George Fox and Some Theories of Innovation in Religion

Claire Disbrey

doi:10.1017/S0034412500019727

George Fox and Some Theories of Innovation in Religion

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008

Claire Disbrey

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The histories of religions are notable for stories of innovators – people who feel compelled to rebel against the religious beliefs and practices of their time, who come up with novel religious ideas, and, whether intentionally or not, start new religious movements. Theories about the nature of religion need to give an account of religious innovation that accommodates these stories, and most claim that they do, even if only in retrospect. The baffling discovery is that the same historical characters are used to exemplify quite incompatible theories of innovation.

Type: Research Article
Information: Religious Studies , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , March 1989 , pp. 61 - 74

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034412500019727 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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^{page 61 note 1} James, William, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1901–1902) (Fontana, 1977), pp. 414–.Google Scholar

^{page 61 note 2} Ibid. p. 30.

^{page 61 note 3} Maclntyre, Alasdair (ed.), ‘The Logical Status of Religious Belief‘, Metaphysical Beliefs (SCM, 1957), p. 176.Google Scholar

^{page 61 note 4} Ibid. p. 200 (fn).

^{page 62 note 1} James, William, The Varieties, p. 29.Google Scholar

^{page 62 note 2} Ibid.p. 49.

^{page 62 note 3} Ibid. p. 416, ‘The philosophic climate of our time inevitably forces its own clothing on us’. And see p. 69/70.

^{page 62 note 4} James, William, The Varieties, pp. 414/15.Google Scholar

^{page 62 note 5} Maclntyre, Alasdair, ‘The Logical Status of Religious Beliefs’, p. 200.Google Scholar

^{page 62 note 6} Alasdair Maclntyre's arguments about experience as evidence are enlarged upon in ‘Visions’, New Essays in Philosophical Theology, ed. Flew, A. G. N. and Maclntyre, A. (SCM, 1955).Google Scholar He says, ‘We could never know from such experiences that they had the characterof messages from the divine, unless we already possessed a prior knowledge of the divine and of the way messages from it were to be identified’, p. 256.

^{page 63 note 1} Ibid. p. 176.

^{page 63 note 2} Ibid. p. 188, ‘It is not just that as a matter of historical fact the practice of worship precedes the explicit formulation of belief, but that we can worship, without being able to say clearly what we believe…so the language of liturgy is at the heart of the matter.’

^{page 63 note 3} Ibid. p. 200.

^{page 64 note 1} Ibid.footnote to page 200.

^{page 64 note 2} Ibid.

^{page 64 note 3} Ibid.p. 210. ‘Any explanation can provide an occasion for conversion.’ Maclntyre quotes the return of Shatov's wife in Tolstoy's The Devils and Wordsworth's brother's death. He comments that only those over–impressed by metaphysics would want to suggest that any logical process is involved.

^{page 64 note 4} See for example Lampen, John, Wait in the Light (Quaker Home Service, 1981), p. 1.Google Scholar

^{page 65 note 1} See for example the reports of Archbishop Laud's Metropolitan Visitation of the Province of Canterbury in 1934–5, printed in the Open University Course 203 (1982), Seventeenth–Century England; a Changing Culture 1618–1689, Block 3, pp. 9 ff.Google Scholar

^{page 65 note 2} Nickalls, John L. (ed.), The journals of George Fox (Religious Society of Friends, 1975), pp. 1/2.Google Scholar

^{page 66 note 1} Ibid. p. 4.

^{page 66 note 2} Ibid. p. 7.

^{page 66 note 3} Ibid. p. 11.

^{page 66 note 4} See as an example, Ibid. pp. 103/4.

^{page 66 note 5} See as an example, Rogers, John,(1653), ‘Ohel or Beth–Shemesh: A Tabernacle for the Sun’ from Hughs, Ann (ed.), Seventeenth–century England; a Changing Culture, vol 1: Primary Sources (OU,1980), pp. 151/2.Google Scholar

^{page 66 note 6} The journals, p. 3.

