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2 the Religious Setting of the Early Friends Quaker Schisms - 17t11 and 18ili Centuries The Quakers, by Hugh Barbour and J. William Frost, Friends United Press (1994), pp. 11-47 2 THE RELIGIOUS SETTING OF THE EARLY FRIENDS The Quaker movement began in England in the 1650s as an intensely transform­ ing religious awakening. of individuals, many small groups, and a few whole regions. 'The striking changes Quakerism made in their ethical life included a new vision of human society: yet then and throughout Quaker history the wider English and American society shaped their religious experience and Friends' ideas. The setting in English religious life of the· first Friends needs to be present­ ed here in some detail both for readers unfamiliar with England and its colonies in 1650 and for scholars aware of conflicting claims about Quaker origins. - THE PURITAN UNDERSTANDING OF HiSTORY The puritan movement had dominated English faith for three generations and established the English and New England Commonwealths, when Quakers arose to extend, fulfill, and challenge it. The name Pudtans is narrowly used for the· English Calvinists who meant to turn the Church of England into a federation of uniform parishes and presbyteries. The wider puritan movement was a cluster of diverse religious groups committed to purifying every aspect of English life. The early Quakers can be understood only in the setting ·of the Puritan view of cos• mic history. Calvin had felt his calling to be to glorify God through human com­ munity life. His ideal was expanded through the Puritans and Quakers into the English and American dream of "building the Kingdom of God on earth." George Fox*, the first leader of the Friends or "the Children of Light," saw them as the fruit of the renewal of the conquest of the world by the Spirit or Light of Christ, the climax of God's plan for world history that had begun with Paul the Apostle, had halted for a thousand years of Catholic apostasy, and had begun. again as incomplete renewal in the Protestant Reformation and Puritan Revolution. I Both Friends and Puritans saw themselves as parts of the people· and Church I • 13 12 THE QUAKERS THE RELIGIOUS SETTING OF EARLY FRIENDS mising love, austerity, and nonviolence. They were named Anabap~sts because they meant to transform. The ideal of a national Christian culture, and its practi­ for many of them their total personal commitment implied that baptism must be cal basis in the ~arish system, pervaded every European nation throughout the immersion of adult believers. At least three streams met in the movement: Puritan times. This ideal had begun after the collapse. of the Roman Empire in biblical, spiritualist, and apocalyptic. The biblical protest echoed earlier m?ve­ Western Europe around A.D. 410, when only the clergy could tame, train, and ments such as the fifteenth-century Hussites and twelfth-cen~ Waldensia~s. civilize the invading Goths, Vandals, Franks, and Norsemen, who became the On the edges of the slower reform programs directed by magistrates and chief ruling tenth of the population in Latin lands. Beyond the "limits" of the Roman pastors in the Swiss cities, young enthus~asts: both clergy and laymen, started .a Empire newly Christian kings, who conquered the Saxons and Czechs or tried to wildfire village movement in 1527, obeymg literally the Sermon on the Mounts unify the Germans, Danes, Norsemen, Swedes, or Poles, imposed on their peo­ teachings on war, oaths, and the perils of wealth. They were persecuted for ples a virtual "platoon baptism" as a symbol of submission. They left it to the denying that the wider Swiss society was Christian. A few groups were able to clergy and monks to educate and make Christian the culture of their masses of escape to estates or forests in Moravia to form a sect of "Hutterites" withdrawn illiterate, nominally Christian subjects. Puritans and Quakers knew that this 4 "universal pastorate" of the papacy from 400 through 1400 had bred paternalism from society; they shared all property communally. • In Bavaria, in the Rhine cities, and in the Tyrol wandering preachers hke and greedy bishops; only a few Friends knew the writings of the great Catholic Hans Denck drew less on the Gospels and more on the teaching of medieval mystics, inward in their relationship to God but usually centered on the sacra­ mystics that only inner experience of God's purifying Word and purgation by ments.2 As children and adults, Puritans in their home village or town had sat in 5 suffering, "the bitter catharsis of inner cleansing," could save people. Thus sal­ the same pews in tht;l same parish churches as had all their grandparents and vation came by God's grace without denying human freedom. Denck, Franck, ancestors, while the forms of worship had been changed twice from Catholic and