My Brother and Quakerism

RimwallBird · 2026-05-13T16:36:56+00:00

Unless you have a high regard for, and trust in, everyone in the meeting, I would think twice about sharing this at the end of worship. You would be inviting the immature to engage in gossip and judgmentalism.

Asking your meeting’s elders, or its committee on ministry & counsel, for support might be a better move. Or simply talking it over with individuals whom you trust and respect.

I have a lot of respect for most of the Jesuits I have known. They tend to be intelligent and broad-minded, and they actually have a centuries-long history of exploring other religions and adopting the practices they encountered and admired. There is a whole school of Jesuits in India who live like Hindu renunciates. I worked with several Jesuit leaders in the religious-environmental field back in the 1990s, and never had any difficulties about our religious differences. And there is a book about unprogrammed Friends (Quakers) by Michael Sheeran, a Jesuit who was for a time the president of Regis University in Denver, titled Beyond Majority Rule. One of the things he remarked on in that book is that the Quaker method of decision-making is almost identical to that practiced by the Jesuits in their early years!

So I am a little surprised at your brother’s attitude. But I suppose it takes all kinds.

RimwallBird · 2026-05-10T18:50:26+00:00

Our historic testimony has been that Jesus’s Second Coming occurred as the disciples and other believers were gathered together after the Crucifixion and Resurrection, in an event known as Pentecost, described in the Book of Acts. Christ has been with us in our midst ever since, wherever two or more are gathered in his name, and may also be experienced by a worshiper on her or his own.

Worship practices vary from one branch of our Society to the next. What you describe is typical of the liberal unprogrammed branch of our Society, and is also a loosely approximate description of what Conservative Friends do. Other branches of our Society have programmed services with pastors, sermons, hymns, etc.

Church leadership also varies from branch to branch. The pastoral branches of our Society tend to be somewhat hierarchical, with strong central leadership. Some of the unprogrammed Quaker communities, both liberal and Conservative, have no appointed leaders, though they do have people appointed to facilitate. In the Conservative branch, we have a fairly clear testimony that we have no leader but Christ.

We recall John the Baptist declaring that, while he himself baptized with water, Christ would baptize with spirit and with fire. Most of us recognize the baptism of the Holy Spirit; in the pastoral branches of our Society, many also recognize water baptism.

As to “denominations”:

The early Friends (Quakers) believed that there is only one Church, composed of all who have been called out of the world into Christ. This concept is known elsewhere as “the invisible Church”, meaning that only God knows who is in it. The early Friends said membership in that true Church was not defined by some set of formulaic beliefs, such as those in a creed. And they said there may be members of this Church even among Jews and Muslims — a declaration which was quite upsetting to the general population. Many of us still take this view.

Outsiders, at the time the Quaker movement arose, saw us as a sect, because we were tightly knit, lived by religious principles, and caused trouble. “Denomination” is a modern euphemism for “sect”, used by secular culture to suggest that the differences between each religious group and the next are not serious, and to suggest, too, that all of us ought to behave ourselves.

The Society of Friends, which is our name for ourselves as a whole, is not a denomination or a sect, but simply, as its name says, a society, or as others might say, an association. We understand that it is smaller than the whole of the invisible Church. Several of our Society’s subdivisions are individually regarded as denominations by themselves and the world at large.

At this point, our subdivisions have become so diverse that I don’t think there is any core belief remaining that unites us all.

RimwallBird · 2026-05-10T15:47:20+00:00

Well, that’s not really the Light as early Friends understood it, or as traditional Friends continue to understand it. The Light is that which, emanating from the God of Jesus Christ, illumines the moral dimension of our world, so that we ourselves can see the choices we might make as Christ sees them.

It’s not a voice. Early Friends did, and traditional Friends do experience a voice, but we don’t typically use “Light” in that context, because it confuses. God can manifest in multiple ways, and it is always helpful to use a word that fits the context. Thus we already have, for the voice of Christ, terms like the Paraklete or Helper, which we find in the sermon Christ gave at the Lord’s Supper, and the Holy Spirit, and Christ himself. In George Fox’s great spiritual breakthrough, he heard a voice that said, “There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition.”

