William Penn Lecture
1947
A Radical Experiment
Delivered at
Arch Street Meeting House
Philadelphia
by
D. Elton Trueblood
Professor of Philosophy, Earlham College
I
Something has gone wrong in the modern world.
Men and women, who are the heirs of all the ages, standing
at the apex of civilization, as thus far achieved, are a
confused and bewildered generation. This is not true merely of
the vanquished, but of a majority of the victors. It is true,
not merely of those who live in the cellars of bombed
houses and ride in converted cattle cars; it is true likewise of
those who live in steam-heated apartments and ride in
Pullman drawing rooms.
This is not merely the old story of human sorrow
or even the old story of human sin. Both of these we
expect, and both of these. we have, but even the most
optimistic person is bound to note that today we have something
else in addition to these. We have something very similar to
the loss of nerve, so convincingly portrayed by Gilbert
Murray and other analysts of the decline of Hellenic culture.
The ancient loss of nerve we can understand, because of
the flagrant inadequacies of the pagan faith, but the
present failure of spirit is more difficult to understand; it
has occurred in the heart of Christendom.
One of the major symptoms of our spiritual decline
is the relative absence of joy. This is understandable in
a country like Germany, which is defeated, impoverished
and ashamed, but it is noticeable in Anglo-Saxon countries
as well. Lacking the overflowing joy of unified lives, our
modern divided and anxious personalities strive desperately
and pathetically for happiness. Lacking the real thing, we
turn to substitutes. The continual demand for
exhibitionist photographs in the popular magazines is an evidence,
not of vigorous love between men and women, but of its
absence. Our worst troubles, as so much of modern medicine
testifies, arise primarily from psychological rather than
purely physiological sources. The difficulties of modern woman,
for example, some of which were almost unknown in
earlier generations, have come, not from any
physiological alterations in the human stock, but from unwillingness
to accept major responsibilities, and from egoistic strivings
after success which undermine the basis of real peace of mind.
The upshot of most careful analysis is that the
central trouble is in our inner lives rather than our outer
condition. The modern world is admittedly perplexing, but, with
a sufficiently vibrant faith men could live as joyously
and victoriously in it as in any other. In fact, they might live
in a better way than mankind ever lived in all
preceding centuries. But before there can be a good life at all,
modern man must become possessed by a faith sufficient to
sustain his life in these troubled times. Such a faith might be an
old faith recovered or a new faith discovered,
but one or the other we must have.
Because western man has largely failed either to
recover or to discover a vibrant faith, he is perishing. Millions
are fatalistic. They feel utterly powerless in the presence of
forces which they can neither understand nor control. In spite
of our proud achievements, including many in the various
arts, there is a widespread sense that we are waiting for
a catastrophe. If we are capitalists we blame labor, if we are
in organized labor we blame the capitalists, and, whoever
we are, we blame the government. Meanwhile we sit back
and have a drink or some other form of escape. We
cultivate more and more the sensual arts, thereby enabling our
minds to be free, for a little while, from the haunting sense
of insecurity and bewilderment. If the advertisements in
the popular magazines are reliable indications, we
care supremely about three things whiskey, perfume,
and motor cars.
Life in the west seems to be marked equally by a
clear understanding of what man needs and by a tragic
inability to provide him with it. Where will men find a faith to
sustain and invigorate them in these troubled days? In the
Rotary Club? In the Labor Union? In the Farm Bureau? In
Eastern mysticism? In national pride? In Free Masonry? In
natural science? Not very likely! All of these have their place
in human experience and all are capable of producing
some spiritual resources, but, both separately and together,
they are insufficient. They may serve as temporary
substitutes for a living faith, but they cannot succeed in
providing such a faith. It was not these or anything very much like
them which brought the amazing recovery of spirit which
occurred in the Greek and Roman world at the beginning of our era.
Most minds turn spontaneously to the church
when the paramount problem of spiritual renewal is
introduced. Isn't the church in that business? If it is a living faith
that we need, let us turn to the church as the one
institution which is dedicated exclusively to the perpetuation
and promulgation of a saving faith. But here we are as
bewildered as anywhere else. The trouble is that so many in the
modern world have grave misgivings concerning the ability of
the church to provide a saving vision. There is a
deep-seated conviction among our neighbors that the experts don't
know, any better than do the amateurs, how the job is to be
done. Thousands think of churches as stuffy places,
concerned with respectability and the conventions, but with
no conceivable part in the creation of courage and
adventure and joy. Many of those who thus judge the church from
the outside are both incorrect and uncharitable in
their judgments, but there is, in what they say, enough truth
to make their judgment profoundly disquieting.
How disquieting the situation is may be shown in
a recent pertinent illustration. A prominent physicist,
long head of his department in a well-known American
university, recently did some hard thinking on the problem of
spiritual reconstruction. He came, finally, to two
important conclusions:
We cannot have a decent world merely by
scientific endeavor. In addition we must have deep moral
convictions and a living religion to sustain them.