others claimed direct guidance by God's Spirit; their followers are now prayer books to Anglican and back and then to the puritan sermons and free prayer between 1560 and 1650. The puritan dream was to remake England called spiritual Anabaptists. Many of these same preachers, notably Thomas Muntzer and B~lthasar through its common worship. Hubmaier, had taken part in the fierce Peasants' Revolt of 1524-25, which both The Puritans· were nevertheless pulled by three conflicting visions of.the Catholics and Protestants put down ruthlessly. The survivors' intense apocalyp­ nature. of Christi~ life: Luther's, based solely on trusting faith; the Anabaptists, tic hopes thereafter centered on God's direct judgment upon the wicked rulers, centenng on punty and martyrdom; and Calvin's, focusing on God's glory and predicted for 1528. By August 1527 all of the Germ~n apocalyptic _Ana~aptist power in the world and in history. Puritans knew their debt to Martin Luther for leaders were arrested, tried, and executed as both heretics and revolutionanes. In attacking Catholic corruption in 1517, for his vernacular prayers and Bible in 1535 the north German cathedral city of Munster accepted apocalyptic le~ders German, and most for his message that salvation depends only on faith in Christ from Holland and Strassburg. Under siege from the bishop's army they claimed as God's word. Martin Luther's Church reforms in Saxony in the 1520s, despite to receive divine commands justifying armed resistance, communism of proper­ the aid of the princes and the printing press, would not have withstood Catholic ty, and polygamy. Munster's story was still used to blacken the of power but for the depth of Luther's own radically inward religious experience of na~e Anabaptists a century after the city fell. Simons God. He called human actions good only when they arose out of spontaneous Meanwhil~, ~owever, M~nno had built up in Holland the Mennonites on purely biblical Anabaptist roots: the love and gratitude to God. Otherwise even "good deeds" are "dogooding" efforts ethic of the Sermon on the Mount, nonviolence, and simplicity of life and wor­ to earn God's favor. Puritans and Friends learned from Luther to see self-made ship. Scholars then and now have debated about Anabaptist influences on righteousness as the ultimate sin. Friends learned that every Christi~ can minis­ Quakerism.6 Dutch and English weavers, theologians, and refugees constantly ter God's love to other humans.3 The Puritan pastors learned from Luther that exchanged ideas. Certainly, when Friends first visited Holland a~ter ~65~ they anxious parishioners needed to be told that God accepted them even .as sinners found much in common with the W aterlander Mennonites. Their reJection of and that in essence the Church is the whole people on its knees. To reform the moral compromise, oaths, and titles had also influenced ear.ly Friends Church, Luther went to the princes; the Puritans in 1640 and Friends in '1659 th~ through the English Baptists, most of whom had blended these Ideals, however, went to Parliament. with Puritan approval of "holy war" and a coming "rule of the Saints." THE ANABAPTIST MODEL ) CALVIN r The cautious reforms of Luther had seemed to m~ny. earnest Christians to be Friends and Puritans learned to hear the call to the Christian community to be shameful compromises. In Switzerland, Germany, and Italy preachers and the instrument of God's power from John Calvin, although he rejected millenari- groups arose who proclaimed that the Church was called by Christ to uncompro- 15 14 THE QUAKERS THE RELIGIOUS SE'ITING OF EARLY FRIENDS was important for Puritans and Quakers because under her persecu- an hopes and confidence in human holiness. At a key turning point iil Calvin's years. She . "th th · life, at the University of Paris in 1533, he gave up his hopes for a career as a tion they merged Anabaptist ideals of heroic resistance to rulers WI e n~uon- lawyer or a churchman to serve God's glory by reforming the Church. Calvin's al Protestant tradition. Brought up as Puritans, Friends and Protestant Amencans Institutes and Bible commentaries taught Puritans and Quakers to see sin as self­ learned through the "Book of Martyrs" of the Elizabethan John Foxe to see as will. Calvin left to the providence of God the future of his life and of all their own heritage the struggles of the early Christians martyred by Roman reformed Christianity in France and Europe. So Predestination was a liberating emperors and the Protestants killed by Mary Tudor.9 For them me R~man doctrine for him and for all of the Elect: since their ultimate salvation was totally Church was Antichrist, the "Scarlet Woman" who is "Babylon" or Rome m the in God's hands, they were free to forget themselves and to fulfill God's plans for biblical Book of Revelation.
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