Tangled Roots: Navigating the Complex Legacy of Early Quakers By Stuart Masters

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-13

[00:00:05]Welcome friends to the 2026 Sworthmore lecture from Friends House in London.

[00:00:14]I'm Mandy Cooper. I'm the chief exec of Woodbrook, which is the global center for Quaker learning, and I'm very excited to be continuing 118 years of Woodbrook's introduction to the Sworthmore lecture.

[00:00:31]This evening, I am delighted to be introducing my friend and colleague, Stuart Masters.

[00:00:38]And although Stuart recently retired from his 15-year staff tenure at Woodbrook, he remains prolific in his writing and teaching and is still very much part of our associate tutor team across subjects of faith, spirituality, theology, and of course, Quaker history.

[00:01:02]I met with Stuart earlier this week and I was hoping to discern some theme of his lecture that might give me inspiration for this introduction.

[00:01:14]Stuart gave me a wide ranging overview.

[00:01:18]So much so that for the full story I do recommend his accompanying book, Tangled Roots.

[00:01:28]See what I did there? seamless segue into book promotion. Um, and the book is available immediately after the lecture in the east corridor. It's that one that way.

[00:01:41]Um, or from tomorrow in the Quaker bookshop and online for the bargain price of £10.

[00:01:48]So back to the introduction and Stuart was talking to me about the roots of Quakerism and the context of change and transition and contemporary parallels.

[00:02:02]Then he shared something more personal.

[00:02:06]It is my experience that it is always the individual testimony, the stories shared between people that are the most profound.

[00:02:18]Stuart told me that his first ever meeting for worship was at Bourneville meeting in 2005.

[00:02:26]Stuart wasn't an academic.

[00:02:29]He wasn't connected to any Quaker ministry prior and his career was very different. He worked in social housing.

[00:02:39]The following year in 2006, he attended the Woodbrook Center for a book launch and a lecture.

[00:02:48]And reflecting back, he described the growing sense of connection and purpose that I think many of us would recognize as the call to ministry.

[00:03:00]That same year, Stuart enrolled on Woodbrook's equipping for ministry program.

[00:03:07]He started in January of 2007, completing two years later, and within just a few months had taken up his permanent post at Woodbrook, where he spent the next 15 years sharing his passion for learning.

[00:03:25]It struck me in that moment that the most urgent part of our conversation was encouragement for all of us.

[00:03:35]That there is no eligibility requirement for that ministry call.

[00:03:41]This might be your first time at yearly meeting. You might have been attending your local meeting only recently and you may wonder when you're allowed to experience that call.

[00:03:56]Stuart's story can answer that question with now. If you feel that call, you don't have to wait for someone to give you permission. Maturity of faith is not dependent on age nor duration of attendance. It's about how we feel that call and how we respond to it.

[00:04:15]The equipping for ministry program otherwise known as EFM was relaunched by Woodbrook this year and I've met some of the current cohort today and one has described the experience so far as mindexpanding.

[00:04:32]When we opened up registrations, it was no surprise to us, but nonetheless very encouraging for the Woodbrook team that we were oversubscribed and we are already taking a list of those interested in joining the next cohort later this year.

[00:04:48]EFM isn't about teaching people what to minister, nor about those attending having a fully formed idea of what their ultimate purpose might be.

[00:04:59]But it's about being with a likeminded group of peers, all with different journeys and quests, but bonded in this pursuit.

[00:05:12]Stuart is here 20 years on from that call because he heard it and he followed it.

[00:05:19]That path is different for all of us, but so many ministries are represented here this weekend, arranged at tables around the corridors. And it's such an opportunity to see where you might feel led, where you can just get involved, whether it's activism or peace work, outreach, chapency, voluntary action, pastoral care, eldership, mission, academia.

[00:05:48]Or you could try one of my all-time favorite ministries, which is making the tea.

[00:05:55]There is no barrier to connection when you are the custodian of the teapot.

[00:06:03]If you want to bond with everyone in a room very quickly, make the tea. I promise it's the best way.

[00:06:11]So, beyond everything that Stuart and I spoke about, I was most inspired by his story of how he turned up, felt that he had found his place of belonging, and followed that call.

[00:06:24]And I'm going to give you a world premiere quote from Stuart's book. It's in the section on gifts and ministries.

[00:06:32]And it says, "Within the Quaker way, it should be possible for everyone to have a ministry service given for the benefit of the community and the world rooted in a person's unique gifts."

[00:06:48]And so from this individual encouragement translated from Stuart's own journey, you're now going to hear and I hope also be encouraged by his storytelling of the adventures of early Quakers and this thread of ministry that connects us all across the centuries.

[00:07:08]a guiding light to keep going, to think creatively, to act boldly, to be uncontained and unconstrained in our response to the divine.

[00:07:22]Because the light is everywhere, the starting point is here, and the time is now.

[00:07:30]Thank you all for joining us in person and online as we worship together in this time of spoken ministry. The 2026 Sworthmore lecture, Tangled Roots given by Stuart Masters.

[00:07:50]Thank you, Mandy. Oh, and it's wonderful to see you all in the room. So many faces. Um, and welcome also to those who are following the the live stream.

[00:08:03]And perhaps you're also watching, some of you might be watching the recorded version. Uh, it may be Friday night and you've got your bucket of popcorn. Uh, I hope that what I'm going to say doesn't give you indigestion.

[00:08:18]Uh, or maybe it's the wee small hours of the morning and you're flicking through YouTube clips. In which case, I hope what I've got to say might help with your insomnia.

[00:08:36]As Mandy said, for nearly 20 years now, I've been studying, writing, and teaching about uh the early Quaker movement and exploring their continued relevance for friends today. This has led me to four essential conclusions about what why this might be helpful.