There can be no living religion without a
fellowship. Because mere individual religion is parasitical, there
must be a church or something like it, and people who care
about the fate of our civilization will join it.
With these conclusions in mind the physicist set
out to attend church in the town where his research was
going forward. The first attempt was disappointing, so he
tried another kind of church the next Sunday, but it was
equally disappointing. He had gone with high hopes and
after rigorous thought, but of course his fellow worshippers
could not know that this was the case. It seemed to him that
these people were merely going through the motions, that
they did not mean what they said, that the gospel was to
them an old record, worn smooth with much playing. Here,
said the physicist, was a world on the very brink of a new
hell, and these people had no sense of urgency or of power.
The scientist had hoped that at least the sermons would
speak to his condition, but they did not. Both seemed trivial.
Here is a scene all too representative of our time.
The hungry sheep look up and are not fed. But where would
you have sent the physicist with confidence? Where can
the requisite vision be found? We can convince the
seeker's reason that mere individual religion is insufficient, and
that a fellowship is required for the maintenance of
man's spiritual structure; but the ecclesia
to which he turns so hopefully may turn out to be disappointingly
ersatz. The "sacred fellowship" may be so taken up with struggles
for institutional prestige and personal power that the
honest seeker is disgusted. There is no denying that many of
the best people are outside the churches precisely because
they are the best people. The fact that they have been
disgusted is something in their favor; at least it shows that
their standards are encouragingly high.
In the western world there are two main
alternatives presented to the average seeker, Protestantism
and Catholicism. The tragedy is that millions find satisfaction
in neither. The evidence for this observation is provided
in numerous ways, one of these being the remarkable
growth of new cults and movements. Though Protestantism is
still the dominant form of Christianity in Anglo-Saxon
and Scandinavian countries, it is easy to see why the man
who has at least seen the folly of his paganism may not
be attracted. The two great evils of Protestantism are that it
is divisive and that much of it is insipid.
A man who, having felt the awful crisis in the spirit of man, is seeking the
bread of life, too often listens to discussions of the
every-member canvass. There are thousands of wonderful and brave
men in the Protestant ministry, but far too many of them
are practically forced by the organizational system to
be promoters or business managers.
If Protestantism is uninviting to the average
seeker, Catholicism is equally so. Though there have been
some highly publicized conversions of former pagans to the
Roman Church, this does not mean that the modern seeker is
finding his answer in that quarter. The Roman Catholic Church
is repellent to millions of moderns because of its
exclusiveness and because of its bias toward totalitarianism.
The thoughtful seeker looks at Spain and sees
religious totalitarianism in practice. He knows that the
Catholic Church does not really believe in freedom of worship.
But freedom of worship seems of cardinal importance to
the modern seeker who is acutely conscious that truth is
complex and that the whole truth is not likely to be contained in
any one institution. Nobody has all the keys there are.
Where then shall the seeker turn? He knows that
both Catholicism and Protestantism include vigorous
remnants, particularly among the neo-Thomists on the one hand
and the neo-Reformation theologians on the other. But this
is theology, and the seeker is looking for something else. He
is looking for what the late William James so happily
termed, "A Religion of Veracity, rooted in spiritual inwardness."
In short modern man is looking and longing for a
New Reformation. He is looking for some new way in which
the Eternal Spirit can be incarnated in a living fellowship
in this our troubled day. He longs to see more light break
forth from God's word.
Great numbers of observers in the western world
give assent to every step in our reasoning up to this point,
but here they diverge. This is the real crossroads in the
thinking of our time. Some believe that the saving faith can come
by a revitalization of the Christian gospel, but there are
many others who, with equal sincerity and seriousness, do
not believe that this is possible. A brilliant exponent of this
latter conclusion is Harold Laski. Harold Laski agrees that
apart from an inspiring faith we shall perish; he
understands perfectly that the Christian gospel performed this
function in the ancient world; but he holds that the Christian
faith can do so no longer. The old fires, he thinks, are burnt
out. His evidence for his conclusion, similar to that
already mentioned, is profoundly disquieting. He says that we
must have a new faith for the new day, and this he finds
emerging from Russia, very much as long ago a new faith
emerged from Palestine, the land of his fathers. What Laski dares
to say openly is undoubtedly the real conviction of many
others, including some who still pay lip service to the
Christian world view. His is, of course, the flaming and avowed
faith of millions in Europe and Asia who believe that they
have found a live alternative to the faith at the basis of
western civilization.
