I don’t read a lot of biographies, but I enjoy the ones I do read, except perhaps the Zayn Malik biography I was given one Christmas. It was obvious it was rushed out when he split from One Direction, and it was evident no-one in his life had been interviewed for it.

I start reading more biographies than I finish. I could tell you quite a lot about the first half of Mary Queen of Scots’s life. If you read them all the way through, the main character very often dies. I read a great biography of Gilbert and Sullivan, and at the end they both died! I was very upset. My favourite thing about that book was the chapter headings: chapter one, Gilbert. Chapter 2, Sullivan. Chapter 3, Gilbert and Sullivan, Chapter 4, Gilbert and Sullivan. Chapter 5, Sullivan, Chapter 6, Gilbert. (When I tell people this, they often say, ‘’ho, chapter 4 should have been called ‘’Sullivan and Gilbert”!’ but I completely disagree. That would suggest a reversal of fortune, with Gilbert losing currency, and that was neither the truth, nor the story of the book.

Another biography I’ve started reading but never finished is The Journal of George Fox, who began the quaker movenent. I like quakers very much, I’d almost like to be one, and I find some kinship with George Fox.

Geoge Fox was a good-hearted man of the 17th Century, after Shakespeare, during Cromwell and slightly before Isaac Newton. According to his journals, he was a very serious-minded child with more a sense of justice than humour. People found him odd (cos he said 'verily'). He left home and wrestled for years with depression and anxiety. He went to several priests about this but they were no help at all.

When he was still young, he had long theological discussions with his local priest, who asked him a lot of tricky questions and he was really irked each Sunday that the priest stole his answers and used them in sermons. He went to another priest to speak of his deep sorrows, and the trouble and injustice of the world, and this second priest prescribed tobacco and psalms. George Fox was not impressed. He ruled another priest out because he was ‘an empty cask’. Conversations with another priest started really well started well, but George accidentally stood on a flower-bed, and the priest yelled at him. He wrote, ‘the man was in such a rage as if his house had been on fire. Thus all our discourse was lost, and I went away in sorrow, worse than I was when I came.’

I really feel for George Fox. He is so very human. He acutely felt the pain of the world. He saw and heard of so much suffering, and he couldn’t ignore it, or distract himself.

I always think of him when I have blood taken for testing, as the phlebotomists can never find my veins.This is what George Fox wrote of his visit to a priest in Lichfield: ‘I went to another, one Macham, a priest of high account. He would needs give me some physic, and I was to have been let blood; but they could not get one drop of blood from me, either in arms or head (though they endeavoured it), my body being, as it were, dried up with sorrows, grief and troubles, which were so great upon me that I could have wished I had never been born, or that I had been born blind, that I might have never seen vanity and wickedness, and deaf, that I might never have heard vain and wicked words, or the Lord’s name blasphemed.”

Same.

He was a very serious young fellow. He found drunkenness and feasting wanton and vain, and found no desire in drink or was really disquieted that people kept trying to encourage him to marry, or sign up to fight.In his journals, he always uses the word ‘professors’ to describe Christians - I think because he found they were people who professed, or claimed, to have faith - as pretty much everyone in England did - but he didn’t see them working to be Christ-like. He felt that Christianity had become tied up in excessive doctrine and dogma, and he felt drawn to a simple, sincere life and worship.

Some day, I ought to read beyond page 20 of his journals, which is as far as I’ve got so far. It’s a very honest portrait of his young life and hopes. All his life, he continued to pursue and worship God, and to treat others with pity and generosity, to advocate for fairer life, and to rail against the obligations placed on believers by the established church.

The Quaker church has grown from this origin, and in some ways remained remarkably pure. Quakers are known for pacifism, and for a strong commitment to social justice. The few Quaker gatherings I’ve been are very inclusive, and their congregations tend to be filled with some fascinating people. George Fox referred to them by a different name, The Society of Friends, which is the most excellent name for a society. In a movie, that sort of name would always harbour a sinister secret, but from the quakers I know, the name suits them really well. And you know how anglican and baptist churches have a thing called ‘small groups’, which used to be called ‘house groups’? The quakers call that Spiritual Friendship. Spiritual Friendship! That’s an excellent name for it. It gives me joy.

In most churches, ‘worship’ means music: psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, and the band is normally called the ‘worship group’. For quakers, worship is silence. More accurately, worship is listening, with hearts and ears open. Mainstream Christianity almost never does that. The two times I went to quaker worship meetings, I was delighted I had an opportunity to sit and listen for God. I so often say I want to spend time listening for any word of God’s inspiration, but I never do it, because I’m busy and lazy and distracted every minute of the day. People sit, and if you have a message to bring to the group, you speak up and do so. I received no messages to bring, but I was still glad of the opportunity. There was no sermon, no reading, no songs. Just half an hour or an hour of worship, a few messages folk recieved, that that was that. My housemate Lottie and I attended one remotely during lockdown. We sat so still and so silent for so long that Lottie’s cat Dolly came over and touched my leg to see if we were alright. A good cat.

I think George Fox did a great deal to build a church that listened and took action in society. They do colossal good, and their meditative, contemplative worship is what I imagine Jesus doing in the wilderness, or David, who spoke in the psalms about meditating on God. My only point of contention with the quakers is that it’s entirely possible to be a quaker and not believe in God, or conduct worship in a complete vacuum, with no use of the Bible, and no more active prayer asking for God to speak. It brings to mind a passage from Acts:

In Acts 17:16-34, Paul visits the Areopagus, a rocky outcrop in Athens, where there are plenty of idols and many different overlapping religions, which is handy, as it means the Athenians are curious to hear of Paul’s faith.

From verse 22:
Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: to an unknown god. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.
Acts 17:22‭-‬23 NIV

I admire George Fox for casting aside much of the artifice of the church’s doctrine and dogma, but I worry that stripping things down too far - perhaps further than he intended in his lifetime - Christianity devolves into the Athenian Temple of the Unknown God. I think meditation and listening are excellent ways to come to know God, but without knowledge of or faith in Jesus it’s very abstract. Reading a Bible is also an excellent way to come to know God, and if you reduced that amount to zero, you might as well fold your ears closed. Most churches I know seem to overwhelmingly prioritise one or the other, but I’d like to do both.

I’ll leave you with another quotation, this one from the introduction to George Fox’s journal: He was as tender as a mother over all who were victims - and what a list it was and still is! — of man’s brutality, injustice, stupidity, greed or carelessness.