[00:08:57]Firstly, although they were very different from us, early Quakers experienced many of the same human challenges and dilemmas we face today. And this presents us with learning opportunities.

[00:09:12]Number two, exploring the complex mix of characteristics that we see in the early Quaker movement helps us to better understand the diversity of belief and practice in the world family of friends.

[00:09:28]Three, the faith and practice of the pioneering generation um established a number of creative tensions that have presented all subsequent generations including us with dilemas that need to be addressed. And we'll be focusing on four specific dynamic tensions in this lecture. And finally, learning from Quaker history enables us to recognize both the achievements and the failings of our past, sheds light on important issues we are grappling with today, and strengthens our self our sense of self-awareness.

[00:10:13]The Quaker community uh is a small faith community but with substantial diversity of belief and practice. Friends have a chameleonike quality being particularly sensitive and responsive to the social and religious context they find themselves in. For example, since the mid 19th century, British friends have been on a journey of perpetual evolution and change from quietest to evangelical, from evangelical to liberal, from liberal to pluralist. And what's made this possible, I think, is the priority that friends give to unmediated spiritual experience, but also a distrust in outward images and forms, a suspicion of fixed creeds and doctrines, and caution about the role of human power and authority.

[00:11:08]So we're going to look at four important creative tensions and in each case we'll look at how these emerged in the early Quaker movement, how they developed over time uh and what this means for us today. So the first theme is what shapes us as individuals and as as a Quaker community and the creative tension there is between our inward spiritual experiences in the present and the tradition we receive from the past.

[00:11:40]As the second theme is what type of community do we want to be and this is the creative tension between communal order and individual freedom.

[00:11:53]Thirdly the creative tension between the quietest and the charismatic. The theme of what is the link between our quiet inward experiences and our outward and physical life.

[00:12:06]And finally uh the theme of what's our relationship with the society and the culture that we find ourselves in. The creative tension between our vision of a new creation and the fact that we find ourselves in a world as it currently is that often seems so far away from that vision.

[00:12:29]And this is not about fake nostalgia hankering after a past that uh never really existed uh or trying to promote a particular narrow viewpoint.

[00:12:41]Instead, my hope is that in engaging with this material, this will help friends to learn from our history, nurture our self-awareness, prompt a greater sensitivity to global Quaker diversity, think deeply about our current faith and practice and where we're heading, uh, and make a renewed commitment to our tried and tested Quaker disciplines and practices.

[00:13:06]So let's get started with the first creative tension between inward experience and received tradition.

[00:13:13]What shapes and guides us guides our actions as an in as an individuals and as a community across Quaker history? We might say there are four primary influences.

[00:13:25]Inward spiritual experience, received religious tradition, sacred text, and our social context.

[00:13:34]The early Quakers were shaped and guided by their inward experience of divine revelation interpreted in relation to the Bible as a sacred text. They rejected the influence of the received Christian tradition viewing it as uh fundamentally corrupted and the social context which they viewed as a fallen world. They felt that they'd been liberated from the domination of all human institutions and authorities, especially the established church. The Apostle Paul in his letter to the Galatians explained, "For I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin, nor and I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ." And George Fox was echoing the Apostle Paul's words when he wrote in his journal, "This I saw in the o in the o pure openings of the light without the help of any man.

[00:14:40]Neither did I know where to find it in the scriptures, though afterwards searching the scriptures, I found it."

[00:14:47]And so we see this really interesting combination here of direct inward experience but interpreted in relation to the Bible. And just a couple of examples about why the biblical narrative was so important.

[00:15:03]Our qu oft often we say Quakers are distinctive because of our belief of that of God in everyone. Now the roots of that is the promise that the Holy Spirit will be poured out on all flesh made through the prophet Joel uh and then fulfilled in Peter's words at Pentecost.

[00:15:23]And then all of our other essential peculiarities um especially the emphasis on inward experience were based on the early Quaker understanding of the new covenant, a particular relationship with God based on divine int intimacy and inward guidance. And that was a promise made through the prophet Jeremiah which if we read in the New Testament has been fulfilled as far as the writers are concerned particularly in Hebrews 8.

[00:15:54]But even though Quakers denied the influence of their context, it's very clear they were people of that context.

[00:16:00]So for example, early Quakers took the trajectory of the Reformation to its logical conclusions in all sorts of ways. A direct relationship with God, the priesthood of all believers, simplified liturgy, suspicion of imagery. All of those things are key reformation emphases. There's a sense in which Quakers pushed those things to their furthest point. The mainstream reformers emphasized biblical authority, but radicals like Quakers emphasized the guidance of the spirit.

[00:16:36]We also see the essential features of the early Quaker movement in groups in the early part of the 17th century, a radical form of Puritanism, many years before Quakers emerged, influenced by the writings on the radical wing of the Reformation. There were individuals and groups in the 1520s in Europe who looked very similar to Quakers. They didn't survive, however.

[00:17:01]So in some senses the Quakers were a a resurrection of that idea.

[00:17:07]So Quakers are suspicious of tradition.

[00:17:10]Um but then they could then they established their own tradition. So when their expectations that all things were about to be transformed were disappointed and they began to suffer persecution um they suddenly found they needed to create a tradition of their own. Um, and this uh this this meant that originally they thought they weren't establishing their own separate denomination because all things were about to be transformed. But they had to find a way to survive. And it's this that created the creative tension in which Quakers gave priority to inward experience and rejected the received Christian tradition that then established a tradition of their own.

[00:17:59]So across history this has been interpreted in a number of different ways. In the 18th century the Quaker discipline was about maintaining the true Quaker faith, protecting its traditions and ordering its community.