There are many pertinent answers which might be
given to Mr. Laski. One answer is that there is convincing
reason to believe that the Christian gospel is true
and not merely useful, its very effectiveness is the classic culture
arising from its essential truth. What is objectively true at one
time is equally true at another. If the Living God really is
like Christ, that is a truth so paramount that changing
patterns of culture make very little difference. Actually, of
course, the essential human problem has not greatly changed
in these centuries. A second answer to Mr. Laski is
the historical observation that Christianity has demonstrated
a remarkable ability to revive itself from within, by
unflinching self-criticism. There have been many ages of revival
and ours might be one of them. What has been, can
be.
Important as these two answers are, the most convincing answer would be a contemporary
demonstration. We cannot revive the faith by argument, but we might
catch the imagination of puzzled men and women by an
exhibition of a Christian fellowship so intensely alive that
every thoughtful person would be forced to respect it. The
creation of such a fellowship is the argument that can count in
the confused world of our day. If again there appears a
fellowship of men and women who show, by their vitality and
moral sensitivity and overwhelming joy, that they have
found something so real that they no longer seek means of
escape, the seekers will have something to join without
disappointment and without embarrassment. If there
should emerge in our day such a fellowship, wholly
without artificiality and free from the dead hand of the past, it
would be an exciting event of momentous importance. A society
of loving souls without self-seeking struggle for
personal prestige or any unreality would be something
unutterably precious. A wise person would travel any distance to join it.
It is such a demonstration that is now required. We
do not require any new denomination. To start a
new denomination of like-minded people is conspicuously
easy, but such an enterprise is almost entirely worthless. It is
the whole lump that must be leavened, and the leaven
cannot be efficacious unless it stays in close connection with
the lump. There are several historical examples of such
leavening fellowships, the work of St. Francis being one of the
best. But how can its counterpart be produced now?
The way in which a humble yet leavening
fellowship may be created and guided is a question of the
utmost difficulty as it is a question of the utmost importance. It
is far more difficult than are most scientific problems,
because it deals with more imponderables. In short, wisdom in
this field, like wisdom in any important field, can come only by
a remarkable combination of careful intelligence and
creative imagination. It is this to which we should now give our
nights and days, and to which we shall give our nights and days
if we care greatly about the fate of the human race at
this juncture. The result might be something radically
different from anything we now know.
It is good to remember that the revolutionary
fellowship of which we read in the New Testament was a result of
careful thought and much disciplined dreaming. In one sense
the entire burst of new life was seen as the work of God, a
sheer gift of divine grace, but in another sense the work
and thought of dedicated men and women were required. In
any case, St. Paul and others actually put enormous effort
into the problem. His inspired Epistles are given over very
largely to his own creative thought about what the nature of
a redeeming fellowship might be. In letter after letter the
same criteria appear. The fellowship must be marked by
mutual affection of the members, by a sense of real equality in
spite of difference of function, by inner peace in the face of
the world's turmoil and by an almost boisterous joy.
The members are to be filled, not with the intoxication of
wine, but with that of the Spirit, Such people could hardly
avoid, as the sequence in the fifth chapter of Ephesians
suggests, breaking out in psalms and hymns. In the early
Christian community the people sang, not from convention, but
from a joy which overflowed. Life was for these people no longer
a problem to be solved, but a thing of glory.
We are so hardened to the story that it is easy for us
to forget how explosive and truly revolutionary the
Christian faith was in the ancient Mediterranean world. The
church at first had no buildings, no separated clergy, no set
ritual, no bishops, no pope, yet it succeeded in turning life
upside down for millions of unknown men and women, giving
them a new sense of life's meaning, and superb courage in
the face of persecution or sorrow. It is our tragedy that we
are living in a day when much of this primal force is spent.
Our temper is so different that we hardly understand what
the New Testament writers are saying. Once a church was
a brave and revolutionary fellowship, changing the course
of history by the introduction of discordant ideas; today
a church is a place where people go and sit on
comfortable benches, waiting patiently until time to go home to
their Sunday dinners.
One of the most hopeful signs of our time is that
we are beginning to sense the wide disparity between what
the church is and what it might be. This point is forced upon
us both by contrast with early Christianity and by reference
to the unmet needs incident to the crisis of our time. And
always the most vigorous critics of the church are those on
the inside, who love her. The worst that the outside critics
ever say is more than matched by what the devout
Christians say. The theological seminaries from coast to coast are
filled with impatient young men, eager for internal
revolution. Fortunately they are being brought together and given
an effective voice in the Interseminary Movement which
is producing a set of volumes on the point at issue and
which will hold a gathering of about a thousand picked
seminarians this summer.
It is good to see the evidence that Christians are
already at work in this task of creative dreaming on the question
of what a truly redemptive fellowship might be. New
movements have been started already, both within the churches
and outside them. For the most part, however, the people
in these movements are separated from those in other
and similar movements, with little sense of sharing in a
worldwide enterprise. Some are lonely thinkers, almost unaware
that others have had their same impatience with what is
offered and the same high vision of what might be
accomplished. Others are unaware of similar experiments which
have occurred in the past, experiments from which they
might learn in planning their contemporary efforts. Success
will not come except as we help each other.
