17. Sectarian Movements in Europe and America: Visions and Voices

One of my most memorable stops during a ten-day trek through the English countryside some years ago was at the Swarthmoor Hall in the Lake District. Built in 1586 by George Fell, the estate was passed down to his son Thomas, who bequeathed it to his wife, Margaret Fell, the “mother of Quakerism.” Throughout her lifetime Swarthmoor Hall became the command center for the Society of Friends.

Now a religious retreat and conference grounds, the estate was closed the Monday morning my husband and I visited; however, a kindly caretaker agreed to take us through the home: kitchen, dining room and parlor, and up the stairs to the bedrooms. He told stories and answered questions in a wonderfully homespun way. Then he let us roam the gardens and fields at our leisure. What a memory-filled sunny morning it was. Whether wandering through the dewy grass or poking around her kitchen, I sensed the spirit of Margaret still lingering from centuries ago.

Our time there reminded me of a comment made by a colleague, a professor of church history. He remarked to his students in class that Margaret Fell is famous only because she married George Fox, the founder of the Quakers. “This is one way you women can make a name for yourselves,” he joked.

I find it interesting, and perhaps mystifying, that the highborn Margaret Fell married the rag-tag, smelly, eccentric, wandering prophet George Fox. But it surely was not to gain fame. She outlived him by more than a decade, and her singular accomplishments in many ways outranked his own. She helped to put the Quakers on a more solid scriptural footing; she set the stage for gender equality; and she paved the way for pacifism to become a key element in Quaker belief.

As a wealthy widow, she might have lived out the rest of her life in ease on that magnificent estate. Instead, she sacrificed her wealth and time and freedom for a higher cause.

Almost always schism begets schism; once the instinct of discipline is lost, the movement breeds rival prophets and rival coteries…. Always the first fervors evaporate; prophecy dies out and the charismatic is merged in the institutional…. It is a fugal melody that runs through the centuries.

RONALD A. KNOX

The fugal melody of schism that runs through the centuries picks up steam following the Reformation as printing presses start humming and Bible translations begin to proliferate. The established church can no longer control the story. Prophets rise up and give birth to movements that breed rival prophets. When the fervor evaporates and the prophecy dies out, the movement is merged into the institutional church, and it persecutes the prophets in its wake. And the fugal melody with all its various voices plays on.

This scenario is best seen in the sixteenth century as Reformation schismatics become institutionalized and persecute Anabaptists, and as the Church of England schismatics persecute Puritans, who will in turn persecute Quakers. In each case the initial fervor evaporates as the schismatic movement evolves into an established church. These sectarian movements are present in every age, but they particularly flourished in England in the mid-seventeenth century. As individuals and groups fled persecution, the sects spread—sometimes to the New World where they bred new prophets or prophetesses. Women, seeing visions and hearing voices like their male counterparts, were prominent in these new movements. Among the prophets and prophetesses were Anne Hutchinson, Roger Williams, George Fox, and Margaret Fell.

The Conventicle Act of Parliament in 1664, ordered by King Charles II, might seem like an over-reaction. Why should the king and Parliament feel threatened if a dozen people are meeting together, for example, to read the Bible? The rationale for the law restricting the number to five was more than merely an effort to keep the peons in their place. Since the time of Constantine, church unity was presumed to foster national unity. The tight church-state relationship in medieval times constituted an arranged marriage beneficial to both sides. When German princes courted Reformers and visa versa, it was an effort to strengthen both sides. So also in England. The Church of England, beginning with Henry VIII, served to strengthen the state. Thus ordinary individuals, meeting in conventicles, or small groups, were seen as potentially seditious. Who knows what might happen? A prophet might rise up right in their midst.

PARADE OF HISTORY

The parade of sectarian prophets is one of the more colorful processions of church history. In 1636 Lady Eleanor, accompanied by several women companions, parades into Litchfield Cathedral, sits on the bishop’s throne, and declares herself primate over the Church of England, identifying herself as “the Lamb’s wife.” But George Fox, founder of the Quakers, leads the noisiest parade into Litchfield. Barefoot and donned in a leather suit, this strange prophet marches into the city on market day two decades later, crying at the top of his lungs, “Woe unto Litchfield, thou bloody city!.”

Students of church history sometimes imagine that the sixteenth century did not really begin until Luther nailed his Ninety-five Theses to the church door, and that all other important events of the century centered around that incident. True, Luther let the genie out of the bottle and the Christian religion would never be the same. But the sixteenth century was more broadly a time of political and social upheaval as well as a time of cultural advance. Renaissance literature, art, and music rivaled scientific and geographical discoveries. Similar circumstances were evident in the seventeenth century, as the religious revolution encountered what has been called the Age of Reason. In the 1640s, as George Fox was traveling on foot from town to town uttering prophetic messages from God and claiming perfection greater than that of Adam, Descartes was giving birth to Rationalism with his sudden notion of Cogito ergo sum—I think, therefore I am.

Every age has its own religious peculiarities and concerns. The Reformation challenged church authority with its emphasis on the Bible, while seventeenth-century religious renewal related more to the matter of church purity. The Puritans symbolize that emphasis, but the full flowering of this emphasis on purity came with the prophetic sectarian movements that arose alongside Puritanism. Puritans harked back to the sola scriptura of the Reformation—and particularly to the writings of Bucer, Calvin, and Bullinger. These three, more than Luther, had set forth a new pattern for the church, the home, and society. Medieval rituals and priestly traditions were scorned. Simplicity was prized. From celibacy and the confessional to the number of sacraments, the Bible ruled. There was no place for a pope—or a prophet.