[00:18:15]The discipline ensured the survival and unity of the Quaker movement but seemed to prompt a focus on outward conformity which potentially hampered the priority they wish to give to inward experience and some were alarmed by this apparent legalism. Margaret Fel famous famously condemned this these things as silly imaginary practices and a silly poor gospel.

[00:18:43]Across during the 20th 19th and 20th century divisions developed between conservatives, evangelicals and liberal Quakers. And this involved differing interpretations of the Quaker tradition they'd received from that first generation.

[00:19:00]But it was influenced crucially by different social contexts.

[00:19:05]This suggests I think that the Quaker way is a tradition that is inherently suspicious of tradition apart I think from conservative Quakers because by their nature they wish to conserve the tradition. And so that very small surviving element of Quakerism in the world was about focusing on upholding the received quietest Quaker tradition based on inward experience with the Bible as a secondary test. For evangelical Quakers, they were influenced by the evangelical revival within the wider society.

[00:19:45]Um and they emphasized biblical authority which was important in setting limits to acceptable uh doctrine and guiding their interpretation of inward experience.

[00:19:58]Liberals were influenced by modern liberal society and they emphasized inward experience over other authorities including the Bible.

[00:20:09]The Quaker tradition was valued but was not necessarily authoritative because liberals subscribed to progressive revelation. Truth is known more fully over time.

[00:20:22]That's kind of an anti-tradition tradition, isn't it? Uh and then finally, pluralist liberal Quakerism as we know it today. Influenced by secular multiffaith society, personal experience is paramount. tradition has a limited role and the Bible and other texts have no special authority apart perhaps from the book of discipline.

[00:20:49]So what does this mean for us as Quakers today? Um we might say that Quakerism is essentially protein and constantly changing. So what does it mean to be caught up in a perpetual and rapid process of evolution? What remains constant when so much is changing? To what extent can we say that our tradition has any enduring form?

[00:21:13]How are our inward experience, received tradition and social context shaping the modern Quaker way?

[00:21:23]One of the dangers we have to face here is in giving so much emphasis to individual experience is that we are a particular people shaped within a specific context and therefore our personal experience has limitations to it. And if you remember Helen Min's uh Sword lecture in 2022, she very much focused on the danger of a group of people basing their decisions on personal experience when they have a relatively narrow uh social and ethnic demographic. And so we lack the insights of those whose circumstances, culture and experiences are different from ours.

[00:22:02]So we just need to be aware of that danger.

[00:22:06]If we look at Quaker testimony as an example, we can see that it reflects in different ways all of those influences in terms of inward experience.

[00:22:17]Testimony is the fruits of the spirit revealed in our lives. What we found inwardly, we try to put into practice outwardly.

[00:22:26]In terms of received tradition, testimony can be seen as a set of inherited Quaker values. That's the way we tend to list our Quaker testimonies.

[00:22:38]In terms of sacred text across history, Quaker testimony has been understood to be um Jesus shaped the way of Jesus revealed in people's lives. And so we can link that to the biblical accounts in the gospels. And then finally, in terms of social context, testimony is always a particular response to specific circumstances.

[00:23:02]it has uh it's rooted in a particular context.

[00:23:08]So is it possible to achieve any kind of balance between our tradition including its biblical and Christian roots and our current inward experiences being open to new light between rootedness and innovation uh and between the constant and protein dimensions of the Quaker way.

[00:23:28]One of the things that we tend to miss because of the constant process of change is the way in which the Bible has been so significant in shaping essential Quaker practices. It's sometime sometimes something that we just miss.

[00:23:41]So I just want to mention a few examples. The peculiar Quaker way of unprogrammed worship actually reflects the description of ordered worship that the Apostle Paul offers in uh chapter 14 of Acts of his first letter to the Corinthians.

[00:23:59]If you've not looked at that, you might want to have a look. It's really interesting. It's got a more charismatic feature to it than we would use today.

[00:24:07]Quaker decision-making, our business method. It closely reflects friends the practice adopted by the act the by the apostles at the council of Jerusalem and you can read that in chapter 15 of acts of the apostles people a group of people come together there's a contentious issue they share lots of different views they seek the guidance of the spirit they find themselves coming into unity and then what do they do they write an epistle this is quaker practice in the bible friends. And then finally, as I've already indicated, Quaker testimony uh certainly across much of history reflects the life and teachings of Jesus as it's recorded in the four gospels.

[00:24:53]So early Quakerism seems seemed to rely on uh an ongoing intense inward experience of spiritual baptism and holy communion.

[00:25:04]When this began to wne, a tradition in the form of Quaker discipline replaced it.

[00:25:12]So if today we no longer have the Pentecostal fire, the rigorously imposed corporate discipline or a sacred text, can we be confident about how the spirit is shaping us and what it's leading us to do? Are our inward experiences reliable on their own?

[00:25:34]So this creative tension presents us with some significant challenges.

[00:25:39]How can we be clear about what's influencing us? How can we be confident that we are acting on the right motivations?

[00:25:48]This is why the discipline of discernment is so essential within Quaker spirituality. A practice of sorting and testing our leadings, developing an heightened sensitivity to where our emotions and motivations arise from because our upbringing, our social context, our personality type shape our responses.

[00:26:12]For example, we live within a culture that historically has been deeply shaped by colonialism and its supporting ideology of racism and that can easily be things like that can easily influence influence us unconsciously um and informing our motivations and that hampers the reliability of our decision making. So discernment is really important in nurturing that self-awareness that we need to moderate the influence of those external pressures on us strengthening our discernment and decision making.

[00:26:54]So that's the first creative tension.

[00:26:57]The next creative tension is between communal order and individual freedom.

[00:27:02]What kind of community do we want to be?

[00:27:05]When individual freedom is absolute, it's impossible for community to exist because communities are only formed if people are willing to surrender some of their personal autonomy to cooperate with others. On the other hand, when communal control is absolute, this means that respect for the value and integrity of individuals is lost because only the community has any worth. the individual becomes merely a cog in the machine.

