“And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the Kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, ‘The Kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, “Lo, here!” or “Lo, there!” For behold, the Kingdom of God is within you.’” – Luke 17:20-21 “Keep within. And when they say, …
In the first generation of the Quaker movement, news of the gospel spread across Britain from house to house, city to city. Quickly, the message was taken abroad to the continent of Europe and to the British colonies in the Americas. These early years of Quakerism were characterized by an untamed passion for sharing the …
For most Christians, there is an assumption that the faith and practice of the early Church bears a certain special authority. Some communions express this in doctrines of “apostolic succession,” in which the modern-day Church receives its spiritual authority as an inheritance, passed down from the first-century apostles to the present-day church leadership. In other …
[People] are told they ought to love God. They cannot find any such feeling in themselves. What are they to do? The answer is the same as before. Act as if you did. Do not sit trying to manufacture feelings. Ask yourself, ‘if I were sure that I loved God, what would I do?’ When …
This Wednesday at Capitol Hill Friends, we examined the third chapter of Paul’s first letter to the Church in Corinth. In this letter, Paul writes to a local Meeting that has become divided based on allegiance to human leadership. The Meeting is splitting into factions, with some preferring Apollos and other claiming Paul as their …
“Let all nations hear the sound by word or writing. Spare no place, spare no tongue, nor pen; but be obedient to the Lord God: go through the work; be valiant for the truth upon earth…” – George Fox The early Quakers were serious about preaching the gospel. In the first decades of the Friends …
One of the greatest challenges for this generation of Quakerism will be figuring out how to adapt our traditional practices to a society in which human mobility and information technology have reached a level never seen before. For the first three hundred years or so, the Religious Society of Friends could count on a certain …