LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Quakers: George Fox
built 264 days ago
The Quakers, formally known as the Religious Society of Friends, comprise a small, radical, Protestant denomination formed during the religious upheaval in 17th century England who sought the revival of original Christianity. They earned the name "Quakers" for how members shook, or "quaked", reflecting their struggle against their inner motives "under the Light."[1] Many migrated to America, especially to Philadelphia in the colony of Pennsylvania, which was owned by Quaker leader William Penn. Quakers were active leaders of many American reform movements past and present, especially abolition of slavery, Indians' rights, prohibition, women's rights, civil rights, prison reform, hospital reform, and world peace. Other famous Quakers include founder George Fox, feminist Lucretia Mott, and presidents Herbert Hoover and Richard Nixon.
Source:
Quakers came into conflict with other sects of the period. Quakers vied with the Baptists, and the Presbyterians. The Muggletonians had a long term paper war with George Fox and the Quakers. Quakers were not strangers to military service during this period. Both the New Model Army and the Royal Navy found Quakers within their ranks.
Source:
Quakers hold a strong sense of spiritual egalitarianism, including a belief in the spiritual equality of the sexes. From the beginning both women and men were granted equal authority to speak in meetings for worship. Margaret Fell was as vocal and literate as her husband, George Fox, publishing several tracts in the early days of Quakerism.
Source:
Quakers in the colonies, as in England, faced severe persecution in response to their persistent challenges to existing religious and civil authority. Between 1659 and 1661, several Quaker missionaries were hanged in Massachusetts Bay Colony because the Puritan leaders considered them a threat to their Bible Commonwealth. Persecution abated there and elsewhere in the colonies in the 1660s, but Quakerism spread most successfully in Rhode Island, which granted religious freedom, and in those areas of Long Island, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina where the established church was weak. When George Fox visited America (1671รข€“1673) he helped institutionalize the colonial meeting structure, establishing "Yearly Meetings" in New England (1671) and Maryland (1672). Quakers emigrated to America in the 1670s and early 1680s in large numbers, escaping harsh persecution in England and seeking new opportunities for religious and economic prosperity. They migrated in families and sometimes Quaker communities, the majority coming from the "middling ranks" of English, Irish, and Welsh society.
Source:
Ranters, 1649-1654, The Ranters appealed to an inward Christ, denying the external authority of creeds and clerics in much the same way as did the Quakers. Both Ranter and early Quaker worship contained an emotional element, as both consciously endeavored to follow the promptings of the Spirit as he directed from within. Early accounts of meetings of both groups contain many references to "the Power of the Lord" which "uttered through them" or "wrought mightily" upon them, compelling them to weep, sing, or speak. (For the visions and inspired utterances of a sixteenth-century Familist see Tobias, Mirabilia opera Dei (London, 1575). Geoffrey F. Nuttall comments on Quaker and Ranter experiences in Studies in Christian Enthusiasm, Illustrated from Early Quakerism (WaUingford, Pa., 1948).) "The Lord's power" was frequently "so mighty upon" George Fox that he "could not hold, but was made to cry out."
Source:
MOCKED as trembling with religious zeal, Fox and his followers adopted the term "Quakers" as their own. Despite oppression and imprisonment, their numbers continued to grow throughout the 17th century. Missionaries volunteered in the New World, Turkey, and Russia during those first decades, and the faith has since spread around the globe.
Source:
MORE ABOUT
George Fox