[00:27:37]Each community therefore must find a balance between the competing emphases of collective and individual control and freedom, uniformity and diversity. And at different times, Quakers have come to quite different positions on that. And this is again rooted in the experience of early friends and how they changed quite significantly within a relatively short period of time in the 17th century. They moved from radical spirit-led freedom to much more rigorous community order.

[00:28:15]In some senses we have we've always had a a strong emphasis on the importance of the individual and that reflects the fact that modernity the move away from middle the middle ages and so on was a move away from the communal to the individual in all sorts of ways and the reformation reflects that as well. a move from a communal relationship with God to a much more individual one. For early friends, an intimate inward experience of divine guidance and inspiration made it possible for ordinary people to exercise a powerful ministry in the world. Each person needed to be faithful to carrying out what God had called them to do rather than follow human rules or orders.

[00:29:01]They say we're it's it's a bit like sort of hering cats, isn't it? Well, maybe that's where some of that's uh rooted in. But this was really significant in empowering women in particular, but also lowerass men. In 1662, Dorothy White, a really important early Quaker writer that maybe needs to be better known, asserted that neither it was neither for any man to command the conscience to be silent from speaking, prophesying or praying, seeing God hath set no limiter over the conscience of any, either to speak or to be silent. For who hath formed the mouth? Who hath created the tongue?

[00:29:43]So if in this new covenant, God teaches everyone directly, how can any other human tell another what is right or what to do? Now this was really helpful in rejecting clerical domination and defending women's right to speak and prophesy, but became a real challenge when needing to establish communal order. As a result, conflicts in the early Quaker movement tended to be about authority, who can tell people what to do rather than correct belief.

[00:30:20]as well as this sense of intense individual experience and empowerment which was so powerful in this early movement. Um, Quakers also felt at the same time that they'd been gathered into a new cohesive community gathered out of the world and brought into something that was tightly knit like fish caught in a net. Francis Howill wrote, "The kingdom of heaven did gather us and catch us all as in a net, and his heavenly power at one time drew many hundreds to land."

[00:30:56]So this complex mix of things creates a really interesting situation. The quake the way Quakers have tended to order their community has presented a unique combination of theocracy, bit of a scary word, where God rules through a given people and anarchy where all human power and authority is surrendered.

[00:31:20]In the earliest years, however, in the 1650s and 60s and early 1670s, uh the Quaker community was directed and ordered by individual leaders who were recognized because of their spiritual power. Their authority was recognized because of that charismatic power. And from the late 1650s until the late 1670s, uh once the other early Quaker leader contender, James Naylor was out of the way, uh George Fox and Margaret Fel's authority tended to hold sway.

[00:31:53]Then during the 1670s, Fox and Fel led the development of a national structure of meetings with a formalized discipline and systems of control that began to replace that individual spirit-led leadership. This turned friends into an ordered people and helped them survive by carefully managing their public image.

[00:32:16]The purpose of this communal discipline was to enable friends to live in gospel order.

[00:32:23]aligned with the order that God had given to the whole creation rather than by the disordered ways of the world, human culture.

[00:32:34]However, in seeking to manage their public reputation, friends inevitably had one eye on gospel order and the other on social expectations.

[00:32:45]And we see this reflected again as we move into the 18th century in what's often called the quietest period. A peculiar people whose unity and purity is maintained through the application of a corporate discipline and that's raised the corporate discipline is raised quite strongly over individual freedom. This included the careful policing of community boundaries uh and a fairly strict regulation of behavior.

[00:33:13]Into the 19th century, we see evangelical Quakers. They were seeking a balance between community and individual. But less emphasis is given to protecting a peculiar identity and more emphasis is given to orthodox belief and an individual relationship with God. And that softening of peculiarity actually created more freedom for the individual.

[00:33:38]And then in the liberal and the pluralist period, we still try to maintain a balance between community and individual, but we're reluctant to enforce the discipline outside of the meeting house.

[00:33:51]We give much greater emphasis to the value of personal spiritual journeys, diversity of belief over communal discipline and identity. So we might say again we've shifted again in the direction of free individual freedom.

[00:34:09]So again what does this what issues does this prompt for us today?

[00:34:14]How can we create community that is cohesive and has a clear identity while recognizing the essential value of each individual member?

[00:34:26]Is there a danger for us in our permissive culture and preference for individual freedom that this weakens the cohesion and distinctiveness of Quaker community?

[00:34:38]Our spirituality over time has tended to shift away from hearing and obeying the divine voice to a greater emphasis on individual autonomy and freedom. But are are resources sufficient?

[00:34:54]Where is power and authority located within our community?

[00:35:00]There seems to be a quiet ongoing conflict playing out between the authority of yearly meeting and local autonomy. And that is essentially an order versus freedom tension.

[00:35:14]And to what extent are we really an ordered community or something more like a loose alliance of like-minded individuals who enjoy each other's company?

[00:35:24]In grappling with those things and in trying to hold that balance, there are some metaphors drawn from the Bible that were important to early friends that might still be helpful for us today.

[00:35:36]The first one is uh that a community is a bit like a body that's made up of many parts. This is the metaphor that the apostle Paul uses in chapter 12 of his first letters to the Corinthians. A body needs all its individual organs and limbs, but functions as a single entity based on interconnection and interdependence.

[00:36:00]The body needs all of the individual limbs and organs that make it up, but each of those individual parts don't have much meaning separated from the body.

[00:36:12]Margaret Fel explained that by one spirit we are all baptized into one body who have been made to drink all into one spirit whether Jews or Gentiles bond or free if they come into this spirit which makes and unites and knits together they are all one for the body is not one member but many.

