Rethinking Quaker principles

This is two essays by Rufus Jones, written with his classic clarity and elegance, as well as his deep knowledge of Quaker history and spiritual experience. He reviews the experience of George Fox and early Friends to show the nature of the vitality and power of their religious movement, and calls Friends to return to this vital contact with divine life and to confidence in the living God. He also writes of the basic traits of the Quaker Way: integrity, spiritual nurture of each other and the young, a faith in the sacredness of human life that leads to refusal to use violence and commitment to humanitarian endeavors, and the constant return to the sources of love and truth in silent worship.
This is classic Rufus Jones, a wonderful show more concise formulation, both informative and inspiring. One of the gems here: "To be 'saved' for these early Quakers did not mean escaping the forces of Hell and gaining an entrance through the pearly gates into a peaceful Heaven. It meant an inward transformation of spirit and a way of life. It was the birth of a new love, and new passion for holy living, a hate of sin both within and without."
The title seems to refer not to new Quaker ideas but to returning to the earlier Quaker Way from the practices and faith of the late 19th and early 20th centuries that he regarded as fallen away. show less

The author believes the Society of Friends is a mutation that emerged from the Reformation movement of the 17th century. If there had been no Puritan movement there would have been no Society of Friends.

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