Religion: Quaker Revival

Disembarking at Boston in 1656, Mary Fisher, “a religious maiden,” and her companion Ann Austin, Quakers, were welcomed by hangman, by gaoler. The hangman made a public bonfire of all books found in their possession. The gaoler, after examining them for evidence of witchcraft, clapped them into jail, where they lay five weeks. Then the religious maidens were shipped back -to England.

So upset were the people of Massachusetts that they made a law. The next Quaker to land would get one ear lopped off. If he came back, off with the other ear! If yet again he returned, his tongue was to be pierced by a red-hot iron. These provisions failing, however, to deter the Quakers, presently the gibbet was invoked and four Quakers were hanged, one of them a woman.

But the Quakers still kept coming. Last week, energized by the election of a member of their organization, Religious Society of Friends, as President of the U.S.,* they were beginning what is probably the most vigorous effort in more than a century for converts.

A circular vigorously urging the doctrine of the Quakers was distributed in the mails, signed by Jesse H. Holmes, professor of philosophy, Swarthmore College; Roscoe Pound, dean of the Harvard Law School; J. Russell Smith, professor of Economic geography, Columbia University; Thomas A. Jenkins, professor of the history of the French language, University of Chicago; Albert T. Mills, professor of history and political science, James Millikin University.

Warmakers Welcome. Although in course of years the Quaker has come to represent t’ie very personification of the pacifist spirit, the circular explains that militarists are not excluded from membership in the society.†

This point and others made in the circular were explained by the fact that the Quakers have never formulated any fixed creed. They have no body authorized “to dictate to the members as to doctrine or conduct.”

Addressed to “the scientifically minded,” the circular declared that it did not seek the attention of those satisfied with “the Apostles or the Nicene Creed, the inerrancy of the Bible, the virgin birth of Jesus, and the verity of the miracle stories of the old and new Testament.” God goes by many another name among Quakers: “the Seed, the Inner Light, the In-speaking Voice, the Christ within, the Word . . . The Hidden Dynamo, The Super-self, The World-father.” And “religion as we understand it has nothing to fear from science.”

I Street N. W. A mild little colonial structure of red brick, with a peaceable white door and portico, stands on I Street northwest, in Washington. It is the Meeting House of the Society of Friends in the capital, and there Mr. & Mrs. Hoover attend service. Its capacity is about 200 people, and the Friends were wondering how best to stretch the walls. With or without circulars to the scientifically minded, they foresaw that crowds would throng to their door each “First Day” of the next four years, when President & First Lady attend.

Quaking, Trembling. Only a few years before the religious maidens landed at Boston, when England was in a state of great religious unrest, the Society of Friends came into being under the leadership of George Fox (1624-91), an itinerant preacher whose personal habits approached those of a latter-day John the Baptist. Once he walked barefoot through the streets on market day crying, “Woe to the bloody city of Lichfield!”

Fox, protesting against the sluggish formalism of the English churches, declared that every man must experience a personal revelation of God, an “Inward Light,” which availed more than mere parroting of Scripture. After the organization of the first Quaker community in Lancashire, the movement spread rapidly through northern England and Wales.

Some of the early Quakers went barefoot, some in sackcloth, some even naked. In moments of great fervor they exhibited violent physical reactions, and it was their contention that those who did not know “quaking and trembling” had not found the “Christ within.” To this is ascribed the name “Quakers,” given them in derision in the first years of the movement.

Peace in America. From the beginning the Quakers cherished a hope for refuge from their’persecutors in America. Fox was considering the purchase of land from the Indians in 1660. The first large settlements were in New Jersey in 1677-78, and under William Penn in Pennsylvania.

No longer do the Friends go barefoot, or even quake in public. In 1927 there were 115,963 of them in the U. S. They were grouped in several divisions according to emphasis laid on this or that doctrine, the largest body being called collectively the Five Years Meeting. Another important body was the Friends’ General Conference; and it was a standing committee of this, the Advancement Committee, which initiated the campaign for members.

* Herbert Clark Hoover was born a Quaker, his mother being zealous in the communities of Friends in Iowa. Mrs. Hoover was an Episcopalian, but adopted her husband’s faith after their marriage. Hoover’s reticence before the public was said to be due largely to his Quaker upbringing.

† Evidently the Rev. Dr. Malcolm James Mc-Leod, pastor of the Collegiate Reformed Church of St. Nicholas, in New York, had not seen the circular. In his Thanksgiving sermon he criticized Hoover for going south on a dreadnought. Said he: “A Quaker on a battleship looks like a cannon in a parlor.”