Today's discussion question

[alice wellintown]

You are forgiven.


> 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.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>
>