More from the new George Fox web site

I am still hoping that more Friends will comment on the new George Fox website created by Hall and Joan Worthington (thanks to Johann Maurer for his comment on the post I wrote yesterday). I do not find that I agree with everything the Worthingtons say, and I hope to find time to put some of my questions and responses into words, but in the meantime I am delighted to find that these two people I never heard of have discovered the richness of George Fox's message.

I have now learned, from correspondence with Hall Worthington, that I was incorrect in assuming that they had first heard of Fox through contact with Friends. Hall discovered Fox independently through his own reading. Indeed, he found when he did explore Quakerism-as-it-is-today that it is quite different from what he had thought George Fox was talking about. I know that many Quaker bloggers have had the same experience. Whatever differences I may discern between my own views and the Halls', it seems very important to me to open up a channel of communication between Friends who take George Fox's Christian message seriously, and these non-Friends who (unexpectedly) do the same.

To stimulate further discussion I am now going to quote a kind of summary of George Fox's message and ministry as the Worthingtons understand it.

THE GOSPEL REDISCOVERED

George Fox reestablished the true gospel (power of God)
that was lost for 1260 years and is again lost today. The gospel difference is:

1) God's peace to you. God's perfect example, (Christ) does not condemn you, but rather gives you His peace and asks you to trust Him to help you find heaven on earth.

HE AWAITS YOU! HE IS THE REWARDER OF THOSE WHO SEEK HIM!

2) He wants to purify you, perfect you, destroy all the sinful nature in your body, give you a new heart and mind, and make you one with Him and the Father. (not presumptively, but in reality). He wants you to not be burdened with your unhappiness and misery (Hell on earth), but rather to lead you to joy, peace, and happiness - the Kingdom of Heaven (Heaven on earth).

3) The process of purification is so simple, the wise of the earth scoff at it:

• Seek his kingdom within you and its' righteousness (and all else will be added)
  (your necessary first priority)
  
• On a daily basis, in private, get quiet and think on the name of Jesus Christ.
  
  ( His name is the power to purify you; stay your hope in him changing you. When not quiet, think on whatever is noble, good, honest, lovely,etc. If there are others with the same hope to meet with, meditate with them.)
  
  
• Listen and watch. (eyes closed or open, it works both ways)
  
  
• Obey any simple, easy to understand commands heard or felt.
  (You will hear many voices. Use scripture to validate. Don't fill in the blanks.)
  
  
• Practice acts love and kindness energized through faith.
  (even the little things count! big things too encourage each other to practice giving, love, and good deeds "the only thing that counts is love energized by faith" )
  
  
• He awaits you. He is the Rewarder of those who seek Him.

4) This Christ and gospel is powerful enough to change us on this side of the grave and make us like Him. This Christ and gospel can destroy the sinful nature of sexual immorality, impurity, debauchery, idolatry, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, envy, drunkenness, etc. and replace them with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Read full article here...

The New George Fox Writings Website

I've been looking at the new website created by Hall and Joan Worthington and devoted to the life and writings of George Fox.

Here are my observations:

First: I was wary when I read that they had "modernized" the language, since this is often a rationale for watering down the content of early Quake writings, but I put my mind at ease after reading a fair number of epistles and comparing them to the "original" text at other sites. The modernizing seems to consist mainly of changing "thee" and "thou" to you, changing obsolete verb endings such as -eth to modern equivalents, and occasionally inserting a clarifying word. For example, in epistle number 2 they have changed from

Rejoice not in the flesh, but in the spirit, which crucifieth all fleshly boasting: if the fleshly will be fed, then carelessness cometh up, and they fall into flatness, (from the spirit,) and are mindless of the Lord God; such are soon up and down.
to
Rejoice not in the flesh, but rather in the spirit,
which crucifies all fleshly boastings:
if the fleshly will be fed, then carelessness cometh up,
and they fall into flatness, (from the spirit),
and are mindless of the Lord God;
such are soon up and down.

Second: As the above example shows, their breaking down of the text into separate lines greatly improves readability.

Third: They have an article under "Editors' comments" called "Government Protests". It points out that the early Friends' testimony against wars didn't generally involve actually protesting wars or trying to end them. It also makes the argument that mass anti-war protests are not really in the spirit of the peace testimony. I would draw different conclusions in the end, but their argument deserves to be listened to.

Fourth: In another article under "Editors comments" called "Imitation of Early Quakers" they protest against the use of "plain speech" and "plain dress" that imitates early Quaker patterns but in their opinion is untrue to the spirit of the real early Quaker testimony about plainness. Here I feel much closer to what they are saying than I do to their point about anti-war marches, though I don't feel, as perhaps they do, that the quaint forms of plainness are actually a bad thing.

Fifth: While I too am a great admirer of George Fox, I feel a tad put off by their statement that "We believe George Fox to be the greatest man the world has known since Jesus Christ left the earth."

Finally: I notice that they say they are not members of any church or religious society since they have not found anyone who agrees with their beliefs. Yet it seems likely that somewhere along the way they have had contact with Friends, since few other groups would have pointed them to the writings of George Fox. One wonders what they think of Friends.