[00:36:34]Another metaphor which is similar in a way again drawn from the Bible is the idea that a community is like a temple of living stones taken from the letter to the Ephesians and the first letter of Peter. A temple needs all its individual stones uh that make it up but it is only when those stones are built together around a cornerstone that the whole the whole building is formed. So again, there's an intimate interconnection between the need for each individual stone and the fact that only when they're all together will they make that building. And hopefully those sorts of metaphors might be helpful for us in thinking about uh uh how we manage that tension today.

[00:37:21]One of the ways that uh individuals and community is organically bound together as uh as we've heard is through gifts and ministries.

[00:37:31]In a well- balanced community, all members are valued and have a part to play. This means actively discerning, naming, and encouraging the gifts and ministries of everyone. What is my particular limb or organ within the body?

[00:37:48]What are your particular stones that make up the living temple?

[00:37:54]And last year in this ordinal lecture, Emily Provence talked about community and the importance of mutual dependence and support. She said, "A person can be transformed when the rest of us invest in them." And that's very much about recognizing those gifts and those ministries and encouraging people to use them.

[00:38:18]For Quaker community to work well, all its members need to understand and be confident in applying essential Quaker disciplines and practices. Without this, communal order and effectiveness is weakened and some members may feel disempowered or excluded.

[00:38:40]So, we're going to move on now to uh our third theme, the creative tension between quietest and charismatic. The issue about how we link our inward spiritual experiences with our outward and physical life. And again, the Bible set the framework for how early friends understood this. The Bible's full of exhortations to people to listen to God and focus on the divine presence by adopting an attitude of humility and attentiveness. Psalm 37 says, "Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him." At the same time, however, the Bible's also full of examples of people responding to the divine presence in powerfully embodied ways. for example, the dramatic actions of the Hebrew prophets or the apostles receiving the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. And Jesus himself holds together both the quietest and the charismatic.

[00:39:40]He regularly takes time away in silent prayer. And this practice seems to be directly linked then to his many outward dramatic signs, healings, and other miracles. And this was the same for the early Quaker movement.

[00:39:57]Quakers were both charismatic and quietest. They were quietest in having a worship practice and spirituality based on human surrender to God through inward stillness and deep listening, patience and humility. We are to stop.

[00:40:14]We are to be still. We need to wait patiently so that we can listen for the still small voice and see what the light is revealing. Isaac Pennington encouraged people to give over thine own willing, give over thine own running, give over thine own desiring to know or to be anything and sink down to the seed that God sews in the heart. And Margaret Fel offered the following spiritual counsel. If ye desire to know the Lord, you must turn your minds unto his light.

[00:40:47]There you will come to know him, feel him, and find him near.

[00:40:53]On the charismatic side, however, beginning with their lifechanging convincement experiences, early Quakers um had a strong outward physical response to the inward divine encounter.

[00:41:06]And this led Quakers to emotionally expressive and powerfully embodied actions. They would physically shake and quake in the power of the spirit. They would be prompted to give ecstatic utterance or prophecy. The spirit made them empowered and fearless and that took them out into the world to be powerful preachers conducting dramatic public signs, healings and miracles.

[00:41:34]Edward Burrow described early Quaker worship as follows. While waiting on the Lord in silence, as often we did for many hours together, the quietest bit.

[00:41:45]We received often the pouring down of the spirit upon us. Our hearts were made glad and our tongues loosened and our mouths opened and we spake with new tongues. The charismatic bit.

[00:41:59]Dorothy White like uh other early Quakers this was about a visceral experience of divine indwelling and she wrote the living God is making a glorious situation a heavenly habitation and an everlasting dwelling place in the sons and daughters of men for God is now come to dwell in his people. So there was a clear creative tension here between a quietest inward spiritual practice and an outward charismatic and emotionally expressive response. The early Quaker movement was both contemplative and Pentecostal.

[00:42:37]But again a very significant transformation happened relatively quickly between the 1650s and the end of the century. Struggling to survive and carefully manage their public image as they campaigned for religious toleration, friends began to play down the more charismatic and prophetic aspects of the earliest years. And perhaps not surprisingly, the raging spiritual fire also died down in the second generation.

[00:43:07]And that had an impact on the next century, which we often call the quietest period. A community that found its unity in a common discipline based on a much more cautious, quietest spirituality in which a physical and emotional response was not expected or welcomed.

[00:43:26]But even at this time, the charismatic would bubble up every now and again. the emergence of the exuberant shakers or shaking Quakers in the northwest of England in the Quaker communities of the northwest of England and Benjamin Lay's dramatic prophetic signs witnessing against Quaker slaveolding reflected the more embodied aspects of early Quakers.

[00:43:50]However, this did not sit easily with the quietest Quakerism and Lei was disowned and the Shakers sang and danced their way out of the Quaker meeting and created their own sect.

[00:44:04]In the 19th century, the conflict between quietism and evangelicalism led to separations in America. Evangelicals moved away from quietism and adopted a more active and emotionally expressive spirituality that connected in some ways to that more expressive early period. In the 20th century, while conservative and liberal friends retained a quietest spirituality, evangelical Quaker expansion in the global south produced a faith that was increasingly influenced by the surrounding Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity. Again, reflecting some of the aspects of early Quakerism.

[00:44:47]So again, that presents us some interesting challenges in our current time. If both a quietest practice and a charismatic response are wellestablished features of our Quaker heritage, how can friends find a way to balance these two seemingly incompatible aspects of our faith? Clearly, there are dangers to imbalance.

[00:45:10]Quietism for all its strengths might mean that silence just becomes an end in itself, a limited echo chamber when we only really hear our own thoughts. Quiet as culture can also foster a sense of homogeneity and conformity that encourage that disenourages uh embodied expression.

