
Walking Cheerfully Over the Facts
As the new interim Webmaster for the Quaker Universalist Fellowship (QUF), I was updating that organization’s site when I noticed a quotation on the home page:
“Walk cheerfully over the earth answering to that of God in everyone.” — George Fox
That exhortation, although usually without the “to,” appears on other Web pages and blogs on the Internet, too, some of them belonging to Friends affiliated with QUF. I’ve also found it in other Quaker instructional materials; we’ll have occasion to make reference to one of those, a classic Pendle Hill pamphlet, later in this essay. Whatever the mode of publication, the saying is almost always carefully attributed to George Fox, the putative founder of Quakerism. Presumably, at least some readers will accept it as a central prescription of Quakerism, ponder its meaning, and attempt to put it into practice — trying, perhaps, to be amiable, conciliatory people who appeal to good will and honor a divine principle (whatever that might be) in every human being they meet.
It is certainly a rich and challenging exhortation; however, it’s not one that George Fox actually gave. It’s what is left of a statement that has been lifted from its original context in his writings and modified in a number of ways. As a result, it paints erroneous pictures of Fox’s teaching and the Quaker faith and practice from which it came.
Before restoring the fragment — mark (as Fox would say): fragment, not sentence — to its native setting, which is a kind of sermon called “An exhortation to Friends in the ministry” in Fox’s Journal,1 we’ll review and repair the modifications in approximate order of importance. We’ll then be able to examine the statement in context and consider what Fox might have been saying to the Quaker ministers (that is, to Friends who devoted much of their time to spreading the Quaker message; the Quaker understanding of ministry is another topic I hope to discuss here in the future).
First, the original’s “every one” has become “everyone” — a very minor change, but one that can lead us away from the individual to the general or collective. Second, the word “to” has been inserted. “Answering to” has a different connotation than “answering.”
Third, Fox’s Journal has “world,” not “earth.” That may be significant. As students of the Bible will know, the term “world” in Christianity signifies the realm of evil and death in which unregenerate human beings exist, as in the very apposite saying of the Johannine Jesus:
“These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).
The substitution of “earth” is understandable, because in the preceding sentence of the sermon Fox had referred to “all countries, places, islands, nations, wherever you come”; but apparently he used “world,” and, given his evident if implicit reference to the verse from John, Fox most likely had a reason for choosing that word instead of the other. (I like to think, too, that he enjoyed double-entendre.) In any case, when quoting a person or text, we — especially we who make a “testimony” of integrity — are not free to change words. Unqualified quotation marks mean, or should mean, “This is exactly what the person/text said.”
Fourth, and most important, the passage, as we have already noted, is not an independent sentence in the original. It is a fragment which, in being re-made into a stand-alone sentence, has been not only modified in other ways but also truncated from both ends. Here is a longer segment of the sentence with the beginning restored. (Note the ellipsis at the end: Fox wasn’t finished at “one.”)
“Then you will come to walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in every one ….”
Simply by restoring “Then you will come to,” we can see that the passage is not the exhortation it had seemed to be. Evidently, Fox was not urging us to “walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in every one,” but to do something else which would result in our walking thus. What might that be?
An Exhortation — to What?
In working toward an answer, if only preliminary and brief, to that question, we will need to experience at least some of George Fox’s sermon from which the popular fragment has been lifted. Given the need for brevity in the blogging format, I will not reproduce all of that sermon here, but it is available at the Quaker Electronic Archive (link opens in a separate window). In order to obtain a much fuller context for the poor truncated thing with which we began, readers of this post may wish to read the sermon in its entirety there before continuing, but I will provide some extracts here.
In the power of life and wisdom, and [in the] dread of the Lord God of life, … dwell; that in the wisdom of God over all ye may be preserved, and be a terror to all the adversaries of God, and a dread, answering that of God in them all, spreading the truth abroad, awakening the witness, confounding the deceit, gathering up out of transgression into the life …. Spare no deceit. Lay the sword upon it; go over it. [...] Let them know the living God; for teachings, churches, worships must be thrown down with the power of the Lord God … for now is the mighty day of the Lord appeared, and the arrows of the Almighty gone forth; which shall stick in the hearts of the wicked. Now will I arise, saith the Lord God Almighty, to trample and thunder down deceit, which hath long reigned and stained the earth. [...] Proclaim the mighty day of the Lord of fire and sword, who will be worshipped in spirit and in truth; and keep in the life and power of the Lord God, that the inhabitants of the earth may tremble before you: that God’s power and majesty may be admired among hypocrites and heathen ….
