George Fox, the founder of the Society of Friends, also known as the Quakers, was born into a poor family in a small village in Fenny Drayton, England, in 1624. He was self-educated and self-ordained as a religious leader. Fox's study of the Bible caused him to reject the doctrines of the major Christian denominations of the period, including Anglicanism, Roman Catholicism, and all forms of Puritanism.
Fox's version of Christianity upheld an "Inner Light" attainable by each individual man and woman through direct experience with God. This "Inner Light" has been defined by a Quaker scholar as "the divine light of Christ," a "still, small voice" in the "soul of every man ... for the purpose of teaching him how he may pass his time in this world to obtain God's favor and blessing." Quoted in Thomas D. Hamm, The Transformation of American Quakerism (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1988), p. 2. Fox claimed that this Inner Light could be received by anyone without intermediary influences such as the clergy, the sacraments, or the rituals of the church.
The Friends assumed a distinct form of dress, speech and lifestyle, and their worship was characterized by simplicity, quietism, and congregational participation.
