Introduction

Introduction J. William Frost In October 2002 the Rebecca White Trust, Friends Historical Association , and Swarthmore College sponsored a conference to commemorate and analyze the impact of George Fox and early Quakers upon later generations of Friends. The occasion was also a celebration of the 350* anniversary of the founding of the Society of Friends in 1652, although selecting any single year as the birthday is rather arbitrary. We could have picked either the year Fox left home on a spiritual search, or when he first experienced what he called the inward light or seed of Christ, or the time he made his first convert, Elizabeth Hooten. However, in 1902 and 1952, Friends selected 1652 as the crucial year because for the first time substantial numbers of North-Country people joined Fox in creating a new religious movement whose institutional forms continue to this day in the world wide Quaker movement. In his own time Fox was a controversial figure, and his example and legacy continue to be debated within and among the various branches of Quakerism and by scholars of religion and British history. The speakers participating in the conference came from Britain and America and represented the main streams of liberal and evangelical Quakerism. We are publishing here in a double issue of QuakerHistory and as a separate book eight ofthe papers presented, with the cost being underwritten in part by a grant from the Rebecca White Trust administered by Arch Street Monthly Meeting. Due to limitations of space we are not printing the comments of critics: Hugh Barbour, Margaret Bacon, John Oliver, and David John - all ofwhom made valuable suggestions about the papers. It could be argued that just as centuries of Lutheran scholarship on Martin Luther tell us more about the authors' beliefs than about Luther, so representations ofFox and early Friends are equally selective and reveal as much about the religious commitments of ministers, theologians, and historians as about Fox. The papers in the book illustrate that this phenomenon was true in the nineteenth century and may go back even into the late seventeenth century. Readers may also want to judge how well contemporary scholars separate their beliefs from their scholarship or whether when writing from within a religious tradition this is a desirable outcome. The theme of the conference was Fox's legacy; that is, how later generations of Friends saw Fox and his contemporaries and how those interpretations changed over the centuries. The world view ofseventeenthcentury Quakers is far removed from our times. How did succeeding generations and how do we separate beliefs that seemed self-evident and revolutionary in 1652—but now seem peculiar to the England of the Puritan revolution—from what has perennial significance? Should Fox be ivQuaker History important today because of his character, his beliefs, his example, or because he created an institutional framework that has endured? Is there a Fox quotation or activity relevant for modern First Day School, Sunday worship services, meeting for business, and the American Friends Service Committee? What roles should the first Friends play in the life of the Quaker community in worship, theology, and social actions? One disagreement that emerged from these papers was between those scholars who see a sameness in Fox's teachings from 1652 until his death in 1691 and others who find a change in emphases by Friends and Fox during the Commonwealth before 1 660 as contrasted with greater orthodoxy and authoritarianism during the Restoration. Did either the ambiguities within the teachings of early Friends or a change in emphases that may have helped Friends survive in the seventeenth century lead to the schisms that divided Friends in the nineteenth century and legitimate different understandings of Quakerism today? Or are the differences superficial and is there a sameness to the religious experience shared by Fox and early Friends that transcends the centuries and unites past and present day Quakers and also other Christians? A second area of disagreement is whether the changes initiated by Midwestern Gurneyite Quakers after 1 870 in advocating revivalism, hymns, pastors, and programmed worship and the equally significant changes advocated by silent-meeting Friends in Britain and the East Coast after 1880 in...