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James Nayler And The Lamb's War, Douglas Gwyn
James Nayler And The Lamb's War, Douglas Gwyn
Quaker Studies
James Nayler was perhaps the most articulate theologian and political spokesman of the earliest Quaker movement. He was part of a West Yorkshire group of radicals who added revolutionary impetus to George Fox's apocalyptic preaching of Christ's coming in the bodies of common men and women. With other Quaker leaders, Nayler insisted upon disestablishment of the Church, abolition of tithes, and disenfranchisement of the clergy, in order that Christ might rule in England, through human conscience. For early Friends, Christ's sovereignty in the conscience was less a principle of individual freedom to dissociate religiously than a basis for collective practices …
Preaching For Hire: Public Issues And Private Concerns In A Skirmish Of The Lamb's War, Jonathan Harlow
Preaching For Hire: Public Issues And Private Concerns In A Skirmish Of The Lamb's War, Jonathan Harlow
Quaker Studies
Quakers from the first rejected the idea of the professional minister requiring university education and being paid for his work. This was a principal motif in the Lamb's War they waged in the 1650s; and it naturally aroused the hostility of established ministers, who had good reason to feel insecure. This article examines a brief battle of books which took place in 1656 and 1657: Thomas Speed, a leading Bristol Quaker, fulminated against preaching for hire and three incumbent ministers countered his attacks. It turns out that the participants were known to each other and had personal axes to grind. …
Choose Life! Early Quaker Women And Violence In Modernity, Grace M. Jantzen
Choose Life! Early Quaker Women And Violence In Modernity, Grace M. Jantzen
Quaker Studies
The peace testimony of the early Quakers was developed in a context where war, killing and death were a major preoccupation. In this article I show how Margaret Fell and other early Quaker women encouraged a choice of life rather than a preoccupation with death. While both women and men Friends developed the peace testimony, in the case of the men, the language of war (albeit the 'Lamb's War') was retained, while many women (though not all) looked for language that was more nurturing and less violent. I suggest that it is the radical choice of life, not just the …