It is in the prophetic realm that the sectarian movements differed from what might be broadly identified as Protestant orthodoxy. Prophetic movements had arisen in medieval times and among Anabaptists of the sixteenth century. But in the seventeenth century they flourished. In the British Isles many of these groups were identified as Civil War sects because of their prominence during the English Civil Wars. The Ranters, for example, considered themselves above the admonitions of Scripture in their perfectionism. They held that the true believer is a holy one, free of sin and the biblical laws.

The Fifth Monarchists, another sectarian movement, was a radical millenarian group that prophesied that it would usher in the reign of Christ as the fifth monarchy (following after the Assyrian, Persian, Macedonian, and Roman monarchies). Under the rule of Christ, this new kingdom would eliminate class and sex barriers. They formed “gathered congregations” and separated themselves from “non-elect.” Itinerant women preachers, including Mary Cary and Anna Trapnel, were common. Cary’s prophecies included eschatological utterances, theological pronouncements, and counsel for everyday living.

PROPHET AS LONELY MADMAN

A genuine first-hand religious experience … is bound to be a heterodoxy to its witnesses, the prophet appearing as a mere lonely madman. If his doctrine prove contagious enough to spread to any others, it becomes a definite and labeled heresy. But if it then still prove contagious enough to triumph over persecution, it becomes itself an orthodoxy; and when a religion has become an orthodoxy, its day of inwardness is over: the spring is dry; the faithful live at second hand exclusively and stone the prophets in their turn.

William James, The Varieties of

Religious Experience

EVERYDAY LIFE

Plain Speech vs. Politeness

Seventeenth-century England, as was true of other societies, was in many respects rigidly class conscious and preoccupied with cultural forms of honor (and dishonor). Deference was due individuals of higher social status, and that deference was evident in lifestyle, dress, behaviors, and speech. Among sectarian movements, however, such niceties were often scorned. All were equal before God—except, of course, for the leader or prophet. Such was especially the case among Quakers. In a concern for being truthful, they emphasized plain (truthful) dress, lifestyle, and speech. The plain dress was easily identified by the gray color and the flat hats worn by men. Plainness was also the rule in theology and church order. The “plain and simple truth” required no creeds or confessions; church meetings were spontaneous. But it was in the realm of plain speech that Quakers were most vilified, largely because of the implied disrespect.

George Fox initiated this approach in the beginning of his ministry: “For the Lord showed me, that though the people of the world have mouths full of deceit, and changeable words, yet I was to keep to Yea and Nay in all things; and that my words should be few and savoury, seasoned with grace.” When addressing another individual, he insisted that honorary titles must be rejected. Catholic honorary terms for clergy were particularly odious, as were such terms that were used in the Church of England and Protestant bodies. The same rule applied when addressing kings and heads of state and members of the House of Lords—and political titles in general. “Yes, sir” or “No, your honor” were not permitted. Even the use of “Mr.” or “Mrs.” was deemed as conveying too much honor. This rule also held true for children. A five-year-old boy would be expected to address the elderly neighbor as Margaret rather than Mrs. Fell. There were no “ladies” and “gentlemen” among Quakers.

Though people living in the twenty-first century find it difficult to understand, pronouns became a major matter of dispute as well. The early Quakers may have been nitpicking, but they were not uneducated fools. In 1666 they published a grammar book that was based on a study of forty languages to prove that the pronoun you could not be used properly in the singular and blaming Catholics for the incorrect and damnable usage:

You to Many and Thou to One: Singular One, Thou; Plural Many, You…. You to One came first from the Pope…. But to say the Plural in the Singular’s place, you, for thou, this pleases our Priests, and School-masters, and peevish Magistrates: Thou’s thou me, Cry they: and thus they have forgotten their Accidence [traditional grammar].

Why the debate over pronouns? Seventeenth-century usage set forth the polite plural forms ye and you when speaking to a single individual of high rank. Thus commoners were expected to use this form when addressing an upper-class lady or gentleman. Those of inferior status were to be addressed with thou. Fox, however, insisted that language must be plain and thus truthful. To refer to one individual as you—the plural form—would be the same as if a person claimed she had two pennies when she had only one. She would be untruthful. A form of untruthfulness was pride, and an aspect of Quaker ministry was to attack pride wherever it could be found. The use of thou and thee to an individual of rank was, according to Fox, “a fearful cut to proud flesh and self-honor.”

Trapnel, a woman of financial means, ranked high as a prophetic visionary, often taking on political leaders. In 1654, after spending days in a trance, she prophesied against Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell. God was about to “batter” him and his political cronies. Authorities were not amused, and she was arrested for subversive behavior. Such prophetic activity was not confined to the sects, however. Lady Eleanor Davis, daughter of the Earl of Castlehaven, considered herself a faithful Anglican. In 1625 she testified that she had “heard early in the morning a Voice from Heaven, speaking as through a trumpet these words: ‘There is nineteen years and a half to the Judgment Day.’.”

For twenty-five years she publicized her prophecies through writing and speaking. Her commentary on the Old Testament book of Daniel prophesied a dire end for Archbishop Laud and King Charles I. For such brazen pronouncements, she was sentenced to prison and required to pay a hefty fine. Described variously as insane, hysterical, and eccentric, she was unquestionably a colorful character. When she brazenly entered Lichfield Cathedral, she not only proclaimed herself the head of the church but also desecrated the altar hangings. Despite her reputation for eccentricity, she had many followers, some in high places. She wrote some forty widely distributed tracts.

