Awakening the Inner Light: Elizabeth Ashbridge and the Transformation of Quaker Community

Abstract

Of the many Protestant sects that emerged from the Reformation, the Society of Friends ?commonly known as the Quakers?was one of those most aware that living language could ossify when formalized in rote prayers, tired rituals, or formulaic narratives. At least in principle, they relied wholly upon the spontaneous illumination of the Inner Light to prompt their members to speak, and to give those speakers a fresh and vital language with which to break their silence, and then to preach or pray.1 In doing so, they rejected the liturgical and homiletic practices of churches whose reformations had settled into administrations, whose fiery critiques had droned into worn refrains, and whose prophecy itself had become uni vocal with the culture it set out to reform. In both Catholic and Protestant