The answer we begin to see in Fox’s sermon is likely to be uncongenial for many of us. The Quaker ministers are exhorted to live every moment in the power of the life and wisdom of God, and in the dread, and even terror, of God as well, thus being a dread and terror to others to whose lives, conduct, and religion the Quakers’ are a reproach. They are to “tread and trample all that is contrary” to truth — truth being the living spirit of Christ in human hearts — and “lay the sword upon” all deceit. (That’s a metaphorical sword: in this same sermon, Fox says, “Keep yourselves clear of the blood of all men, either by word or writing ….”) “[T]eachings, churches, worships must be thrown down with the power of the Lord God,” the power in which the Quakers live — “and who are in that [power], reign over it all.”
That last phrase is very significant. Fox asserts more than once that Quakers are “over all.” In context of themes that permeate his writings, we can read that as meaningful on a number of levels. Dwelling in the power that is Christ, the Friends are kept “above” “the world” in a moral and psychological sense, in being kept free from sin and above the occasions of sin;2 they are also “over” the world, and over unregenerate human beings, in an ontological and even metaphysical sense, because they are one with Christ the judge and “sit with him in heavenly places.”3 In other words, Fox asserts Friends’ moral and spiritual superiority as well as the powers of judgment4 and spiritual dominion which inhere in that superiority. The Friends have been reborn in Christ and therefore have dominion over sin; that is, they are morally perfect. They are reminded to abide in that perfect life in Christ and thereby to “reign and rule with Christ … whose dominion is over all to the ends of the earth.” As they would before Christ the judge, “the inhabitants of the earth … tremble”5 before the Quakers, in whom they meet God’s judgment: the Day of the Lord is at hand.
Fox is clear that the job of the Quaker minister is to bring not peace but a sword. Elsewhere, he writes:
The ministers of Christ and the prophets of the Lord, who spoke his word, spoke in synagogues and in markets, in highways, and under the hedges, and upon the mountains, which disturbed the world, and all professors upon the earth [who] had the words of truth but were out of the life; and they disturbed the heathen that knew not God. [...] The ministers of Christ preached up perfection, and an overcoming of sin, and a being made free from sin ….6
Again, these are images that we, too, may find disturbing, even those of us who, unlike me, are Christian theists.
With that introduction, we look now at the section from which the popular statement is taken.
Bring all into the worship of God. Plough up the fallow ground. Thresh … that the seed, the wheat, may be gathered into the barn …. For the chaff is come upon the wheat by transgression [i.e., sin]. He that treads it out is out of transgression, fathoms transgression, puts a difference between the precious and the vile, can pick out the wheat from the tares, and gather into the garner; so brings to the lively hope the immortal soul, into God out of which it came. None worship God but who come to the principle of God, which they have transgressed. None are ploughed up but he who comes to the principle of God in him, that he hath transgressed. Then he doth service to God; then is the planting, watering, and increase from God. So the ministers of the spirit must minister to the spirit that is in prison, which hath been in captivity in every one; that with the spirit of Christ people may be led out of captivity up to God, the Father of spirits, to serve him, and have unity with him, with the scriptures, and one with another. This is the word of the Lord God to you all, a charge to you all in the presence of the living God; be patterns, be examples in all countries, places, islands, nations, wherever you come; that your life and conduct may preach among all sorts of people, and to them. Then you will come to walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in every one; whereby in them ye may be a blessing, and make the witness of God in them to bless you: then to the Lord God you shall be a sweet savour, and a blessing.
Although the conjunction of images such as trampling and walking cheerfully may be confusing, by this point in our enquiry Fox’s teaching should look quite different than it often appears in modern Quakerism. Fox’s words raise serious difficulties for the popular contemporary reading of “walk cheerfully over the world/earth, answering that of God in every one,” a reading epitomized by Howard Brinton’s anachronistic existentialist framing of it as an “instruction” for Friends to engage in “‘intersubjective dialogue’ or an ‘I-thou’ (rather than ‘I-it’) communication” with others.7 This is communication of a different order.
You may click here for Part Two of this post, in which we discuss in detail the terms ”cheerfully” and “answering that of God” and then draw some conclusions. Please note that your comments should be posted under Part Two — they have been disabled for Part One.
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NOTES for Part One