Because the task before us has many elements in common with the task of architecture, it is relevant at
this point to meditate upon the undoubted success of the
modern architectural revival. Our contemporary
architectural tendencies constitute one of the clearest evidences of
cultural improvement in our generation. We have done very badly
in other ways, but we have done remarkably well in
this. Modern towns and cities are still ugly, for the most
part, but those sections in which contemporary architects,
from the recognized schools, have had a free hand, are often
very beautiful indeed. Few can fail to be impressed, for
example, with the architectural advance shown in Cleveland,
whether in the Terminal Tower and its vicinity or in Shaker
Square. Equally encouraging is the domestic architecture of
the English Garden Cities, of the northern suburbs of
Baltimore, and of many other communities.
What has been the secret of this new burst of life
in the art of building? In every case the gain has come by
a delicate combination of appreciation of past models,
plus the boldness of real adventure. The boldness alone tends
to produce the merely bizarre, while exclusive attention to
past models produces the merely quaint, but the combination
of the two may be genuinely creative. Dreaming in
vacuo is usually not very profitable, but dreaming as an
imaginative extension of known experience may be extremely profitable.
If we apply this formula to our creative dreaming
about what the church might be and ought to be, we get
something like the following. We should note with care the
principles which made the Christian fellowship so powerful in
Philippi and Corinth and Ephesus; we should try to
distinguish between the factors of enduring importance and those
of local or transitory significance; we should do the same
for the Franciscan Movement in the thirteenth century,
the Quaker Movement in the seventeenth century, and so
on with many more. If these turn out to have some factors
in common, in spite of diversity of setting, such factors
must be studied with unusual care. At the same time we must
rid our minds of most current conceptions about what a
church should be in order to try to see what the real needs of
men are. Perhaps there ought not to be any distinction at
all between clergy and laity; perhaps the life of the church
could function better without the ownership of buildings or
any property. Many of the early Christian groups met in
homes and several met in caves, while some of the
seventeenth century Quaker meetings were held in prison. Perhaps
real membership should be rigorously restricted to the
deeply convinced; perhaps the normal unit should be the
small cell rather than the large gathering. Many churches
would be ten times as influential if their membership were half
as great.
This list of suggestions could be enlarged. It
will be enlarged by any group of people who try to put into
this question the same bold thinking that our best
scientists have already put into the questions which they have
been so extraordinarily successful in answering, and the
same disciplined imagination that our best architects have
put into new buildings.
We do not know what the church of the future ought
to be, but we can be reasonably sure that it ought to be
very different from the church as we know it today. "If
something radical is to happen to society," says Dr. Oldham,
"something radical must happen to the church." We are due for
great changes and we must not resist them. Far from that,
we must help to produce them. No civilization is possible
without adventure, and the adventure which our time demands
is adventure in the formation of faith-producing fellowships.
II
In the light of the paramount problem of
spiritual reconstruction in our day the Quaker Movement
suddenly takes on new significance. What if the Quaker
Movement, for all its modesty and smallness, could give some lead
to modern seekers, looking for light on what a
redemptive fellowship should be or could be? All the effort that
has gone into Quakerism would thus become
worthwhile. Quakerism would not be an end in itself, but would be
one means to a large and glorious end.
What is suggested is a new way of studying the
history of the Quaker Movement. We should study it, not for
its own sake as an inherited tradition, but in order to see
what features of it may wisely be incorporated in the new
society that is struggling to emerge from the church we now
know. Quaker history as mere antiquarianism is very
small business. It is about on a level, spiritually, with
genealogy, the least profitable form of literature as well as the
most snobbish. Quaker history can be examined, not for the
sake of ancestor worship, and not as a contribution to
sectarian pride, but as an objective analysis of what all men
everywhere can learn from one particular experiment of
considerable duration.
The word "experimental" was one of the favorite
words of seventeenth century Quakers, partly, no doubt,
because of the growing scientific temper of their time. "This I
knew experimentally," said Fox, of his fundamental insight
which came to him three hundred years ago this year. Though
the word "experimentally," in this context, means almost
the same as "experientially," it came to be used in the
thought and writing of William Penn in our modern laboratory
sense. Thus, as is well known, the deepest meaning of
the Pennsylvania Colony in the judgment of its founder,
was that it constituted an "holy experiment." The principles
so highly valued were put to the test where all might
see whether they would really work in practical experience.
If we begin to think of the entire Quaker enterprise
as one continuous experiment, lasting now for three
centuries, we find that this conception is more satisfactory than
are the other possible interpretations with which we have
been familiar. The idea of experiment provides a particularly
happy answer to the moot question of the relation of
Quakerdom to the Christian faith and the Christian Church. The
most common answers to this question in the past have
been four, as follows:
(1) The Society of Friends is what the Christian
Church would be if rightly guided.
