as the Quakers pushed gender equality and disorder to the Puritan's reverence for order and the Scriptural role of the man as the sole authority of his household. William Penn, who believed that religious liberty must be available to everyone, helped the Quakers secure their own colony while remaining ambivalent to their roles of women. (Mothers of Feminism; The Story of Quaker Women in America by Margaret Hope Bacon, Harper & Row Publishers, 1986).
http://www.rapidnet.com/~jbeard/bdm/exposes/hybels/insider.htm
His central dogma was that of the "inner light", communicated directly to the individual soul by Christ "who enlightenth every man that cometh into the world". To walk in this light and obey the voice of Christspeaking within the soul was to Fox the supreme and sole duty of man. Creeds and churches, councils, rites, and sacraments were discarded as outward things. Even the Scriptures were to be interpreted by the inner light. This was surely carrying the Protestant doctrine of private judgment to its ultimate logical conclusion. Inconvenient passages of Holy Writ, such as those establishing Baptism and theEucharist, were expounded by Fox in an allegorical sense; whilst other passages were insisted upon with a literalness before unknown. Thus, from the text "Swear not at all", he drew the illicitness of oaths, even when demanded by the magistrate. Titles of honour, salutations, and all similar things conducive to vanity, such as doffing the hat or "scraping with the leg", were to be avoided even in the presence of the king. War, even if defensive, was declared unlawful. Art, music, drama, field-sports, and dancing were rejected as unbecoming the gravity of a Christian. As for attire, he pleaded for that simplicity of dress and absence of ornament which later became the most striking peculiarity of his followers. There was no room in his system for the ordained and salaried clergy of other religions, Fox proclaiming that every man, woman or child, when moved by the Spirit, had an equal right to prophesy and give testimony for the edification of the brethren. Two conclusions, with disagreeable consequence to the early Friends, were drawn from this rejection of a "priesthood"; the first was, that they refused to pay tithes or church rates; the second, that they celebrated marriage among themselves, without calling in the services of the legally appointed minister.
from http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06304b.htm
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