George Fox

English religious leader

• Born: July 1, 1624
• Birthplace: Drayton-in-the-Clay (now Fenny Drayton), Leicestershire, England
• Died: January 13, 1691
• Place of death: London, England

Fox founded the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) and then spent the remainder of his life defending and sustaining the new sect during one of England’s most tumultuous periods.

Early Life

George Fox’s father, Christopher Fox, was a successful weaver. The family of Fox’s mother, Mary Lago, was more socially prominent than his father’s family. Although it is unclear exactly how many siblings Fox had, at least four sisters and one brother have been verified.

Fox was an unusually serious-minded child. Given to reflection, he was convinced of the need for a religiously centered life even in his youth. Indeed, he records in his journal—published as The Journal of George Fox (1694)—that “When I came to eleven years of age, I knew pureness and righteousness, for while I was a child I was taught how to walk to be kept pure. The Lord taught me to be faithful in all things.” Modern biographers and scholars confirm that the Foxes’ neighbors were also apparently keenly aware of this unusual boy’s “godliness” from an early age.

Apprenticed in his early teens to a shoemaker, Fox learned quickly all aspects of the business, which flourished, yet he grew increasingly dissatisfied with his existence and the life his peers and mentors led. Feeling more and more a stranger in his hometown, Fox left Drayton-in-the-Clay at nineteen and wandered, eventually reaching London. Disturbed by the tumultuous life he observed in London and concerned for his anxious parents, Fox returned to Leicestershire for about a year.

In his early twenties, Fox felt himself tempted by despair and increasingly alienated by the values of his society. During the mid-1640’s, Fox spoke at length with ministers from several denominations, struggling against his own despair to find spiritual strength in the religion of his youth. Eventually, however, in 1647, Fox experienced what he terms in his journal, “a great opening,” detailed in one of the most famous passages from his writings:

And when all my hopes in [ministers and preachers] were gone, so that I had nothing outwardly to help me, nor could tell what to do, then, Oh then, I heard a voice which said, “There is one,… Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition,” and when I heard it my heart did leap for joy.

Given fresh hope and a new purpose by this conversion experience, Fox moved toward attaining a full understanding of his life’s vocation and ministry.

Feeling suddenly that “all things were new,” Fox began to share openly the powerful spiritual discernment his years of wandering and intense soul-searching had finally brought him to at age twenty-four. He was arrested at Nottingham in 1649 and at Derby in 1650 for disrupting worship services in churches. In these instances, Fox was moved to take issue with the “priests” (as he referred to all professional, paid clergy) and their explication of scriptural texts. Fox emphasized to the congregations that all they needed in order to understand Christ’s message (“Truth”) could be theirs through “inward revelation” of the indwelling Christ.

This message of inward reflection and revelation at the heart of all of Fox’s preaching increasingly fell on receptive ears. People began to attend Fox’s public sermons in large numbers, much to the consternation and then fury of the traditional clergy. Fox, a muscular, striking young man with almost shoulder-length curly locks, fascinated crowds with his booming voice and theologian’s understanding of the Bible. Many local ministers, intending to rebuke him in public, quailed in front of his piercing eyes. Hundreds of Independents, Baptists, and Puritans were convinced of the truth and wisdom of Fox’s message, even though Fox continued frequently to be arrested or beaten by hostile clergy, congregations, and townspeople. Especially threatening and offensive to them were Fox’s arguments against forced tithing and his Pauline insistence that the Christian church lived in its people and not in buildings, which Fox and his followers dismissed as “steeplehouses.”

In June, 1652, following another mystical vision atop Pendle Hill in Lancashire, Fox traveled to an area near the border of Westmorland (now in Cumbria) and Yorkshire, in western England. From a great rock in Firbank Fell, near the village of Sedbergh, Fox addressed more than one thousand people. For several hours, Fox spoke “under the power of the Lord,” explaining at length his understanding of Christ’s message and of the Christian life. Emphasizing his listeners’ ability to hear the message of Christ in their own hearts, free of creeds, doctrines, and paid cleric-interpreters, Fox laid the groundwork for an organized new religion, one with a nonviolent message for a period of universal strife in English history. Fox, founder and chief exponent of this new religion, was not yet twenty-eight years of age.

