A Quaker Theology of Worship

The roots of the traditional Quaker theology of worship are found in George Fox’s experience of the Inner Light—that sense of the divine and direct working of Christ in the soul. He came to believe and subsequently taught that the same experience is available to all. The purpose of worship, therefore, is to wait in silence and then respond to the presence and power of God.

The development of the Quaker theology of worship was driven by a deep dissatisfaction with the mainstream of the Reformation, especially the Puritan-dominated established Church of England. They felt that the Reformers failed to properly emphasize the Spirit’s freedom of movement and the believers’ dependence on the Spirit in worship. They also accused the established church of ignoring or denying the priesthood of all believers in the practice of worship and limiting it by the clergy’s central role in worship.

The Richmond Declaration of Faith (1887) captures the theology of traditional Quaker worship when it declares that “worship is the adoring response of the heart and mind to the influence of the Spirit of God. It stands neither in forms nor in the formal disuse of forms; it may be without words as well as with them, but it must be in spirit and in truth.”

Traditional Quaker worship emphasizes that true worship takes place only when the Spirit of God moves the hearts of those who are gathered for worship and that silence, not planning, is one of the surest means of guaranteeing the Spirit’s freedom. It emphasizes a firsthand encounter of the worshiper with God in the context of a strong corporate mysticism. Privately or individually God speaks to the community through individuals to whom he has spoken.

The following statements outline the traditional Quaker theology of worship:

1. Christ is present by his Spirit in every Christian in the gathered community.
2. The purpose of worship is for the gathered community to open itself, individually and collectively, to the presence of Christ through his Spirit.
3. The activity of worship is waiting, in disciplined, expectant silence, for the moving of the Spirit and then responding inwardly or with spoken ministry or prayer as the Spirit directs.
4. Christ’s presence by the Spirit requires no mediation, so all externals, including words and forms, and all human activity are secondary. Worship is totally dependent on divine activity and not on human preparation. There is no formal leadership.
5. The Spirit can speak to any or all in the gathered community. Therefore there are no distinctions between laity and clergy, male and female, slave and free.
6. God can speak through any or all in the gathered community. Since all—as believer priests—may minister to one another, there is no need for clergy.
7. The only essential baptism is the inward baptism of the Spirit; the only essential communion is spiritual communion. Christ did not intend that the sacraments found in the New Testament continue after his death.
8. Only spontaneous music is permitted—a portion of a psalm or a sung concern or word of witness. Quakers held that there was no New Testament example or teaching for “artificial musick.”

Today Quaker worship assumes various forms, many of which appear to be at variance with traditional Quaker theology. However, Francis Hall insists that genuine Quaker worship, regardless of its form, continues to unite around the following:

1.     Believers gather to worship God in spirit and in truth to sense the presence of and respond to the moving of the Spirit of God.
2.     Jesus Christ is honored in worship. Worship arises from the Christ event and from Christ’s role as the supreme revealer of the nature of God and transmitter of the Spirit of God.
3.     True worship occurs when the Spirit of God moves worshipers’ hearts.
4.     Quaker worship is not bound by human forms. The Spirit is free, and hearts that open to the Spirit in worship will open also to the Spirit’s freedom.
5.     Silence is a genuine and important means of becoming open to God and one of the surest means of guaranteeing the freedom of the Spirit. So it is a part of Quaker worship—absolutely central for some, and at least an element in all genuine Quaker worship (Text from Francis B. Hall, ed., Quaker Worship in North America [Richmond, Ind: Friends United Press, 1978]).

Quakers in the New World

Many Baptists in England were attracted to George Fox when he became a traveling preacher in about 1650. Fox championed an inner illumination of spirit, in contrast to the Congregationalists who stressed church membership and the Baptists who emphasized personal responsibility to God and the baptism of believers. Fox, though an uneducated man, believed that he had a message to give to the public. He preached the possibility of direct enlightenment through the influence of the Holy Spirit and the experience of God’s love. In the face of war and hate, he pleaded for peace and goodwill, and in the midst of an uncompromising Calvinism, he proclaimed that God was striving to reconcile everyone to Himself. He gave the Bible less prominence than did most of the Dissenters, and he saw no need for sacraments or ordained ministers. The common people welcomed this unconventional kind of religion.

Impact: Within ten years about sixty preachers were imitating Fox. Few leaders of high standing joined them, except for William Penn, an admiral’s son, who was able to plant a Quaker colony in America in 1681. From here the Quakers carried their message through the colonies. In parts of the South, they were the most popular of the religious sects. Their idiosyncrasies, however, annoyed the Puritans of Boston so much that several persons were hung after a sentence of banishment had failed to dispose of them. In the Middle colonies, they became one of the most respectable and prosperous elements in society.