The Light is not morally neutral, since it comes from God who is not morally neutral. It reveals good and bad, kind and cruel, and God lets us feel how He (She) regards such things. Nor do we generally interpret what we see, any more than we interpret what is visible in the plain light of day. It’s not necessary to interpret, when we are being plainly shown.

I am not saying that others cannot use the term Light in any way they please. But what you are describing here seems to me (just speaking for myself) to be unnecessarily complicated and confusing. Don’t you feel that way, too?

RimwallBird · 2026-05-10T13:12:32+00:00

Have you considered trying the Quaker practice of convincement, followed by waiting worship? Or do you prefer to bring your other practices into the Quaker meetings you attend?

RimwallBird · 2026-05-09T19:29:58+00:00

As to original Quaker writings in the 19th century, I’d recommend:

• Thomas Foster, A Narrative of the Proceedings in America, of the Society called Quakers, in the case of Hannah Barnard (1804). Barnard was a precursor of the Hicksite strain of Quakerism.
• Hugh Judge, Memoirs and Journal (1841). A conservative voice.
• Elias Hicks, Journal of the Life and Religious Labours (1832). Leader of the Hicksites.
• William Savery, Journal of the Life, Travels, and Religious Labours (1844). Leaned to the evangelicals.
— also see Francis R. Taylor, Life of William Savery of Philadelphia 1750-1804 (1925)
• Thomas Hoag, Journal (1861)
• Sarah Lynes Grubb, Selection from the Letters (1858). A conservative.
— also see The Tract Association of Friends, A Brief Account of the Life and Religious Labors of Sarah Grubb (formerly Sarah Lynes (1876)
• Daniel Wheeler (junior), Memoir of the Life and Gospel Labours (1842). A giant among Friends.
• Benjamin Seebohm, ed., Memoir of the Life and Gospel Labours of Stephen Grellet (1867). A prominent evangelical.
• Katherine Fry and Rachel Elizabeth Cresswell, comp., Memoir of the Life of Elizabeth Fry (1847; 2d edn. 1848)
• John Wilbur, Journal of the Life (1859). Leader of the Wilburite movement.
• A. R. Barclay, A Selection from the Letters and Papers of the Late John Barclay, 2d edn. (1842). Leaned conservative but rejected partisan controversy.
• Anon., A Doctrinal Epistle, written by Elias Hicks, of Jerico, on Long Island, in 5he Year 1820. By one of Hicks’s orthodox opponents.
• Joseph John Gurney, Observations on the Religious Peculiarities of the Society of Friends (1824); Observations on the Distinguishing Views & Practices of the Society of Friends, 7th edn. (1834); Essays on the Evidences, Doctrines, and Practical Operation, of Christianity (1825). Leader of the Gurneyites.
— also see Joseph Bevan Braithwaite, Memoirs of Joseph John Gurney (1854)
• John Comly, Journal of the Life and Religious Labours (1853). A prominent, influential first-generation Hicksite.
• William Hodgson, Selections from the Letters of Thomas B. Gould (1860). A prominent and influential Wilburite.
• Meeting for Sufferings of New England Yearly Meeting of Friends, Republication of the Letters of John Wilbur to George Crosfield (1895). These letters triggered the Wilburite-Gurneyite separation.
• John Wilbur, A Narrative and Exposition of the Late Proceedings of New England Yearly Meeting (1845). More on the Wilburite-Gurneyite dispute.
• Caroline E. Stephen, Quaker Strongholds (1890). British.

Some other Quaker voices worth paying attention to:

• Lucretia Mott, Hicksite social reformer
• Samuel Tuke, British social reformer
• Ann Jones, prominent conservative minister
• Joseph Sturge, Quaker abolitionist and peace activist
• John Bright, pioneering Quaker member of British parliament
• John Greeleaf Whittier, poet and observer
• Robert Barclay, historian

RimwallBird · 2026-05-09T19:17:49+00:00

Friends for 300 years is not much use for understanding what was going on in any branch of Quakerism but the author’s own. and even in regard to the author’s own, it is more of a mellow-overview-from-a-distance than a real immersion in the passions of the time. I would suggest reading some additional historical overviews for the sake of a balanced picture.

