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QUAKERS  (RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS)

            The Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers as they are popularly known, can be considered the first alternative religion in the American colonies. When the first Quaker pioneers, two women in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and one in Virginia, landed on the American continent in 1656, they posed a threat to the established churches--Congregationalist in New England and the Church of England in the southern colonies. While some branches of Quakerism have assumed mainstream characteristics in the ensuing 345 years, others retain unique features and testimonies and all continue to espouse pacifism, making them unpopular especially at time of war.

History.

            Quakerism dates its origin to 1652, when George Fox,  its  charismatic founder, came into the north country in England and met a large group of Seekers who found his preaching compelling. Fox believed that the risen Christ was present and available to everyone as a teacher and that through inner baptisms and inner communion it was possible for men and women to rid themselves of the burden of sin and become as Adam and Eve had been before the fall. Fox was an ardent student of the Bible and believed it to be divinely inspired, but he also believed that it must be read and interpreted in the light of the Spirit. He advocated the use of plain language (saying thee and thou rather than you in the singular); refused to take off his hat to authorities, or in fact to recognize anyone's authority over him; objected to all priests and steeple houses; believed that the sacraments must be inward not outward; and taught his followers to worship in silence, waiting for the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

            Those in the group that gathered around him called themselves Children of the Light but were eventually nicknamed Quakers by a hostile judge. They suffered much persecution in England over their refusal to pay tithes or obey authority. Desiring to spread the good news of their new religion, they traveled up and down the British Isles preaching, and then took their message to Holland, Germany, and the American colonies.

            Originally Quakers were loosely organized, but with the coming of persecution it became necessary for some structure to be developed. As a result, beginning around 1660, local congregations were set up as meetings for worship throughout the country. Each meeting was responsible for the care and discipline of its own members and the supervision of smaller worship groups, called preparative meetings. Meetings occurred monthly for the conduct of business and were called monthly meetings. Once every three months, monthly meetings in a region would gather for a Quarterly Meeting, and once a year all the Quakers for a Yearly Meeting. The whole was bound together by a common set of rules, or "book of discipline," developed by the Yearly Meeting. Yearly Meetings kept in touch with one another through epistles prepared and read at the time of the meeting.

             In the American colonies the Quakers were regarded as heretical. The pioneers in New England were imprisoned, searched for signs of witchcraft, and shipped out. Later, when more Quakers arrived to take their place, the Puritans began to pass anti-Quaker laws. Eventually a number of Quakers were imprisoned and flogged and four were hanged. Persecution was somewhat less virulent at first in the southern colonies, but soon Virginia and Maryland were imprisoning Quaker visitors. In New York the Quakers were whipped and punished until the directors of the Dutch West India Company intervened. The establishment of Pennsylvania as a haven for the Quakers in 1682 was a response to persecution in the colonies as well as in England.

            Eventually persecution stopped and the Quakers prospered. They were frugal and industrious and retained many ties to Quaker merchants and bankers in England. In North Carolina and in Rhode Island a Quaker governor was elected. In Pennsylvania many members of the ruling Assembly were Quakers, and in New Jersey they comprised the proprietors. They built solid, handsome meetinghouses for their unique form of silent worship and equally solid homes in which to raise their large families. Set aside by their unique dress, their use of plain language, and their refusal to pay tithes or support the military, the Friends nevertheless became well-respected citizens in many areas.

            In subsequent history, Friends have played both an insider and an outsider role. They have established many schools and colleges and philanthropic organizations, and have played a role in public life, including contributing two U.S. presidents: Herbert Hoover and Richard Nixon. On the other hand, they have retained a role as a critic of American society, particularly of slavery, which they resisted, and of war, which they continue resist. Quakers were also leaders in the struggle or the rights of Native Americans and women.

Schisms

Their very creedless-ness has caused Quakers to be subject to schisms over matters of belief and practice. In 1827, they split into two groups over questions of church authority versus individual conscience, and also a difference between those who were affected by the new Evangelicalism and those who clung to the older Quaker belief in the inward Christ. A second split occurred in 1845. Following the Civil War, many Quaker meetings in the Midwest began to feel the need of the services of a pastor and a more organized worship service. Early in the twentieth century, these pastoral Friends again split over questions of doctrine, and a group of Friends churches formed the Evangelical Friends Alliance. There were other smaller splits.

Quakers Today

            Today Friends are divided among a group of yearly meetings that retains the practice of silent worship and gathers informally in the Friends General Conference, a midwestern group of Friends Churches that form the Friends United Meeting, and the Evangelical Friends Alliance, with most of its yearly meetings in the West. The latter two groups have developed missionary outreach, so that there are today Friends in Africa, Asia, and Latin America with ties to American Quakerism. There are several smaller groupings. Each has its own service organization, publications, and institutions. Altogether there are approximately 108,000 Quakers in the United States today.

Present Trends

            Many young people have begun attending the silent Friends meetings in university towns or cities, attracted by the peace testimony and by social activism, believing that they have found a religion which permits them to believe whatever they wish and to join in group meditation. They are sometimes startled when older members of the meeting insist that Quakerism has a strong Christocentric heritage and because of its worldwide fellowship with other Quaker groups it cannot be entirely bent to the wishes of a particular congregation.

            The very reliance on the inward Christ, or the inner light, which was the hallmark of the origins of the society, has encouraged a degree of individualism which may be partly responsible for the wide range of modem Quaker belief. To go from a liberal, silent Friends meeting, where former Jews and Muslims are accepted into the fellowship and same-sex marriage may be celebrated, to an evangelical meeting, with a conventional service and the preaching of a strongly Christocentric message of salvation, and where homosexuality is regarded as a sin, can be profoundly unsettling. It is tempting for each extreme to tell itself that it is an expression of "the real Quakerism." Yet both have roots in the original Quaker message and both express testimonies in regard to peace and equality which have made an impact on American culture, and continue today to represent aspects of the American conscience.

--MARGARET HOPE BACON 

Excerpted from The Encyclopedia of Cults, Sects and New Religions Edited by James R. Lewis  published by  www.prometheusbooks.com Prometheus Books

http://www.quaker.org

http://www.fgcquaker.org

http://www.fum.org References Barbour, Hugh. The Quakers in Puritan England. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1964.

Brock, Peter. The Quaker Peace Testimony. New York: Sessions, 1991. Frost, J. William, and Edwin Bronner. The Quakers. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen, 1990.