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]).

A Post-Reformation Model of Worship: Quaker Worship

The worship of the Friends is rooted in silence. The people wait upon the Holy Spirit, who in the silence moves them in worship, where they meet God.

Introduction
In calm and cool and silence once again
I find my old accustomed place among
My brethren, where, perchance no human tongue
Shall utter words; where never hymn is sung,
Nor deep-toned organ blown, nor censer swung.
Nor dim light falling through the pictured pane!
There, syllabled by silence, let me hear
The still small voice which reached the prophet’s ear;
Read in my heart a still diviner law
Than Israel’s leader on his tables saw …
(John Greenleaf Whittier, “First-Day Thoughts”)

Quaker writers like John Greenleaf Whittier have left us vivid descriptions of the traditional Quaker meeting for worship in which worshipers assemble in disciplined silence and holy expectancy, to wait—without prearranged singing, Bible reading, prayers or sermon—for the movement of God’s spirit. And as they wait, they pray—

Recall my wandering fancies, and restrain
The sore disquiet of a restless brain.…
(Whittier, ibid.)

As the silence of the gathered meeting deepens, it draws a profound response from the worshiper:

… when I came into the silent assemblies of God’s people, I felt a secret power among them, which touched my heart, and as I gave way unto it, I found the evil weakening in me, and the good raised up, and so I became thus knit and united unto them, hungering more and more after the increase of this power and life.…

(Robert Barclay, quoted in Eleanore Price Mather, Barclay in Brief [Wallingford, Pa: Pendle Hill Pamphlet, 1948]).

There is no pastoral leadership in Quaker worship. Each worshiper centers down in personal prayer and meditation. Worship proceeds with mystical communion and spoken ministry as individual worshipers are led by the Spirit to speak or pray.

Lowly before the Unseen Presence knelt
Each waiting heart, til haply, some one felt
On his moved lips the seal of silence melt.
Or, without spoken words, low breathings stole
Of a diviner life from soul to soul,
Baptizing in one tender thought the whole.
The spirit of God moves, and worshipers are
Wrapped in a sense of unity and of Presence such as quiets all words and enfolds [them] within an
Unspeakable calm and interknittedness within a vaster life.
(Thomas Kelly, The Eternal Promise [New York: Harper & Row, 1966]).

Worship continues undirected and uninterrupted—“for silence and words have been of one texture, one piece” (Kelley)—until an elder quietly stands and turns to greet those near him.

When shaken hands announced the meeting o’er.
The friendly group still lingered near the door,
Greeting, inquiring, sharing all the store
Of weekly tidings.…
And solemn meeting, summer sky and wood,
Old, kindly faces, youth and maidenhood,
Seemed, like God’s new creation, very good.
And greeting all with quiet smile and word,
Pastorius went his way. The unscared bird
Sang at his side; scarcely the squirrel stirred
At his hushed footstep on the mossy sod;
And wheresoe’er the good man looked or trod,
He felt the peace of Nature and of God.
(John Greenleaf Whittier, “The Quaker Meeting,” 1868, in Joseph Walton, Incidents Illustrating the Doctrine and History of the Society of Friends [Philadelphia: Wm. H. Pile’s Sons, 1897]).

Quaker Worship in the Post-Reformation Period

Quaker worship, to varying degrees, is unstructured. It is characterized by silence and by the leading of the Spirit.

It is easy to identify the Quakers or Society of Friends as the most radical tradition of all in its break from late medieval forms of worship. Other groups emerging from the Reformation have clergy, the preaching of sermons, and outward and visible sacraments. The classical forms of Quaker worship have none of these, although one may detect some indirect links with medieval mysticism. Paradoxically, most Quakers have tempered their radicalism by being the most conservative in fidelity to their original forms. Roman Catholic worship has changed far more than has Quaker worship in England or on the east coast of the United States

The origins of Quaker worship lie in the soul-searching of George Fox (1624–1691) and his discovery of the “inner light” in every human. This inner light brought one closer to God than Scripture or sacraments, for it was direct access to the Spirit itself with no need for the mediation of clergy or set forms. Furthermore, such direct access was available to all, male or female, slave or free. Thus, any study of liturgy and justice must begin with the Quakers, for what they practiced in worship was what they felt compelled to practice in all of life. What F. D. Maurice (1805–1872), Percy Dearmer (1867–1936), Virgil Michel (1890–1938), and H. A. Reinhold (1897–1968) later advocated had been a common practice among Quakers for several centuries. Since all were equal before the Spirit, women had as much right to speak in worship as men, and anyone who could see the Spirit in a black person had no right to keep him or her in slavery. Since no one was marginalized in worship, it also meant no one should be honored by clothing or title in society. Decisions were to be made by the “sense of the meeting,” since a vote always means a defeat for a minority.

