Part 1 : Resource Material

Early Quaker History and Theology – Quakertown Monthly Meeting January 2026

Think about and pay attention to the emergence of the ideas of Continuing Revelation, State Religion versus Individual Religion

The English Reformation was on a different path than that of Lutheranism and Calvinism in continental Europe.

It all started with Henry VIII (28 June 1491 – 28 January 1547) removing England from the Catholic Church and founding the Church of England (1534). He asked the Pope to annul his first marriage after no sons survived past infancy, but when the Pope didn’t agree, he decided to act himself. At this time, there were no theological differences between the Church of England and the Catholic Church, but he did confiscate the lands of the Catholic Church.

At the same time, Martin Luther (10 November 1483– 18 February 1546) was challenging the Pope with his 95 Thesis (1517). Although there was no direct influence on England at the time, due to the printing press with movable type being developed, copies of his work were printed. In Germany, certain rulers bought into Luther’s ideas, other didn’t.  Germany was a patchwork of Catholicism and Lutheranism.

Henry’s initial heir was his youngest child, the only male, Edward (12 October 1537 – 6 July 1553), who became king on his father’s death. He was only 9 when he became king and 15 when he died.

After a commotion about Edward’s will, Mary I, Henry’s oldest child (18 February 1516 – 17 November 1558), born of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Mary was a devout Catholic and worked diligently to bring England back into Catholicism. She married Phillip II, king of Spain. She persecuted those priests who had been influenced Luther’s teaching, who fled to Europe for safety.  But she reigned for only five years because she died.

Her sister, Elizabeth I(7 September 1533 – 24 March 1603), ruled for almost 40 years, bringing stability.   She turned the country back to Protestantism, and the exiled clergy returned to England, bringing with them both the teachings from the Continent.

John Calvin (10 July 1509 – 27 May 1564) was a French theologian and cleric, who headed the theocratic rule of Geneva Switzerland. His teachings have become the basis of the Church of Scotland, Presbyterianism and Reformed Theology, such as the Puritans.

After Queen Elizabeth I died, a cousin, James I of Scotland (19 June 1566 – 27 March 1625), was named to rule. This is the King James who commissioned the King James Bible.

His son, Charles I, (19 November 1600 – 30 January 1649), married a French Catholic. He believed that he should have some of the powers that had been vested in Parliament. This set up a conflict, which resulted in the English Civil Wars, which were a series of three wars from 1642 to 1651: The Roundheads (Puritans) versus the Royalists.  Charles was beheaded in 1649. 

No monarch ruled from 1649 to 1653 when Oliver Cromwell, the leader of the Roundheads, was named Lord Protector. Cromwell ruled until his death in 1658 when his son took his place. His son stepped down less than a year. Both were Puritans. The monarchy was restored in 1660 with the ascension of Charles II (29 May 1630 – 6 February 1685) to the throne.  (The Restoration)

This back and forth between Catholicism and Puritanism was unsettling. It was felt that they were in apocalyptic times, and that if the Puritans won, it would bring on the second coming of Christ. This resulted in a large number of Seekers, otherwise known as Dissenters or Separatists. Some of the Separatists settled Massachusetts Bay Colony, some became Baptists, others founded extreme groups such as the Ranters, the Levelers, the Diggers, and the Fifth Monarchists. (Wikipedia lists 20 such groups) Quakers arose out of this movement.

George Fox, one of the founders of Quakerism,

grew up in a family which was descended from an earlier period of religious dissent, the Lollards, which came out of the reaction to the first Bible translated into English, the Wycliffe Bible.  Fox recounts in his Journal wandering around England starting in 1643 looking for someone who could answer his questions about the Bible and Jesus. Instead, he finds people who steal his ideas and those who say one thing on Sunday but act differently in the week (“professors”).  He spends ten years (during the Civil War!) wandering mostly in the north of England, asking questions, hearing about people who seem to have something to say spiritually and looking for ideas.

His practice was to rise in the middle of a religious service to state his beliefs, which led to him being arrested and imprisoned over and over again throughout the rest of his life. Note that these churches were the Church of England which were supported by tithes, mandatory taxes on the population to support the state religion, and at least some of the ministers were political appointees who had little or no inclination to spirituality. After his experience of seeking, he had found little value in the Church of England. He called the churches “Steeplehouses” because God wasn’t in the building and ministers “hireling priests”. 