Charismatic, apocalyptic, and perfectionist sectarians were certainly not confined to England. Prophetic movements rose up on the Continent, particularly in France following the revocation by Louis XIV of the Edict of Nantes (making Protestantism illegal) in 1685. A Huguenot resistance group known as the Camisards, or Cevenal Prophets, arose in the Cevennes Mountains. Both leaders and followers claimed direct revelation from the Holy Spirit resulting in extraordinary physical affects. According to one observer, some “fell on their Backs” and “remained a while in Trances, and coming out of them with Twitchings, they utter’d all that came into their Mouths.” There were instances of young children who were said to have given prophecies while speaking in tongues. Indeed, there were fantastic stories of babies bursting forth in fluent French, calling their elders to repentance.

Often authorities ignored what they deemed to be no more than routine rantings of religious eccentrics. But if the “crazy” man or woman took on the role of a prophet with a loyal following, the remedy of the day was severe persecution. Sometimes citizenry took matters into their own hands and pelted the annoying street preacher with rocks. But the heavy hand of the law was never far behind. Imprisonment and execution of heretics was a centuries-old tradition conducted by Christian regimes both Catholic and Protestant alike. There was no such thing as religious freedom, except, some imagined, in the New World. But the New World—and especially New England—was anything but a haven for religious dissenters. As was often true on the Continent and in England, the once-persecuted minority turned into persecutors as soon as their own brand of religion was in vogue. This is precisely what Ann Hutchinson and Roger Williams discovered after they immigrated to New England.

Anne Hutchinson: New England “Heretic”

She was considered a dangerous woman, a much greater threat to the community than the ordinary “gossip” or “scold” who often found her way into the Massachusetts Bay Selectmen’s Minutes. She was intelligent and articulate and commanded a hearing that few others enjoyed.

Born in Lincolnshire, England, Anne Marbury Hutchinson (1591–1643) was the daughter of an Anglican cleric who was twice imprisoned for his dissenting beliefs and his criticism of the incompetence of the clergy. Yet he managed to maintain a religious equilibrium that allowed him to continue serving in Anglican parishes. Young Anne was home-schooled in her father’s library, and like him she challenged the authority of the Church of England. In 1612, the year after her father died, she married William Hutchinson, an up-and-coming merchant.

For the next twenty-two years she and her husband remained in England, where she mostly had babies and studied the Bible. Her mentor was her minister, John Cotton, who would become one of the leading Puritan divines of New England. When he sailed for the Bay Colony in 1633, she was devastated. It became “a great trouble to me,” she confessed. “I could not be at rest but I must come hither.”

Cotton is no doubt pleased when the Hutchinson family arrives in Boston. Referring to her early years in New England, he later praised her spiritual maturity and lay ministry:

Shee did much good in our Town, in womans meeting at Childbirth-Travells, wherein shee was not onley skillful and help-full, but readily fell into good discourse with the women about their spiritual estates … By which means many of the women (and their husbands) were … brought to enquire more seriously after the Lord Jesus Christ.

Middle-aged and the mother of fifteen children, Hutchinson has a keen mind and is highly respected in the community. Her “heresy” is to challenge the religious establishment, especially on the issue of liberty of conscience. But her challenge is also related to gender, though she is not a seventeenth-century feminist, as some writers have suggested.

The Puritan establishment, far more than sectarian movements, was by its very nature deeply entrenched in a highly organized system that championed the rule of law. Orderliness was prized. Within a century, however, that system would start to unravel with a more feminine slant to spirituality and Hutchinson was in the forefront. Initially, her activities do not create controversy. She holds weekly meetings in her home with neighborhood women, offering advice on childcare and homemaking and making comments on the Sunday sermon. Soon word spreads and more women attend—so many that they cannot be accommodated in her home without scheduling extra meetings. Women return home and tell their husbands, and the men begin to attend as well, fulfilling the fears of the authorities that she would “as by an Eve catch their husbands also.” In fact, she had so many followers that they were dubbed “Hutchinsonians.”

The authorities have good reason to oppose her. She is critical of the Boston ministers, spreading the word that the only ones who are truly elect are John Cotton and her brother-in-law, John Wheelwright. In her mind, the Puritan “covenant of works” represents no more than a man-made code of legal requirements that has no place in true religion, which, she insists, is a “covenant of grace” as one is guided by the Spirit through one’s conscience. “As I do understand it, laws, commands, rules and edicts [“covenant of works”] are for those who have not the light which makes plain the pathway. He who has God’s grace in his heart cannot go astray.” Indeed, anyone can communicate directly with God. She testifies to special revelations from God, revelations that Puritans simply cannot tolerate. “If they be allowed in one thing [they] must be admitted a rule in all things,” admonishes governor Winthrop, “for they being above reason and Scripture, they are not subject to control.” She likewise challenges the doctrine of original sin.

That she would make such claims is serious offense, but that she has a following who fill her house at weekly meetings calls for court action. Indeed, the dozens of people who crowd into her home to listen to her sermon critiques and biblical expositions include, according to a contemporary observer, “some of the magistrates, some gentlemen, some scholars and men of learning.”

By 1637, only three years after arriving with her family, Hutchinson is branded a “Jezebel” who is spreading “abominable” teachings, a “thing not tolerable nor comely in the sight of God, nor fitting for [her] sex.” She testifies to Governor Winthrop that “upon a Throne of Justice,” the Lord revealed that “I must come to New England, yet I must not fear nor be dismayed.” Winthrop shoots back: “I am persuaded that the revelation she brings forth is delusion.” That same year, at age forty-six and several months into her fifteenth and final pregnancy, she is called before the General Court of Massachusetts. She might have been intimidated by their charges of insubordination, but she stands her ground. “You have no power over my body, neither can you do me any harm,” she responds. “I fear none but the great Jehovah, which hath foretold me of these things, and I do verily believe that he will deliver me out of your hands.”