I think this website is fascinating. I'd love to hear what other Friends make of it.

Read full article here...

Let Not Prejudice Boil In Any of Your Hearts

The Friday night "Meeting in the Name of Jesus" that is held in the 15th Street Meetinghouse has been reading and discussing epistles of George Fox after our hour of worship. This past Friday we read Epistle #158. It contains an amazing gem of a sentence - one which for some reason I have never seen quoted elsewhere:

"And let not prejudice boil in any of your hearts but let it be cast out by the power of God, in which is the unity and the everlasting kingdom."

'Nuff said.

Read full article here...

Would George Fox Be a Christian Today?

note: This post was slightly edited on 8/1/2005 to remove some typos in the version posted originally and to improve on word-choice in a couple of instances.

I am really excited by all the discussion on the last few posts regarding the relationship of Christianity to Quakerism. Not only are we discussing questions very close to the heart, but we seem to be doing it while retaining a degree of mutual respect and civility that can sometimes be forgotten in this kind of discussion. The only downside is that I find I cannot possibly keep up with everything said, respond to all the questions, and weigh in on every issue raised. Or maybe that's not a downside. Maybe it means that I should just be glad to have started the conversation and be willing at some point to just sit back and listen as it continues.

But before I sit back...there are at least two general issues I'd like to write about. One is the hypothetical question as to whether George Fox and the early Friends just happened to be Christian because they were surrounded by others who were Christian, or whether the Christian focus of their message was an essential part of it. The other (which I will save for a separate post) is a cluster of questions brewing in my own mind by what is meant by the concept of a meeting (or other religious body) being "universalist" rather than committed to a particular religion.

Dascho wrote:

Of course, we can't say that Fox and the early Quakers had a lot of choice about being Christian. In the first place, they had little exposure to other religions. Secondly, they suffered enough for being as different as they were and announcing that they weren't necessarily "Christian" could only have made matters worse.

I don't mean to suggest that early Friends' Christianity was insincere or merely the product of coercion. Rather, it is clear that they didn't choose Jesus Christ as an alternative to say, the Buddha's dharma, or the way of Lao Tzu, the existence of which they were not aware. Principles of inner light, going beyond self-will, charity, etc. were expounded in their world by the Bible almost exclusively.

Beppe replied to this that

I have read this line of thinking several times by Friends in articles and mostly online. It seems to assume that if early Friends had exposure to other religions, as some of us do today, that they probably would come to another (read: universalist) position. But, we don't know that (and we never will). For example, there are plenty of contemporary Friends who have had exposure to other religions and still choose to identify with the Judeo-Christian tradition as not only the "history" of Friends, but as a very much living part of the Quaker identity and practice.

I think I would go a little farther than Beppe here. Of course, there is a sense in which we "can't know" what would have been true in a situation that never existed. All we can do is make our assumptions about it. But why do we make this particular thought-experiment about early Friends and not about other groups that called themselves "Christian"? Would Francis of Assissi have tried to follow Christ if he had not been born in a culture that claimed to be Christian? Would Martin Luther? Would John Calvin? Why are we more ready to entertain this possibility when we think of George Fox than when we think of these other figures? I suspect it's because our notion of what Christianity is owes a lot more to the history of Western Christendom than to the Gospel itself.

As for George Fox, let's not forget that he "heard a voice" that told him "there is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition." So he at least believed that it was not his society that led him to Christ, but the very voice of God himself, the same God who in so many things led him to directly oppose the customs and assumptions of English society.

Consider, too, that Christianity in Fox's time had 1600 years of experience interacting with other religions and that in many respects it had been very open to them, incorporating into Christian practice the customs and observances of both Judaism and the polytheisms of ancient Rome and Greece. These influences showed themselves in everything from the veneration of saints (who were often treated in popular piety much like pagan gods), to the observance of pagan holidays under Christianized names such as Christmas and Easter. What distinguished George Fox and the early Friends from other Christian groups of their time (and our time) was not their greater tolerance for such inter-faith borrowing but their complete and utter rejection of it. Hence their use of the phrase "the time called Christmas", their insistence on talking about "First Day", "Second Day", etc. rather than "Sunday", and "Monday".

Finally, though of course Fox didn't know about Hinduism or Buddhism and even his knowledge of Islam was limited, he was not entirely ignorant of the existence of non-Christian religions and not entirely prejudiced against them. In one of his epistles he criticized establishment Christians by pointing out that they were less tolerant of each other than "the Turk" (i.e. the ruler of the Ottoman empire) who, although a Moslem, allowed Jews and Christians to also practice their religions and have their own sabbath days.

Of course, what Dascho may have been getting at is that whatever Quakerism was in George Fox's time does not necessarily dictate what it will be in ours. I agree, and in fact I would not want to return to Fox's attitude about art, for example. But the centrality of Jesus in Quakerism is - to my mind - much more fundamental than that. Whether Quakerism of the future will maintain that central focus is something that will be decided as we go along by the way we act and what we say. I am determined that for whatever they are worth my actions and my words will contribute to keeping, not losing, that focus.

Read full article here...