The Quakers

a short history

Key Quaker beliefs are: God is love
The light of God is in every single person

A person who lets their life be guided by that light will achieve a full relationship with God

Everyone can have a direct, personal relationship with God without involving a priest or minister

Redemption and the Kingdom of Heaven are to be experienced now, in this world

The Quakers - the Religious Society of Friends was founded in the 1650s by George Fox, who aimed to take believers back to the original and pure form of Christianity. By the time of his death in 1691, his movement had 50,000 followers.

Fox got into political trouble by preaching that there was something "of God in every person". - a revolutionary attack on all discrimination by social class, wealth, race and gender and it had worrying implications for the social structure of his time.

Quakers‘ refusal to take oaths or to take off their hats before a magistrate, and their holding of banned religious meetings in public, led to 6,000 Quakers being imprisoned between 1662 and 1670.

Fox believed that everyone should try to encounter God directly and to experience the Kingdom of Heaven as a present, living reality. He objected to the rituals of the churches, and rejected the idea that the Bible was always right.

He argued that God himself does not want churches, which, with priests and rituals are an unnecessary obstruction between the believer and God.  These views infuriated the mainstream churches, and Quakers were persecuted in Britain on a large scale until 1689.

Quakers today work actively to make this a better world.

They are particularly concerned with human rights, based on their belief in equality of all human beings; social justice; peace and freedom of conscience.

They seek to live simply so as to reduce the burden on the environment.

Quakers do not celebrate Christian festivals such as Easter and Christmas, they feel the incarnation and resurrection should be remembered on a daily basis.

Communal worship consists of silent waiting, with participants contributing as the spirit moves them.

There is no creed since this is seen as taking on belief at second hand - they think that faith should be more personal than that and based on a person's inner conviction, and that faith is something that is always developing and not something frozen at a particular moment in history that can be captured in a fixed code of belief.

Quakers have no collective view on what happens after death.

They tend to concentrate on making this world better rather than pondering what happens after leaving it. They are actively involved in social and political issues and believe in pacifism and non-violence.

Brian Hatton

Download as doc

Download Page as pdf