Fox, George

George Fox (1624-1691) was the founder of the Society of Friends or Quakers, Fox was born in Leicestershire, England, the son of a Puritan weaver. Finding little solace in the church, he decided at about the age of 22 to turn to God alone for spiritual companionship. He determined that organized religion was an enemy of true faith and that it led to formalism and hypocrisy. In 1647 he became an itinerant preacher and traveled widely across England and Scotland, as well as to Holland and America. He and his followers refused to take any oaths of allegiance or to serve in the military, decisions that often led to their imprisonment. He gained numerous converts to his beliefs, which included the assertions that professional clergy should be forbidden and that spiritual truth is gained only through the personal and immediate teaching of the Holy Spirit or “inner light.” His mystical teachings have had a direct influence on a wide range of Christian writers and philosophers.

NEARER, MY GOD, TO THEE

Nearer, my God, to Thee, nearer to Thee!
E’en though it be a cross that raiseth me,
Still all my song shall be, nearer, my God, to Thee.

Refrain

Nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer to Thee!
Though like the wanderer, the sun gone down,
Darkness be over me, my rest a stone.
Yet in my dreams I’d be nearer, my God to Thee. Refrain

There let the way appear, steps unto Heav’n;
All that Thou sendest me, in mercy given;
Angels to beckon me nearer, my God, to Thee. Refrain

Or, if on joyful wing cleaving the sky,
Sun, moon, and stars forgot, upward I’ll fly,
Still all my song shall be, nearer, my God, to Thee. Refrain

There in my Father’s home, safe and at rest,
There in my Savior’s love, perfectly blest;
Age after age to be, nearer my God to Thee. Refrain

About the writer: Sarah Flower Adams was born in Harlow, England in 1805 and died in London in 1848. She was the youngest daughter of Benjamin Flower, editor and proprietor of the Cambridge Intelligencer. In 1834 she married John Brydges Adams, a civil engineer and inventor. She had a gift for lyric poetry and wrote thirteen hymns for her pastor, the Reverend William Johnson Fox, an Independent minister. These were all published in Hymns and Anthems, London, 1841.

Key Verses: At sundown, he arrived at a good place to set up camp and stopped there for the night. Jacob found a stone for a pillow and lay down to sleep. As he slept, he dreamed of a stairway that reached from earth to heaven. And he saw the angels of God going up and down on it. –Genesis 28:11, 12

Sunday Worship in Friends (Quakers) Churches

The silent meeting for worship is the most visible element of classical Quaker worship. Worshipers assemble without leader or program, stilling their minds and focusing their attention, waiting to sense the presence of the Spirit of God and then to respond as they are moved in their own spirits. The silent meeting for worship is but a means, however, for achieving the essential element of Quaker worship: the response of the soul to the felt presence and the moving of the Spirit of God. “Worship is the adoring response of the heart and mind to the influence of the Spirit of God,” says the Richmond Declaration of Faith (1887). “It stands neither in forms nor in the formal disuse of forms; it may be without words as well as with them, but it must be in spirit and in truth.”

Of the three broad types of worship—altar-centered, pulpit-centered, and congregation-centered—classical unprogrammed Quaker worship is the supreme example of the latter, which some call “waiting on the spirit.” For three centuries Quakerism has adhered more closely to its early practices and ideals than any other Western tradition. But today its external distinctives are blurred, especially among evangelical Quakers whose structured or programmed worship shares much in common with pulpit-centered free church worship.

Classical Quaker Worship

The Quaker movement grew out of the experiences of George Fox who, as a troubled young man, searched for years for an answer to his personal turmoil. His search led ultimately to an experience of the Inner Light—a sense of the divine and direct working of Christ in the soul. This experience brought peace with God and himself as well as a strong dissatisfaction with the worship of the Puritan-dominated Established church. At the heart of the movement he began in 1646 lies the belief that the Inner Light he experienced is accessible to all and that the purpose of worship is a common waiting in silence for evidence of the presence and power of God.

