Abstract
Since Max Weber’s ground-breaking study, The Protestant Ethic, and the Spirit of Capitalism, it has become something of a scholarly trope to treat the rise of secular modernity and the formation of Quakerism as going readily together. In an effort to dismantle this habitual interpretation of Quaker history, this article posits the existence of an embryonic ‘enchanted’ Quakerism, which actively resisted the nascent secularity of early modernity. Drawing extensively on the gift-theory of Marcel Mauss, it will be shown that first-generation Quakerism was characterised by a magical conception of the body, nature, and society. Such a posture, in its radical anachronism, sought to undermine both Cartesian science and the emerging discipline of political economy. In place of a cosmology of hierarchy and commodification, early Quakers argued for a sweeping theology of gift, which imbued the whole of experience with divine activity. While secularity was busily confining the magical and the miraculous to the realm of innermost subjectivity, the Quakerism of the 1650s and 60s was characterised by a stubborn refusal to accept such a process of religious privatisation. In contrast, early Quaker spirituality postulated the continual interaction of Biblical realities with contemporary natural and social orders.
Highlights
Since Max Weber’s ground-breaking study, The Protestant Ethic, and the Spirit of Capitalism, it has become something of a scholarly trope to treat the rise of secular modernity and the formation of Quakerism as going readily together
The healing arts is understood as a redemptive Gospel science, which had its roots in the harmonious life of pre-fall humanity. Auxiliary to such a re-configuration for early Friends was the recovery of a logic of divine gift, which permeated their understanding of the Christian life
At the beginning of the 20th century, British and American scholars attempted to re-evaluate the religious legacy of George Fox and the early Quakers, using the new tools provided by comparative religion
Summary
Since Max Weber’s ground-breaking study, The Protestant Ethic, and the Spirit of Capitalism, it has become something of a scholarly trope to treat the rise of secular modernity and the formation of Quakerism as going readily together. As I shall show, early Quaker preachers viewed bodies, nature, and society, as produced and sustained by a continual chain of gift-relations between God and his creatures. In this way, early Quaker conceptions of ‘the fall’ were frequently expressed in terms of the repudiation of God’s gifts, while redemption rested upon the believer’s full participation in a sacred economy of gift-giving. While Cartesian science was busily attempting to divide reality into the divine realm and the terrain of inert matter, Quakers held fast to the conception of a living world, which radiated divine grace and providence Was their cosmology full of supernatural agencies, but one barely separated from the realm of eternity. The horizon of Scripture rooted Friends in the ever-present reality of Christ, and relativized all social loyalties, allowing Quakers to perceive the true commonwealth of gifts to which they belonged
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