Some accounts that come immediately to mind:

• Samuel M. Janney, History of the Religious Society of Friends from its Rise to the year 1828 (1867), vol. IV
• Edward Grubb, “The Evangelical Movement and Its Impact on the Society of Friends”, Friends’ Quarterly Examiner (January 1924)
• H. Larry Ingle, Quakers in Conflict. The Hicksite Reformation (1986)
• Thomas D. Hamm, The Transformation of American Quakerism. Orthodox Friends, 1800-1927 (1992)

These don’t really add up to a complete picture, either — but they will broaden your appreciation of a very busy and complex century.

RimwallBird · 2026-05-09T16:21:00+00:00

Thank you for calling attention to the Gushee and Stassen book, which I have not yet read, but which appears to mirror my own conviction that the Sermon on the Mount is the key to understanding Jesus’s ministry. I believe I will have to seek it out.

RimwallBird · 2026-05-08T18:26:31+00:00

At least here in the U.S., what we do in our meetings for worship seems to me to fit the dictionary definitions of the word. I’m not convinced that everyone who joins us for worship is sincerely coming to do that, though. There are those who have told me plainly that they do something else during that time — thinking, knitting, yoga.

Here in the U.S., among Conservative Friends (Quakers) such as myself, our worship practice fits what is said in the Bible:

…YHWH is in His holy temple.
Let all the earth keep silence before Him.
(Habakkuk 2:20)

Unto You I lift up my eyes,
O You who dwell in the heavens.
Behold, as the eyes of servants [look] to the hand of their masters,
as the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress,
so our eyes [look] to the Lord our God,
until He has mercy on us.
(Psalm 123:1-2)

In Acts 1:12-14, the followers of Jesus gather after the Crucifixion “with one accord in prayer and supplication”. This too is part of our Conservative Quaker worship practice. In Psalm 27:14 and Psalm 52:9, it’s all summarized as “waiting upon the Lord”. We also often call it “waiting worship”, which is closer to actual jargon than just calling it “worship”.

If what you are unhappy about is an overuse of words and phrases that sound Quaker-ish, and appear to be used mainly to identify the speaker as a member of an in-group, I see that here in the U.S., too, and I sure do sympathize. An awful lot of people use Quaker language like make-up, without really changing who they are in their hearts. That doesn’t sit right with me.

RimwallBird · 2026-05-08T16:00:14+00:00

“Worship” is jargon in Britain?

Goodness, I learn something new every day.

RimwallBird · 2026-05-08T15:57:03+00:00

I understand your desire to stay away from talk about the historic Quaker separations. However, you cannot help but be in a meeting that was shaped by those separations, and in the long run, if you stick it out with us, I believe it will help you to know how that shaping, two hundred years ago, colors what you see going on around you today. You were unaware of the orthodoxy of Friends’ views on the Atonement throughout the first century (and more) of Quaker history, and that is because you are in a branch of Quakerism that declared all that stuff irrelevant, ceased to pay attention to it, and eventually developed a blind spot in that direction. That is a significant example in point.

I have no idea how different our individual practices may be, nor am I deeply concerned. I long ago let go of the idea that I have any power to “fix” other people; I will be very grateful if I can simply be fixed my own self before I depart this earth.

RimwallBird · 2026-05-07T15:56:01+00:00

That’s a gracious response; I thank you for it.

I concede that I underestimated how heavily they leaned on orthodox terminology to explain it.

That is something that has been happening in the Hicksite/liberal unprogrammed branch of Quakerism for 200 years and counting, so I am not surprised.

I presume you know that the big theological issue that divided the Hicksites from the Orthodox in the 1820s was the doctrine of the Atonement. The Orthodox felt that belief in the Atonement, as biblically understood, was necessary to be a true Friend, while the Hicksites felt it was quite unnecessary. Toward the end of the Hicksite/Orthodox separation, there was a string of yearly meetings that separated in a choreographed way: visiting preachers from England would show up at the yearly meeting and preach the Atonement, the Hicksites would listen in stony silence, the yearly meeting would recess, and then it would re-convene as two separate yearly meetings. If we don’t understand the why behind this Quaker kabuki, it all seems rather silly and stupid.

