Set Apart for the Gospel of God

Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures, the gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among all the gentiles for the sake of his name…
(Romans 1:1-5, New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition)

It can sometimes seem, especially in the United States and the United Kingdom, as though Friends have organized themselves around a social justice agenda. You can find them doing things like protesting direct or indirect participation in war, petitioning their governments to show greater support for human rights, or providing food and other resources for unhoused members of their communities. These and other forms of activism make sense in the non-Quaker world—they endeavor to make that world a more peaceable, more equitable, simply a better place.

Some Friends may feel drawn to such activism because of the ways it fulfills secular philosophies of justice or morality. For the greater part of Quaker history, though, the core testimonies that inform our actions have derived from something far weightier than utilitarian reasoning or political judgment. The first Friends rejected certain common customs in their seventeenth-century English society, Douglas Gwyn explains in Apocalypse of the Word, because they recognized such practices as “those things which Friends could no longer do without diminishing or even belying the message of Christ’s salvation that they preached.” He continues:

“Thus they could no longer honor men or women while trying to bring them to the judgment bar; they could no longer glorify themselves with the possessions of the world, but lived in a simplicity that allowed their best energies to glorify God; they could no longer join in wars to defend the kingdoms of this world, when they were already joined in the spiritual struggle of the gospel to build the kingdom of God; they could no longer stifle the ministry and leadership of women when God’s Spirit was so gloriously upon them to preach and lead.”

Pacifism. Feminism. Antiracism. Anti-capitalism. Antifascism. Abolitionism.

Aspects of Quaker testimony may resemble such political philosophies, but Friends have rarely seen their actions as simply political. (In fact, we’ve often deliberately removed ourselves from the political realm!) Gwyn, in his study of George Fox’s theology, writes of how the early generations of Friends saw themselves engaged in “a battle of liberation,” in many ways taking up the charge that God had given Paul to bring about the obedience of faith among all the gentiles.

Friends who had experienced Christ Jesus speaking to their condition believed that, like Paul, they too had been called as apostles, set apart for the gospel of God. They could easily have echoed what Paul writes a few lines later in Romans: “I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is God’s saving power for everyone who believes.” (1:16) 

In the Geneva and King James translations that Friends of Fox’s era would have read, Paul’s declaration has even greater precision: “I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ.” Though some Quakers today, especially in British and American meetings, may no longer feel a spiritual need for such specificity, the notion that one could separate the gospel of salvation from the Christ would have struck many Friends over the last four centuries as odd.

Not least of all because Fox and his peers felt the Spirit of Christ moving amongst them—not the Holy Spirit, holding down the fort until Christ’s return, but the real deal, so to speak, offering salvation right then and there. Their trust in the Living Christ led them, as Gwyn says, to strive “to free the inhabitants of the earth from the repressive doctrines of the false prophets, the ruling clergy, the merchants of the apostles’ words who have kept people in Babylon’s captivity.”

The world had lost its way. Friends sought to lead it back on the path.

The urgency of their work—our work—has not diminished, despite the advances made in the last four centuries. The powers of this world continue to hold sway, guiding repressive regimes and unjust social structures around the globe; far too many of us remain in Babylon’s captivity.

When we view this as primarily a political struggle, we can fall into the trap of regarding our goal as shifting the balance of power. Think of it like riding in a car: Today the “bad guys” have their hands on the steering wheel; we want to yank them out of the driver’s seat so we can put the “good guys” behind the wheel instead. We convince ourselves that will make everything all right—and it will fix some of the most immediately glaring problems. But we need to recognize the car itself as the death trap, moving on a fixed track that will never lead us to the blessed community. The gospel invites us to walk away from the vehicle entirely and forge a new direction.