A new religious movement emerged within the turbulent middle seventeenth century in England. They called themselves Children of the Light, but their detractors called them Quakers, because of the way they trembled and quaked with enthusiasm as they prayed.

The movement’s founder, George Fox, had been a restless seeker, given to solitary, thoughtful contemplation of scripture and serious conversation with religious leaders. Dissatisfied with the Church of England’s insistence that clergy who studied at Oxford and Cambridge were therefore necessarily prepared for their duties, Fox wandered the country trying to find, among the radical preachers who had separated from the Church of England, one who could address his spiritual need. Being educated didn’t guarantee spiritual authenticity. Being enthusiastic or critical of the established religious order didn’t make one holy, either. As he writes in his Journal, Fox was ready to give up on finding anyone, any priest or preacher, who could speak to his condition: “And when all my hopes in them and in all men were gone, so that I had nothing outwardly to help me, nor could I tell what to do, then, oh then, I heard a voice which said, ‘There is one, even Christ Jesus that can speak to thy condition.’ And when I heard it my heart did leap for joy.”

The direct experience of the Living Christ was not only possible, but it trumped all other ways of experiencing the presence of God. No priest or ceremony or sacrament or prayer book or scripture could adequately convey God’s presence compared to this direct encounter. George Fox proclaimed, “Christ has come to teach His people himself.” Christ was present as an inward reality, incarnate within every person. The Living Christ was a light within and among people who sought him out: “Yet a little while is the light with you,” Jesus says of himself in the gospel of John. “While ye have light, believe in the light, that ye may be the children of light.” (John 12:35-36)

The fundamental authority and organizing principle of these Children of the Light, or Friends of the Light, was the direct inward encounter with God’s living presence. Revelation was ongoing and immanent; the still small voice of God could be heard by anyone with ears to hear. The Voice, the Word of God, is found in the silence. These Quakers created formless or unprogrammed worship that cultivated this listening, inward attention. Worship was the unmediated encounter with God. Another radical dissenting religious group in England familiar to George Fox was known as the Seekers; they would gather together in silence until the Spirit gave the preacher words to convey to the congregation. Among Quakers, worshippers remained in silence until the Spirit gave anybody present, not just the minister, something to say. There was no program of scripture reading or hymn singing or congregational prayer or pastoral preaching; simply the expectant silence of the gathered faithful waiting and listening for the voice of God.

The inner experience of rituals such as communion and baptism were emphasized while the outward observance of these rites was done away with entirely. If sacraments are the outward sign of an inward grace, that grace needed no signifiers, no distracting gestures or symbols to be authentically experienced. Initiation into the life of the Spirit, and communion with God and one another were powerfully lived and felt without water, bread, or wine. “Behold, I stand at the door and knock,” Jesus says in the Book of Revelation. “If any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.” (Revelation 3:20) The Lord’s supper was entirely an inward reality, an inner encounter with the Living Christ available to all who hear his voice and open up to him.

In addition to worship, the direct encounter with the Inward Christ, the Inward Light, shaped the way the Quakers conducted themselves as a group and in the world. Church business was based on the principle of corporate direct guidance; meetings for business were like meetings for worship in which participants waited for the promptings and leadings of the Spirit.

George Fox advised his followers “to walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in every one.” There was something of God in every person. Quakers pointed out that in John’s gospel Jesus is described as the true Light that “lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” (John 1:9) Every person had access to this light. If God’s revelation could be directly given to anybody, then everybody was equal; every person was to be cherished as a potential vehicle for the will of God, every person was to be valued as instrument for the voice of God. This affirmation led to Quaker testimonies for peacemaking and abolition of slavery and women’s equality.

It also led to an egalitarian ecclesiology. There was no hierarchy among Quakers, though it was acknowledged early on that people were given the Light in differing measures. Elders and clerks helped care for the local meeting or congregation, but there was no clergy as such. Those that showed evidence of a life directed by God were recognized by their fellows and authorized to fill these roles. Quakers met for worship every Sunday, the First Day of every week, and monthly to conduct business. Within a region, worship groups came together for quarterly meetings, and soon within a larger geographic area, annual meetings for business took place. These Yearly Meetings are the equivalent of denominational structures in other religious groups. The New England Yearly Meeting began in 1661 and is the first and oldest such Friends’ Yearly Meeting in the world.

“Friends regard their religion in worship and daily life as being guided by the Inner Light,” says the official statement of the North Carolina Yearly Meeting. “Thus they have no use for dogma and creedal formulas. Quakerism can be described but not defined, since it is an inner vision and outward life style rather than a theological worldview.”