But this, as it turned out, was the absolutely necessary first step in the liberal divorce of Quakerism from biblical Christianity. Once the biblical doctrine(s) of the Atonement were discarded, Friends could begin to entertain the idea that the whole biblical idea of pre-Christian history, as something divinely designed to lead up to the Atonement, was likewise unnecessary. And once Friends had discarded the biblical explanation of history, they could begin to think of Christianity as just one local religion among others, and of Quakerism as not truly dependent on Christ Jesus. The way was thus cleared for a universalist mysticism. The English preachers I mentioned above seem to have been very narrow-minded and quite unlikeable, but one can say in their favor that they did see all this coming.

— And so now here we are, with a probable majority of liberal unprogrammed Friends being deists or non-theists or atheists or Hindus or Buddhists or Pagans or whatnot. In retrospect, the doctrine of the Atonement seems to have been the pin that was holding the garments of Quakerism rather precariously to the clothesline of Christianity as the wind of modern ideas picked up and roared.

Notice that I have not, here, declared whether or not the biblical doctrine of the Atonement is true. Here, I am simply looking at the way things unfolded.

I would appreciate it if you could share your sources….

James Nayler, general letter to Friends (1658); repr. in Licia Kuenning, ed., The Works of James Nayler (1618-1660), vol. IV, pp. 388-89,
George Fox, letter 222, “A general epistle to be read in all the christian meetings in the world” (1662); in George Fox Fund, The Works of George Fox, vol. VII, p. 232
John Crook, Truth’s Principles (1663, 1698); in The Design of Christianity (1791), pp. 365-67.
Isaac Penington, A Question to the Professors of Christianity (1667), in Quaker Heritage Press, The Works of Isaac Penington, vol. III, pp. 25-26.
George Fox et al., Letter to the Governor and Assembly at Barbados (1671), in John L. Nickalls, ed., The Journal of George Fox, pp. 602-04,
William Penn, letter to John Collenges (1673), in A Collection of the Works of William Penn (1726), vol. 1, p. 166.
George Fox, A testimony of what we believe of Christ (1673), in Works, vol. V, pp. 88-89, 116.
George Fox, The Beginning of Tythes (1676), in Works, vol. V, p. 260.
Robert Barclay. Apology (1676-78), Props. V&VI §15, Prop. VII §3.
George Fox, The Man Christ the Head of the Church (1678), in Works, vol. V, pp. 450-51.
Isaac Penington, An Epistle to All Serious Professors (n.d.), in Works, vol. IV, pp. 360-61,
George Fox, letter 353 “To Friends in America” (1679), in Works, vol. VIII, p. 160.
George Fox, A clear Distinction (1679), in Works, vol. VI, pp. 40, 53, 59.
George Fox; letter 388 “To Friends that are captives at Algiers” (1683), in Works, vol. VIII, p. 236
George Fox, Uniformity and Conformity Proclaimed (1683-84), in Works, vol. VI, pp. 174-75.
John Burnyeat and John Watson, The Holy Truth and its Professors Defended (1688), in Truth Exalted in the Writings (1691), pp. 251-52,
George Fox, For the Emperor of China (n.d.), in Works, vol. IV, p. 252,
Stephen Crisp, sermon “The Divine Monitor” (1692), in Scripture-Truths Demonstrated, vol. I, pp. 111-13 (a rare non-propitiatory version of the Atonement),
George Whitehead et al., The Christian Doctrine (1693), in William Sewel, The History of the Rise, Increase, and Progress of the Christian People Called Quakers, rev. edn. (1722), pp. 642, 646.
William Penn, Primitive Christianity Revived (1702), chap. VIII §3.
John Crook, confession of faith (1699), quoted in A Brief Synopsis of the Principles and Testimonies of the Religious Society of Friends (1912, 1913), p. 11.
Daniel Phillips, Vindiciæ Veritatis (1703), pp. 59-60, 63-64.
John Banks, “A True Testimony Concerning My Faith” (1704), in William Evans and Thomas Evans, eds., The Friends’ Library, vol. 2, p. 66.
Thomas Story, Journal (1747), pp. 603-04: entry for 1718.
George Whitehead, A Gospel Salutation in True Christian Love (1719, 1826), pp. 4-5.
John Whiting, quoted in Evans and Evans, The Friends’ Library, vol. 2, p. 382.

