ABSTRACT
In author's time, converted evangelicals, secular radicals, ethical reformers and modern mystics have each seen early Friends in their own image. All these groups share a central concern for Friends’ intense and joyful directness of experience and ethical commitment and creativity, but each group sees in original Quakerism what corresponds to its members’ own experiences of radically inward worship and apocalyptic social change. When the Quaker movement broke out it was part of the national crisis of 1641–61, variously called the English Revolution and the Puritan Revolution, which also reshaped in distinct ways Scotland, Ireland and the American colonies, and their complex relationships to England. In Britain, Germany and Scandinavia, the Reformation renewed national languages, literatures and cultures. Over against both Protestant and Catholic inclusive national churches, however, small congregations of committed adults gathered by families, often learning spiritual worship and equality from communities of monks and nuns.