[00:45:34]The charismatic stuff has plenty of dangers to it as well. Charismatic empowerment can produce blinkered certainty. The danger of spiritual abu ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab abuse it, that kind of charismatic behavior can just become a marker of my spiritual status. Um it can discourage people from the harder work of building community and pursuing justice and peace.

[00:46:00]Again, Quaker testimony is interesting in all of this because even in the most quietest of Quakers, testimony is the outward and physical revelation of what we found in Woodwardly. It has a strongly embodied aspect to it. George Fox advised friends to be patterns and examples so that their visible lives, what they said and what they did, would preach to others. And that's led Rachel Muers to argue that Quaker testimony is a form of physical physically enacted communication.

[00:46:35]Is it possible for us to bridge the global divides in Quakerism today? Is it possible for pastoral and evangelical friends to benefit from traditional quietist and contemplative practices?

[00:46:50]Could conservative and liberal friends gain something of value from the more embodied and emotionally expressive aspects of their heritage? And this seems to be perhaps even more important in the current time as we see ourselves moving into growing a growing crisis within our world. Throughout history, new movements of the spirit have tended to emerge within circumstances of social turmoil and change.

[00:47:21]Particularly when this was associated with the coming end times as a sense of crisis develops in our own time. Do we need a charismatic response?

[00:47:33]One that produces a generation of people who are powerful, fearless, and uncontainable.

[00:47:44]Given that it's so central to Quaker spirituality, how easy is it to really surrender ourselves, stopping all human striving, thoughts, and desires? Do we take the challenge of that seriously enough? To what extent does the quietness and lack of emotional embodied response in modern liberal Quakerism reflect a degree of comfort and respectability that limits our social and ethnic diversity?

[00:48:14]What will it take for us to get the kind of fearlessness and empowerment that we need to respond to the current growing crisis?

[00:48:24]And what are our lives, our words, and our actions communi communicating to others at this time?

[00:48:33]The absolute inward surrender of quietism and the embodied charismatic response cannot simply be conjured up.

[00:48:42]However, these are important issues that need to be brought into the light and discerned carefully. The early Quaker practice suggests that it was the intensity of the quiet surrender that generated the power of the embodied response.

[00:49:01]So, to our final uh theme, our final creative tension, the creative tension between the new creation and the world.

[00:49:10]Quakers have always found themselves caught between the vision of a new creation of peace, justice, and well-being and a world that's structured in a very different way. How should we navigate around that creative tension?

[00:49:25]Again, the Bible set the framework within which early Quakers understood this. The Bible describes a world that has become corrupted by human violence, selfishness, and injustice and promises the coming of a new creation of peace, justice, and right relationship.

[00:49:45]In this, we see an essential dualism going on. The world and the new creation are viewed as incompatible and in conflict with one another.

[00:49:56]In his letter to the Romans, the Apostle Paul wrote, "Do not be conformed to this world, but discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect."

[00:50:08]And the prophet Isaiah shared the divine promise of a peaceable kingdom. They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.

[00:50:18]Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.

[00:50:26]Now the Christian church was meant to offer a foretaste of this new creation, but it soon became part of the power structures of the world promoting the idea of two distinct but complimentary kingdoms. So there was a spiritual realm of the priesthood and the monastics and the way of Jesus was appropriate to that realm, but there was also a temporal realm, a a secular realm and that could work to quite different standards. And if you were a Christian, you could operate in both and play by the rules of both. And the rules of the world, of course, tend to be quite violent and quite coercive. And so we see a holding together of two things that look incompatible but are viewed as in some way complimentary. But like other radi other radicals, Quakers didn't see those two kingdoms as complimentary. They saw them as in conflict. And you had to stake your claim to where your loyal loyalty lay.

[00:51:27]And in addition to that, they s saw two fundamentally different ways of being human. the fallen way of the first Adam in conflict with God and the rest of creation and the new life in Christ who is the second Adam in right relationship with God and all things. James Naylor described this as follows. There is a first Adam and there is a second Adam.

[00:51:54]And they who who are in the first bear his image and they who are in the second bear his image. And these are contrary to one another. The one being from above, the other from below. The one the seed of God and the other the seed of the serpent.

[00:52:15]And linked to that, early Quakers also made a stark distinction between two forms of government.

[00:52:23]Outward earthly government that maintains order in a fallen world using physical force and an inward divine government in which people are ruled by an experience of divine guidance.

[00:52:38]So we might say that Quakers in this sort of conflictual model give priority to the kingdom of God over the kingdoms of the world, the way of Christ over the way of the first Adam, and divine inward governance over the external physical governance of the world.

[00:52:57]What motivated their witness was a conviction that in their time, Christ was overcoming the way of Adam in the Lamb's War and the kingdoms of the world were about to be replaced by the peaceable kingdom of God. Of course, that didn't happen. And when it didn't happen and Quakers began to suffer persecution, in order to survive, they had to find a way of finding an accommodation with the powers of the world.

[00:53:26]So although their primary loyalty was to the kingdom of God, they accepted the authority of earthly government within its specific boundaries and they were prepared to engage with it in a respectful way. So in the 1650s, George Fox met on a number of occasions with Oliver Cromwell and tried to convince Cromwell that Quakers were no threat to the Commonwealth. And in 1660 after the restoration of the monarchy, Margaret Fel spent a lot of time down in London stalking the king effectively uh having an audiences with Charles II writing to Charles II to try and convince him and the new regime that Quakers were a peaceable people and no threat to the new royalist regime.

[00:54:14]And then in the 1670s and 80s, William Penn became the primary lobbyer for friends. And the reason was he was a personal friend of James II.

[00:54:26]Uh and this didn't work out too well because of course uh in the glorious revolution so to speak uh we booted out James II and that bookquake is in a rather difficult position and that shows you some of the the difficulties of playing politics.

