Primitive Quakerism Revived

Reader Responses

If George Fox or another early Quaker came to your meeting this week, what would happen?
How would they be received? What messages might they have for us today?

I know he/she would be surprised at our liberal progressive Meeting, but know he/she might smile in the end to realize that this wonderful community, which he/she inspired, advocating for peace, simplicity, love, compassion, equality, and integrity in a world that has become so opposite.

And I would love to see George Fox, or his counterpart, smile at that, and I would love to hug George Fox and thank him for making this community and the Religious Society of Friends available to me. Underneath it all, I think George Fox was a hugger.

Jeffrey P.

If George Fox came to my meeting, he would be shunned. He would be told he was being disruptive, because of his open passion for Spirit. If he had an idea about how to operate with the meeting, it would be shot down. He would be told he was “going way too fast with Quaker process,” would be silenced for trying to solve a conflict, and his outspokenness would drive the meeting away from him. He would learn that we just sit and discuss things and then take months or years to act on them. He would never find the kind of courage and action that he and the other original Quakers had. 

And, because of his unique brain and ways of expressing himself, he would overwhelm people, make people upset, and be misunderstood constantly. He would end up playing the scapegoat in a meeting that is determined to avoid and ignore any differences in people even though they say they accept diversity, and his prophetic gifts would be totally dismissed and rejected. His own best friends would find every way of keeping him out of organizing meeting projects with him. His mental health would suffer because of how my meeting would treat him. He’d try to shake people up and be systematically silenced. Just as I, a middle-aged neurodivergent Quaker, have been in my meeting.

Francine B.

I suspect he would struggle to understand us and we would struggle to understand him. So we would sit in silence together.

Gareth K.

I see George Fox as a radical Christian... He was teaching people about their individual powers of divine intervention, and he was evangelical in nature. 

Over the centuries, Quakers have gotten away from Christ in silent meetings. And pastor-lead Quaker churches have gotten very mainstream Christian. As a Philadelphia Quaker, I think George Fox would consider Philadelphia meetings in line with the original Quaker spirit, but maybe missing Christ as a guiding example. Any religion can be hurtful, and it is good to tread lightly on this earth in love.

Peg M.