Quakers, Ranters, and the present

Historian Christopher Hill's The World Turned Upside Down looks at the chaos - political, economic, and religious - of the English Civil War, the period when Quakerism started in fiery proclamations. It's hard to imagine, in today's relatively settled yet relatively mobile society, how so much could explode so rapidly. It seems a time when the end of the world really did seem near. In talking about the peril of applying modern frameworks to the time, Hill writes:

From, say, 1645 to 1653, there was a great overturning, questioning, revaluing, of everything in England. Old institutions, old beliefs, old values came in question. Men moved easily from one critical group to another, and a Quaker of the early 1650s had far more in common with a Leveller, a Digger, or a Ranter than with a modern member of the Society of Friends. (14)

Ranters were both Fox's blessing, a ready source of converts, and his curse, as Quakers were often labeled Ranters by their opponents while their own meetings were disrupted by Ranters. The history of the movement from about 1660 (or even 1656) to 1690 is largely the effort to move away from these groups' influence.

Quakerism emerged in a period of utter tumult - as Hill suggests, The World Turned Upside Down. As Hill notes later, "there is [not] any great theological novelty in Fox's works of the 1650s, any more than in the Journal" (232). Quakerism's success - with ideas that had often previously been suppressed - was in finding strong leaders in a time of chaos, people who could both communicate their ideals and exemplify them. "Christ has come to teach his people himself" was an incredibly powerful message and a difficult one to deliver to an audience often seeking stability in Scripture during a period of chaos.

Quakerism in 1652 is a tremendous flame, burning across the countryside. 1659 is probably the peak of political radicalism for Quakerism as a movement. By 1690, those flames are cooling to embers, embers which have sustained Quakerism to the present, through a long list of additional shifts. (There was an amazing message at Bridge City Friends Meeting Sunday about flames and embers that I keep hearing repeat in my mind.)

In my own obsession with history, I'm amazed by those early flames. It's hard not to be mesmerized by the incredible talent and perseverance of the early Quakers. It's also hard not to notice how quickly Quakerism had to change, and how the talent and perserverance applied in those new contexts as well. It has continued to change for 350 years - and perhaps some modern Friends aren't as far from 1650s Ranterism as Christopher Hill suggests.

How would Quakers deal with another period like the one that formed it?