The importance placed on the Inner Light led Quakers to reject formal ministry and all set forms of worship and to substitute spiritual communion and baptism for visible sacraments. Classical Quaker worship emphasizes, first, that true worship takes place only when the Spirit of God moves the hearts of those who are gathered for worship and that silence, not planning, is one of the surest means of guaranteeing the Spirit’s freedom. “Ever since we were a people we have had a testimony against formal worship, being convinced … that the worship and prayers which God accepts are such only as are produced by the influence and assistance of his Holy Spirit” (The Rules of Discipline of the Yearly Meeting, Held on Rhode Island for New England, 1856). Secondly, the classical way emphasizes a firsthand encounter of the worshiper with God in the context of a strong corporate mysticism in which God speaks to the community through individuals to whom he has spoken.

The setting for classical Quaker worship is plain and simple. Traditional meetinghouses have rows of benches and often, facing them, a few raised benches for elders, “weighty Friends,” and those who feel they may be led to speak—though the right to speak is extended to all who attend. Other meetinghouses often have benches or other, flexible seating arranged in hollow squares.

There is no pastoral leadership; the only prearranged responsibility is the selection of an elder to close the meeting by standing and turning to greet those near him. Elders are also responsible to ensure that the meeting stays within acceptable bounds.

As worshipers come together, they assemble in disciplined silence and “holy expectancy,” waiting—without prearranged singing, Bible reading, prayers, or sermon—for the movement of God’s Spirit. Each centers down in personal prayer and meditation and worship proceeds with mystical communion and with spoken ministry as individual worshipers are led by the Spirit to speak and pray. The meeting is said to be gathered—sometimes without a word having been spoken—when, in Thomas Kelley’s words, the worshipers have become “wrapped in a sense of unity and of Presence such as quiets all words and enfolds (us) within an unspeakable calm and interknittedness within a vaster life” (The Eternal Promise [1966]).

Contemporary Quaker Worship

Today Quaker worship is more diverse than at any other time in its history. Unprogrammed worship is still found, primarily on the East Coast of the United States and in England, among Quakers who tend to hold more liberal beliefs. Most Quaker worship in America—especially among evangelical Quakers—is either partially or fully programmed or structured.

Programmed worship began to be adopted, more for pragmatic than theological reasons, by many Quaker congregations during the nineteenth-century period of revival and renewal in American Protestantism. It differs little, externally at least, from pulpit-centered, congregational, free-church worship. These congregations employ pastors, and their worship includes prearranged music, Scripture readings, prayers, preaching, and occasional brief periods of silent worship. Their meetings for worship tend to involve two distinct movements: the first, often referred to as “worship,” moves from the people toward God, consisting of singing and other music and, perhaps, Scripture reading and prayers. In the second, God speaks to the congregation through the sermon. Those congregations that practice partially programmed worship include a significant time of open or free worship based upon silent waiting, as in classical Quaker worship.

Change in contemporary Quaker worship is shaped to a degree from within as non-Quakers have become active in Quaker congregations. Such influence, understandably, has been quite diffuse.

In addition, there seems to have been two primary outside influences. The first was the free-church worship as found in the nineteenth-century period of revival and renewal that coincided largely with the opening of the American frontier. This influence brought to the Quakers a strengthened pastoral role and emphasis on biblical preaching, a reshaping of the form and content of worship, and a growing openness to the observance of Communion and baptism. Second, the recent praise-and-worship movement has given contemporary Quakers a vehicle—as silence once was—through which to sense and to respond to the Spirit of God in worship. Many churches now utilize extended periods of singing first to focus their attention and then to respond to the moving of the Spirit of God.

The Table

Changing attitudes toward the sacraments represent the most visible and for some the most troublesome recent change in Quaker worship. In classical Quaker worship, all external elements—including words—are secondary to the real experience of the presence of Christ. The sacraments, therefore, are spiritualized and their inward reality emphasized. Visible sacraments are not necessary when one can experience Christ directly in community. For them, communion with the risen Lord does not come through eating and drinking perishable items but through spiritual communion with him through the Holy Spirit. And for them, the only baptism that counts is the inward baptism of the Spirit.

Today, a growing number of Quaker congregations are observing Communion. The practice began nearly one hundred years ago on the East Coast and is spreading today, especially among evangelical Quakers, at an increasing rate. There does not seem to be a distinct, guiding theology at this point, and observance tends to be inconspicuous and infrequent—once or twice a year, apart from regularly scheduled worship services. There is at least one distinctive aspect: While most other Protestant traditions would say that Communion and baptism are not necessary for salvation, they would insist that they are, as ordinances, matters of obedience, hence an aspect of discipleship. Quakers, however, hold them to be optional and therefore not necessary for discipleship. As a result, they may speak of the “elements,” but tend to avoid reference to “sacraments” and “ordinances.”