(1689)
While the Independents and the Dissenting Brethren of Westminster were effective in developing and spreading a new tolerant attitude toward other faith-groups with their new denominational theory, this view of the church found only limited acceptance in England, where the Church of England still retained a favored position, even after the Act of Toleration in 1689 recognized the rights of Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists and Quakers to worship freely.
[tags]Act-of-Toleration, Baptists, BlogRodent, church-history, Church-of-England, ChurchRodent, Congregationalists, Dissenting-Brethren, history, Presbyterians, Quakers, Westminster[/tags]
The real architects of the denominational theory of the church were the seventeenth century Independents (Congregationalists) who represented the minority voice at the Westminster Assembly (1642-49). The majority at the Assembly held to Presbyterian principles and expressed these convictions classically in the Westminster Confession of Faith and in The Westminster Larger and Shorter Catechisms.
The Independents, however, who held to congregational principles, were keenly aware of the dangers of "dividing the godly Protestant party" in England so they looked for some way to express Christian unity even when Christians did not agree.
These Dissenting Brethren of Westminster articulated the denominational theory of the church in several fundamental truths: First, considering man's inability to always see the truth clearly, differences of opinion about the outward form of the church are inevitable. Second, even though these differences do not involve fundamentals of the faith, they are not matters of indifference.
Today the direct descendants of the Anabaptists are the Mennonites and the Hutterites. Only one section of the Mennonites today, the Old Order Amish, hold tenaciously to the old ways. What unites the various types of Mennonites is not a style of dress or a mode of transportation, but a shared set of beliefs and values. Many of these beliefs are now accepted by other Christians. So the distant relatives of the Anabaptists today include the Baptists, the Quakers and, in one sense, the Congregationalists.
[tags]Anabaptists, Baptists, BlogRodent, church-history, ChurchRodent, Congregationalists, history, Hutterites, Mennonites, Quakers[/tags]
"Quaker" was a derisive name. In 1650 Judge Bennett told George Fox that he knew that at the meetings of Fox and his followers people shook with emotion. So he told him, "you folk are the tremblers, you are the quakers." And the name stuck.
When dissent from the Church of England was made legal, Quakers called themselves the "Society of Friends". That is what they are called today, although in many parts of the world "Friends Church" is the name.
George Fox saw a need to proclaim Christ who liberates people from the power of sin in their lives and began preaching in the open air to thousands.
The early Quaker preachers sounded rather like the Old Testament prophet Amos: they proclaimed Christ as truth and let that truth stand in judgement over current evils. They wanted people to live by Christ's righteousness, rather than to
