The History of George Fox

QuakerSpeak is a weekly video series. New video every other THURSDAY!
SUPPORT QuakerSpeak! quakerspeak.com/donate/
SUBSCRIBE for a new video every other week! fdsj.nl/QS-Subscribe
WATCH all our videos: fdsj.nl/qs-all-videos
___
Become a Friends Journal subscriber for only $28
fdsj.nl/FJ-Subscribe
Filming and Editing by Christopher Cuthrell
___
Transcript:
Being born in 1624, George Fox is coming of age at a time when England is involved in a civil war that pits the forces of Parliament on one side against the king on the other. One of the results of this is a breakdown in the control that the Church of England had over religious life. So you have dozens of new religious groups manifesting themselves. The one thing all of these competing religious groups had in common was that they insisted “We are the only true Christian church, and if you're not part of us, you're going to burn in everlasting hellfire after you die.” George Fox believes in the reality of hell and eternal damnation, and he desperately wants to escape that.
I am Thomas Hamm. I live in Richmond, Indiana, where I taught for many years at Earlham College. I use he/him pronouns and I am a member of West Richmond Friends meeting. George, in his journal, tells us that he grew up a pious young man. When other youths were dancing on the village green or bowling at nine pins, he would go into the village tavern and exhort the men drinking there to consider the evil of their ways. In short, he was a very serious person. very concerned about the state of his soul, Even as a teenager. When he was 19 years old, George Fox. set off on a kind of spiritual pilgrimage. First, he traveled around southern England seeking out people who had reputations for piety and godliness. But as he recorded it, “...there were none that could speak to my condition.”
In 1646, 1647, he wanders up into the north of England. And it was on the moors of Yorkshire here and Lancashire, places where even today there are often more sheep than people, that George Fox had a series of spiritual experiences. Today, I think we would probably call them revelations because they're experiences where he is convinced that God was speaking directly to him. and those would become the basis of the Quaker movement. Perhaps the most important of all of these to him was this realization, “There is one, even Christ Jesus, who can speak to thy condition. ”He saw an experience of Christ as the answer to all his problems. It was the response that would satisfy his soul. It's pretty clear that for the rest of his life, that realization is going to be central to how George Fox sees the world and his role in it.
That is the first of his openings, but he has several others that are going to be central to the Quaker movement as it develops in England in the 1650’s. One was his conviction that all people have within them a certain divine light; the light of Christ inwardly revealed. And this is true even if people have never heard of Christianity, where they've never seen a Bible. They still have that light within them. Which, if it is obeyed, if people are obedient to the light that is within them, then it will lead them to lead a good life that is acceptable in the eyes of God. Another one of Fox’s openings: Revelation. The same spirit that inspired the writers of the various books of the Bible still inspires human beings in the 1640s. That shapes Quaker worship. Quakers gather together without any one person appointed to be the leader or pastor. There is no set of rituals to be followed, no set prayers or creeds to be recited. Instead, friends gather together, confident that if God has a message for the assembled group God will inspire someone to speak. God can inspire anyone, literate or illiterate, young or old, both men and women. For Fox that is fundamental.
In 1652, George Fox was moved to climb Pendle Hill, which had a local reputation as a somewhat dubious place. Earlier in the century there had been accusations that witches held their meetings there. Fox seemed to a perceived it differently. He was led of the Lord to go there, and while he was on Pendle Hill, he described having a vision of a great people to be gathered. From the 1640s onward he will preach anywhere he can collect a group. Whether it's on a village green or in a private home or in a barn or a tavern. He felt he had a message to share. But after his experience on Pendle Hill, he really seems to have a vision of his message being the basis for a movement that would be primitive Christianity revived. Some people who hear Fox were deeply moved by him. We have a number of accounts by his hearers that talk about how profoundly he moved some of them. He seemed to have a sense of what their spiritual needs were and spoke to them...
___
The views expressed in this video are of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views of Friends Journal or its collaborators.

[@maegardnermills4292]

Thanks I have discovered Quakers in my ancestors as well as my husband's ancestors.

[@candyboyer]

Interesting history of George Fox. Well done, Tom!

[@DelaneyAugustineWalk]

thank you 🙏🏼