Friends Church

The Religious Society of Friends, also known as Friends Church, is a Christian denomination. Members are known as Friends, or popularly as Quakers. There is a wide range of theological views including evangelical, conservative and liberal; collectively they differ from other churches by a particular emphasis on the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. The Society is fragmented into autonomous local organizations, based on theological, social and cultural differences. Many of these groups hold strongly opposing views, leading to conflict. Worship varies between services co-ordinated by a pastor or recorded minister; or worship with no fixed programme which is predominantly silent. This "silence" is the fundamental dogma behind New Thought.

The movement began in mid-17th century England when travelling preachers including James Naylor[1], George Fox[2], Margaret Fell[3] and Francis Howgill[4] broke away from the Church of England, bringing together groups of English Dissenters, attempting to restore what they believed were the practices of the early Church. They emphasised the idea that it was only Christ, rather than priests, who could speak to them.

Historically, Quakers have been known for their refusal to participate in war; plain dress; refusal to swear oaths; opposition to alcohol and participation in anti-slavery, prison reform, and social justice movements. Quakers are also known historically for founding and running a number of large corporations which were run under Quaker principles and have funded much of the Quakers' work - including banks (Barclays and Lloyds among others), financial institutions (eg Friends Provident), and manufacturing companies (eg Clarks, Cadbury, Rowntree, Fry's).

In 1643 George Fox[1], a shoemaker from Fenny Drayton, Leicestershire, began toured the country giving sermons where he argued that consecrated buildings and ordained ministers were irrelevant to the individual seeking God. Three years later Fox had a divine revelation that inspired him to preach a gospel of brotherly love.

Fox formed a group called the Friends of Truth. Later they became known as the Society of Friends. Fox's central dogma was that of

the inner light, communicated directly to the individual soul by Christ.

After considerable debate, the Society of Friends evolved a form of organization with regular monthly, quarterly, and annual meetings. They selected elders, to watch over the ministry, and overseers to make provision for the poor and secure the education of the children. They wore plain clothes stripped of all ornament. Powdered hair or ruffles on the shirt were considered to be signs of vanity. Women were expected to wear sober clothes without frills or feathers.

[1] James Nayler (or Naylor) (1618–1660) was an English Quaker leader. He is among the members of the Valiant Sixty, a group of early Quaker preachers and missionaries. At the peak of his career, he preached against enclosure and the slave trade.

After experiencing what he described as the voice of God calling him from work in his fields, Nayler gave up his possessions and began seeking a spiritual direction, which he found in Quakerism after meeting George Fox in 1652. Nayler became the most prominent of the traveling Quaker evangelists known as the "Valiant Sixty"; he attracted many converts and was considered a skilled theological debater. By all accounts an extremely charismatic man with a somewhat Christ-like appearance, he also attracted a loyal personal following, which some other Quakers regarded with suspicion.

By 1656 Fox and Nayler were hardly on speaking terms. In October 1656, Nayler(suffering under aberration of mind[5]) and his friends, including Simmonds, staged a demonstration which proved disastrous: Nayler reenacted the arrival of Christ in Jerusalem that is commemorated on Palm Sunday, riding on into Bristol on a donkey, attended by followers who sang "Holy, holy, holy" and strewed the muddy path with garments. Though Nayler denied that he was impersonating Jesus and said rather that "Christ was in him" (consistent with the Quaker doctrine of the Inner light), he refused to comment further on the meaning of the action, and the ecstatic devotion of his followers convinced many that he had messianic pretensions. On 16 December 1656 he was convicted of blasphemy in a highly publicized trial before the Second Protectorate Parliament. Narrowly escaping execution, he was pilloried and whipped through the streets of London, was branded with the letter B on his forehead, had his tongue pierced with a hot iron, and was then transported back to Bristol to be whipped through its streets too, before enduring two years imprisonment at hard labour.

George Fox was horrified by the Bristol event, recounting in his Journal that "James ran out into imaginations, and a company with him; and they raised up a great darkness in the nation", despite Nayler's account of his actions being consistent with Quaker theology, and despite similar lofty language used by Fox and the other Quakers themselves. Nevertheless, Fox and the movement in general denounced Nayler publicly, though this did not stop anti-Quaker critics from using the incident to paint Quakers as heretics, or to equate them with Ranters.

The Ranters were an alleged sect in the time of the English Commonwealth (1649–1660) who were regarded as heretical by the established Church of that period. If they indeed existed, their central idea was pantheistic, that God is essentially in every creature; this led them to deny the authority of the Church, of scripture, of the current ministry and of services, instead calling on men to hearken to Jesus within them.
The Brothers, or Brethren of the Free Spirit, was a lay Christian movement which flourished in northern Europe in the 13th and 14th centuries. In this time of crisis within the Church and society as a whole there was a strong sense that the end of the world was coming and so the issue of Man's spirituality and salvation became more and more important. Where people ceased to find the spiritual answers they sought from Rome, dissident movements like the Brethren sprang up all across Europe preaching an alternative view of Christianity. They fell foul of the Church and were persecuted as heretics by the temporal and spiritual authorities of the time.


[2] George Fox (1624 – 1691) was an English Dissenter and a founder of the Religious Society of Friends, commonly known as the Quakers or Friends.
The son of a Leicestershire weaver, Fox lived in a time of great social upheaval and war. He rebelled against the religious and political authorities by proposing an unusual and uncompromising approach to the Christian faith. He travelled throughout Britain as a dissenting preacher, for which he was often persecuted by the authorities who disapproved of his beliefs.

Fox married Margaret Fell[2], the widow of one of his wealthier supporters; she was a leading Friend. His ministry expanded and he undertook tours of North America and the Low Countries, between which he was imprisoned for over a year. He spent the final decade of his life working in London to organize the expanding Quaker movement.


[3] Margaret Fell or Margaret Fox (1614 –1702) was a founder of the Religious Society of Friends. Known popularly as the "mother of Quakerism", she is considered one of the Valiant Sixty early Quaker preachers and missionaries.

In late June of 1652, George Fox visited Swarthmoor Hall. Margaret was away when he arrived, but upon her return in the evening, Margaret Fell met

“him who 'opened us a book that we had never read in, nor indeed had never heard that it was our duty to read in it (to wit) the Light of Christ in our consciences, our minds never being turned towards it before.”

[4] Francis Howgill (1618 –1668) was a prominent early member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in England. He preached and wrote on the teachings of the Friends and is considered one of the Valiant Sixty--men and women who were early proponents of Friends beliefs and who suffered for those beliefs.

[5] http://www.brh.org.uk/articles/bpp/nayler.html