But though it could dispense with sermons and sacraments, the one thing Quaker worship could not surrender was the Christian community itself, the “meeting.” Hence, the most important act in worship for Quakers is coming together in Christ’s name. Quaker worship is a form of corporate mysticism in which the Spirit uses individuals to speak to the group. Greatly to be feared is putting oneself forward by rushing into words. Only after a time of “centering down” can one feel ready to speak under the compulsion of the Spirit. Quakers feel that Christ did not intend outward baptism and communion to continue any more than foot-washing, so these sacraments occur in invisible and inward ways only.

Quaker worship always has involved a great sense of personal restraint. Even great Quaker saints such as John Woolman (1720–1772) worried after first-day meeting (Sunday) that they might have spoken from the self rather than the Spirit. A high degree of biblical literacy is also presupposed. The Spirit, after all, is the author of Scripture too and will not contradict itself whether in the Bible or in reason.

On the American frontier, like so many other traditions, some Quakers adopted frontier forms of worship, especially in Indiana. Thus, services evolved with structured worship, paid clergy, and even outward sacraments. Sometimes unstructured or unprogrammed worship could be integrated into services that were basically structured. But many East Coast and English Quakers worship still in ways that would not astonish George Fox, so stable has Quaker worship been.

Worship and Sacred Actions Throughout the Year in the Friends (Quaker) Churches

The Quaker rejection of formalism and ceremony in worship extended to the observances of the church calendar. Resistance to formalism remains today, although Evangelical Quakers celebrate portions of the Christian year.

Quakers have historically rejected symbolism, the observance of special days, and other ceremonies and forms as human inventions. They regard such ceremonies and forms as unnecessary when individual believers can experience the Spirit of God directly. In addition, they believe avoidance of such externals protects believers from the idolatry into which humankind so easily falls.

Early Quakers reacted strongly against the formalism of the Anglican church, maintaining that the Reformation had stopped short, leaving Protestant worship ceremonial and ritualistic. Robert Barclay, in his Apology, stated the case forcefully: “For we find many branches lopped off by them [the reformers], but the roote yet remaining; to wit, a worship acted in and from man’s will and spirit, and not by and from the Spirit of God” (quoted in Friends Worship in a Pastoral Meeting, n.d.). It is not unusual, therefore, to find rules like the following from The Rules of Discipline of the Yearly Meeting. Held on Rhode Island for New England (1856, 27): “We cannot, therefore, consistently unite with any in the observance of public fasts, feasts, and what they term holy days; or such injunctions and forms as are devised in man’s will for divine worship” (quoted by John White in Protestant Worship: Traditions in Transition).

Today, little has changed and Quakers for the most part do not observe the Christian year. There continues to be at least a latent fear of formalism, especially among Evangelical Quakers, though the theological rhetoric of the past is largely absent. Most Evangelical Quakers, like their pulpit-centered church neighbors, celebrate Christmas and Easter, and in some cases, Good Friday. Occasionally one finds observance of the Advent sermon with wreath-lighting and Advent sermons. It is unusual, however, to find any further adoption of the Christian year.

Missions to the Native Americans

When the Europeans came to the New World they felt it was their responsibility to convert the natives and soon both Catholics and Protestants were at work among them, each in their own way. Friars were commissioned to accompany the Spanish exploring expeditions, and by the time the Puritans were busy with their Massachusetts Bay settlements over forty Catholic missions had been established in Florida with nearly thirty thousand adherents. During the same period, Franciscan missionaries went into the Southwest with Spanish expeditions and rapidly won the Indians to the Catholic religion. French missionaries went further than the Spaniards. The Jesuits made perilous journeys among unknown lakes and streams and through the forests. From Maine up through the St. Lawrence valley, westward along the Great Lakes, and down the upper tributaries of the Mississippi the missionaries paddled their canoes, searching out native villages. Sometimes they suffered terrible torture and martyrdom, but they persisted resolutely in their purpose. They planted the cross where they preached, baptized their converts, and administered the sacrament of the mass. In Louisiana, French Catholicism gained a permanent foothold, but after the English conquest, there was little to show for their pioneering in the Mississippi valley. Although most English colonists were hostile to the natives, attempts were made by many dedicated believers to share Protestant Christianity. An early colonial law required the instruction of Indian children in Virginia, and William and Mary College made provision for the education of Indian youth. Roger Williams made friends among the natives and prepared a Key to the Indian Language. The Quakers and the Moravians went among the Indians of the Iroquois Confederacy, and David Brainerd, by his brief but singularly devoted life, gained fame for his efforts to win the Delaware Indians. In 1810 the Congregationalists of the United States organized the first foreign missionary society and promptly sent missionaries to the Indians of Georgia.

Impact: Sadly the Indians came to be regarded as wards of the Government, and it became national policy to place them on specified reservations. The missionaries sent out by Eastern societies were the only groups sympathetic to this maltreatment and they tried to help by building schools, churches, and clinics.