(2) The Society of Friends is one denomination
among others, each of which has its valid contribution to make.
(3) The Society of Friends is not a Christian body,
but involves the mysticism of the East as well.
(4) The Society of Friends is a philanthropic
body concerned chiefly with the relief of suffering.
The third and fourth of these conceptions have not
been held by very many within the Society of Friends,
though they have often been held by outsiders. The fourth is a
failure to understand the deep religious roots from which
good works spring, while the third is a failure to recognize
the degree to which the unique events connected with
the historic Christian revelation have been stressed by most
of the characteristic Quaker thinkers from the beginning.
Most members of the Society of Friends have held
either (1) or (2) of the four propositions given above, the
earlier generations leaning toward (1) and the later
generations toward (2). Neither, however, is wholly satisfactory.
The difficulty with the first formulation is that it appears to
be lacking in a graceful humility. The trouble with the
second formulation is that it appears to be so modest and
tolerant that it is almost innocuous. This suggests that
both formulations involve important insights but that each
is insufficient and that, consequently, it would be desirable
to combine them if that were possible. Now the merit of
the experimental formula is that it does combine them. If
we are asked what the experiment is in, we must answer
that it is an experiment in radical Christianity.
This keeps the vigor which mutually tolerant denominationalism lacks,
but it also keeps the desired humility, in that we point to
an experiment and not to a wholly accomplished
demonstration. Furthermore, there may be other experiments which can
go on concurrently and with great mutual gain.
One of the notable merits of the experimental
conception is that it makes impossible a retired and
complacent sectarianism. Friends have been guilty of this at
various periods, but fortunately we have seldom been entirely
lacking in forces of criticism which have sought to destroy
such complacency. If ours is an experiment, then it
continues, not for our sakes, but for the sake of the entire Church
and for the sake of mankind. The experiment is made in
the hope that lessons may thereby be learned for the use of
all devout men much as an experimental farm produces
lessons for all intelligent farmers.
This means that no part of Quaker life is private.
Friends have sometimes allowed themselves to refer to their
schools as "private schools," but this expression is rapidly
coming to be seen as a mistake. Such language suggests an
ingrown and self-satisfied minority, providing superior privileges
for its own children. Quaker schools, if they are true to
the major conception, are public schools in the sense that
they bear a responsibility to the public good, but public
schools differently financed and directed than those which are
tax-supported.
This means that Quakerism, when its true vocation
is followed, is at once both supremely narrow and
supremely ecumenical. It is narrow in that it makes strict
requirements; it is ecumenical in that it exists for the sake of the
revivication of the entire Body of Christ. Quakers have failed in
their vocation whenever they have descended to the level of
one sect among others or when they have intimated that
those outside their circle were not Christians. The
experimental idea provides an escape from this dilemma. It cannot be too clearly stated that what early
Friends intended was a truly radical experiment. George
Fox proposed to cut straight through all the religious red
tape. If anything seemed artificial and unnecessary, the
young shoemaker's apprentice determined to dispense with it,
no matter how precious it might have been at other times
or how glorified by tradition. Naked reality was what he
sought. It is to this that William James was referring when he
said, "The Quaker religion is something which it is impossible
to overpraise. In a day of shams, it was a religion of
veracity rooted in spiritual inwardness and a return to
something more like the original gospel truth than men had ever
known in England."
George Fox was not a learned man and knew very
little about Christian history between the first and
seventeenth centuries, but he did know the difference between
essentials and non-essentials. Consequently he paid no real
attention either to sacraments and liturgical forms made
impressive by long usage, or to a priesthood claiming apostolic
authority by a succession secured through episcopal ordination.
Much as Doctor Johnson later "refuted" Bishop Berkeley by
kicking a stone, Fox refuted the sacerdotalists by the direct
appeal to experience. He saw unordained men and even
women ministering with apostolic power. What other evidence
could be required?
Though Fox did not claim to know the fine points
of the theory of ordination and apostolic succession, he
did know that men might be perfectly regular on these
points and yet grossly lacking in the evidence either of love of
the brethren or of closeness to God. He was aware that
men might cling to these externals of the faith when the life
had departed from them. He saw that men could easily
be meticulous about these matters or even about
dogmatic formulations of faith and yet be careless about the
weightier matters of mercy, justice and truth. What did he care
about the external credentials of the "true church" when he
knew in his own soul the kind of illumination that placed him
in the order of prophets and apostles? What he proposed,
quite simply, was an experiment in veracity.
The experiment has been useful chiefly because it
has constituted a direct and open challenge to
dogmatic exclusiveness, wherever found. Through three
centuries Friends have been a problem to the creed makers. Here
are people who give considerable evidence that they
are Christians, but they break the neatly stated rules. How
can you define Christians as baptized persons when some
whose Christianity is everywhere recognized have never
been baptized, at least not in the sense intended?