[00:54:41]This accommodation with the world unsurprisingly did have some negative implications because friends began for example to accept that social inequality was divinely ordained and they also as we know became involved in uh the colonial uh economy of the British Empire and became involved in enslavement and I think this is because they raised spiritual liberation over social liberation in this in this context.

[00:55:14]Quaker historian Elizabeth Casden has argued that George Fox determined that it was more important to establish friends as respectable law-abiding citizens with submissive law-abiding slaves than to challenge the system of cattle slavery.

[00:55:35]In the 18th century, this continued.

[00:55:37]Friends focused on protecting their peculiar ways as the one true church spiritually separated from the world while actively engaging with it in all sorts of ways, particularly in terms of business and trade. By the end of the 17th century, friends had become very effective lo political lobbyists as they tried to secure religious toleration and this had an impact in their relationship to the state. They were successful in securing a range of concessions from the British state, each enacted by legislation. So, Quakers got into a lot of trouble early on because of their testimony against swearing oaths.

[00:56:18]But because of their lobbying, there was a a Quaker Act in 1695 which allowed specifically allowed friends to affirm rather than swear an oath. In the middle of the 18th century, uh, the state, the British state was experiencing real problems trying to get Quakers into the military, into the militias. Um, and so there was a piece of legislation enacted that effectively recognized them as conscientious objectors. It allowed someone to pay a fee for a substitution of someone else.

[00:56:50]And so you so it's kind of an interesting way of passing the problem onto someone else, isn't it? And then finally, uh, in the middle of the 18th century as well, there was a piece of legislation that said a marriage is only legal after, um, the the bans had been read in a church or after the receipt of a of a license. And because that was contrary to Quaker practice, Quakers along with the Jewish community had a specific exemption from those arrangements.

[00:57:19]So you can see how Quakers came into quite a comfortable relationship with the state because of the way in which they were so successful in gaining those sorts of privileges.

[00:57:31]But this s this success um refle it did reflect the way Quakers were very effective in managing their relationship with the state. Um but nevertheless it um it presented compromises.

[00:57:45]But by the end of the 18th century, Quakers had become comp campaigners for the reform of the very unjust systems that had brought them wealth and respectability.

[00:57:58]In the 19th century, the impact first of evangelicalism and then liberalism softened sectarian boundaries and that meant that friends were much more willing to work with others on shared concerns.

[00:58:12]And this beginning this began to shift the nature of Quaker testimony. Before that Quaker testimony had been had been specifically the marker of a peculiar religious people. After that it became much more um a testimony to universal values or principles.

[00:58:33]Of course in the 19th century Quakers are vigorous vigorously involved in all sorts of reform issues. abolitionism, temperance, penal reform, health, health care, mental health reform, housing and education.

[00:58:48]However, the wealth and status of friends at this time inevitably placed limitations on their social attitudes and conduct as Kathleen Bell has shown us in her Eva Cox scholarship on when Quakers got it wrong. So, for example, rather wealthy Quakers sometimes expressed concern that servants and the lower orders might corrupt their children.

[00:59:16]Um, and when Quakers were involved in missions into urban areas, some friends expressed a concern that allowing workingclass people into the Quaker community would be a burden on the society.

[00:59:31]in terms of race and ethnicity. Although Quakers were solid abolitionists, that didn't necessarily mean that they bought into uh racial justice. And certainly in America, we see Quakers often opposing black voting, opposing intermarriage.

[00:59:49]Um, and friends of color in the meetings were often required to sit in segregated benches. And that's led Donna McDaniel and Vanessa July uh to suggest that this meant they were viewed as fit for freedom but not for friendship.

[01:00:09]So friends were both shaped by the culture that surrounded them and able to promote fresh insights pointing towards their vision of a new creation.

[01:00:21]But there's always been different emphases. Conservative friends tend to be more cautious about the potential corruption of the world around them.

[01:00:31]Evangelical and liberal friends have tended to adopt a more positive attitude to the world. Perhaps apart from those evangelicals who came out of the revi late 19th century revival, their Wesley and holiness spirituality made them suspicious has made them suspicious of the wider world like conservative friends.

[01:00:54]So where do we sit with all of this today?

[01:00:59]Despite our best efforts, we find ourselves implicated in the very things we claim to to reject. We promote peace while living under the protection of the most powerful military power system in history.

[01:01:16]We value a life of simplicity, but also enjoy the comforts of the affluent western lifestyle.

[01:01:24]We support economic justice but often benefit from an unjust and destructive economic global economic system. We cherish a contemplative spirituality while living busy lives dominated by information overload. I think that shows you how tricky it is to work and navigate your way around this particular creative tension. What are we doing today that might shock future generations?

[01:01:54]Why is it so hard to discern which features of the world are healthy and which need to be resisted and act accordingly?

[01:02:04]It may be that in grappling with those things we need to return to some of the aspects of early Quaker vision even if we reinterpret them within a a modern context. So first of all, do we need to take the reality of human frailty and limitations more serious more seriously in coming to terms with the negative aspects of human nature and society? Accepting that humans are both precious and flawed.

[01:02:34]Liberal Quakers tend have tended to want to emphasize the good and not think about sin, which is the word early Quakers would have used about all of this. But we do need to face up to the fact that we are as a species, we seem to be very malleable. Huge amounts of money is spent to try and convince us about what we should think or what we should buy. And people wouldn't spend that money if it didn't work. Um, so recognizing that we're malleable, we're easily led, but also that we are born into a society that's structured in a way that makes it much more difficult uh to do what's right than to go along with evil. And that presents real challenges for all of us. I think one of the uh this I think takes us back to the early vision of the lamb's war.

