Quaker Theology

On matters of theology, Quakers were and are, in the minds of many, pitifully lacking. They had and have no systematized theological abstractions, no creeds, no articles of faith, no catechisms. Barclay, whose writing follows Penn’s in this volume, is the only recognized Quaker theologian.  The spiritual convictions which Quakers held made impossible the codifying of belief into the rigidity of “a theological system,” under which, in the words of R.A. Knox (and for this reason he deplores it) one could “shelter.” The Quakers had and wanted one shelter only, and that was a mutuality of love experienced between God and the people here on earth. Without this, dogma was sacrilegious; with it, it was unnecessary.

Introduction to The Quaker Reader, pages 7-8.

Quaker Practice

Caroline Stephen wrote, “I cannot be wrong in saying that a greater value has from the first been attached by Friends to practice as compared with doctrine than is the case with other Christian bodies.” Whether too much or too little so in later years, is a question Friends often ask themselves. But in any case much of this volume has to do with practice: with the efforts of Friends to ameliorate prison and asylum conditions; to establish work camps; to care for the distressed, displaced, and undernourished; to advance the cause of liberty, whether of minds or persons. These are practices not, as Fox would say, “notional”: they are not the result of policy; they are not pietistic; they do not stem from “social conscience”; they are not imitative; they are not the rational efforts of a commercial morality which sees that morality “pays off.” They are, when they proceed from the heart of the Meeting for Worship where they originated, an outward reflection into the world of that Light whose other name is love.

From the Introduction to The Quaker Reader, page 17-18.