Thus Quakerism developed with no rituals or liturgies, no hierarchical clergy, no overseeing denominational structure, no creeds or dogmas. The ultimate source of authority was the Inward Light, that of God within every person experienced without interpretation. The leadings of the Spirit, experienced as a direct inner prompting, were authoritative. This month, our worship theme here at First Parish Church is authority, and I find in my reading of Quaker history many insights about religious authority, with reverberations in my own spiritual life and the life of religious liberals more broadly. A religious movement and community shaped by the direct, immediate experience of the divine is instructive. The authority of clergy, liturgy, scripture, hierarchy and creed all came into question when immediate contact with God was made central. And it was the question of authority that eventually brought discord and schism among the Quakers.

In the nineteenth century, divisions began to appear in the Religious Society of Friends, as Quakers came to call themselves. One of the central issues in the fracturing of the Quaker movement was the authority of the Bible. The Bible was seen as a secondary authority to personal revelation. Where the Inward Light contradicted the Bible, it was that inner experience that would be authoritative. Other Quakers viewed the Bible as revelatory. For these Friends, the experience of the Inward Light allowed them to read scripture accurately, but the Light itself was not authoritative. Influenced by the evangelical revivals of the time, some Friends wanted a more biblically-based faith. Others took the interiority of life in the Light to the opposite extreme, claiming the Inward Light as the only authority, eschewing the Bible and the gathered community as tests or correctives of that subjective experience. Yearly meetings divided to the point where today, generally speaking, there are three major branches representing a spectrum of Quakerism: liberal, conservative, and evangelical.

At one end of the continuum, evangelical Friends, the largest and dominant group globally, have pastors and churches and sermons and creeds and are in many ways indistinguishable from other Protestant sects. At the other end of the spectrum are those liberal Friends with unprogrammed worship, a non-Christian or post-Christian spirituality that focuses solely on the inner experience that may or may not even be theistic in nature. On one hand, clearly delineated lines of authority, and on the other, an inwardly focused spirituality in which the self is the only authority. At one end, the risk that the direct experience of God’s presence is filtered and interpreted and shaped by outside forces, and at the other end, the risk of a narcissistic solipsism.

I’ve been ruminating on questions of religious and spiritual authority since December, when the State of Israel began its bombardment of the Palestinian territory in Gaza. As it happened, in my personal devotional reading of the Bible, I had simultaneously arrived at the books of Joshua and Judges. Daily, I listened to the news coming from Gaza of the humanitarian nightmare there, created by months of embargo followed by a barrage of bombs followed by military invasion. Daily, I read and heard what the lack of food, fuel, and medicines were doing to civilians who were also being bombed by sea, land and air. Daily, I read scriptures that described the ancient Israelites invading ancient Palestine and slaughtering the native inhabitants there. The Bible details the invasion, massacre, and capture of Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Jebusites and others, often listing the casualties, sometimes listing the cattle and other property destroyed or appropriated. I perceived an overlay of ancient and contemporary narratives of terror, attack and carnage as news stories and Bible stories echoed one another. Every day, I wondered how what I was reading in the Bible could be considered the Word of God when it in fact appeared to me to be a five thousand year old version of news reports coming from Gaza. Every day I questioned how what I was reading in the Bible could be good news.

The Bible is a collection of writings from the ancient Middle East, texts that span hundreds of years in both their narrative and the history of their production. Particularly, they are texts of the ancient Hebrew people – stories, legends, songs, prayers, laws, customs, histories to name a few of the genres to be found in the Hebrew Bible. The national history of the Hebrew people is narrated, as all histories are, from the perspective of those insiders with the luxury to do so, usually the political and literate elites. The Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, and Jebusites no doubt tell a different story. But the Bible is the Hebrew story of how God helped them vanquish the native inhabitants of the land they were invading and occupying. Indeed, how God promised to hand over this land to them over and above those foreign peoples who happened to already be living there.

Marshalling the insights of archaeology, history, anthropology, geography, literary-critical analysis, among other disciplines, I was reminded that these are the tribal stories of a single nation of the ancient world. They are limited in scope, limited in their pre-modern worldview, and limited in the good news they can convey to a twenty-first century reader. Much in this writing is simply unreasonable. I was reminded that these texts also take slavery for granted as an institution, understand women as inferior to men, and prescribe capital punishment for homosexual behaviour, among other things that no longer make sense. The Bible needs to be read through the lens of reason. The insights of reason and the findings of the humanities and sciences are important sources of reflection. Intellectual curiosity and inquiry are tools on the spiritual journey. An individual must discern for himself or herself what is most loving, just, healing, and liberating. Reason and conscience are further sources of authority.

