The Levellers and the Quakers arose at about the same time in England, and, as I have noted, at least one Leveller leader, John Lilburne, actually became a Quaker shortly before death. George Fox, the founder of the Society of Friends (or Quaker) religious faith, never personally met Roger Williams, although they debated each other in print, with Williams at one point choosing the cute book title, George Fox Digg'd Out of his Burrows (1676). Although the Quakers shared his view that the Ol d Testament was largely eclipsed by the New, Williams disliked and distrusted the Quakers, even if he tolerated them, just as the Quakers would tolerate Baptists within their colony of Pennsylvania, founded by Quaker William Penn (d. 1718).

Both Williams and Fox were advocates of disestablishment and rather broad freedom of religion, but Fox wanted to go beyond Williams. The more radical Reformation thinkers sought to pull power from the Papacy toward the parishes, and the original B aptists (like Congregationalists such as Milton) further sought to shift power from the pulpits to the pews, giving parishioners decisive voice in the hiring, paying or dismissal of clergy.

The Quakers go further, and will not even have pulpits or pews.

Although the later "Speaking Quakers" of the American frontier began to give more emphasis to religious leaders of worship, the original Quakers had no professional clergy.

Nor did they have traditional church buildings with steeples above and religious symbolism within in, all believed by them ungodly.

Quakers characteristically meet in a simple room where, between long spaces of meditative silences, anyone could speak briefly as moved by the "Inner Light," which for them is a kind of continuing divine revelation which supposedly is auxiliary to Scripture, not in conflict with the Bible nor transcending it. Calling themselves the Society of Friends (or sometimes Children of Light), they were dubbed "Quakers" by their critics, probably because of their trembling when at earnest worship. Ev entually what had been an epithet is freely accepted by them.

While they would eventually have a sprinkling of some usually non-inheriting children of the upper classes, most contemporary accounts describe them as primarily lower class, and by all accounts, their main bastion was in the English midlands befor e spreading into London and Bristol, Dublin, Ireland, or even Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the founding of the Quaker colony there by William Penn. Because of their preference for simple styles of living as well as worship, many Quakers in time became quite prosperous from trade.

While the Quakers disavow any linkage, they seem very close to the more pacifistic currents of continental Anabaptism, visible from the early 16th century, which often spread its ideas about through itinerant male weavers.

But the Quakers were not to be as closely communitarian as the Mennonites or Amish, nor did they prefer rural rusticity. Yet consistent advocacy of non-violence is a main teaching of the faith.

The founder, George Fox (d. 1691) was the son of a weaver, but he became an apprenticed shoemaker. Like some of the fringe Baptists of his time, he claimed miraculous powers of healing as well as prophecy.

Fox began his career as a preacher in agitating against the Anglican Church, which he believed remained too close to Roman Catholicism. He would sometimes attend Anglican sermons, after which he would stand up an give counter-sermons!

He was often toted off to prison for this, often yelling out more sermons to onlookers as he was carried off, sometimes strapped to a horse. Due to his friendship with Oliver Cromwell, he was never jailed long, not viewed as much of a threat as th e Levellers, due to his conversion to non-violence.

The Quakers characteristically challenge both church and political authorities when deemed unjust. They refused to swear religious oaths in court (they usually preferred to avoid all litigation, which Ben Franklin admired in them at Philadelphia) or pay the tithe used to support the Church of England.

While they would take off their hats when praying to God, they would not otherwise doff the hat or kneel before any other authority. While apparently apocryphal, an unsubstantiated ascription to him of the American Friends Service Committee, Georg e Fox was traditionally ascribed the maxim, "Speak truth to power."

Quakers from protected places such as Williams' Rhode Island or Pennsylvania often sought to proselytize in other colonies, even if whipping and cropping of ears could occur in Puritan Massachusetts Bay, the repression peaking about 1656-61. One p ersistent Quaker woman, Mary Dyer, was finally executed there by hanging. When then offered a last chance to promise never to return if instead exiled, she replied, "Nay, I cannot."

While non-violent, being "civil" did not mean being always polite. Rather, they could often show the brash style we now may associate with say, the Jehovah's Witnesses. One Quaker even insulted the Pope to his face. Later, while usually not favo rable to use of violence to secure independence from Britain, Quakers would courageously engage in the struggle against slavery in the United States, or in trying to bring an end to wars.

The Quakers tolerated all religious creeds in their colony of Pennsylvania, but they rather inconsistently would not permit Roman Catholics to vote or hold public office.

Ironically, during the War for Independence, a test oath looking for willingness to use violence against the British removed most Quakers as well as Mennonites from the Pennsylvania voter roles.

Quakers had done their best to avoid warring with the Indians, trying to pay for all land, but they sometimes became hypocritical in letting others (usually Scotch-Irish Presbyterians) have under misleading titles the money they wanted to fight the Indians on the frontiers.

While the Quakers have usually championed civil liberties, their doctrine of the Inner Light could have some repressive potential.

They assume that everyone can receive the same Inner Light from God, and hence would regard it as unseemly for anyone to debate a point or demand a vote in the normally consensual Quaker meeting.

Also, they seem to have been influential along with Benjamin Rush in the emergence of one of the first prisons at Philadelphia, where prisoners were for long periods compelled to be silent, deemed to permit the awakening of their consciences after penitence (hence "penitentiary").

In some ways this conflicts with the original meaning of "conscience" as a "knowing together," not a thinking all alone in a cell.

Note also that of the corporate wisdom of the Catholic church often really meant the Pope, and if other Protestant reformers pushed the supremacy of the Bible over all other standards (some to extreme Biblical literalism), the Quaker idea of direct revelation from God becomes easily distorted away from the idea of a shared revelation to one leader who is always right.

Thus the leading assistant to George Fox, James Nayler, who, like Fox, claimed miraculous powers, began to take on airs of being the reincarnation of Christ.

The point is that many ideas, which begin by seeming liberating and supportive of free speech, can if pushed to excess become repressive in their own right. Yet George Fox and his Society of Friends must be recognized as early champions of public freedom of speech.

Allen, Irene. 1992. Quaker Silences. N.Y.: Villiard Books.