Life’s Work

From the early 1650’s to the end of his life, Fox knew little rest or outward peace. His call to the Westmorland Seekers and their heady response did not lessen the furor of religious and political upheaval that characterized the larger society for all but the last several years of Fox’s life. The beatings, stonings, imprisonments, and illegal detentions did not merely continue but intensified steadily after the restoration of Charles II to the English throne in May, 1660.

Successive acts of Parliament between 1662 and 1668, intended primarily to punish Puritans for their support of Oliver Cromwell, resulted also in systematic, ferocious persecutions of the pacifist Quakers, who by that time were officially called the Religious Society of Friends. Quakers became martyrs in England, and between 1659 and 1661, four Friends were hanged in Boston. Between imprisonments and persecutions on one hand and the inevitable factionalization within the society itself on the other hand, Fox’s resolve and resources were tested severely during from 1652 to 1688. His tasks required all of his prodigious talents of physical endurance, shrewd courtroom rhetoric, and a sustaining religious faith.

In spite of this seemingly withering opposition and oppression, Fox and the Society of Friends thrived. In October, 1669, at age forty-five, Fox married Margaret Askew Fell of Swarthmoor Hall, Lancashire. Fell, the widow of Judge Thomas Fell, had been a principal supporter of Fox since 1652 and had long lent her social prominence and considerable wealth to the Quaker cause. Historians credit Margaret Fell and her first husband—who never actually became a Quaker—with protecting the movement in its vulnerable first years. The Society of Friends, meanwhile, grew as it sent missionaries to France, Holland, Scotland, Ireland, the American colonies, and even to Turkey.

By the time George Fox died, in London, in January, 1691, William III and Mary II had acceded to the throne of England, and the Toleration Act of 1689 had brought a final halt to the persecutions of the Quakers and other non-Anglicans. With his message of the Inner Light, of Christ’s presence and love; with his refusal to take up arms or to espouse any violent cause; with his prophetic vision of a healed world, Fox had outlived violent opposition. When he died, he left behind an established religious sect committed to realizing his vision of revivified Christian love.

Significance

As the founder of Quakerism, George Fox had an enormous impact on religious and cultural history. Indeed, in the judgment of the eminent British historian G. M. Trevelyan, “George Fox made at least the most original contribution to the history of religion of any Englishman.” This originality manifests itself in the central tenets of Quakerism. With his prophetic visions and promptings to guide and empower him, Fox derived a system of belief based upon the concept of continuing revelation, which holds that the spirit of Christ lives within the hearts of the truly faithful and that the will of God is thus continuously revealed as human history unfolds. Fox therefore offered seventeenth century Christians a newly invigorated faith that made immediately accessible a living, dynamic Christ who could speak to the condition and lives of Christians caught in the religious undercurrents of the English Civil War and its bloody aftermath (1641-1660).

Fox’s insistence on the equality of women and men in spiritual matters tapped sources of talent and leadership unprecedented in the history of Christianity. Such spiritual equality encouraged and anticipated wider educational and social opportunities for women—not only in Britain but also in America. Fox’s uncompromising integrity—he always refused bail bonding, for example, because he thought it was an implied admission of guilt—inspired Quakers to advocate reforms against slavery, labor conditions, punitive judicial sentences, harsh prison conditions, and so on. Further, Fox’s refusal to seek revenge, either physical or legal, against his persecutors inspired the Quaker belief in nonviolence, pacifism, and conscientious objection to participation in wars.

