Lately we were visited at our Sunday Meetings by a devout and recently born again "Christian" of a somewhat evangelical bent. During afterthoughts each week she attended, she felt commanded by God to read a passage of the bible "to bring us understanding and to remind us of the Christian roots of Quakerism", as she claimed in her ministry that followed. The passages were all from parts of the Old Testament and told of the wrath of God and certainty of his vengeance. She was very well versed, and claimed to have read Fox and "knew him to be among God's elect".
She has now moved on, God having commanded her to go elsewhere, his words having fallen on barren ground with us. We are clearly among those whose ears and hearts are closed up by our arrogance; yet, in her eyes, Quakers had once been among the truest of Christians. I gather from her homilies that the world is divided into the 'saved' – those that have heard the word – and the 'damned', who are deaf to their saving power.
On one occasion she said in a somewhat vexed way "I thought you were Christians!". Clearly, we are not what she understands by being "Christian". I did say to her that many, even in the early years of Quakerism, also thought we were not Christians.
The experience has left me pondering about the early Quakers. Was she right about the type of Christian she thought they were? I think it is possible to read Fox and the other early Quakers and to find among their words strands of evangelical thought; but then, there is also much that does not fit with that.
This may be in part why North American Quakers split in two in the nineteenth century: those who followed an evangelical path, finding succour among the early Quaker's words, and those who did not, also finding succour among the early Quaker's words; both finding vindication where they chose.
George Fox in his wanderings had plenty of opportunity to fall in with communities of an evangelical bent, such as the Baptists, or one or other of the many Anabaptist fellowships, amongst others. He did not. Instead he fell in with communities of Seekers. What he discovered amongst them was not so much evangelical as mystical: experience not to be captured by words.
The Catholic mystics of the Middle Ages, spoke of 'syndereses' – the essence, ground, or centre of the soul that enters into communion with God; the spark or emanation of divinity in the soul – which seems to be as good a description of Christian mysticism as one is likely to get: the umbilicus within each person that connects us with the divine, which can be discovered during the deepest contemplative silence.
Interestingly, Carl Jung suggested that there was such a point in the unconscious of all people, that he called the God archetype; a psychic umbilicus with the latent potential of awakening our spirituality.
Fox told Friends to "walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in every one", pointing to the same nub, which he thought could be found in all: the Quaker omphalos.
In Don Cupitt's words, Fox "sought to bring spiritual power down from heaven and
disperse it into human hearts"
Was it the discovery by Fox of mysticism amongst the Seekers that "answered to his condition"? An experience that takes you out of the clouds of words and beliefs – the "windy doctrines" which he had encountered "blowing people up and down" (or, as he wrote in his Journal about the doctrines of the preachers he encountered "by which they blew the people about, this way and the other way, from sect to sect.") Mysticism is about a relationship that is felt, experienced, known, but which is beyond words and beliefs. It is essentially inexpressible, but transformative.
Now I came up in spirit, through the flaming sword, into the paradise of God. All things were new, and all the creation gave another smell unto me than before, beyond what words can utter. I knew nothing but pureness, innocence, and righteousness, being renewed up into the image of God by Christ Jesus; so that I came up to the state of Adam, which he was in before he fell. George Fox,1648 (see Qf&p 26.03)
Was this the "Christ Jesus" of the Evangelicals? A transcendent presence, to be magically connected with by fervent belief and devotion? An unseen but ever present and surrounding being who might "save" you? The risen Jesus Christ whose return to sit in judgement is to be anticipated? A magically embracing cloud? Or was this "Christ Jesus" as a template, and exemplar, sent by God to set the pattern for living? I think Fox is ambiguous, and can be read either way. However, mysticism bypasses belief and magical thinking, and suggests a template, a pattern, an example. A figure to be imitated, not worshipped. Was this ambivalence and avoidance of doctrine why the Quakers were so often accused of denying the trinity? Certainly, in The Sandy Foundations Shaken the trinity was explicitly denied by William Penn, whose preference it was to see Jesus Christ as a pattern sent as an exemplar.
The rejection of any form of formal worship, rites or rituals which, according to Fox, "stood in forms without power", so that Quaker "fellowship might be in the holy spirit" was done to enable direct and immediate communion with the divine, accessed from within (syndereses): a communal mystical pathway to be had in the practice of the shared stillness and silence of Meeting. A silence from which rose the words of spontaneous ministry, as well as the inspiration to live rightfully.
According to some, to be Jewish is to obey the laws of Moses; to be diligent and observant. It is about how you live, not so much about what you believe. It is of the here and now in its practices. Was that what the early Quakers were attempting to be like? Living in the truth, observing the new law as taught in the Gospels?
A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another. John 13.34 & 35 (King James version)
Some of the early Quakers seemed to think they could live in the here and now in the same state as Adam before the fall:
So a man or woman may
come to Adam's state that he was in before he fell, which was without
sin. Against such the judgment of God does not go forth, but they
have peace with God, and fellowship
in what is pure, before sin and transgression were. (Stephen Crisp (1628–1692), The Missing Cross to Purity.)
In some ways, Quakerism is nearer to Judaism than it is to Evangelicalism: it is about obedient and observant living in the here and now, building the kingdom of God(liness) day by day in how you live, not being caught up in the "windy doctrines" about some second coming and day of judgement, or about being 'saved'. It is more about doing than believing.
Early Quakers differ so much from so many other Christians by not being obviously lapsarian, that the professor of Theology, Donald Nesti, who researched Quakerism from a Catholic perspective, thinks they are an entirely separate branch of Christianity, neither belonging to the Catholic tradition, nor to the Protestant tradition, both of which rely on lapsarian theologies, or notions of original sin; an alienation from God and the possibility of redemption. Early Quakers did not seem to think they were alienated because there was "that of God" within which could guide their lives in the here and now, so that they might live in the state of Adam before the fall: their God was immanent and his kingdom forged by rightful living.
Certainly, although a modern not an early Quaker, the Swiss Quaker Pierre Ceresole expressed the practical here and now nature of Quakerism better than many I have read, rejecting the worship of Jesus Christ, seeing that as idolatry:
The name of Jesus Christ has come to mean more than his work, it has become your idol. You are simply worshipping a name. The best justification for atheism is: to be in rebellion against the worship of words. I suggest that the time has come to give up using his name, which has divided us, and to return to his work, which will untie us. (p.20, For Peace and Truth from the Note-Books of Pierre Ceresole, 1954)
Having cut themselves off from the anchoring provided by the teachings, creeds, beliefs and doctrines of, not only the established Church, but also the other numerous varieties of denominations that had sprouted like fresh grass during the Civil War and the Interregnum, the early Quakers were left beating their own path, often in a zigzag way as they evolved: sometimes lurching towards evangelicalism, sometimes away. They knew truth experimentally. They also knew it to be beyond words. They tried to make their lives a testimony in action by right living, by doing things in Gospel order.
