Early Quakerism, instituted and promoted by George Fox in the mid-1600s, had no marks of church structure in the early movement. Those who composed it had revolted from the heavy hand of religious organization and from the rigidity of what they called theological “notions.” What seemed to them the most certain fact of their own experience was the surge of the Spirit within and the revealing light of Christ operating in the soul. This was not a speculative theory. It was a thrilling, palpitating experience.

They did not at this stage think of themselves as a new sect, a new denomination. George Fox himself said we belong to “what was before all sects.” They thought in all sincerity that they were the “seed,” “the first fruits” of Christ’s restored and renewed universal Church of the Spirit. This movement which they were launching was to be essential Christianity, the thing itself. Of that no Quaker in George Fox’s lifetime doubted.

The word “Society” was chosen to express the ideal of Quaker simplicity in organization. It meant then what we mean now by “Fellowship” — a vital spiritual group. It avoided the memory and the suggestion of danger which the word “Church” connoted to their minds. They wanted to be removed as far as possible from the danger of corporate compulsion in all matters which concerned the individual’s relation with God, and in the deep-lying and sacred issues of faith and practice. They were feeling after a genuine basis of spiritual liberty, equality, and fraternity. They were endeavoring to provide free and ample scope for the life and growth of the soul of man, both upward and outward.

In another respect, Friends of the early period deviated from all existing Protestant churches. They did not regard the scriptures as the infallible “Word of God.” They loved these scriptures with their whole heart. One of George Fox’s hostile critics admitted that if the Bible were lost it could have been reproduced from the memory of George Fox. They were all saturated in it and quoted it most aptly and effectively. But the ultimate authority for them was always Christ, the living Word of God, interpreted for them in the New Testament, but still abiding, and revealing Himself in their own souls as Guide, Light and Leader. That was essentially their new message.

In no uncertain note Fox indicated that “priest-made faiths” or “council-made faiths,” or “convention-made faiths” are mental constructions, ideologies, (his word is “notions”) which tend to be congealed substitutes for the soul’s personal discovery of Christ, and for a vital correspondence with the divine mind and will and guiding leadership.

It was on the basis of sincerity that George Fox revolted from the use of theological “notions” and creedal statements, and brought religion down to a secure basis of experience of life, of tested reality, and of discovered truth translated into action. To say or hear exalted phrases from a pulpit, or to sing hymns of lofty import, and then to go home and act precisely as though these exalted things had never been said, struck at his life, and threw him into a state of agony. It is impossible ever to estimate rightly the essential significance of the Quaker movement without a clear appraisal of the importance of this call to stark sincerity.

This call to sincerity lies at the root of the Quaker attempt to live the simple life. Simplicity at its best and truest is this utter honesty of heart and life, this complete sincerity of soul before God and in relation with our fellowmen so that we truly struggle to be what we tell God we want to be and what we profess in our social relations to be. A Quaker must get out and keep out of the ruts of duplicity and sham. That is a basic Quaker way of life which gets back to its original spirit.

It is true that the Society of Friends has occasionally gravitated in the direction of becoming itself a rigid and congealed sect. The pressure from above, that is from the leaders of the Society, to turn the Friends into a solidified “peculiar people,” with a fixed garb and form of speech, hedged about and isolated from “the world” by carefully devised regulations and testimonies, is still remembered. Nearly every aspect of life, including the direction of love and affection in marriage and the height of one’s gravestone after death, became regulated. The Discipline became a hard and fast system, which expected conformity. That epoch has ended.

Taken from the writing of Rufus Jones.