The court issues a sentence of banishment, but she is permitted to remain in Boston under house arrest until spring. By that time she may have thought better of being banished, for she is ready to make concessions when court representatives interview her. The meeting continues until well after dark, by which time John Cotton, no longer her friend, “pronounced the sentence of admonition with great solemnity, and with much zeal and detestation of her errors and pride of spirit.” The following day, March 22, 1638, she appears again and makes further concessions, including an admission of saying “rash and ungrounded” things against the magistrates. Winthrop recalled being surprised by her change of heart, for “this gave the church good hope of her repentance.” But after further questioning and wrangling, the effort to “bring her to see her sin” was “all in vain, [and] the church, with one consent, cast her out.” With her excommunication, “her spirits, which seemed before to be somewhat dejected, revived again, and she gloried in her sufferings, saying, that it was the greatest happiness, next to Christ, that ever befell her.”

FEAR OF FANATICISM

Generations after her death, Anne Hutchinson was often cited as the premier example of religious fanaticism. In 1743 Puritan leaders in Westfield, Massachusetts, were distressed by the activities of Bathsheba Kingsley, who admitted to “stealing a horse [and] riding away on the Sabbath with[ou]t her husband’s consent.” What were they to do with such women? She spent most of her days in outlying villages, “wandering about from house to house under a notion of doing Christ’s work and delivering messages”—messages that often included condemnation of local clerics. Charles Chauncey, an opponent of the excesses of the Great Awakening, argued that such fanaticism was reminiscent of the days of Anne Hutchinson.

On March 28, under the orders of Governor Winthrop, Hutchinson left Boston for Providence, where her husband had purchased land from the Indians. For the Puritan leaders, however, banishment was not enough. They went to great lengths to besmirch her reputation. Following an agonizing miscarriage soon after her exile, a minister alleged she had not merely miscarried but rather had brought forth “20 monstrous births or thereabouts, at once, some of them bigger, some lesser, some of one shape, some of another,” none of them “of human shape.” John Cotton, her one-time minister and defender, joined in the malicious rumor and reported to an assembly in Boston that because of God’s judgment she had delivered “twenty-seven … lumps of man’s seed, without any alteration or mixture of anything from the woman, and thereupon gathered that it might signify her error in denying inherent righteousness.”

Quaker Mary Dyer led to execution on Boston Common, 1 June 1660. (By an unknown 19th-century artist)

But if a miscarriage was not enough to prove her reprobation, her untimely death was. After she and her family had moved to Long Island, word came back to Boston vindicating her detractors and warning any other would-be heretics:

The Indians set upon them, and slew her and all the family … [and] did burne her to death with fire, her house and all the rest named that belonged to her…. I never heard that the Indians in those parts did ever before this, commit the like outrage …; and therefore God’s hand is the more apparently seene herein, to pick out this wofull woman, to make her … an unheard of heavie example of their cruelty above al others.”

In actuality, the Hutchinson deaths were part of a more widespread annihilation of both Dutch and English families by Indians on Long Island.

There would be other women who tested the Boston authorities, including Mary Dyer, who followed the teachings of Hutchinson but later, on a visit to England, joined the Quakers. Knowing that returning to Boston would spell trouble, she boldly entered the town and testified to her new-found faith. Dyer was banished, only to return, at which time she was sentenced to hang. But even the Bay Colony Puritans winced at hanging a woman—at least prior to the witch trials of 1692. Just before the execution she was given a reprieve and told in no uncertain terms that they would not be so lenient next time. Thus when she returned in the spring of 1660, she was hanged. That she was a woman preacher was not a critical factor in her execution; that she was not abiding by Puritan rules was. The same was true of Roger Williams, though he was able to get out of town before a worse fate befell him.

Roger Williams: Proclaiming Separation of Church and State

Heralded as one of the founders of American liberty whose influence is seen in the Bill of Rights, Roger Williams (1603–1683) is an enigmatic figure whose lack of theological clarity illustrates a significant element in seventeenth-century Christianity. The Puritans, the Separatists, the Quakers, the Baptists—though often at odds among themselves—typically hold strong beliefs that are set forth by a theologian or prophet. Williams represents the religious critic who is more concerned with challenging the establishment than with formulating doctrine or developing a new movement.

Growing up in London, Williams witnessed the hard hand of the law in religious persecution. But more significant for his future development were the hours he spent in court observing cases against religious dissenters. Years later the daughter of a noted judge recalled that the young Williams “would in a short hand take sermons and speeches in the Star Chamber, and present them to my dear father.” After schooling at Charterhouse and graduation from Cambridge in 1627, he was appointed an Anglican chaplain and married the daughter of an Anglican minister. But his inclinations are more in line with Puritanism.

Roger Williams

In 1630 he and his wife sail for New England, where he is welcomed by John Winthrop and described as a “godly minister.” But within weeks after his arrival, he moves to Salem to serve in a Separatist congregation, a church demanding complete separation from the Church of England.

In his espousal of Separatist beliefs and his criticism of the Boston establishment, Williams is now persona non grata in the Bay Colony. Under pressure from Boston, he is forced to leave Salem (amid rumors of his “heresy of Anabaptism”). He moves on to Plymouth, where he makes contact with local Indians. Soon he is accusing the Puritan authorities of employing an invalid charter issued by the king, who has no right to native lands. His ideas on religious toleration only exacerbate matters. He argues that “no human power has the right to intermeddle in matters of conscience and that neither church nor state, neither bishop nor king, may prescribe the smallest iota of religious faith.” Further, he insists that no one should be required to financially support any church because “man is responsible to God alone.” In 1635, the General Court issues an ominous order:

Whereas Mr. Roger Williams, one of the Elders of the church of Salem, hath broached and divulged new and dangerous opinions written letters of defamation, both of the magistrates and churches here, and that before any conviction, and yet maintaineth the same without any retraction; it is, therefore, ordered that the said Mr. Williams shall depart out of this jurisdiction within six weeks now next ensuing.

