I was moved in the Lord's power to thresh their chaffy, light minds, part one

Haddonfield Friends Meeting
Haddonfield, NJ
August 12, 2007

What did I know about Quakers before attending this meeting? Unless eating lots of Quaker Oats oatmeal counts for something, not a lot. Most of what I did know was rather haphazard. I knew that George Fox was the group’s founder. I knew that the term Quaker had been applied to them derisively, because early members of the group shivered or “quaked” during meetings. I knew that Quakers had been among the important leaders in the Abolitionist movement in the US and England, that they are pacifists, and that their worship meetings consist mostly of stretches of silence, broken by people standing up and speaking as they are led of God – no sermon and no preacher. I knew that they believed in plain dress and, historically, addressed each other using the antiquated terms thee and thou.

I knew that William Penn was a famous Quaker who had founded the commonwealth of Pennsylvania under a charter from King Charles II, who gave him the land in order to pay back a loan. I knew that Richard Nixon had been raised a Quaker, although I wasn’t sure how much he had kept up with it as an adult – not much, I would guess, if pacifism is an essential tenet.

As I thought about it, it seemed embarrassing that I didn’t know more about Quakers, seeing that I had lived in Philadelphia or its suburbs for more than ten years. I had even visited Pennsbury Manor, William Penn’s beautiful restored estate on the Delaware River. I needed to know more, but before I visited the Haddonfield Friends meeting, the only thing I managed to do was to read the first two chapters of the Journal of George Fox the founder of this denomination (1624-1691).

Fox’s journal conducts the reader into the mind of an enormously unusual man. From a very young age Fox had a dislike of seeing older folks “behave lightly and wantonly towards each other,” and vowed that he would never act like that when he grew up. Apprenticed to a shoemaker, he was a peculiarly conscientious youth. At the age of nineteen he had a beer with some friends, but soon left the group, grieved by their foolishness. He spent the night in remorseful prayer, decrying the vanity of young people.

Soon after the drinking incident, young Fox “broke off all familiarity or fellowship with young or old,” and commenced wandering about the country in despair. He went to many priests for advice, but found no relief. He came back home, didn’t get along with his family, and took to wandering again. Fox continued “in great sorrow and trouble, and walked many nights by myself.”

He took counsel with a priest, who advised him to “take tobacco and sing psalms,” a message you probably won't get from too many pastors today. This advice displeased Fox: “tobacco was a thing I did not love, and psalms I was not in a state to sing; I could not sing.” He had a falling out with the priest, and claimed that the priest “told my troubles, sorrows, and griefs to his servants, so that it got out among the milk-lasses.” (You have to sympathize there. I know I hate it when my troubles become gossip among the milk-lasses.) So Fox tried getting help from yet another priest, “but found him like an empty, hollow cask.”

Fox then brought his complaints to someone named Dr. Craddock, and as they walked in the garden discussing his doubts and despair, Fox happened to step upon some of the plants, which put Dr. Craddock into a rage, and ended the counseling.

He went to yet another priest, who seems to have had expertise in medical as well as spiritual matters. This man tried to bleed Fox, but “they could not get one drop of blood from me, either in arms or head (though they endeavoured to do so), my body being, as it were, dried up with sorrows, grief and troubles, which were so great upon me that I could have wished I had never been born.”

Fox continued in his morose ways. At Christmas time he refused to feast or “sport,” but contented himself with visiting widows and giving them money. (It’s not clear to me how he got this money, as he doesn’t seem to have been working, just wandering around bemoaning things.)

In early 1646 Fox had some revelations: 1) All Christians are believers, whether Protestant or Catholic; 2) a degree from Oxford or Cambridge doesn’t make a man fit for ministry; and 3) God doesn’t dwell in buildings.

These revelations seem pretty tame to us nowadays, but apparently they were quite striking to Fox. He began to have more revelations, or “great openings,” including some sort of insight into the Book of Revelation. The “priests and professors” (professor was a common term at that time for Christian – someone who professed faith) advised Fox to stay away from the book of Revelation, but of course he knew better than they did.

Fox met up with Ranters, a dissenting group of nonconformists. Ranters claimed to have achieved perfection, which they sometimes expressed through nudity. (Historian J. C. Davis has put forth the view that Ranters actually didn’t exist at all, but were a sort of urban myth of the time, created to scare people into getting back into the established church, lest they become as wacky as those crazy nonconformists.) At any rate, Fox claimed to have converted most of the Ranters to his way of thinking, even if we’re not sure who the Ranters were, or how exactly they were organized.

Although he sometimes experienced interludes of “heavenly joy,” Fox seems to have continued hiking about the country, tormented and miserable, trusting neither the priests nor the members of the dissenting churches, for some time. He concluded that no mortal could help him: “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. Thus when God doth work, who shall hinder it? and this I knew experimentally.”

He began preaching, and people flocked to hear him: “A report went abroad of me, that I was a young man that had a discerning spirit; whereupon many came to me, from far and near, professors, priests, and people. The Lord's power broke forth, and I had great openings and prophecies, and spoke unto them of the things of God, which they heard with attention and silence, and went away and spread the fame thereof.”

After his preaching career began, Fox experienced a period of doubt wherein he became convinced that he had sinned against the Holy Ghost (referring to the mysterious text that has dogged most spiritual adventurers at one point or another), but eventually he “got over that temptation also.” Thus ends chapter one.

I had begun the book expecting to like George Fox, the friendly Quaker, and instead found myself repulsed, attracted, amazed, filled with pity, curious, and awed. The founder of the Society of Friends was one of least friendly guys in history! I’m pretty sure that if he met me he would denounce me (and rightly so, by his standards). He seemed to live in an alternate universe – so close, and yet so far. I saw connections between him and other religious superstars, such as Sts. Paul and Francis, Martin Luther, the Pilgrims, Mother Ann Lee.

That was all I managed to read before the visit. I wondered how much contemporary Quakers resemble their founder. If it’s anything like the degree to which other Christians resemble theirs, I shouldn’t expect much.