About
The following excerpt and others below are taken from “Faith and Practice,” published by the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (1998).
The Religious Society of Friends arose in England in the middle of the seventeenth century. ... In the established Church of England, a great deal of emphasis was placed on outward ceremony; there, and in such dissenting churches as the Baptists and Presbyterians, religious faith was also generally identified with the authority of the Bible or the acceptance of a formal creed. Many individuals, however, became increasingly dissatisfied with ceremonies and creeds, and broke away from these churches. Singly or in small groups, they turned inward in search of a religion of personal experience and direct communion with God.
George Fox (1624-1691) was one of these seekers. ... At age nineteen, ... he decided to leave home inorder to seek spiritual direction. For four years he wandered through the English midlands and as far south as London. Though he consulted various ministers and professors (that is, professing Christians), none could give rest to his troubled soul. Finally, as he recorded in his journal,
... when ... I had nothing outwardly to help me, nor could 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 heard it, my heart did leap for joy. ...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.
And so, at the age of twenty-three, George Fox began to preach.
His basic message was simple enough: first, that his own dramatic and life-changing experience of a direct, unmediated revelation from God confirmed the possibility of a religion of personal experience and direct communion with God, a religion of continuing revelation instead of a closed written canon; and second, that this same possibility was available to every person. Fox's message, combined with his charismatic personality, soon attracted a small group of women and men who joined him in spreading the “good news” that “Christ has come to teach his people himself.” These first “publishers of Truth” believed the good news to be a revival of primitive Christianity rather than a new gospel. Gradually, Fox and his associates began to enlist others in this revival; and in 1652, Fox persuaded many of the Westmorland Seekers, a numerous and already well-established religious movement, to become Friends (or Friends of Truth), as his followers called themselves, or Quakers, as they came to be called by others. [Faith and Practice, pp. 1-2]
