QUAKERS AND QUAKERISM. - I. ORIGINS AND DOCTRINE. - The name of Quakers or "tremblers" is a derogatory term given to the Society of Friends (Friends' Society) founded by George Fox in 1643. This sect, the fruit of the Puritanism (v.) of the time, owes it to Cromwell and to the regime of broad tolerance that he introduced for nonconformist groups that it was able to develop. Under the authoritarian Anglicanism of Laud, as under the Presbyterianism of the Covenant, the Society of Friends would probably have been annihilated from its very rise.
1. Origin
George Fox, b. at Drayton (Leicestershire) in 1624, was the son of a weaver, in whose house the Bible was frequently read and scandal was felt at the slightest infraction of the moral laws. One day when a cousin of his, a clergyman, dragged him off to the tavern, he was so distressed at having drunk more than was proper that he gave himself to prayer, imploring forgiveness from God; he believed he had immediately received "the word of God in his heart," that he had been invested with the spirit of the prophets of Israel. Having begun to preach a mystical doctrine untied to any rite and to any Sacrament, he met with violent opposition: the clergy summoned him before a tribunal, the people were divided. During the trial, having appeared before the judge Bennett (in the county of Derby), he implored him to "honor God and tremble before His Word." The judge answered him by treating him as a "trembler," in English quaker: whence the name that remained with the sect.
2. Method of expansion
It was rudimentary, but effective. The Quakers, who called themselves Friends or also Children of Truth or else Children of Light, would enter the churches at the moment of the public Office; they would then raise their voices and, calmly and firmly, denounce the pastor as "a dead dog," a hireling attached to benefices and titles, a preacher of coarse superstitions. Such interventions provoked an enormous scandal: some hurled themselves against the distributors, others took their defense, and the sect thus gained new recruits. The Quakers showed such joy in receiving ill-treatment that a halo of martyrdom immediately glorified them before the crowd.
3. Doctrine
It is advisable to distinguish the teaching of Fox from that of the sect's theologian, Robert Barclay (1648-90). Fox was not educated, knew nothing but the Bible, and preached above all against the "excesses of Puritanism" of his time; against militarism he recommended horror of every war; against the use of force, the patience of martyrdom; against the repression of vice, the influence of example; against a gloomy and sad religion, a constant joy; against the fear of hell, the will to develop the heaven that each one carries in his heart. In place of the Bible alone, he set individual inspiration. Robert Barclay gave systematic form to these ideas and set them out in his principal work Apologia theologiae vere christianae (1676: translated into English in 1678 and then into German and French). Barclay appealed to human feeling; there is in each man a natural revelation since in him a "substantial seed" was deposited by God. Barclay rejected the dogmas of original sin, of Calvinist predestination and of irresistible Grace. He excluded all the Sacraments, even Baptism and the Supper, considering spiritual communion sufficient.
II. HISTORY
At the time of the Restoration under Charles II, Fox counted 60,000 adherents; his activity met with ever greater opposition, but he lived long enough to see toleration proclaimed in 1689. He died in 1691 after having been in prison eight times.
The Society, meanwhile, had made a brilliant acquisition in the person of William Penn, who became the most illustrious of the Quakers. Born in 1644, Penn was the son of a very well-known and esteemed admiral: he was won over to the Quaker cause by the preacher Thomas Lee; in 1670 he inherited from his father a considerable fortune, which he placed at the disposal of the sect. He betook himself to America, where he founded a colony, to which the King wished to give the name Pennsylvania. There he made the principle of non-violence prevail and concluded with the Indians, without bureaucratic formalities and without an oath, a peace treaty of which Voltaire could say that it had never been either disapproved or violated. In 1673 Penn founded the city of Philadelphia; the rest of his life was quite eventful, and he died (1713) in prison for debt, just as in his youth he had been there for his ideas.
III. CURRENT STATE
Quakerism has continually suffered from the spirit of independence that it had developed in its adherents; schisms and separations reduced it in England from 60,000 to 17,000 members in 1735; it had greater fortune in the United States, despite other schisms. In 1822 a certain Elias Hicks, who taught pure deism and denied the divinity of Jesus Christ, was excommunicated together with 2,000 disciples. At present a distinction must be made: the Orthodox Society of Friends, which comprises 9/10 of Quakers; the Hicksite Society of Friends, few in number; the Wilburite conservative Orthodox Friends, a separate group gathered under the leadership of John Wilbur; the Religious Society of Friends of Philadelphia, or primitive Quakers. These four groups number no more than 150,000 adherents, of whom 120,000 are in the United States, 25,000 in England, 1,000 in Australia, and the others scattered in Germany, Denmark, France (Nîmes), Turkey, Alaska, the Indies, Mexico, Japan, Syria, and the Congo. Since 1866 there has existed an association of the foreign missions of the Friends. The influence of the Quakers has always been greater than their number, which has never reached the figure of 200,000 persons.
Bibliography7 works
Leone Cristiani