George Fox (1624-1691)
One of the founding fathers of Quakerism, George Fox was born in 1624 in the English town of Fenny Drayton, Leicestershire. At the age of 19 he left home to wander the country, seeking answers for his religious perplexities. In 1647, while fasting and reading the Bible he achieved a spiritual breakthrough on which he based his growing faith that the Divine Spirit can speak directly to man. Nothing was needed for this direct experience to take place – a revolutionary belief for the time.
He bravely rebelled against governmental control over the Church of England advocating that consecrated buildings, tithes and ministers were unnecessary to the individual seeking God. Fox and his followers firmly believed that they represented the return of true, primitive Christianity. He was sent to prison on eight occasions for his stances on religion. On one such occasion, during his trial, he told the officials that they ought “to tremble before the word of God”. “You are the Quaker, not I” the Judge supposedly responded. From that moment on, his followers became known as Quakers. Although others of his time shared many of his ideas, none had the personal magnetism which resulted in the birth of so durable a religious body as the Society of Friends.
As early as 1660 the Quakers as a group took a definite stand against war presenting a declaration to Charles II which read:
“We utterly deny all outward wars and strife and fightings with outward weapons, for any end or under any pretense whatsoever, and we do certainly know, and so testify to the world, that the spirit of Christ, which leads us into all Truth, will never move us to fight and war against any man with outward weapons, neither for the kingdom of Christ, nor the kingdoms of this world.”
