Rethinking Quaker Principles

by Rufus Jones

Overview

Is our Quakerism to be an open or a closed type of religion? Open religion means a type that is uncongealed, fresh, free, formative and in vital contact with the creative stream of divine life. Open religion has faith in the spiritual capacity of the soul and confidence that God and man are akin and essentially belong together. Open religion, therefore, is expectant, forward looking. It prizes the past, but believing profoundly that God is a living God, it sees more yet of love and truth and goodness before us. Its ultimate assurances are not in books or creeds or formulations or arguments, but in the soul�s experience of the reality and Christlikeness of God. It dares to leave religion free to grow with the growing world and growing mind, and to sail the uncharted seas with God. The Society of Friends in its early formative period was a striking illustration of open religion. The day dawn and the daystar had arisen in the hearts of these �Children of the Light,� and they moved forward.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940148133773
Publisher:	Pendle Hill Publications
Publication date:	02/04/2014
Series:	Pendle Hill Pamphlets , #8
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	30
File size:	63 KB

About the Author

Rufus Matthew Jones (1863-1948), a philosopher, mystical scholar, Quaker historian, and social reformer, grew up in China, Maine among orthodox Quakers. He graduated from Haverford College in 1885 and received an M.A. from his alma mater in 1886 and from Harvard in 1901.
He taught at Oakwood Seminary (1886-7), and at Friends School, Providence, was principal of Oak Grove Seminary (1889), and was recorded as a minister (1890). He taught philosophy at Haverford (1893), achieving the T. Wistar Brown chair in philosophy before he retired in 1934. He edited the American Friend (1893-1912), and served as trustee of Bryn Mawr College (1898-1936).
The author of over 50 monographs, Rufus Jones had as a principal mission the healing of the 19th century split in American Quakerism; his life�s work bore fruit in the 1950s with the reunification of American Quaker Meetings. Rufus Jones was instrumental in establishing at Haverford College the Haverford Emergency Unit (a precursor to the American Friends Service Committee) that prepared members for relief and reconstruction work in Europe after World War I.
A world traveler (it is said he traversed the ocean 200 times), Jones met with Mahatma Gandhi at his ashram in India, and spoke with religious leaders in China and Japan during a trip in 1926, and in 1938, he traveled to South Africa, meeting with General Jan Smuts and returning via China and Japan. In that same year, he participated in a mission with George Walton and D. Robert Yarnall to Germany to see if a peaceful means of dealing with Nazis could be reached.