Thus experience, produced by experiment, checks dogma. This truly is
scientific method.
There is in the world today a great deal of
fruitless argument, especially between Protestants and
Roman Catholics, over the question what the true church is
and who is in it. The Quaker experiment cuts straight
across this argument by the application of the experimental
test. Do you want to know whether a group is part of the
true church? Very well, note whether they love each other;
note whether their hearts are quickened by the love of the
Living God; note whether they show that they have the mind
of Christ in them. No other credentials are needed. If
these are lacking, all reference to historical origin and
development is meaningless anyway. Ask, of any group, not how it
got here, but where it is now. The golden text of all this
emphasis on radical veracity is found in a memorable sentence
from the pen of Robert Barclay who, like Fox, was impatient
of artificiality.
"It is the life of Christianity taking place in
the heart that makes a Christian; and so it is a
number of such being alive, joined together in the life
of Christianity, that makes a Church of Christ;
and it is all those that are thus alive and
quickened, considered together, that make the
Catholic Church of Christ."1
Such a sentence suggests nothing to be added or
taken away. Anyone can use this test now, for it belongs to all.
It is one of the best fruits of the experiment.
At first the experiment had no name and needed
none. Fox simply declared what his own experience showed to
be true and a few listened. The beginning of ordered
preaching, confined to the English Midlands, occurred in 1647.
Fox was only twenty-three, but it was a great year in his life.
It was just three hundred years ago that this serious
young man, disappointed at what the recognized clergy were
able to give him, realized, with the suddenness of revelation,
that, since he was a child of the Living God, he was not
dependent on what these men could or could not do. He saw that
there were other sources of the knowledge of God than
those provided by a conventional education and that
such knowledge was, indeed, open to every seeking spirit.
Because the passage which describes this opening is crucial to
the radical experiment, and because we are standing now
at the tercentenary of this experience, the familiar passage
from the Journal should be quoted in full:
"Now after I had received that opening from the Lord that to be bred at Oxford or
Cambridge was not sufficient to fit a man to be a minister
of Christ, I regarded the priests less, and looked
more after the Dissenting people. Among them I saw there was some tenderness; and many of
them came afterwards to be convinced, for they had some openings. But as I had forsaken the
priests, so I left the separate preachers also, and those called the most experienced people; for I saw
there was none among them all that could speak to
my 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. Then the Lord did let me see why there was
none upon the earth that could speak to my
condition, namely, that I might give Him all the glory; for
all are concluded under sin, and shut up in
unbelief, as I had been, that Jesus Christ might have
the preeminence, who enlightens and gives grace
and faith and power
and this I knew experimentally."
In the year 1648 the experiment got its first
name, Children of the Light. The small community was so
called because Fox was directing his hearers to the living
experience of Christ as the Light available for all. This was in no
sense a denial of the importance of the Christ of history, but
rather an identification of the Light with the Christ of
history. William Penn noted later that Friends preferred to
speak, not of the "light within," but of the "light of Christ
within." It has been well said that "the crux of Fox's discovery
was that in the present spiritual reality he was aware of
the same living Christ to whom the scriptures and the
doctrines bore witness. It was a mystical apprehension of the
fact that the person of Christ belongs not only to history at
a given time and place, but also to an eternal world into
which Fox and his friends knew that Christ had brought
them."2
This emphasis on the Light, which gave the
experiment its first name, was a sound beginning, though alone it
was not enough. It is always a sound beginning, because it
starts with experience, and all knowledge rests ultimately
on experience of some kind. That direct, immediate
experience of God, as objectively real, is possible, and that
such experience is not a delusion, has been verified by
countless men and women throughout the three hundred years of
the experiment's duration. The chief means of verification
has been the evidence of changed lives. William
Charles Braithwaite once wrote that the chief enrichment
of Christianity so far made by the Quaker movement
consisted in the production and training of a type of character
which "goes through life trying to decide every question as it
arises, not by passion or prejudice, nor mainly by the
conclusions of human reason, but chiefly by reference to the Light
of God that shines in the prepared
soul."3 Here is another contribution to the Church Universal which a restricted
but radical experiment can make. All Christians now have
more reason to trust both corporate and group guidance as a
result of the experimental approach.
The second name attached to the experiment,
quickly supplanting the first and continuing to this day is the
name of Quaker. This name, first used in 1650, was clearly
given in derision. We have two somewhat different accounts
of the origin of the name, though the two accounts are
not irreconcilable. According to the Journal
of Fox, the name was first given by Justice Bennet at Derby, where he
was imprisoned for twelve months in 1650-1651, originally on
a charge of blasphemy. "Justice Bennet," wrote Fox, "was
the first that called us Quakers, because we did bid them
tremble at the word of the Lord. This was in the year 1650."
