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77 Q The Kingdom of Light Margaret Fell’s Theology and Eschatology 3 As an early apologist, Margaret Fell championed Friends’ beliefs and practices in a variety of contexts. As a First Publisher of the Truth, she is an important source of insight into the theological development of the Society of Friends and her extant correspondence and religious writings provide a window through which to view the rise of Quakerism. Her books, pamphlets , and correspondence are addressed not only to Friends, but to priests, rabbis, kings, and nations. Never merely a follower of George Fox, Fell was a proclaimer of the Light, ever working to clarify, defend, and promote Quaker beliefs. From the outset of her convincement by Fox, Margaret Fell gives us a unique perspective on the Quaker movement. Though expressed in terms unique to the Friends movement, Fell’s theology is biblically based and surprisingly orthodox given the strong opposition which Friends’ theology elicited among the church leaders and divines of the day. Despite the occasional confusing or poorly organized effort, she was often an articulate theological spokesperson for the Quaker movement. In the same way, her well-documented leadership of the Friends’ organizational hub in the north of England and her persecution and imprisonment for Quaker religious practices gives her writing a clear pedigree. Scholars and students of Quakerism also understand that the value of her religious writing rests in her readiness to challenge critics and her willingness to defend Friends’ beliefs and practices in print. Having said this, it should be noted that in pursuing a systematic account of Fell’s theology we enter into territory she herself chose not to explore. This “nursing mother” of Quakerism was a polemical and prophetic pamphleteer, a religious leader and practical theologian concerned primarily with her immediate audience 78 Margaret Fell and the End of Time and present pressing needs of the Lamb’s War. Margaret Fell was not a scholar in the traditional sense, and in fact carried with her a distrust of the educated, professional clergy. According to Fell, schooled pastors received instruction in Scripture but “have not the inspiration of the Almighty, and motion of the Spirit of the Lord God, the same that gave forth the Scriptures, when they come to interpret them, and give meaning to them, being unlearned therein, they just wrest them to their own destruction and therefore they do not profit the people at all.”1 What then, besides some quest for deep irony, would justify our efforts to corral her religious thought into the close quarters of the standard systematic loci? We shall discover that gaining a better sense of the overall shape of her theology in reference to the standard loci will enhance our appreciation of early Quaker thought, and her contribution to it. As we discussed earlier in chapter 1, Margaret outlived the majority of first-generation Friends. Because of this long period of productivity and publication, Fell survived long enough to become an anachronism in the very movement on which she had stamped her mark. Later Society of Friends leaders at times found her earlier work awkward for political or social reasons, and her later work problematic because her pen had become an unauthorized vehicle for dissemination of the Society’s opinions. Thus, close attention to her writings reveals the clear impact of changing social and political realities on Quaker theology over a long and historically significant period of time, and while this came at great personal cost to Fell, it is a benefit to Quaker studies.2 Like others of her time, she was motivated by her belief that a new age was upon the earth. Margaret was thus filled with a feeling of urgency and a holy boldness evidenced in her letters and publications. Her place at the center of the emerging Quaker movement was marked by a sense of mission which, combined with her pragmatic nature and her no-nonsense North Country sensibilities, made her a woman neither inclined to waste time nor mince words. Fell’s writings thus reveal a great deal about the dynamic origins of the Friends movement and its developing theology : its early eschatological fervor, missionary zeal, spiritual militancy, and boldness in the face of persecution. Fell’s writings likewise convey the values and sensibilities of those First Publishers of the Truth, most of whom went early to the grave as a result of their convictions. Because of this, it is important to make clear that we are not making...

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