Refusing to be stifled, Williams continues to hold meetings and seeks to convince others of his ideas. Many people are “taken with an apprehension of his godliness.” In fact, they are whispering about plans to set up their own colony. The court then decides to rid itself of the troublemaker by shipping him back to England. But warned by Governor Winthrop of this impending turn of events, he flees into the wilderness, leaving his wife and infant behind. “I was unmercifully driven from my chamber to a winter’s flight, exposed to the miseries, poverties, necessities, wants, debts, hardships of sea and land in a banished condition,” he later wrote. “I was sorely tossed for … fourteen weeks in a bitter winter season, not knowing what bed or bread did mean.”

Williams had already become familiar with the Indians, having earlier inquired of their social traditions and trading customs. He purchases land from the celebrated native chief Massasoit, but due to claims on the land by the Plymouth Colony, he moves away and establishes Providence Plantation, acknowledging the providence of God in his good fortune. News of his survival through the winter and his plans to establish his own colony bring family members and like-minded freethinkers south to join him in the spring.

For a man in his era, he is unusual in his esteem for Native Americans. He becomes convinced that the Indians are in many ways more noble than are the Puritan invaders. “For the temper of the braine in quick apprehensions and accurate judgements,” he insists, “the most high and sovereign God and Creator hath not made them inferior to Europeans…. The same Sun shines on a Wilderness that doth on a garden.” He strongly expresses his views in correspondence, essays, and books (including a Narragansett dictionary), as well as in verse that cuts to the heart of the matter:

I’ve known them to leave their house and mat

To lodge a friend or stranger

When Jews and Christians oft have sent

Jesus Christ to the Manger

Oft have I heard these Indians say

These English will deliver us

Of all that’s ours, our lands and lives

In the end, they’ll bereave us.

Williams’s religious ideas are in a constant state of flux and progression toward pluralism. He had come to the Bay Colony with evangelistic zeal. Like other Puritans, he had expressed “longing after the natives’ soules.” But as time passes, his philosophy of “soule liberty” develops to the point that he believes that conversion of the native people is not a priority, or even advisable. Like others, he acknowledges that native tribes fight each other and are known for terrible torture, but their battles are never over religious issues as are those of his fellow Englishmen and of Europeans in general. His stance on religious toleration is the exception to the rule, though one contemporary observer suggests that his views are widespread: “Under the pretence of liberty of conscience, about these parts, there come to live all the scum and the runaways of the country.”

In the spring of 1636 word reaches Williams that the Pequots and their allies are on the verge of attacking the Puritan towns and ridding the region of the European settlers once and for all. The greatest fear is that the Narragansetts, with tens of thousands of fighting men, might join in the battle against them. Accompanied by a native runner, Williams makes great speed to meet with the Narragansetts in their territory. Battered by a storm, he arrives at their principal settlement some thirty miles away to plead the cause of the colonists. With his reputation for honesty, he negotiates a treaty between Massachusetts officials and the Narragansetts—and later with other tribes who might have joined in the attack.

Without the help of other tribes, the Pequot War (1634–1638) does not realize its goal of ridding the land of white men. Indeed, the colonial militia prevails and takes terrible revenge on any natives deemed complicit, much to the sorrow and chagrin of Williams. The final battle of the war comes when the colonial troops set fire to a large thatched building, trapping several hundred native warriors along with women and children—all of whom are burned to death. “It was a fearful sight,” Puritan leader William Bradford observed, “to see them thus frying.” Williams is sickened when he hears about the horrific inferno.

As time passes, his reputation grows. In spite of his heresies, he is looked upon with high regard by many Bay Colony leaders. In fact, Governor Endicott later welcomes him back. But he refuses the invitation. “I feel safer down here among the Christian savages along Narragansett Bay,” he seethes, “than I do among the savage Christians of Massachusetts Bay Colony.”

Among those who settle in Providence Plantation are Baptists, who do not find a warm welcome in the Bay Colony. In Providence, some keep the seventh-day Sabbath, while others do not. For a short time, Williams preaches to a joint gathering of Baptists and thus is considered by many to be the founding minister of the first Baptist church in America. But he is far too independent in his religious beliefs to be properly deemed a Baptist.

The colony of Rhode Island is not officially chartered until 1644, while he is back in England. That same year he publishes The Bloody Tenent of Persecution for Cause of Conscience, in which he presents his philosophy of toleration through a dialogue between Peace and Truth. The book is controversial—and popular. Liberty of conscience is a threat to the religious system, whether in England or America. John Cotton responds in 1647 with his own volume, The Bloody Tenent washed and made White in the Blood of the Lamb. But Williams has the final word. In 1652, he further challenges Cotton and his ilk with The Bloody Tenent made yet more Bloody by Mr. Cotton’s Endeavor to wash it White.

Providence Plantation is anything but a Utopian community. Though seeking peace and toleration from the intolerant Bay Colony, the settlers quickly find many things to fight about. Some join together to buy large tracts of land, thus preventing new arrivals from farming their own property. In a letter of 1654, Williams expresses his disappointment: “I have been charged with folly for that freedom and liberty which I have always stood for—I say, liberty and equality in both land and government.” In the following years, land becomes a major focus as he seeks to mediate disputed claims.