Historically, it is amazing that Fox and his early followers survived at all, yet eventually, even preeminent national leaders such as Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658), Charles II (1630-1685), and James II (1633-1701) came to credit (if not agree with) the unusual vision of Christian love that Fox and the Society of Friends espoused. Combining the visionary clarity of a prophet, the intuitive discernment of a mystic, the organizational ability of a political leader, and the integrity and stamina of a hero, Fox founded a religious sect whose influence reverberated far beyond the doors of its meetinghouses.

Bibliography

Bailey, Richard. New Light on George Fox and Early Quakerism: The Making and Unmaking of a God. San Francisco, Calif.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1992. Bailey interprets Fox’s belief in Inner Light, arguing the Inner Light was the celestial Christ who inhabited and made the believer divine.

Bori, Pier Cesare. “The Vision of Paradise in The Journal of George Fox.” In The Earthly Paradise: The Garden of Eden from Antiquity to Modernity, edited by F. Regina Psaki and Charles Hindley. Birmingham, N.Y.: Global, 2002. An examination of the original Quaker conception of Paradise, as articulated by Fox in his journal.

Brinton, Howard H. Friends for Three Hundred Years: The History and Beliefs of the Society of Friends Since George Fox Started the Quaker Movement. London: Allen and Unwin, 1953. Reprint. Wallingford, Pa.: Pendle Hill, 1983. Perhaps the most accessible and authoritative history of Quakerism. Brinton’s gift is combining scholarly insight with readability.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. The Religious Philosophy of Quakerism: The Beliefs of Fox, Barclay, and Penn as Based on the Gospel of John. Wallingford, Pa.: Pendle Hill, 1973. Brinton concisely outlines the scriptural and theological roots of Quakerism. Although brief (115 pages), the book reflects both insight and broad learning.

Fox, George. The Journal of George Fox. London: Thomas Northcott, 1694. Rev. ed. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1952. Reprint. London: Religious Society of Friends, 1975. An authoritative edition of Fox’s journal, incorporating the emphases and deletions of previous editions.

Gwyn, Douglas. Apocalypse of the Word: The Life and Message of George Fox. Richmond, Ind.: Friends United Press, 1986. An excellent scholarly biography that places Fox and Quakerism in historical and theological context. Background discussions are informative, concise, and helpful.

Ingle, H. Larry. First Among Friends: George Fox and the Creation of Quakerism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. A scholarly biography, placing Fox’s life within the upheavals of the English Civil War, the Puritan Revolution, and the Reformation.

Monaghan, Hanna Darlington. “Dear George”: George Fox, Man and Prophet. Philadelphia: Franklin, 1970. An unusual, well-researched study of Fox, this book is based on the author’s comparative study of Fox’s journal and the questionable liberties the first editors and compilers took with it. Especially interesting is Monaghan’s discussion of the healing performed by Fox, a subject ignored by most modern biographers.

Munro, Oliver Fyfe, ed. George Fox, 1624-1691: Our Living Contemporary. London: Farrand Press, 1991. Contains transcripts of five lectures given to mark the tercentenary of Fox’s death. The lectures outline Fox’s life, the development of the Society of Friends, and the society’s current and future position in the world.

Vipont, Elfrida. George Fox and the Valiant Sixty. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1985. Focusing on the sixty missionaries who first carried Fox’s message through England and abroad. The book’s content displays historical understanding and familiarity with Quaker historical geography, but its style too often borders on irksome quaintness.

West, Jessamyn. The Friendly Persuasion. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1945. Reprint. San Diego, Calif.: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1991. West’s engaging collection of short stories about a Civil War era American Quaker family offers a human embodiment of Quaker principles, traditions, and behavior in a society that does not share those views. As such, the stories present a tangible portrait of traditional Quakerism in America.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗, ed. The Quaker Reader. New York: Viking Press, 1962. Reprint. Wallingford, Pa.: Pendle Hill, 1992. A helpful anthology of Quaker thought and writing from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. Offers a good introductory survey of Quaker theology in journals, letters, treatises, and books, but its abridgements are sometimes unsatisfactory.