Society of Friends
The Religious Society of Friends had started over 300 years ago.The Religious Society of Friends comprises religious organizations which arose out of a Christian movement in mid-17th century England. This movement focused on ordinary individuals’ own experience of Christ, led by over 50 itinerant preachers known as the Valiant Sixty, including James Naylor, George Fox, Margaret Fell and Francis Howgill. Today, there is no single Religious Society of Friends with universal juridical authority as each national or regional organization (usually termed a Yearly Meeting) has full autonomy. The names Quaker or Friends Church are used by some of these organizations. Today, there is a large range of theological belief between Yearly Meetings, reflecting developments in the 19th and 20th centuries. Some Yearly Meetings (termed conservative) have retained Friends’ beliefs of relying on the guidance of the eternal Christ. Other Yearly Meetings have embraced evangelicalism, with a stress on biblical inerrancy and salvation; whilst other Yearly Meetings have accepted liberalism, with an emphasis on individual interpretation, with some members in these Yearly Meetings now holding universalist or non-theistic beliefs.
The Religious Society of Friends began in England in the late 1640s, in a context of social upheaval which included increasing dissatisfaction with the established church, the execution of the king, and the rise of Nonconformist movements.
George Fox was a prominent Quaker in the 17th century. His central teaching that Christ has come to teach his people himself forms the basis of modern Quaker faith and practice. He became convinced that it was possible to have a direct experience of Jesus Christ without the mediation of clergy. He began to spread this message as an itinerant preacher and found several pre-existing groups of like-minded people; he felt called to gather them together, and was one of the most prominent of the early Friends.
One of their most radical innovations was a greater, nearly equal, role for women. Despite the survival of strong patriarchal elements, Friends believed in the spiritual equality of women, who were allowed to take a far more active role than had ordinarily existed before the emergence of radical civil war sects. Early Quaker defenses of their female members were sometimes equivocal, however, and after the Restoration of 1660 the Quakers, became increasingly unwilling to publicly defend women when they adopted tactics such as disrupting services.
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