Today's discussion question

[Joseph Tracy]

And these books led you to the conclusion that Fox was a suicidal loony tune? 
Having read quite a few books on Quaker and English reformation history and having been with Friends for 15 years, and having observed your Pynchon commentary forgive me if I am skeptical of your expertise. 
On Aug 17, 2013, at 11:32 AM, alice wellintown wrote:

> Also very good, if you can find it: _The Quakers: An International History
> John Cunningham D.D.
> 
> Also part of the Quaker History Series, not easy to find but very good,
> 
> _Studies in Mystical Religion_
> Fufus M. Jones, M.A., D, Lit,
> 
> And, on Quakers and Slavery
> 
> Thomas Drake's Quakers and Slavery in America
> 
> 
> 
> On 8/17/13, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
>> http://www.quaker.org/pamphlets/ward1956a.html
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On 8/17/13, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Yeah, Ok...whatever...
>>> On 8/17/13, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>>>> Your take on Fox is typical of your willingness to take probably some
>>>> opinion you approve of and without serious research to cast as truth
>>>> what
>>>> is
>>>> a rather feeble bit of argumentation.
>>>> In fact Fox was arguing for what several posts here are describing- a
>>>> direct
>>>> spiritual and transformative experience not hinged to doctrine as the
>>>> Puritans emphasized or to the practices of the Church of England. What
>>>> emerged was a distinctly non-heirarchichal community which for 300 years
>>>> has
>>>> refused to embrace a creedal statement and been consistently ant-war and
>>>> for
>>>> human rights. . As far as describing its historic course or the reasons
>>>> it
>>>> grew, you are simply unqualified to have a serious opinion and what you
>>>> offer is blatherous nonsense.
>>>> On Aug 16, 2013, at 11:42 AM, alice wellintown wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> So we return to H.L. Mencken's Book of Prefaces and his scathing,
>>>>> witty,  and famous definition of Puritanism.
>>>>> 
>>>>> I don't know what Friends or Catholics or Presbyterians or Baptists or
>>>>> Lutherans know about the history of Christain idea, doctrines, dogmas,
>>>>> let alone the particular and seperate squables that formed, and often
>>>>> dismembered these (and the Quakers or Froiends declined in number
>>>>> because they were so open to the ideas of others, though we see the
>>>>> Readings Out in M&D....), and I imagine that Quakers or Friends,
>>>>> though in my experience very knowledgable about history, know less
>>>>> than their counterparts who attend sermons on a Sunday and are
>>>>> subjected to the history of the churches at least a few times in the
>>>>> year.
>>>>> 
>>>>> The Reformation needed, in the minds and hearts of "puritans",
>>>>> reform. Puritan, term, long before Mencken abused it,  was a term of
>>>>> derision. Often, as is the case with Shakers and Quakers, co-opted,
>>>>> but still, as the government continued to hang, jail, and punish, and
>>>>> as religious toleration was only something prayed for, the number of
>>>>> Puritans ever increased as the violence visited up their covered heads
>>>>> increased (How's that for the want of violence?). War, and the fear of
>>>>> Rome, or anything Papist, and the attempt to force everyone under one
>>>>> tent only increased the anarchy, as more and more, strange
>>>>> manifestations of the religion sprang up from the bloody fields. Sects
>>>>> multiplied  and then multiplied, some died, some split, some gave
>>>>> birth to children they didn't recognize or disowned, cast into the
>>>>> river or upon the devil's door. Why Fox's madness spread is hard to
>>>>> say. I doubt it has anything to do with what you list in your post,
>>>>> Joseph. Fox was, in modern psychological terms, morbid, melancholic,
>>>>> over the rainbow, crazy. But the hysterical history that engulfed this
>>>>> poor suffering soul was, as fortune's wheel turned, grace. Had the
>>>>> madness of history not met the madness of Fox, he would have died,
>>>>> probably at his own hand, a Cobbler's hammer to the skull.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> 
>>