Tower and Town, December 2025 (view the full edition)The QuakersThe Quakers were formed in the 1650s by the radical itinerant preacher, George Fox. England had endured a bitter and costly Civil War which set the Crown and the aristocracy against Parliament and the Protestants. Parliament had prevailed and executed King Charles. The established church was in disarray and had lost much of its power; the traditional hierarchies were broken; it was the world turned upside down, and a flurry of radical and revolutionary groups sprang up: the Diggers, the Ranters, the Levellers and the Seekers, and among these the equally radical Quakers. Theirs was a faith rooted in the teachings of Jesus, but in reaction to the Church of those times. It was without hierarchy, so without priests or bishops and without set prayers, hymns or liturgy. Worship is mostly in silence which can be broken by members who feel strongly moved by an insight coming in the silence. And we don't have creeds or dogmatic statements of belief imposed on us. So, patterns of belief are less important for us than patterns of behaviour; with less reliance on external authority there is more responsibility to try to live our lives together according to our own spiritual experience. And from this has flowed our alternative to creeds, our shared Testimonies. Our Testimony for Simplicity is a concern about the waste, pollution and unfairness of our consumer society and its lethal threat to our environment, and Quakers are active in climate change awareness and action. A foundational Testimony is for Truth, not in the sense that we have some dogma unavailable to others, but a demand for integrity in personal, political or business life, an idea relevant in today's post-truth world. It was relevant too in the seamy business world of the 18th century (not unlike today's) when the Quakers, excluded as non-conformists from the universities and therefore from the professions, earned a reputation for honesty which led to almost embarrassing success in the business world. Lloyds and Barclays were such foundations (not now), Friends Provident, Clarke's shoes and some well-known chocolate companies, among many others. The third and very important Testimony is for Equality. It flows from our belief that there is that of God (however you may personally define that concept) in everyone. And it follows that every person, whether male or female, white or black, rich or poor, gay or straight, sinner or devout, deserves our respect and our care and consideration. Can you cheat or kill or exploit a being who shares a measure of divinity with you? Can you enslave them? The Quakers were a vital and effective part of the anti-slavery movement, and today we recognise how gross inequalities in our societies threaten our futures. The Quaker Testimony for Pacifism is well known. War seems built into the DNA of humanity, but Quakers have always tried to counter the causes of war and succour its victims. So here we are in a post-truth world, riven by wars, with increasing levels of inequalities of every kind, and with climate change already threatening us with major extinctions a few generations down the line. We are a small group, like so many others diminishing and ageing. We ask: why isn't everyone a Quaker? George Fox wrote (from prison, in equally uncertain times) "Be patterns, be examples in all countries, places, islands, nations, wherever you come, that your carriage and life may preach among all sorts of people; then you will come to walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in everyone." Barney Rosedale |