The claim is that Shaker leader Ann Lee was born a Quaker. The Wikipedia entry says: “Her parents were members of a distinct branch of the Society of Friends (a sect of Quakers) and too poor to afford their children even the rudiments of education.” The source of this is given in the citation: a 1879 encyclopedia article, a copy of which is hosted on Wikisource: “Her parents were members of a distinct branch of the society of Friends, and too poor to afford their children even the rudiments of education.” A source for this claim was never given in the encyclopedia, though later on it does reference Frederick William Evans, a much later Shaker figure.

That is the Tim Gee compiles five pieces of evidence that together feel very convincing.

There are of course influences but that’s to be expected. Every religious movement of the Second Great Awakening had some relationship to Quakers. The Methodists, Mormons, Holiness, Adventists all have some connections. When you tour the “1652 Country” area of England, where George Fox first brought Quakers together, you’ll keep running into signs about John Wesley doing the same for Methodists a century later, and here in South Jersey where I live a whole slew of Quakers became Methodists in the early 1800s. At least one early Mormon evangelist in Ohio essentially went from Quaker town to Quaker town trying to recruit people. The Quaker defense of female leadership and the principle that women can preach obviously rubbed off on the Shakers and other movements.

The idea that the British colonies in America were some pure land where we could reinvent a primitive Christianity was a powerful meme (if you will) at the time and certainly drew Ann Lee to cross over and plant a religious movement here. But Ann Lee picked one of the least Quaker areas to plant her community and drew early members from New England millennialist revivalists. She definitely wanted to build something distinct from Friends.

Just a moment…

www.friendsjournal.org

We agreed that a lot of Quaker belief can only be experienced, not described, which makes for difficulties when doing outreach. It’s easy to go into nuance once someone has coming into the meetinghouse and is participating in an education program but how do we get them off the street in the first place. Tom said:

I’m comfortable with Christ language and the inward light of Christ. And I know there are friends who are not, and there are good reasons why they’re not. I’m not denying that. in these newcomer sessions a persistent question is: Are Quakers Christian? And how do you understand that? And they’re mostly coming from backgrounds and other kind of more conservative churches.

And so that’s a live question for them because in some sense they all left those churches because the fundamentalism was grating on them. I always pull off this thing from my shelf, it’s the Reader’s Guide to George Fox’s Journal by Joseph Pickvance. And he makes a fascinating statement: the commonest cause of misunderstanding of Fox’s teaching today is a failure to realize how wide and deep and functional is the meaning that quote Christ had for him. 

Our discussion ranged quite a bit, from Art Larrabee’s “Nine Core Quaker Beliefs” to Marcus Borg’s Heart of Christianity and 1653’s Saul’s Errand to Damascus, by James Nayler and George Fox. I definitely need to do some more reading!

Full show notes and a transcript are available.

Tom has also written a follow-up post on Quaker belief on his blog.

Davison is returning to the debate:

“That of God” yearns for God, Fox implies in the quote we always use for this phrase. In that epistle, once we have done the inner work of our own transformation in the light of Christ ourselves, then we can answer that of God in others. That of God within us is calling out in the darkness, and the Light answers with the Word.

“That of God”—Again

For decades, I have complained about Friends claiming that “that of God in everyone” is our central tenet…

Through the Flaming Sword

One of the roles of faith is to remember that we’ve been here before. We’ve been the wandering Jews lost in the desert but fed manna to survive. We remember the disciples taken by surprise by the rush of Roman guards come to arrest our Messiah, who urged us to put away our swords. We tell stories of a young George Fox wandering England looking for spiritual teachers until all his “hopes in them and in all men were gone.” We survive by telling stories. We keep ourselves centered and calm by remembering others who found a path through uncertainty and assured us they were held up by a Comforter.

Just a moment…

www.friendsjournal.org

George gives the camera a steely‐TV‐anchorman‐type look and says, “Hello, this is the evening edition of Fox News. George Fox speaking. For our first story, let’s turn to Will ‘the Quill’ Penn at the sports desk.”

“Good evening,” says Will. “Well, it’s half‐time over at Sierra Friends Center’s outdoor basketball court, and the Woolman Wombats are battling it out with the Quaker Oafs. Both teams just completed the league’s required workshops on nonviolent communication and the Alternatives to Violence Project. The score at half‐time is zero to zero. We have some footage from the second quarter.”

Just a moment…

www.friendsjournal.org

There is a long history of Friends preaching and witnessing outside of the confines of the meetinghouse. George Fox’s Journal is full of unconventional worshiping; he had a particular penchant for preaching from any bit of high ground he could find, like a tree or rock outcropping. His contemporary James Naylor is most remembered for re‐enacting Jesus’s Palm Sunday entry into Jerusalem by dramatically riding a horse down a main road into Bristol. Modern‐day Friends continue to find unconventional places to worship…

Also, I’ve just set up a form to get on the email notification list to get pinged when topic write-ups get posted. It’s very low-volume, as we only write these once a month. There’s only two subscribers. For the time being, I’m just keeping the emails in a list and sending personalized emails.

Just a moment…

www.friendsjournal.org

When it comes to Spirit-attentive worship and ministry, the Vineyard manifests Quaker spirituality in a way that is faithful to the Evangelical tradition, but truly mystical, and of course deeply Quaker. They live out a Quakerism many of today’s American Quakers, both Liberal and Orthodox, would find laughable, backwards. George Fox, on the other hand, may get it.

The Making of a Charismatic Quaker

For many of us, our predicament today seems most like the soil with the thorns: We want to draw closer to God and walk in God’s ways, but there is so much bad news, so many obligations, so many distractions. We can be led astray, sometimes without even knowing it. The founder of our movement, George Fox, once said that “whatever ye are addicted to, the Tempter will come in that thing; and when he can trouble you, then he gets advantage over you, and then ye are gone.” We can be addicted to many things: not just, say, alcohol or gambling, but ideas, both about the world and about ourselves.

Alone, none of us can do much to change the world. But we can allow ourselves to be instruments of peace, reconciliation, love. It’s easy to get stuck and tempting in those times to get defensive or look toward others. I’ve found the old Quaker take on “The Tempter” to be personally very useful. I’ve learned to question and go inward whenever I feel too much pride in something or find myself part of a group that seems self-satisfied with its work.

Good soil