Although known for toleration, Williams is not without his own prejudice. He despises Quakers, in part because of their claims to true-church purity and their subjective claim of inner light. Desiring to go straight to the source, he challenges the visiting George Fox to a debate. Fox ignores the dare, but local Quakers agree to meet with him. He publicly debates them, while accusing them of being “without manners, without courtesy,” so that to meet one along the way is no better than to “meet a horse or a cow.” In the end, Williams taunts Fox with a volume titled George Fox digged out of his

A LONELY PROPHET

I fasted much, walked abroad in solitary places many days, and often took my Bible, and sat in hollow trees and lonesome places until night came on; and frequently in the night walked mournfully about by myself; for I was a man of sorrows in the time of the first workings of the Lord in me.

During all this time I was never joined in profession of religion with any, but gave up myself to the Lord, having forsaken all evil company, taking leave of father and mother, and all other relations, and traveled up and down as a stranger on the earth … for I durst not stay long in a place, being afraid both of professor and profane, lest, being a tender young man, I should be hurt by conversing much with either. For which reason I kept much as a stranger, seeking heavenly wisdom and getting knowledge from the Lord…. As I had forsaken the priests, so I left the separate preachers also, and those called the most experienced people; for I saw there was none among them all that could speak to my condition…. When I was in the deep, under all shut up, I could not believe that I should ever overcome; my troubles, my sorrows, and my temptations were so great that I often thought I should have despaired, I was so tempted.

George Fox, An Autobiography

George Fox: Prophet and Rebel

In 1650 George Fox (1624–1691) is sentenced by a judge to six months in prison for preaching a blasphemous message, claiming by his own testimony to be free from sin, perfectionism later reinforced by his Pendle Hill vision—a vision depicting “a people to be gathered to the Lord,” freed from the power of sin in their lives. Fox gathers followers and founds a movement that becomes known as the Society of Friends (commonly called Quakers). His appearance sets him apart. Thomas Carlyle, a nineteenth-century Scottish historian, rates Fox alongside Luther and captures his essence in a suit of clothes:

The most remarkable incident in modern history perhaps is not the Diet of Worms…. The most remarkable incident is passed over carelessly by most historians and treated with some degree of ridicule by others—namely, George Fox’s making for himself a suit of leather. No grander thing was ever done than when George Fox, stitching himself into a suit of leather, went forth determined to find truth for himself—and to do battle for it against all superstition and intolerance.

Although Fox has never risen to the height of Luther as a historical figure, he deserves attention for his prophetic role—a role that would become critical in the later developments of cultic and charismatic movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The oldest of four children, Fox grew up near Leicester, England, the son of a prosperous weaver and devoted Anglican churchman. His testimony is very unlike that of John Bunyan and others who recalled living a sinful life until they were marvelously converted. Fox testified that he possessed a “gravity” and “spirit not usual in children” that caused him to be distressed when he witnessed levity in others. “When I came to eleven years of age,” he later remembered, “I knew pureness and righteousness; for while a child I was taught how to walk to be kept pure.” Indeed, he later claimed that throughout his youth, “I never wronged man or woman in all that time; for the Lord’s power was with me and over me, to preserve me.” His concern for religious matters as a youth paves the way for his becoming a lonely prophet as he moves through his twenties. In his journal he describes his solitary days and being set apart by God.

George Fox

In the late 1640s the perfectionism that has been a key element in Fox’s religion since early childhood comes to full flowering. Unlike John Wesley, who would later teach perfectionism (entire sanctification) but never claim it for himself, Fox is exhibit A. “Now I was come up in spirit through the flaming sword, into the paradise of God,” he wrote. “I knew nothing but pureness, and innocency, and righteousness; being renewed into the image of God by Christ Jesus, to the state of Adam, which he was in before he fell.” Indeed, he goes beyond the perfection of Adam and by his own testimony attains the perfection of Jesus: “I was immediately taken up in spirit to see into another or more steadfast state than Adam’s innocency, even into a state in Christ Jesus that should never fall.”

That he is accused of blasphemy is not surprising. In 1649 he is imprisoned in Nottingham, a confinement that would be followed by many more. He is also assaulted by rowdies while civil and religious leaders look the other way. Yet the persecution provides publicity for his message. People come out to hear what this controversial prophet has to say.

Pendle Hill

Fox’s ministry begins to solidify in 1652, after he encounters God through a visionary experience on Pendle Hill, an event that marks the turning point of his life. Of this experience he writes: “As we travelled we came near a very great hill, called Pendle Hill, and I was moved of the Lord to go up to the top of it; which I did with difficulty, it was so very steep and high. When I was come to the top, I saw the sea bordering upon Lancashire. From the top of this hill the Lord let me see in what places he had a great people to be gathered.” Through his outdoor preaching, he soon gains a following. Like John the Baptist and the Old Testament prophets, he calls people to repentance. He walks barefoot in his homemade leather breeches, raising his hands and shouting out God’s curses on the cities and towns. Making his way through the crowded markets of Litchfield, he bellows, “Woe unto Litchfield, thou bloody city! Woe unto Litchfield!” Persecution and imprisonment inevitably follow.

Like the sixteenth-century Anabaptists, he urges his followers not to make use of “carnal weapons.” Rather, they should use “spiritual weapons.” Pacifism is the rule. “Let the waves [of persecution] break over your heads.” There is a strong apocalyptic theme to his message. He believes that the world has entered the “New Age of the Spirit” (similar to what the Montanists had taught) and that he is ushering in the millennial age virtually by himself—as a perfected man in the image of Adam.

Fox emphasizes the uniqueness of his perfectionist beliefs. “Of all the sects in Christendom,” he writes, “I found none that could bear to be told that any should come to Adam’s perfection, into that image of God, that righteousness and holiness that Adam was in before he fell; to be clean and pure without sin, as he was.” Indeed, he views it as his mission in life to bring people out of the carnal sects and into a “spirit-filled” life: “I was to bring them off from all the world’s fellowships, and prayings, and singings, which stood in forms without power; that … they might pray in the Holy Ghost, and sing in the Spirit, and with the grace that comes by Jesus.”

