2 - The Society of Friends

Summary

Quakerism emerged from the most chaotic and violent period in English history: the Civil Wars of the 1640s. For centuries, European monarchs had justified their rule through the ‘divine right of kings’. This doctrine held that God himself endowed aristocrats with the right to govern, thus legitimizing the political order in a way that made it impossible for faithful Christian subjects to argue with. From the sixteenth century onwards, the protestant reformation began to call this right into question. Martin Luther translated the Bible into German in 1534. This was not the first translation of the holy book into a European vernacular language. However, the recent invention of the printing press, also in Germany, meant that the Holy Book now became accessible to a large audience. It marked a turning point in Europeans’ relationship with their faith. Instead of relying on the interpretation of priests, literate people could now read the Bible for themselves. This led to some interesting discoveries. Readers found that quite a few of the doctrines espoused by the Church had no actual basis in scripture. For instance, it contained very little, if any, basis for the divine right of kings. This discovery fired up unprecedented debate on the distribution of political power across Europe. It set in motion a process culminating in severe political violence. On the continent, protestant and catholic alliances fought each other and ravaged the land in the Thirty Years’ War. In the British Isles, the Civil Wars raged from 1641 to 1652. Supporters of the monarchy on the one hand, and of Parliament on the other, had their armies fight over supremacy in the state. The Parliamentarians won. In 1649, they manifested their victory over the monarchists, and their rejection of the divine right of kings, by beheading Charles I. The monarchy turned republic under the leadership of Oliver Cromwell.

These events demonstrate an important feature of early modern European society: in this period, the political and the religious spheres were not separated. It was a deeply religious society that suffered the Civil Wars and which shaped the world in its aftermath. The political transformation England underwent then was the most dramatic imaginable. The divine right of kings represented a strong relationship between worldly and divine power. Parliamentarians, men, had executed the king, supposed bearer of divine endorsement. This act introduced a previously inconceivable fragility of political authority.