George Fox
- Lived
- 1624–1691
- Era
- Modern
- Where
- England
- Tradition
- Religious Society of Friends
The inward light, and the founding of the Quakers
A weaver's son who spent his early twenties walking England in spiritual distress, finding no minister who could help, and concluding that Christ could teach him directly. He gathered the movement that became the Religious Society of Friends and was imprisoned eight times for it.
Why it matters
What he taught — that there is that of God in everyone, so no clergy, no liturgy and no sacraments are required — carried consequences he pressed relentlessly: refusing hat-honour and titles because they flattered rank, refusing oaths because truth should not need two standards, and refusing war. Quakers were persecuted severely on both sides of the Atlantic, and were then decades ahead of everyone else on slavery and prison reform.
In the record
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1607–1750 AD Migration
Migration to the Americas
Quakers took his refusal of oaths, war and rank across the Atlantic
All the figures, from the apostolic age to the present, or the timeline they stand in.