Radical re-centring

Part of the wonderful journey of discovery resulting from researching Irene Pickard's archive – it was like being a tourist for six years through other peoples minds and spiritual experiences – was encountering the radical re-centring that seems to lie at the root of Quakerism. 

The derailing of the spiritual authority of the Catholic Church by the Reformation and of its replacement, the Church of England, by the dethroning of Charles I, left a space for ordinary people to explore their spirituality without the fear of punishment. 

The publication of King James' authorised translation of the Bible into English (1611) and the spread of literacy due to the availability of books and other printed material, enabled many of the post 1611 generations to have direct access to 'the word of God' which had been denied to earlier generations. They had the tools to explore what had formally been the preserve of Latin reading priests, and some of them did just that:

At another time it was opened in me that God, who made the world, did not dwell in temples made with hands. This, at the first seemed a strange word because both priests and people use to call their temples or churches, dreadful places, and holy ground, and the temple of God. But the Lord showed me, so I did see clearly, that he did not dwell in these temples which men had commanded and set up, but in people's hearts; for both Stephen and the Apostle Paul bore testimony that he did not dwell in temples made with hands, not even in that which he had once commanded to be built, since he put an end to it; but that his people were his temple, and he dwelt in them.
The Journal of George Fox 1647

Fox was far from alone. The combination of direct access to the Bible and the freedom from fear of persecution led many to be radically adventurous, following where their deepest conscience led. And that was the point: they had not lost their lust for spiritual truth, if fact, set free of the fetters of church authority, it grew stronger. They sought for new centres of authority for their spirituality to replace the crumbling edifices of institutionalised religion. As Professor Alec Ryrie suggests in his Gresham College lecture The Spiritual Quest against Religion, they were bravely going where only heretics had dared to tread.

Their conclusions could be extremely radical. Here is Margaret Fell telling of George Fox's words which had so profoundly altered her life: 

'The Scriptures were the prophets’ words and Christ’s and the apostles’ words, and what as they spoke they enjoyed and possessed and had it from the Lord’. And said, ‘Then what had any to do with the Scriptures, but as they came to the Spirit that gave them forth. You will say, Christ saith this, and the apostles say this; but what canst thou say? Art thou a child of Light and hast walked in the Light, and what thou speakest is it inwardly from God?’   Margaret Fell, 1694

Conclusions that anyone could have direct access to the same source that had inspired Christ and the apostles – an inward 'light' that made truth shine in the heart; and when the light shone, the world changed:

Now I was come 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.   George Fox, 1648

It was the charismatic experience of communion with the holy spirit (that of God in everyone). A radical re-centring which validated the spiritual experience of each and every person. Experiences that led to 'great openings' as Fox called them. 

And I went back into Nottinghamshire, and there the Lord shewed me that the natures of those things which were hurtful without were within, in the hearts and minds of wicked men. The natures of dogs, swine, vipers, of Sodom and Egypt. Pharoah, Cain, Ishmael, Esau, etc. The natures of these I saw within, though people had been looking without. And I cried to the Lord, saying, 'Why should I be thus, seeing I was never addicted to commit those evils?' And the Lord answered that it was needful I should have a sense of all conditions, how else should I speak to all conditions; and in this I saw the infinite love of God. I also saw that there was an ocean of darkness and death, but an infinite ocean of light and love, which flowed over the ocean of darkness. And in that also I saw the infinite love of God, and I had great openings.   George Fox, 1647

That radical, iconoclastic path was never going to be comfortable to follow, as the Woodbooke tutor Stuart Masters told in his 2020 Salter Seminar, Creating Heaven on Earth: The Radical Vision of Early Quakers: The World Turned Upside-Down.

Three hundred years after George Fox, Carl Jung was encouraging his patients to discover and connect with exactly that same centre, the inner well-spring of guidance and inspiration, no matter what they termed it: it would present itself to them in whatever form best suited their prejudices. 

The language available to Fox in a deeply Christian milieu was always going to shape the expression of his 'openings'; the language available to Jung's patients in a much more secular-scientific age would likewise shape theirs. What they shared in common was the force of that inner compass once it was discovered.

Margaret Fell and Spinoza

One of the more unlikely surprises I had during my research was a connection between Margaret Fell (1614 – 1702) and Baruch Spinoza (1632 – 1677): Spinoza translated Margaret's Epistles to the Jews into Hebrew. 

Margaret Fell, who became George Fox's wife later in her life, is very much one of the co-founders of Quakerism, giving it the pastoral structures that enabled it to survive, especially through those early years of persecution and imprisonment. She herself suffered two lengthy spells in prison. Perhaps her most significant writing is Womens Speaking Justified (1666), in which she argued for spiritual equality between men and women, and equal weight being given to their ministry. It is in many ways the foundation of the Testimony of Equality that has stood ever since.

Spinoza I knew from my undergraduate studies in the early 1970s. Margaret Fell I only encountered after I came into Quaker circles some ten or so years ago. That Spinoza, one of the outstanding philosophers of his age, should have encountered Quakers at all seemed unlikely: Quakers were very few and thin on the ground, almost unknown outside England or Wales at that time, and he was a Dutch Jew, who never travelled outside of the Netherlands.

However, following his expulsion from the Amsterdam Jewish community (1656), Spinoza formed relationships with the Dutch Collegiants and via them with the Quakers, some of whom were travelling in Holland, having been drawn to the Collegiants, feeling that they were fellow spirits. He didn't join either, but he did spend time with both, moving to be nearer the headquarters of the Collegiants. It was during that period he offered to translate Margaret's epistle.

In many ways the Collegiants and the Quakers shared much in common, certainly in their attitude of distaste for the established and hierarchical churches, and for a shared attitude towards scriptures as inspired guidance rather than divine writ. They also shared a great tolerance of diverse views, seeing what spoke in people's hearts to be a better guide than the diktats of any church. 

Both had many among them those who embraced Spinoza's vision of God – a view very far removed from the dominant vision of the times. It has been called pantheism – the identity of reality and divinity – or, more crudely, God = Nature, but it is more sophisticated than that. However, it was a vision that placed human beings as the active agents and 'God' as a passive background, enabling and inspiring, but not controlling or interfering. This was humans as moral agents come of age.

It was exactly such attitudes that led George Keith (1638-1716) – an early Quaker and one of Fox's travelling companions both in the Netherlands and in America – to eventually abandon the Quakers, accusing them of being 'deists'. He would have know well what he meant by such a term, having graduated from Aberdeen in Theology before turning Quaker. Deists do not see God as playing an intercessional or active part in human affairs: very much Spinoza's view. He unequivocally denied a personal 'God' as mere superstition.