[01:03:29]This was this was a conflict between good and evil that's taking place within each of us and in the world. A struggle over what power guides and motivates and rules in our lives. What power is guiding, motivating and ruling in our lives? Where are we in that inward lamb's war?

[01:03:51]Early friends also took the imagery of the principalities of the powers and the powers from the New Testament quite seriously. There are many penicious pressures that can lead us astray including social, political and economic structures and ideologies that encourage division, hatred, violence, injustice and destructiveness.

[01:04:16]One of the ways we might be able to negotiate this uh tricky path is to draw on what Richard Roar has called the practice of the Hebrew prophets. Living on the edge of the inside. That's a practice of living precariously.

[01:04:35]Neither alien outsiders nor comfortable insiders.

[01:04:40]This can be a creative place offering an openness to alternative perspectives that lead to the possibility of prophetic challenge.

[01:04:51]But again, we need to return to the reality of us living in a time of increased crisis.

[01:05:00]We know that it was in a a time of uh turmoil and social breakdown that early friends emerged.

[01:05:09]time of violence and instability. And it was within that context that they had lifech changing experiences.

[01:05:18]As we look at the world now, we see the future of life on Earth threatened by industrialized war and ecological destruction.

[01:05:29]We see global economic injustice.

[01:05:33]And though all of those things then fueling an increase in forced migration, which is then responded to by those in power with the development of authoritarian populism and all of the kind of horrible racism and xenophobia uh we see around today.

[01:05:51]One of the things I think we need to recognize is that it's not enough to change social systems and it's not enough just to change ourselves. Both a change of human will and a change of social system is needed. These two things are intimately interconnected.

[01:06:08]Structures need to change but human will needs to change too. Without this, even if there was a structural change, for example, the previously oppressed very easily become the new oppressors.

[01:06:23]There's always been a struggle going on within individuals and within society between good and evil. love and hate, fruitfulness and destructiveness.

[01:06:34]In our own place and time, the outcome of this struggle could not be more consequential.

[01:06:40]What is at stake is the very future of life on earth.

[01:06:45]The Quaker faith does not rely on some kind of spiritual escapism, but is but is founded instead on the conviction that humans, society, and the whole creation can be transformed.

[01:07:00]Therefore, salvation means right relationship.

[01:07:06]The necessary power that can achieve this may be spiritual and only known inwardly, but its effects are wonderfully earthy and embodied.

[01:07:20]So what kind of relationship should we have with the state and the dominant culture?

[01:07:25]How is the struggle between good and evil playing out within us now?

[01:07:31]Are we optimists or pessimists?

[01:07:34]Can we steer a course between naive optimism and doomed pessimism?

[01:07:41]And how can we make our communities what Tom Wright has called small working models of the new creation.

[01:07:53]So those are the four the little little things we've got to deal with. It's nothing really, is it? I'm sorry you're all going to walk out of this room.

[01:08:04]But I think these are things that we need to bring into the open to think about in a positive way. What can we gain from an engagement with these four creative tensions in terms of inward experience and received tradition? Can we become more aware of what's shaping us as Quakers today?

[01:08:22]How might we creatively hold together our Christian and biblical roots and our spiritual of spirit spirit of restless innovation in ways that nurture relationships with the wider Quaker family without undermining our commitment to the tolerant and inclusive aspects of modern liberal society.

[01:08:45]in terms of the tension between communal order and individual freedom. Could an active engagement with this creative tension help us to develop new ways of being community that achieve real cohesion and order without devaluing individuals and undermining their agency in terms of the creative tension between uh the quietest and the charismatic?

[01:09:11]Should we be more open to the possibility that our quiet inward experiences might just might possibly prompt embodied and expressive outward responses affirming the essential goodness of the human body and the earthy physicality of the natural world.

[01:09:30]In a time of gathering crisis, what kinds of empowerment and resilience need to be cultivated so that we can respond courageously to what lies ahead?

[01:09:43]And finally, the creative tension between the new creation and the world.

[01:09:47]To what extent should we separate ourselves from the dominant culture or immerse ourselves within it? Are we primarily a community of freethinking rebels or a polite and respectable people?

[01:10:03]Given that we seem to be largely assimilated into the wider culture, how might this be limiting our ability to recognize our complicity with evil and injustice?

[01:10:17]I'd like to suggest that in view of all of this, and I know I've laid a lot on you friends, we urgently need to nurture a renewed commitment to our essential spiritual disciplines.

[01:10:30]The vitality and social impact of friends as a faith community depends on our shared commitment to the overall shape of Quaker spirituality with its essential disciplines and practices.

[01:10:45]This means taking seriously the inward work of being attentive and seeking spiritual guidance by adopting an attitude of inward stillness and quiet attentiveness and deep listening so that we can become aware of what the spirit is doing within us and within the world. But before we take action, we need to rigorously test uh our leadings and practice this discipline of discernment.

[01:11:17]Where are our emotions arising from?

[01:11:20]Where's our inward guidance arising from? And can we distinguish between the real prompings of love and truth and other other lesser motivations?

[01:11:32]Then we must face the challenging outward work of seeking to live adventurously and faithfully in the world. Being willing to try out new things, to experiment and innovate in our lives, finding the courage and the resolve needed to act on the inward guidance we have received. Even when this is likely to provoke hostility and resistance and make us appear peculiar, it seems likely that friends will remain a rather small faith community within the world. But if we're willing to strive creatively with these essential tensions that have deep roots in Quaker history and seek to be faithful in upholding and applying our longstanding spiritual disciplines and practices, we have the potential to be like the tiny mustard seed which when sewn and tended grows into a huge plant that serves the needs of local wildlife and becomes a notable feature on the landscape.

[01:12:35]Friends, do we still have the potential to turn the world upside down?

[01:12:42]Let it be so.