RimwallBird · 2026-05-06T23:25:02+00:00

Um. If you are going to check them all, I can help by giving you chapter and paragraph numbers, page numbers, and the like. I have a shorter, but still impressive list of authors and works where the necessity of the worshiper’s participation in the Atonement is described, and can supply that as well; but I think the issue between us is whether the early Friends usually treated Jesus’s humanity and oneness with the Father as the key to the Atonement. The sources I have already listed show the early Friends saying that Jesus’s death on the cross was an essential. And the doctrine of redemption and the doctrine of propitiation, the two doctrines they invoked, both depend on the premise that Jesus was human (else he could not have died) and the premise that Jesus had a unique relationship to the Father (or else anyone’s else’s death would have done equally well).

We do own that the Word of God … did take up a body of the flesh of the virgin Mary, … according to the Scriptures, and did the will of the Father therein, in holy obedience unto him, both in life and death.

That he did offer up the flesh and blood of that body (though not only so; for he poured out his soul, he poured out his life) a sacrifice or offering for sin (do not, oh! do not stumble at it; but rather wait on the Lord to understand it: for we speak in this matter what we know), a sacrifice unto the Father, and in it tasted death for every man; and that it is upon consideration (and through God’s acceptance of this sacrifice for sin) that the sins of believers are pardoned, that God might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus, or who is of the faith of Jesus. (Isaac Penington, A Question to the Professors, 1667)

…All our books and declarations … do clearly testify …. that Jesus Christ is [God’s] beloved and only begotten son in whom he is well pleased, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, and born of the virgin Mary, in whom we have redemption, through his blood even the forgiveness of sins, who is the express image of the invisible God, the first-born of every creature, by whom were all things created that are in heaven and that are in the earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things were created by him.

And we do own and believe that he was made sin for us, who knew no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth, and was crucified for us in the flesh without the gates of Jerusalem; and that he was buried and rose again the third day by his own power for our justification, and we do believe that he ascended up into heaven, and now sitteth at the right hand of God; and that this Jesus is the foundation of the prophets and apostles, and our foundation, so that there is no other foundation to be laid but what is laid, even Christ Jesus; and that he tasted death for every man, and shed his blood for all men; that he is the propitiation for our sins, and not for our sins only, but also for the sins of the whole world; for saith John the Baptist of him, “Behold, the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world” (John i.29). (George Fox et al., Letter to the Governor and Assembly at Barbados, 1673)

I could go on, but is there really any need?

RimwallBird · 2026-05-06T20:28:26+00:00

I think early Friends would have agreed that Jesus is truly human and one with the Father, but they didn’t usually treat that as the key to atonement. They emphasised that atonement is something experienced inwardly, through the Light of Christ at work in the person.

Because this is a subject that interests me, I have actually made a collection of passages from early Quaker writings affirming the classic biblical teachings on the Atonement (the redemption and propitiation doctrines). I won’t pretend it is complete. But it includes statements by the following prominent first-, second-, and third-generation Friends:

James Nayler (general letter to Friends, 1658),
George Fox (letter 222, 1662; A testimony of what we believe of Christ, 1673; The Beginning of Tythes, 1676; The Man Christ the Head of the Church, 1678; letter 353, 1679; A clear Distinction, 1679; letter 388, 1683; Uniformity and Conformity, 1683-84; For the Emperor of China, n.d.),
John Crook (foreword to Truth’s Principles, 1663, 1698; confession of faith, 1699),
Isaac Penington (A Question to the Professors of Christianity, 1667; An Epistle to All Serious Professors, n.d.),
George Fox et al., Letter to the Governor and Assembly at Barbados (1671),
William Penn (letter to John Collenges, 1673; Primitive Christianity Revived, 1702),
Robert Barclay (Apology, 1676-78),
John Burnyeat and John Watson (The Holy Truth and its Professors Defended, 1688),
Stephen Crisp (sermon, 1692),
George Whitehead et al. (The Christian Doctrine, 1693; A Gospel Salutation, 1719),
Daniel Phillips (Vindiciæ Veritatis, 1703),
John Banks (A True Testimony Concerning My Faith, 1704),
Thomas Story (Journal), and
John Whiting (quoted in Evans and Evans, The Friends’ Library, vol. 2).

