Let Us (Not) Set Up Three Tents

Jesus took with him Peter and John and James and went up on the mountain to pray. And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning. Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. They appeared in glory and were speaking about his exodus, which he was about to fulfill in Jerusalem…. Just as they were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is good for us to be here; let us set up three tents: one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah,” not realizing what he was saying. 

While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them, and they were terrified as they entered the cloud. Then from the cloud came a voice that said, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!”

(Luke 9:28-31, 33-35, New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition)

In 1652, George Fox was traveling with a small group across northwest England, “preaching repentance to the people” as he wrote in his Journal, when “we came near a very great hill, called Pendle-hill, and I was moved of the Lord to go up to the top of it; which I did with difficulty, it was so very steep and high.”

Very steep and high, indeed—just over 1,800 feet above sea level.

Tall enough that, even though he was about forty miles inland, Fox had a clear line of sight to the western shore. “From the top of this hill,” Fox wrote, “the Lord let me see in what places he had a great people to be gathered.”

Fox gives the moment one short paragraph—he frankly seems more excited describing what happened that night at a nearby inn, where he received another vision of “a great people in white raiment by a river side,” a community God told him would come together in a valley to the north, toward which his party began walking the next morning.

A dramatic climb makes for a memorable story, though, so Pendle Hill has become a key part of the Quaker legend. If anyone joined Fox on that hike, he didn’t mention it. So I’m guessing that, unlike Jesus at the Transfiguration, Fox didn’t have any sidekicks making suggestions about building a shrine at the summit to commemorate the moment. (Then again, it doesn’t seem as if they would have seen anything but Fox standing or kneeling in silence, taking in a private revelation.)

Centuries later, individual Friends may feel an urge to visit Pendle Hill for themselves—Quakers do keep telling the story, after all—but the Religious Society as a whole doesn’t encourage pilgrimages. We don’t say, “Oh, you must see Pendle Hill before you die.” We don’t consider it sacred ground—or, at least, no more sacred than the rest of God’s creation. Fox experienced his vision on Pendle Hill, so we remember Pendle Hill, but if he had mentioned the name of the inn he stayed at that evening, maybe we’d have remembered that, instead.

The revelation matters more than the location.

As Fox might frame it, Christ came to teach us himself—listen to him.

In his life, Fox consistently valued spiritual messages above worldly seats of prestige and power. He had a particular disdain for what he called “steeple-houses,” which he saw as places where priests wielded authority over their communities, abandoning the original directive Jesus gave to his first disciples.

During one of his several stays in prison, Fox received a visit from a priest named Doctor Craddock, and engaged him in a wide-ranging theological debate, which eventually led to the nature of the church. “I asked him whether Christ shed his blood for the steeple-house, and purchased and sanctified the steeple-house with his blood,” Fox recalled. 

“Seeing the church is Christ’s bride and wife, and that he is the head of the church,” Fox pressed on, “dost thou think the steeple-house is Christ’s wife and bride, and that he is the head of that old house, or of its people?” Craddock conceded the point, but Fox wasn’t quite finished. “Ye have given the title of church to an old house,” he reiterated, “which properly belongs to the people, and you have taught them to believe so.”

Most Quakers today understand that a meetinghouse has no spiritual significance without Friends to give the meeting life.

Some meetings in England and the United States have been around for centuries, and take an understandable pride in their historic meetinghouses. But when a meeting, or even a handful of Friends within a meeting, makes the error of elevating its local history above the ministry of Spirit, such idolatry can severely degrade the community’s worship life. 

Before they know it, they may find themselves caring more about the condition of their old building than about the condition of their souls. Hoarding money and other resources to keep the meetinghouse “in good shape” instead of sharing resources with those around them. And, eventually, wondering why people occasionally come to hear about what Quakers did there two or three hundred years ago, but so few of those visitors stick around for worship now.

We may enjoy the convenience of having a place where we can gather for worship every First Day, but we should remember: We never know when or where the cloud of revelation will come and overshadow us—and when it happens, we must reshape our lives around the message, not the moment.