The other account is that of Robert Barclay, who
says the name was given because of the trembling which
Friends sometimes experienced in their
meetings.4 Apparently the nickname of the Derby judge stuck because it matched
an already recognized situation. What was most striking
to outside observers was that these people took their faith
so seriously that they were shaken to the very center of
their lives. The most important thing to be said about their
religion was that it shook them. They accepted the gospel, not
as dull information and not with mere intellectual assent,
but as a message marked by terrific
urgency.
The third name attached to the experiment is
equally revealing. If the first name stressed immediate
experience and the second name indicated the mood of urgency,
the third name was a testimony to the fact of a
genuine fellowship. The name which the experimenters came to
love most and which they officially adopted was
Friends. They were, they said, Friends in Truth and Friends of one
another; they were therefore the Religious Society of Friends.
That this emphasis on fellowship has been crucial
to the entire experiment is easy to see. The inner
illumination alone might produce the self-centered and the bizarre,
with no outside checks on either ideas or conduct. The sense
of urgency alone might produce unbalanced fanaticism.
But men and women who submit to the disciplines of
fellowship, recognizing the authority of group experience, are
largely saved from these extravagances. The lesson of the
Quaker experiment is that, while individual mysticism may
be dangerous, group mysticism tends to be wholly
beneficent. They mistake the meaning of the experiment greatly
who suppose it has been primarily a glorification of
individual religion, necessary as that may sometimes be. Few
phrases were as common to early Friends as the words "one
another" and "together." They found that a serious attempt to
practice radical Christianity makes men and women temper
their own wishes by the wishes of their fellow members. The
great mystery, they discovered, is the mystery by which we
become "members one of another," not merely in meetings
for worship, but also in meetings for discipline. It is
very important to note that the fellowship realized in
the experiment under scrutiny has not been the fellowship
of individuals, but the fellowship of
families. It is therefore radically different from the Shaker movement, which
was partly inspired by our experiment, but has now
practically come to an end in essential failure. The Shaker
movement had no place for families, but the Quaker Movement
has always glorified the family. In the days of persecution
the children carried on the meetings while the parents were
in prison. The Fellowship, then, has kept close to common
life with its heavy responsibilities and its opportunities.
The fellowship has never been that of the monastery or that
of the spiritually elite, but that of common families
including men, women, and children devoted to common pursuits.
Though these are the chief names by which the experiment has been known, the names as actually given
in history do not exhaust the list of primary features of
the movement. One remains to be mentioned, and may best
be understood by reference to the word
concern. Good as the fellowship is, the fellowship would have been a failure if
the enterprise had ended there. Friends soon saw that the
final justification of the fellowship was the creative way in
which it led people into the service of their fellow men. A
concern arises when the deep experience of the knowledge of God
as revealed by Christ, and especially that knowledge
which emerges in the minds of a genuine fellowship, leads
those thus shaken to perform deeds of mercy to their
neighbors wherever found. Thus the concern accomplishes
the marriage of the inner and the outer; it joins, in
miraculous fashion, the roots and the fruits of religion. Above all
else the experiment has demonstrated that equal attention
to both the roots and the fruits is possible and that
spiritual health is found wherever this situation obtains.
Where only the roots are emphasized, we have a situation in which people luxuriate in their own
religious emotions, developing their inner experiences for their
own sake. It is easy for religion to stop here, but when it
does, we have little more than spiritual sensuality. It
is fundamentally self-centered. Where, on the other hand,
only the fruits are emphasized, we have mere creaturely
activity, the kind of worldly philanthropy which eventually is
little more than professional social service. Friends, in their
long history, have often made both of these mistakes, but
the major tradition has been the avoidance of both by
keeping the connection close. Worship of God is one thing and
service of mankind is another, but the first is dishonest unless
it eventuates in the latter and the latter is superficial
unless it springs from the former. A realization of this has led
many Friends to think of John Woolman as our best exemplar.
In his experience, more truly than in that of most,
great sensitivity to social wrongs stemmed directly from a
sense of God's presence and sovereignty. The world is
helped whenever any man or any group of men demonstrates
the power which this close connection makes possible.
As we analyze the radical
three-hundred-year-old experiment in this fashion we come to see it as
something in which the separate features are united in one
sequence of ideas and events. The order in which the
main characteristics of the movement appear is both logical
and chronological. There are five steps in the sequence and
these constitute the five most important contributions of
the movement to the rest of mankind. These can be denoted
by the use of five words.
Veracity is the first word. The lone, struggling
George Fox was indeed seeking what William James called
"A Religion of Veracity." He could not be content with
shams; he saw through the artificial. This drove him beyond
the conventional aspects of Christianity. He was impatient
of all unreality. This was not the end of the matter, but it
was a grand beginning.
Immediacy is the second word, following directly
from the first. Far too much religion is a matter of what
people take at second hand from others, without a sense of
first-hand knowledge. Radical Christianity necessarily makes
men dissatisfied with that knowledge which is "knowledge
about" and leads them to seek that knowledge which
is "acquaintance with."