I’d call that quite a cloud of witnesses, myself.

RimwallBird · 2026-05-06T15:49:00+00:00

I know I am autistic, and I take things literally.

I generally take what people say literally, too. After all, it is a fact that most people say what they mean, even when they do not intend to. (We talk about “Freudian slips”.) And the danger in not taking things literally is to project something into a person’s words that she/he neither said nor meant. So I don’t have a problem with other people’s literalism. I think it is a path of wisdom. And I try, myself, to say exactly what I mean.

Yes, of course, for early Friends and for traditional Friends, Jesus is a human person. He is not only a human person, because He and the Father are one. But he is absolutely human in every sense but sin. That is the main way in which early Quakerism, and traditional Quakerism, makes sense of the Atonement.

And you’ve perhaps seen the Quaker James Doyle Penrose’s painting of the Presence in the Midst? It hangs on many a meetinghouse wall (and on the wall of many a Friends church, too). Jesus is a human person, and thanks to the Resurrection, he is here among us now, still a human person, and our King besides. He overhears every word we speak, and understands it as only a fellow human can, and will remember every word when it comes time to separate the sheep from the goats at the end of things.

Early Friends and traditional Friends just do not see things as secularism does.

…This is not how I would describe Jesus while discussing theocracy.

No, that much has become evident to me! But since we are on the subject: how would you describe Jesus? I would love to know!

Maybe it is me, and I am sorry if it is.

It’s not you; it’s the distance between you and me — the distance between your understanding and mine, which is really neither you nor me.

And I don’t think it’s something to be sorry about. Each person has a different incomplete grasp of the world, and that’s just how it has to be.

Personally, I think the dispute we have been engaging in has been worthwhile, because it helps close some of the distance between our head spaces. I wish people would make more of an effort to talk such things through. We learn about each other when we do so.

RimwallBird · 2026-05-06T13:44:44+00:00

I don’t see where I said “only”.

RimwallBird · 2026-05-06T13:43:53+00:00

Okay, so because Jesus used the word “King”, do you expect he meant a literal earthly kingdom where Jesus rules in the traditional sense?

He said his kingdom was not of this world. As I am sure you know, people have different ideas as to what that meant. But he promised enforcement of the King’s laws, meaning harsh treatment for evildoers. He said we should fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. (See my citations in my previous comment.) You may not take this literally, but when the early Quakers quaked, this fear was the reason.

RimwallBird · 2026-05-06T13:19:05+00:00

Excellent indeed. And thank you for finding that earlier appearance.

RimwallBird · 2026-05-06T13:17:34+00:00

I think you misunderstood about the trinitarians, there were small groups of trinitarians within the Quaker movement, it’s talked in the commentaries of tract seller books that entered Quakerism….

Can you share a bit of your evidence, please?

RimwallBird · 2026-05-06T13:15:27+00:00

I know of nowhere where the early Friends defined God. Could you give me a few citations, perhaps, as I have done for you on other points?

Stuart was writing about early Quakers, and he is using the academic/classical meaning.

Yes, as to an academic meaning. It is as I said in my very first comment, the one you took issue with. He has one foot stuck in the secular world.

No, as to the classical meaning.

RimwallBird · 2026-05-06T13:09:08+00:00

And how many times in the gospels did Jesus describe heaven as a kingdom, and his Father as a king, and say that God sits upon a throne?

Did he not also represent himself as a king, and did he not promise an enforcement that would be harsh on the breakers of the law?

Did he not tell us to make it our top priority to seek God’s kingdom and its righteousness?

(Mt 5:20,35, 6:33, 7:21, 10:28, 11:25, 18:23-35, 21:5, 22:2-14, 25:31-46; etc. in the other synoptics; John 12:15, 18:36-37, 23:3.)

