Fox, George

(1624–91)

   Denomination Founder and Devotional Writer.

   Fox was born in Leicestershire, England and was apprenticed as a young boy to a shoemaker.

   In 1643 he felt called to give up all his worldly ties and he travelled around the countryside in search of enlightenment. Then, in 1646, he felt the ‘inner light of the Living Christ’. He gave up attending formal Church services and he began to preach that the truth is to be found in God’s voice speaking to the individual soul. His organisation came to be called the ‘Friends of Truth’ which was later abbreviated to the ‘Friends’. He was imprisoned in 1649 for interrupting a Church service and again in 1650 as a blasphemer. It was then that the Friends were given the name of ‘Quakers’ because Fox had urged the judge at his trial to ‘tremble at the word of the Lord’. Altogether he spent six years in prison. The rest of his life was spent in promoting his message. His famous journal was published after his death and has become a spiritual classic. By the end of the seventeenth century, Quakerism had spread throughout Great Britain and in 1682 William penn founded the American colony of Pennsylvania to assure liberty of conscience for members of the society. To this day there is no formal ministry in the society and meetings have no formal liturgy. Members refuse to take oaths and, as pacifists, do not take part in military service.

   G.H. Gorman, The Society of Friends (1978);

   E. Russell, The History of Quakerism (1943);

   H.E. Wildes, The Voice of the Lord: A Biography of George Fox (1965).