Urgency is the third word in the series. Those who
have had a direct sense of the divine presence cannot stand
idly by while other men and women go on in relative
darkness. Those who seek to experiment with radical Christianity
are bound to be shaken out of all easy respectability, shaken
to the middle of their lives. It is inevitable that they,
in commitment to the will of the Living God, became
evangelical in mood and missionary in intention.
Fellowship is required in such an experiment,
especially as an antidote against unprofitable excess. The
experiment, to be worthy of attention, must be deeply social. The
veracity, the immediacy and the urgency, are all disciplined by
the reality of group experience. The radical Christian
always recognizes that his fellow members have a stake in his
own undertakings and that the normal religious unit is the group.
Concern brings the entire series to a climax. Even
with the fellowship, the movement would fail apart from a
strong sense of service to needy men and women. So long as
the fellowship is the fellowship of the concerned, it is saved
from becoming self-congratulatory and self-regarding. This is
the completion of the experiment. It is the
Religion of Veracity, it is the Children of the Light,
it is Quakers, it is the
Society of Friends, but still, more truly and more
comprehensively, it is The Fellowship of the Concerned.
III
Here, then, is one experiment which, by its own
inner logic, has shown what the essential elements of a
living witness are. As developed in history these elements are
five, and they are five which can be applied to any
serious undertaking anywhere. They are not the unique
possession of one particular movement. We may go farther and
express the serious doubt that any redemptive movement can
be efficacious unless it involves these five elements no
matter how much more it might involve. Thus we are helped,
by one historical experiment, in the creative
dreaming demanded by the needs of the modern world. Whatever
a redemptive movement may be called, wherever it may
be produced and whatever its external form, it cannot be
truly effective unless it includes Veracity, Immediacy,
Urgency, Fellowship, and Concern.
The actual Quaker Movement has often been a
poor thing. It has advanced and receded many times in
three hundred years of tumultuous history. Seldom have all
five of the vital elements been equally incorporated in
the Movement. Frequently Friends, who began by cutting
the ecclesiastical red tape, have been unhappily successful
in producing their own variety. Friends have failed on
several occasions to maintain the sacredness of their own
fellowship. Sometimes they have forgotten what it is to be
Quaker, persons utterly shaken in their lives, and have settled
back with a complacent sense of superior virtue or
attainment. But in spite of all these failings, many of which continue
to this day, the movement has, from the beginning,
carried within it a singular promise. The deep inspiration has
always been the ideal experiment, by which current failures
have been judged, and this ideal experiment is that which
requires the five names for its adequate depiction. The Fellowship
of the Concerned has not been fully realized in the
historic Society of Friends, but there has always been this
haunting vision, inherent in our Quaker life.
Sometimes Friends have allowed themselves to
become a mere sect, with little interest in other Christians, but
this was not our first position nor is it our last. Quakerism,
when true to its own genius, has been ecumenical in
spirit, concerned with the entire human family and mindful of
the words of our Lord when He said, "Other sheep have I
which are not of this fold." It is worthwhile to remember that
the experience of George Fox on Pendle Hill, in 1652,
was interpreted by William Penn in a wholly ecumenical
manner. Penn said that Fox "had a vision of the great work of God
in the earth, and of the way that he was to go forth to begin
it." This is precisely the vision which each one of us craves
for himself. Fox, as Penn interpreted him, was not
thinking merely of those who might be called Quakers, but of all
men everywhere, made in God's image even though they know
it not.
"He saw people as thick as motes in the sun, that should in time be brought home to the
Lord; that there might be but one shepherd and one sheepfold in all the earth."
This is the ecumenical ideal; this is the Christian
ideal. At this juncture of history it seems far from realization,
but it is eternally valid. This is the clear vision which makes
us know how imperfect our present condition is. Perhaps it
is the vision without which a people will perish.
What we seek, then, is the emergence of the
true church, the company of loving souls, exhibiting the mind
of Christ. Our fondest hope is that our own modest
experiment of a few centuries may facilitate the emergence of this
sacred fellowship. We do not seek to make all men
Quakers. Quakerism, as we have known it, is not good enough.
What we desire is that all men be brought into a far more
ideal society than any we have known. If Quakerism ever
helps to usher in that larger and more ideal society, it will
have done its peculiar work. What we seek is not, therefore,
merely our own perpetuation, but that Fellowship of one
Shepherd and one sheepfold. But, since that Fellowship is still in
the making, our modest testimony continues to be needed.
The best thing we can do for the modern world is to
demonstrate to all that a Fellowship of the Concerned is actually a
live possibility. Our function, in the church Universal, is to
help keep alive the faith in this possibility.
Notes
1 Apology, X, 10.
2. The Nature of the Church, p. 19.
3. Spiritual Guidance, p. 82.
4. Apology, XI, 8.