C Wess Daniels: Queries and a Life of Discernment. Quakers have been living with questions for a really long time. These questions have been known as queries, most of you are familiar with them by now and they have a history of their own. The first reference I have found to queries is in George Fox’s journal in 1657. There he writes of queries that he posed to local professors and priests to challenge their lack of scriptural and spiritual insight (professors were people who professed to be Christians but didn’t possess the life of the Spirit). But the first official queries were used in the 1660’s as the Quaker movement began to be more organized: “It was London Yearly Meeting that employed them “to gauge the health of the Society and provide specific information: “How does Truth prosper among you?” or “How many Friends have suffered for Truth in the past year?’”


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Friends in the Portland Oregon area