The Bible, as the story of God and God’s people, remains nevertheless influential, seminal for me in my spiritual life. As the primary testament of God’s work and presence in the world of history, the Bible is formative. This is the theological account, story, and memory of what God has done with and through God’s people, conditioned by its location in history and geography and written by human hands. Much of it is exactly what people have done throughout time, with a theological gloss. This collection of ancient documents testifies to this spiritual history and memory, continually informing and forming God’s people. One need not be slavishly devoted to its every word to appreciate this record, flavoured by the historical and cultural contexts that produced it, this testimony about God.

The story of other Christian disciples, others who faithfully followed Jesus of Nazareth through the centuries, are a further source of authority for me. This community produced its own testimonies, both the New Testament and beyond. The community of Jesus followers, contemporary and historical, form and inform those seeking to follow the Way of Jesus today. The community of faith supports, aids, and challenges. An individual’s experience and conscience are tested against that of others, both present and past. One’s experience of God needs to be tested to avoid delusion and making an idol of the self. Direct experience needs to “pass through the fires of thought” to be tempered and purified, both in conversation with others, in conversation with the tradition, and in the light of reason. The dialogue takes place with New Testament witnesses as the memories, stories, and texts of early followers of Jesus; the witnesses of saints and sages throughout the years as faithful and prophetic voices that continue to inform, comfort, and challenge; the confessions of Christian communities through their creeds, prayers, liturgies, governance, music, art and architecture.

As a Christian I affirm that Jesus of Nazareth is the definitive disclosure of God and God’s purpose and will for the world. Jesus preached and practiced forgiveness, compassion, boundary-defying friendship, unmediated access to God, and resistance to systems of domination. I read all of scripture in the light of who Jesus was, what he did and stood for. Those parts of the Bible that contradict the teaching and example of Jesus, then, I do not consider authoritative. I do not consider accounts of bloodshed and domination and misogyny, for example, as the Word of God. The Bible needs to be read through the lens of the testimony of Jesus. The same can be said of the historic Christian testimonies. These, too, need to be seen in the light of who Jesus was as Christians have frequently betrayed his original vision.

Reason, scripture, tradition and experience work in tandem with one another as sources of authority for me in my spiritual life. None of these alone is authority enough. Each corrects and informs the other. The Bible needs to be read through the lens of personal experience and in conversation with historic testimonies of people of faith. Testimonies of the religious tradition need to be viewed through the experience of a loving, forgiving, gracious God. Personal, individual experiences of God need to be compared with what others have known of God to know if these promptings and leadings, as Quakers would say, are actually of God. These others include the contemporary community of faith as well as the historic community of faith. Tradition needs to be corrected by ongoing insight given by the Spirit who continually makes things new; outmoded forms need to be updated as personal experience of the Spirit prompts us. Reason, scripture, tradition and experience correct, reinforce, and inform each other and together form the source of religious authority.

This brings me back to the Inward Light. Revelation is not sealed. God continues to reveal God’s self to the world and in the world. The creative power and energy of God is the ultimate source of all. The Hebrew Bible speaks of God’s dobhar; the Greek New Testament speaks of God’s logos—the creating Force, the speaking Voice, the expressing Spirit, the thinking Mind. Christians speak of this creative power and energy as the Word of God. (This is not to be confused with the Bible or the words of God. Upper-case W, Word of God). For Christians, Jesus of Nazareth is the embodiment of the Word of God and his example, teaching, and ministry are the descriptors and signifiers of this Word. It is possible, through God’s grace and spirit, to discern the Word of God in the mundane material of daily life. The Word is alive and comes to us in prayer, worship, natural landscapes, right relation with others, and in other, often unbidden and surprising ways. Without direct experience of God’s in breaking Spirit, religious life can become empty form or intellectual sophistry.

The Word of God is alive in the world. God continues to speak, to reveal something of God’s self in and among people, in and among God’s creation. God continues to say, Let there be. God continues to say, It is good. God continues to create and invites us to create with God works of beauty, wholeness, a social order shaped by compassion and justice. The Word of God is loving, just, healing and liberating as revealed and manifest in Jesus. Everything that is good and true and beautiful and ultimately authoritative for us flows from this creative and creating Word, the power, energy, dobhar, logos, of God. It is the light by which we see and read and compare and think, by which we sift through all that we are given to discern the presence of God.

“The darkness is now past, and the true light now shineth.” There is a place within you, a golden light-filled spot within you, that is untouched by cynicism and pain and disappointment. There is a seed within you, a tiny untouched fleck of gold. Let its light grow within you. Let yourself be infused by its gracious spreading warmth. Let it shine.

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