On his way to Westmoreland in the North of England in 1652, he climbs a large hill called Pendell Hill and has a dream of a “great people to be gathered”. It was a busy time for that area, which people converging from all over to shear the sheep. A few days later, he attends a gathering of thousands of Seekers on Firbank Fell (another hill) and speaks for three hours. Many were convinced, including some who were prominent in the Seeker movement. His message “presented … a radical … critique of the Church based on a prophetic understanding of Christ’s immediate teaching, revealing, and ordering power within the believer, the true temple of God.”  Apocalypse of the Word, Doug Gwyn, p 29

Later in the week, he got up to speak during the church service near Swarthmoor Hall, where Margaret Fell was attending the service. From Fox’s journal, quoting Margeret Fell: ‘And so he went on, and said, “That Christ was the Light of the world, and lighteth every man that cometh into the world; and that by this light they might be gathered to God.” I stood up in my pew, and wondered at his doctrine, for I had never heard such before. And then he went on, and opened the scriptures, and said, “The scriptures were the prophets’ words, and Christ’s and the apostles’ words, and what, as they spoke, they enjoyed and possessed, and had it from the Lord,” and said, “Then what had any to do with the scriptures, but as they came to the Spirit that gave them forth? You will say, ‘Christ saith this, and the apostles say this’ but what canst thou say? Art thou a child of the Light, and hast thou walked in the Light, and what thou speakest, is it inwardly from God?” This opened me so, that it cut me to the heart; and then I saw clearly we were all wrong. So I sat down in my pew again, and cried bitterly: and I cried in my spirit to the Lord, “We are all thieves; we are all thieves; we have taken the scriptures in words, and know nothing of them in ourselves.” ‘

Doug Gwyn summarizes Quaker beliefs as follows:

1.    The Quakers believed themselves to be in the end times and to be the inheritors of Jesus teachings

2.    Christ’s work superseded all of the teachings of the church and government.

3.    Christ’s message to them in the present superseded the Bible, that Bible wasn’t the Word of God, it was the words of God.

Gwyn notes that the Quaker preaching in the 1650s succeeded where the Puritan message hadn’t because of the theology.  It succeeded because:

1.    It recaptured the energy of the early Christians and not the dead letter of the Bible

2.    It rejected Calvin’s utter depravity, it gave them hope

3.    It was not a political solution, the way the Puritans wanted

Quakers thought they were fighting for the souls of people, both within and without, and they called this The Lamb’s War. A quote from Fox: “and now is Christ come who will make war in righteousness and destroy with the sword of his mouth all those inventions that have been set up since the days of the apostles.” Gwyn Apocalypse of the Word, p. 37

Fox was not the only founder of Quakerism,

but he was a gifted speaker and was responsible for the convincement of many people.  The idea of Christ speaking directly to people had existed prior to Fox, but he put the ideas together and made them come alive. He also directly addressed the major weakness of the Puritan faith, hypocrisy. Because Puritans bought into Calvin’s idea that we are utterly depraved and could not do anything ourselves to enter into Heaven, people felt free to “profess” faith on Sunday and continue to act the same way they had before their faith.  Quakers (and Fox) specifically gave them a path to salvation. We will talk more about this in a later session.

However, as people of the 21st century, Fox’s work is difficult to understand. His sentences are run on and use terminology that we don’t identify with.

He also attracted people who expanded on his ideas, and published pamphlets and books that explained them in other ways.

Two notable early theologians were Robert Barclay & Elizabeth Bathurst.

Barclay was trained as a theologian and was offered an inheritance by his uncle if he became Catholic. Instead, he joined the Quakers and wrote many books and pamphlet’s explaining the Quaker faith. The essential view which Barclay maintained was that all people can be illuminated by the Inward Light of Christ "which is the author of the Scriptures and will lead them into all truth". (Wikipedia) His seminal work (Apology for a True Christian Divinity, first published in 1678 in Latin in Amsterdam) was well regarded and is still in print.

Both he and Elizabeth Bathurst conceptualized the Inward Light of Christ as the “Seed of God”. This allows them both to draw a distinction between the Seed of God and the Seed of Man, which was an inspired theological move.

Unlike Barclay, Bathurst was untrained and her only work was published posthumously, but she was apparently well regarded. Here is a quote on this topic from her work, Truth Vindicated (1695):“And this Light is elsewhere called the Seed , even that incorruptible Seed , by which we are begotten to God, and born again by his Eternal Word, which liveth and abideth forever, see 1 Pet. i. 23. This is the promised Seed , yea, that Seed of the Woman, spoken of, Gen. iii. 15. where the Lord said to the Serpent, I will put Enmity between thee and the Woman, and between thy Seed and her Seed ; it shall bruise thy Head, and thou shalt bruise his Heel. This is the Seed of the Kingdom of Heaven; for Heaven's Kingdom is within, as Christ said”