^{page 66 note 7} Ibid. pp. 4–6.

^{page 67 note 1} Ibid. pp. 7/8.

^{page 67 note 2} Edwards, Thomas (1646), ‘Gangrena’, Primary Sources, pp. 131/2.Google Scholar

^{page 67 note 3} Hall, Thomas (1651), ‘The Pulpit Guarded: The Epistle to the Lay Preacher’, Primary Sources, Pp. 144/5.Google Scholar

^{page 67 note 4} Fox says, ‘When I had openings, they answered one another and answered the Scriptures.’ This can be demonstrated by comparinghis opening that God does not live in temples made with hands, The journals, p. 9, with Acts 7.48 and 17.24.

^{page 68 note 1} A crisis which came to fruition in Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan in 1651.

^{page 68 note 2} The Journals, p. 11

^{page 68 note 3} See e.g. Penn's, William preface to The journals, p. xliii.Google Scholar

^{page 68 note 4} Lampen, John, Wait in the Light, p. 20.Google Scholar

^{page 69 note 1} The journals, pp. 35/6. It is interesting to note how many phrases in this long dissertation come directly from the New Testament.

^{page 69 note 2} Hoskins, Anne and Sharman, Alison (eds), Quakers in the Eighties (Quaker Home Service, 1980), p. 6.Google Scholar

^{page 69 note 3} Lampen, John, Wait in the Light, p. 6.Google Scholar ‘The religious debates of his time had the advantage of this agreed vocabulary, the language of the Bible.’

^{page 69 note 4} Ibid. p. 35.

^{page 70 note 1} Hoskins, and Sharman, , Quakers in the Eighties, p. 5.Google Scholar

^{page 70 note 2} Brinton, Howard, Guide to Quaker Practice (Pendle Hill, 1955), p. 8.Google Scholar

^{page 70 note 3} See The journals, p. 268, although one must look elsewhere for the whole story.

^{page 70 note 4} The journals, pp. 280 ff.

^{page 70 note 5} Brinton, Howard, Guide to Quaker Practice, p. 3.Google Scholar

^{page 70 note 6} Aylmer, G. E., The Levellers in the English Revolution, 1957.Google Scholar

^{page 71 note 1} Edwards, Thomas (1646), ‘Gangrena’, Primary Sources, p. 175.Google Scholar

^{page 71 note 2} Winstanley, Gerrard (1649), ‘True Levellers' Standard Advanced’, Primary Sources, p. 188.Google Scholar

^{page 72 note 1} See e.g. Lash, Nicholas, Theology on the Way to Emmaus, SCM, 1986Google Scholar, Miles, Tim, Religious Experience (Macmillan, 1972), p. 13CrossRef Google Scholar, Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philosophical Investigations (Blackwell, 1958), specially 1 paras 258–93Google Scholar, Maclntyre, Alasdair, ‘The Logical Status of Religious Belief’, Metaphysical BeliefsGoogle Scholar, and ‘Visions’, New Essays in Philosophical Theology.

^{page 72 note 2} See Winch, Peter ‘Meaning and Religious Language’, Reason and Religion, ed. Brown, Stuart (RIP/Cornell University Press, 1977).Google Scholar

^{page 73 note 1} See, for example, Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philosophical Investigations (Blackwell, 1978), 1 para. 258.Google Scholar

^{page 73 note 2} See for example the growth of the Quaker commitment to pacifism under the leadership of William Penn.

^{page 73 note 3} In almost all his writing on religion but notably in Phillips, D. Z., Faith and Philosophical Enquiry (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970).Google Scholar

^{page 73 note 4} Winch, Peter, ‘Understanding a Primitive Society’, Religion and Understanding (Blackwell, 1967)Google Scholar and ‘Meaning and Religious Language’, Reason and Religion.

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