Category Archives: Quaker Theology

An Indomitable Woman Friend: Five Dead Babies, Spiritualism & Reform

While she was the wife of a prosperous textile manufacturer, all her affluence and “privilege” did not save her first child, born in 1829, from an early death — or the next four after him: all five died, one after another, in infancy or shortly afterward.

As the fifth one faded, Chace penned a rhymed plea

“Oh! no, it cannot, cannot be;
My darling babe will live.
He must not go away from me,
He is the last of five. . . .

And, much and often have I prayed,
That so it might not be;
That in a little coffin laid
This one I ne’er might see.

“Oh! Father, spare him longer yet,
Our lonely home to cheer.
We’ve often said it was for this
That Thou hast sent him here.”

But it was not to be.

A Progressive Quaker Sermon – By Lucretia Mott

NOTE: Lucretia Mott, considered at the time of her death in 1880 to be the “greatest American woman of the nineteenth century” by many of her contemporaries, was a Quaker abolitionist, women’s rights activist and social reformer. She was a key figure in an insurgent movement of Progressive Friends. Her messages and actions are very … Continue reading A Progressive Quaker Sermon – By Lucretia Mott →

Progressive Friends Origins – Part 1

Where did Progressive Friends come from? How did they get started? To get at these questions, we have to start by taking down a myth: the myth of the peaceable Quaker liberals of the nineteenth century. They were the ones called Hicksites, who got that name when most American Quaker groups tore themselves into two … Continue reading Progressive Friends Origins – Part 1 →

Say Hello to Progressive Friends!

. [First posted in 2014.] Sometimes it can feel like a stretch, but there are at least a few of us who still believe the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers, has some useful contribution to make in the world. If this faith is not entirely in vain, that makes the group’s history potentially useful … Continue reading Say Hello to Progressive Friends! →

Thoughts on the Quaker “Testimony of Equality”

arly Friends lacked a Testimony on Equality with the outside world because, to speak plainly, they (the Friends) were quite sure that those outside were NOT their equals.

A striking example of this is found deep in the famous 1660 Letter to King Charles II, from Fox and a dozen or so other leading Quakers — the one which announced what we now call the “Peace Testimony.”

In a part of the letter which does not get quoted on meeting house wall posters, Fox & Co. explain to the king, “for your soul’s good,” why he should avoid persecuting the Quakers. It was not merely because they were peaceable folk, innocent of plotting his overthrow; but more important, because to do so would mean he was fooling with “the babes of Christ, which he [Christ] hath in his hand, which he [Christ] cares for as the apple of his eye; neither seek to destroy the heritage of God . . . .”

And here we have early Quaker theology in a nutshell: Friends were God’s chosen people, “the apple of his eye.” In the Bible, the counterpart is referred to as a “royal seed.” Maybe the Friends were not destined to rule the world outwardly, sitting on actual thrones; but surely they were commissioned to show it the true way to what the Lord had in mind, and they needed to be able to do the Lord’s work unhampered.

So were Quakers “equal” to other humans, even the king? Not hardly; none of this lot came anywhere near their level as “the heritage of God.”