QUAKERS AND QUAKERISM
### I. ORIGINS AND DOCTRINE
The name "Quakers" or "Tremblers" is a derogatory term applied to the Society of Friends, founded by George Fox in 1643. This sect, a product of the Puritanism (v.) of the time, owed its development to Cromwell and the regime of broad tolerance he introduced for nonconformist groups. Under the authoritarian Anglicanism of Laud, as under the Presbyterianism of the Covenant, the Society of Friends would likely have been annihilated from its very inception.
1. **Origins.** - George Fox, born in Drayton (Leicester) in 1624, was the son of a weaver, in whose home the Bible was frequently read and the slightest infraction of moral laws was condemned. One day, when a cousin who was a clergyman dragged him to a tavern, he was so distressed at having drunk more than was proper that he turned to prayer, imploring God’s forgiveness; he believed he had immediately received “the word of God in his heart” and was invested with the spirit of the prophets of Israel. Once he began preaching a mystical doctrine devoid of any rite or Sacrament, he encountered violent opposition: the clergy cited him before the courts, and the people were divided. During the trial, when he appeared before Judge Bennett (in Derbyshire), he entreated him to “honor God and tremble before His Word.” The judge responded by calling him a “trembler,” in English *quaker*, whence the name that stuck to the sect.
2. **Method of Expansion.** - It was rudimentary but effective. The Quakers, who called themselves Friends or also Children of Truth or Children of Light, would enter churches during public worship; then, calmly and firmly, they would raise their voices and denounce the minister as “a dead dog,” a hireling clinging to benefices and titles, a preacher of crude superstitions. Such interventions provoked enormous scandal: some attacked the disturbers, others defended them, and the sect thus gained new recruits. The Quakers displayed such joy in enduring mistreatment that an aura of martyrdom immediately glorified them in the eyes of the crowd.
3. **Doctrine.** - It is necessary to distinguish the teaching of Fox from that of the sect’s theologian, Robert Barclay (1648–90). Fox was uneducated, knew only the Bible, and preached above all against the “excesses of contemporary Puritanism”; against militarism he advocated 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 sorrowful religion, constant joy; against the fear of hell, the will to cultivate the heaven each person carries in his heart. Instead of the Bible alone, he placed individual inspiration. Robert Barclay systematized these ideas and expounded them in his principal work, *Apologia theologica vere christianae* (1676; translated into English in 1678 and later into German and French). Barclay appealed to human sentiment; in every person there is a natural revelation, since in him a “substantial seed” was deposited by God. He rejected the dogmas of original sin, Calvinist predestination, and irresistible grace. He excluded all Sacraments, even Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, deeming spiritual communion sufficient.
### II. HISTORY
At the time of the Restoration under Charles II, Fox counted 60,000 adherents; his activity was increasingly opposed, but he lived long enough to see the Toleration Act proclaimed in 1689. He died in 1691 after having been imprisoned eight times.
Meanwhile, the Society had made a brilliant acquisition in William Penn, who became the most illustrious of the Quakers. Born in 1644, Penn was the son of a well-known and highly respected admiral; he was converted to the Quaker cause by the preacher Thomas Loe. In 1670 he inherited a considerable fortune from his father, which he placed at the service of the sect. He emigrated to America, where he founded a colony to which the King gave the name Pennsylvania. There he established the principle of nonviolence and concluded a peace treaty with the Indians without bureaucratic formalities or oaths, a treaty that Voltaire could say had never been disapproved or violated. In 1675 Penn founded the city of Philadelphia; the rest of his life was quite eventful, and he died (1713) in debtors’ prison, as he had been in his youth for his beliefs.
### III. PRESENT STATUS
Quakerism has continually suffered from the spirit of independence it fostered among its adherents; schisms and separations reduced its membership in England from 60,000 to 17,000 by 1735, though it fared better in the United States despite further schisms. In 1822 a certain Elias Hicks, who taught pure deism and denied the divinity of Jesus Christ, was excommunicated along with 2,000 disciples. At present it is necessary to distinguish: the orthodox Society of Friends, which comprises nine-tenths of the Quakers; the Hicksite Society of Friends, a small group; the orthodox Wilburite conservative Friends, a separate group under the leadership of John Wilbur; and the Religious Society of Friends of Philadelphia or Primitive Quakers. These four groups do not number more than 150,000 adherents, of whom 120,000 are in the United States, 25,000 in England, 1,000 in Australia, with the rest scattered in Germany, Denmark, France (Nîmes), Turkey, Alaska, India, Mexico, Japan, Syria, and the Congo. Since 1866 there has existed an association of the Friends’ foreign missions. The influence of the Quakers has always been greater than their numbers, which have never reached 200,000.