Tongues-speaking was reported among the Quakers as well as a wide variety of religious excitement. Fox himself believes that he has the power to work miracles and discern spirits, and his followers claim similar charismatic gifts. Court testimony offers a glimpse of Quaker enthusiasm: “Men, women, and little children at their meetings are strangely wrought upon in their bodies and brought to fall, foam at the mouth, roar and swell in their bellies.” Richard Baxter gives a similar account. “At first they did use to fall into violent Tremblings and sometimes Vomitings in their meetings, and pretended to be violently acted by the spirit; but now that is ceased.”

Fox was the charismatic prophet-founder of the movement—a movement that might have died out like other contemporary sectarian movements, but for a major difference: the conversion of an influential woman who would wield power in the movement for a half century.

Margaret Fell Fox: Mother of the Friends

Margaret Fell (1614–1702) was a key figure in the Society of Friends and led the movement for more than a decade after her husband, George Fox, died. Her home at Swarthmoor Hall became administrative and spiritual center of the Quaker movement. Born into the landed gentry, she married an older man when she was yet in her teens. Thomas Fell, also of landed gentry, was a highly respected judge and member of Parliament. Riding the circuit kept him away for long periods of time, leaving the estate in the capable hands of Margaret. Long after his death, she reflected on their marriage: “We lived together twenty-six years, in which time we had nine children. He was a tender and loving husband to me, and a tender father to his children, and one that sought after God in the best way that was made known to him. I was about sixteen years younger than he.”

Part of caring for her large household involved spiritual oversight, “being desirous to serve God, so that I might be accepted of Him.” Indeed, she is a spiritual seeker who is always “inquiring after the way of the Lord” and travels “often to hear the best ministers that came into our parts.” Of these ministers, she invites “the most serious godly men” to come to the estate to have “prayers and religious exercises in our family.” She continues this practice for some two decades. Then, in 1652, “it pleased the Lord … to send George Fox into our country, who declared to us the eternal truth, as it is in Jesus; and by the Word and power of the eternal God, turned many from darkness unto light, and from the power of Satan unto God.”

Fox is still an itinerant preacher and evangelist with no organized following. She is so impressed with his message that she invites him to stay over at Swarthmoor Hall. The next morning he shows up at church and stands up to speak. As she later recollects, he offered his standard message: “You will say Christ saith this, and the apostles say this; but what canst thou say? Art thou a child of Light, and hast thou walked in the Light, and what thou speakest is it inwardly from God?” While others regard him an eccentric vagabond, she stands up to defend him and is profoundly affected by his words, as she later testifies: “This opened me so, that it cut me to the heart, and then I saw clearly we were all wrong. So I sat down in my pew again and cried bitterly: and I cried in my spirit to the Lord, ‘We are all thieves; we have taken the Scripture in words, and know nothing of them in ourselves.’.”

Before Thomas Fell returns from his circuit, Margaret and the children and servants have all been converted to the new religion. A short distance from his home he is met by concerned citizens, who warn him that his wife and family have been carried away in enthusiasm. Margaret later recalls the circumstances:

When he came home, and found the most part of his family changed from our former principles and persuasions, which he left us in, he was much surprised at our sudden change; for some envious people, our neighbors, went and met him, and informed him that we had entertained such men as had taken us off from going to church, which he was very much concerned at…. And so it so happened that … some other Friends … discoursed with him, and did persuade him to be still, and weigh things before be did anything hastily, and his spirit was somewhat calmed…. And then he was pretty moderate and quiet; and his dinner being ready, he went to it, and I went in and sat down by him. And while I was sitting, the power of the Lord seized upon me; and he was struck with amazement, and knew not what to think…. That night George Fox returned. After supper my husband was sitting in the parlor, and I asked him if George Fox might come in? And he said, yes. So George came in…. He spoke as excellently as ever I heard him, and opened Christ’s and the apostles’ practices…. And he opened the night of apostasy that had occurred since the apostles’ days, and he exposed the priests and their practices in the apostasy. So well did he speak, that I thought if all in England had been there, they could not have denied the truth of those things.

In the following years the Fell home is opened for Friends meetings, and Margaret, with her husband’s sanction, becomes a strong financial supporter of the movement. But as with most sectarian prophets, some of the followers aspire to be leaders themselves. Differences in both belief and practice create rifts. And even though Fox rails against Anglicans and Dissenters alike for their hierarchical structures and obsession with propriety, he himself wields dictatorial power and demands proper respect. When James Nayler, a leading Quaker preacher, refuses to properly bow before Fox, he is declared unfaithful. “There was now a wicked spirit,” Fox warns, that has “risen amongst Friends.”

Besides his claims of perfectionism, Fox is deemed a heretic for his disdain of the sacraments. The true sign of religion is inward, he argues, and there is no place for outward church rituals such as baptism or communion. Shocking as these “heresies” are to most people of the era, they are the very declarations that draw people to the new movement. Indeed, during the late 1650s, while Cromwell is in power, Fox imagines that the Friends will grow to dominate the religious landscape. Persecution, however, serves not only to keep the numbers down but also Fox’s spirits. He easily falls into depression.

In the late 1650s Margaret also suffers depression. When her beloved husband dies, the estate is divided. She receives Swarthmoor Hall, and her son inherits the large tracts of land. She not only loses her dear companion but also the only real friend of the Friends in high places. With Cromwell’s death and the restoration of King Charles II, persecution increases. Authorities ride into Swarthmoor, arrest Fox, and incarcerate him in a dungeon in Lancaster Castle, where he languishes in vile conditions for several months.