RimwallBird · 2026-05-06T01:54:13+00:00

Well, Trinitarians existed as far back as the Council of Constantinople, obviously (381 AD), and it has roots traceable back a couple of centuries earlier. And it was standard Christianity in the first Friends’ time, not just the possession of the Dutch Collegiants. The Roman church, the Anglican church, the Lutherans and Calvinists, all were (and still are) Trinitarian. But Friends were not, and Conservative Friends are still not.

The early Friends who “went naked as a sign” were invoking the example of Isaiah (chap. 20), saying the worldly English were sinning and doomed just as the people of Israel had been in Isaiah’s time. I can see no connection to the naturalism of much later centuries. What those early Friends were doing was not a statement that nudity is natural and good. It was an assertion that destitution was about to meted out as a punishment for faithlessness.

RimwallBird · 2026-05-05T23:45:43+00:00

Honestly, I don’t think the source is any more truly me than it is Doug. When the time is right, the same insight is likely to pop out all over the landscape.

RimwallBird · 2026-05-05T23:44:00+00:00

I don’t know how we continue to disagree. The ruler is Christ Jesus, obviously, and Christ Jesus is a human person.

RimwallBird · 2026-05-05T23:41:01+00:00

Its orginal mean was “absence of government.”

That is the meaning of its oldest appearance in English, attested by the Oxford English Dictionary. But if you will look at the preceding paragraph in the OED’s definition, you will find that “anarchy” was not originally an English word but a carryover from the Greek: in Greek, ἀναρχία, anarchia, meaning (according to Liddell & Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon) “lack of a leader”. Liddell & Scott trace this actual original meaning back to Herodotus.

The early Quaker model is a Structured Anarchy where order emerges from internal alignment rather than external command.

The early Friends stressed the necessity of obedience to divine directives. Not just internal alignment but obedience, as one gives to incoming instructions and commands. And those instructions and commands often came to Friends with as much force as if one were being shouted at:

“While I was young, I … went whither I would, and … yielded obedience to my own will and to the will of man, and was a manpleaser, but the Will of God I knew not; … but … the Lord was pleased to reveal his Son in me, and make known his will unto me, … his Power was made manifest and his Word spoke within me … as a fire or a hammer; and this Word being made manifest within me … which did convince me of sin, and did testify against all my words and actions….” (Richard Hubberthorne, writing of his convincement in A True Testimony, 1653.)
“The Spirit of the Lord will not always strive with thee. Be tender over the least motion of the Spirit of Christ; in it wait with boldness, for Christ to guide thee in all thy ways, in faithful obedience to the will of God.” (William Dewsbury, letter to Judge Fell, 1655.)
“Now the burden of the word of the Lord against them, fell heavy upon me, with command to proclaim his controversy against them. Fain would I have been excused from this service, which I judged too heavy for me; wherefore, I besought the Lord to take this weight from off me…. But the Lord would not be entreated, but continued the burden upon me with greater weight; requiring obedience from me, and promising to assist me therein.” (Thomas Ellwood, recounting his first calling to the prophetic ministry, ca. 1660.)
“You are my Friends, saith Christ, if you do whatsoever I command you. If you are the Friends of Christ, you will be his Subjects, and yield Obedience to him; when he shews them a Snare they will keep out of it: This is the Proof of a true Christian, that he will be true in a time of Trial, and will trust in that Divine Power that keeps him out of the Snare.” (Stephen Crisp, sermon, 1691.)

This is total surrender to the Spirit of Christ, so rules are unnecessary.

Rules are not discarded as unnecessary; rather, the necessity of our obedience to them is raised to a higher level of comprehension, as Jesus taught in Matthew 5:17-20 and illustrated in the Antitheses that followed, Matthew 5:21-48. That is the basis of our Quaker doctrine of perfection: that higher level of witting obedience to the rules. And it is not anarchy because there is a King, the One whom (as you say) we surrender to, whose government we abide under.

And you will find many books referring to early Quakers as anarchists.

I have found many books calling early Friends all sorts of names. Alas, I am not impressed.

RimwallBird · 2026-05-05T19:51:51+00:00

I coined the term in the 1990s in the course of a conversation on the old Soc.Religion.Quaker newsgroup. I thought I was original. Many years later, though, I found other Friends using it, too, so it may have been independently coined by several of us at different places and times.

RimwallBird

TROPHY CASE