Abiding Quaker

Here's an excerpt from a new post titled "Increase Our Faith"at Abiding Quaker .

Beyond the restoration of relationship by truth-telling and re-affirming social boundaries, however, is a call to handle offenses in a way that requires more than human ability. Jesus calls us and the disciples to this new…

In this essay I present some ideas that are basic to understanding Quaker faith by discussing passages taken from John’s Gospel. First, I examine the natural condition in which we are obstructed, a state from which we can be fully released only by Christ’s inwardly experienced return. Second, I focus on the particular work of two of Jesus’s disciples: Peter and John. In…

Fox repeats this call over and over: “Keep your testimony…for your worship in the spirit and in the truth, that Christ Jesus hath set up” (Works, 8:34); “keep up your testimony in the light, power, and spirit of God, for the worship that Christ set up above sixteen hundred years since, in spirit and in truth…which is a worship that cannot be shaken.” (8:84) This is a testimony that the Quakers had before the peace testimony was formulated in 1660, and I think in Fox’s mind it was the most…

Fox repeats this call over and over: "Keep your testimony...for your worship in the spirit and in the truth, that Christ Jesus hath set up" (Works, 8:34); "keep up your testimony in the light, power, and spirit of God, for the worship that Christ set up above sixteen hundred years since, in spirit and in truth,...which is a worship that cannot be shaken." (8:84) This is a testimony that the Quakers had before the peace testimony was formulated in 1660, and I think…

In the ninth chapter of the book of John we are given a story of a healing, a bestowal of sight to one who has been blind from birth. Unlike many of the healing stories found in the first three books of the New Testament, this story is more than a simple interchange between Jesus, the healer, and the one who is healed, for the individual’s   restoration to health is…

In Fox’s teaching, however, the prophetic office of Christ becomes no less important than his priestly and kingly functions, and this shift of emphasis brings about a Copernican revolution in our understanding of who Jesus Christ is and how he saves people. ("The Relation of Fox's Message to the Bible" by Lewis Benson)

Since apostolic times, many differing Christologies have been presented by institutions and reformers, and various gospels have been preached. George Fox,…

There is no rose of such virtue 

As is the rose that bare Jesu. 

For in this rose contained was  

Heaven and earth in little space; 

Res miranda. [a wonderful thing] 

The angels sungen the shepherds to:

Gloria in excelsis Deo:

Gaudeamus. [Let us rejoice.]

Leave we all this worldly mirth,

And follow we this joyful…

Ye that have seen the everlasting gospel, and known the everlasting gospel preached again, which was among the apostles, and have been reaped out from among the apostates, got up since the apostles’ days; I say, live in it, and dwell in it; in which life and power ye see over to the apostles’ days (The Works of George Fox 7:268). 

"The Everlasting Gospel Preached by George Fox" is the second of ten lectures given by Lewis Benson in his lecture series Rediscovering the…

 Lewis Benson began his lecture series Rediscovering the Teaching of George Fox at Moorestown Meeting in New Jersey in the fall of 1982. The first lecture in this series is titled "The Place of George Fox in Christian History." It is now available for reading on the New Foundation Fellowship website, and can be accessed through Ellis Hein's introduction: …

A year and a half ago I wrote an essay titled “The Only Antidote,” in which I argued for the need to think critically: to use natural powers of reason and conscience to honor, discern, and communicate the truth. Referring to Hannah Arendt’s understanding of the cause behind the rise of Fascism and also referring to a Bible story of John the Baptist’s execution by Herod, I pointed to the crucial and perennial role of critical thought in containing the spread of evil.

Although critical…

Lewis Benson was a Friend of the last century whose life's work was the study and interpretation of George Fox's writings and the presentation of their meaning and significance to modern Quakers. Workers who have joined in this labor go by the name of New Foundation Fellowship. At our website nffquaker.org, we have opened a new resource of Benson's writings, and we will add new essays every so often. Our first offering is titled "The Antipathy Between Prophecy and Religion"; it can be…

Man at his coming into the world hath a light from Christ, him by whom the world was made, which is more than conscience; but he that hates the light abides in darkness, and so is not like to receive the spirit, but is reproved with it (The Great Mystery, p.342).

Though everyone who comes into the world has a light from Christ, not all love it, because loving it entails suffering, a dying to the self, the inward crucifixion. Not loving the light has tragic consequences, both…

New Foundation workers and supporters gathered at Ellis and Rebecca Hein's property near Casper, Wyoming, for an annual gathering in Seventh month, 7th through 10th. Seven people attended, two of them new to our gathering. Those attending were Kevin Anderson, Casper; Patricia Dallmann, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Rhonda Fuller, Lansing, Michigan; Ellis Hein, Casper; Rebecca Hein, Casper; Rae Lawrence, Milton-Freewater, Oregon; and Ron Sirkel, Lees Summit, Missouri. On the first evening of…

The words "faith" and "belief" are often used interchangeably. Though the two can be related, they aren't synonymous. From the vantage point of Friends, Ellis Hein examines the different meanings of these words in his new essay titled "Faith or Belief: What is the difference" now posted at the New Foundation Fellowship website. Please feel welcome to visit: …

Some years ago in a lecture series on the Bible given at Pendle Hill, a speaker urged Friends to take back the Bible from the fundamentalists.With more than a decade having passed since that time, Quakers, for the most part, continue to forfeit our responsibility to interpret Scriptures in our particular way, through waiting for guidance from the same Spirit that brought them forth. For too long we have discounted the Scriptures’ use as a reality…

In his booklet “A Revolutionary Gospel,” Lewis Benson writes of three stages of work that seventeenth-century Friends undertook: the first in the sequence was turning people to Christ through preaching the Word (the substance of vocal ministry), which reached to the witness of God in others (convincing/convicting of sin); the second stage was settling and establishing the newly convinced, which entailed repentance and amendment of life; and the third was building on this newly laid…

The following is a summary of a discussion of the first few pages of Fox's Journal that occurred a couple of weeks ago in a New Foundation Fellowship conference call set up for that purpose. The summary is followed by two comments: the first coming from another participant in the discussion, and the second from one who was unable to join in that day.

(1) A small number of us gathered by conference call to read and discuss the Works of Fox, beginning with volume one.…

If we died with him, we shall live with him;

if we endure, we shall reign with him.

If we deny him, he will deny us.

If we are faithless, he keeps faith,

   for he cannot deny himself (2 Tim. 2:11-13).

These simple, beautiful lines are preceded by the Apostle's guarantee: "Here are words you may trust." It seems likely that he's informing us that the words are inspired, and therefore trustworthy. In addition, the breadth and depth of understanding,…

We’re here today because we’ve gone through these trials; we've been tempted countless times to love something more than truth, and for the love of it, we’ve chosen truth instead, though our choice entails baptism into Christ’s death, the world's brief triumph. We know that the eternal triumph, the resurrection to new life, follows the inward dying to the self. In that triumphant inward resurrection, we know not only rightness but the joy and the peace of having received Christ, the life, of…