Swarthmoor Hall, where Margaret Fell lived and organized the Society of Friends

With the help of others, Fell secures his release, but then she is incarcerated herself—for refusing to take an oath of allegiance to the king. She is surely not trying to exacerbate the situation in order to become a martyr: “I love, own, and honor the King and desire his peace and welfare [and to] live a peaceable, a quiet and a godly life under his government, according to the Scriptures.” But this only, she insists, “is my allegiance to the King. And as for the oath itself, Christ Jesus, the King of Kings, hath commanded me not to swear at all, neither by heaven, nor by earth, nor by any other Oath.”

She is sentenced to six months in jail, only to be given a life sentence following her trial. Although she ends up serving less than five years, her time in jail is hardly wasted. While her religious inclinations focus inward, she has a very outward practical bent as expressed in a lengthy pamphlet written behind bars: Women’s Speaking Justified, Proved and Allowed of by the Scriptures, All Such as Speak by the Spirit and Power of the Lord Jesus And How Women Were the First That Preached the Tidings of the Resurrection of Jesus, and Were Sent by Christ’s Own Command Before He Ascended to the Father, John 20.17.

But if women’s speaking can be justified by Scriptures, where does the opposition to women’s speaking come from? From “the bottomless pit, and the spirit of darkness that hath spoken for these many hundred years together in this night of apostasy,” she argues. In marriage, too, women enjoy equality. Did not God tell Abraham: “In all that Sarah hath said to thee, hearken to her voice”? Two years after the booklet appears, she would have an opportunity to practice equality in marriage. In the summer of 1669, eleven years after Judge Fell died, Fox testifies to a revelation: “I had seen from the Lord a considerable time before that I should take Margaret Fell to be my wife. And when I first mentioned it to her, she felt the answer of life from God thereunto.” After consulting with the children, Fox and Fell are married later that autumn in Bristol before a company of Quakers. She is fifty-five, he, eleven years her junior.

There is no time for a honeymoon (a luxury that was hardly compatible with Quaker sensibilities anyway). On returning home to Swarthmoor, she is once again imprisoned for having broken the Conventicle Act, which forbad individuals to lead unauthorized religious meetings. Separated from the groom, she languishes in jail for most of a year. Soon after she is released, Fox sails for America. Shortly after his return, he is again imprisoned and not freed until 1675. Such separations characterize their marriage. They rarely live together for any extended period of time. When Fox dies in 1691, at the age of sixty-seven, the movement is still disorganized and scattered.

In the decade following her husband’s death, Fell struggled with factions and individuals who sought to bring a legalistic “silly poor gospel” into the movement. Such views were in her mind narrow and threatened the very core of Quaker beliefs. Rules and regulations would quench the Spirit: “Let the Spirit of God … lead us and guide us,” she admonished. “Let us stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free.” She continued to write and lead meetings in her home until her death at eighty-seven.

QUAKERS ABROAD

One of the most well-known names among Quakers is William Penn (1644–1718), the founder of Pennsylvania. Born into wealth and converted at age twenty-two, he later acquires a vast tract of land in the New World where Quakers and others can enjoy religious freedom. He is remembered for his championing democracy, for his call for a union of the American colonies, and for his fair and honest treatment of Native Americans.

William Penn

Two years after Penn died, John Woolman (1720–1772) is born into a Quaker family in New Jersey. As a young man he earnestly seeks an opportunity to serve God. Then the opportunity comes: “My employer, having a negro woman, sold her, and desired me to write a bill of sale.” Woolman obeys, but that incident sets him on a lifelong crusade to make abolitionism a key element of Quaker belief and practice. That Quakers were opposed to slavery from the beginning is a common misunderstanding. In fact, many of them were wealthy slaveholders. For the next three decades, Woolman travels on foot and on horseback to one Quaker home after another, convincing families of the sinfulness of slavery. He speaks at meetinghouse, writes essays, and sets the stage for Quakers as leading abolitionists and sponsors of the Underground Railroad, a system for helping fugitives find safety from slavery.

From the beginning of her involvement with the Friends, Fell had served as an effective apologist for the movement. In 1660, she had written “Declaration,” which laid out the Quaker position on pacifism, a position that has served the Society well in the centuries since. Her life and ministry, like that of her husband’s, had a profound and long-lasting influence not only in her homeland but also in America and around the world.

What if …

What if Roger Williams had buckled under the Puritan regime and not been banished from the Bay Colony? Would he have founded Providence Plantation and befriended Indians and warded off the potential annihilation of Bay colonists? How did his demand for freedom of religion affect the future of American liberty?

What if Thomas Fell had not supported Margaret’s ministry among Quakers? Would she have gone on to marry George Fox after Fell’s death? Without her influence and organizational skills would the Quakers be a mere footnote in history like other seventeenth-century Civil War sects? Would the Quaker movement today be associated with pacifism?

What if John Woolman had not been convicted by God to make the abolition of slavery his life’s work? Many of the nineteenth-century abolitionists were Quakers. Without the profound Quaker influence might abolitionism have been slowed and the freeing of slaves in America been delayed beyond the 1860s?

17. Sectarian Movements in Europe and America: Visions and Voices

17. Sectarian Movements in Europe and America: Visions and Voices

CHAPTER 17

Sectarian Movements in Europe and America

Visions and Voices

PARADE OF HISTORY

PROPHET AS LONELY MADMAN

EVERYDAY LIFE

Anne Hutchinson: New England “Heretic”

FEAR OF FANATICISM

Roger Williams: Proclaiming Separation of Church and State

A LONELY PROPHET

George Fox: Prophet and Rebel

Margaret Fell Fox: Mother of the Friends

QUAKERS ABROAD

What if …

Further Reading