Quakerism is founded upon the belief that the mystical encounter is central to religious life. We feel that God Speaks within the heart of every man in love, conscience and the revelation of truth, and will go on doing so as long as man exists to listen. From time to time, throughout history, He speaks with unusual force and clarity, revealing truth to a culture or to the entire world through prophets – devout and selfless men and women who prove their dedication to his purpose. Holy Scripture itself, we never forget, is the result of the mystical experience. Within the Christian tradition, few purer, more dedicated instruments of divine revelation ever lived than the “little cobbler of Goerlitz.” Jacob Boehme. This extraordinary man – mystic, visionary, illuminate, clairvoyant – was born in 1575, forty-nine years before the birth of George Fox, and died in 1624 only a few months after Fox came into the world. Boehme has sometimes been called the most illustrious forerunner of Quakerism; but, reflecting on his life, one is struck by something more. His religious convictions, his earnest piety his manner of expression, as well as his family background and boyhood, are so similar to those of the founder of the Society of Friends as to suggest a profound spiritual kinship. Were they linked, these men who never met in life, by some grand plan involving the revelation of truth and the converting of a people to follow it? The question teases the mind and returns again and again as one compares their thought, the forces that molded their characters, and their writing styles, of which the tone, the cadence, even the figures of speech are alike, if not identical.

The Friends Council on Education has generously enabled me to visit many of our Quaker schools and colleges, some a number of times, during the past fifteen years. That the most frequently raised query continues to be, “What should a Friends school be?” tells me two one, that most of our schools continue to be favored with head masters and teachers who sense that the mission of a Friends school should be much more than just academic excellence, though we feel uncertain about what that “much more” should be. Secondly, the query tells me that Friends must continue to search for ways in which to speak more nourishingly to the query than we have heretofore been able to do. Our schools are very vulnerable to the corrosive effects of a pervasively seductive and secular society. Of the procession of new heads, teachers, parents, and students that continuously moves through Friends schools, only a meagre handful come from the Quaker community. My concern is that if our schools are to retain and strengthen their identity as Friends schools and if they are to have transforming effects on the character of their students, then we must reflectively and persistently try to understand what truth our tradition has to speak to the query. And we must as ceaselessly seek to implement our insights in the way we teach and organize our schools. Those who know many Quaker schools intimately know how far they fall short of our tradition’s ideals. Our schools are richly diverse; some have very distinctive views of what “a Friends school should be.” Others are much less certain. This pamphlet is only one Friends’s answer to the query. Although it does not describe any Quaker school I know, I hope it puts into words what many may feel should be the values of a Friends school.

The point of this extended discussion of gospel order and Quaker process is not to beat one set of principles and practices with the other. It is to show that Quakerism is, as usual, at a crossroads in dealing with issues of authority and power in church governance; to point out the directions Quakers have taken and seem to be taking; and to offer some assessment of the costs of traveling one way or another. Quakerism has always struggled to find the right balance between affirming the autonomy of the individual following his or her own conscience, and affirming the authority of the group to determine what a true leading of the Spirit is. “The authority of our meetings is the power of God,” asserted that the autonomy of the individual had to yield to the authority of the believing fellowship. The assertion did not end the debate; liberal Quakerism is still reacting to the trauma (more imagined than experienced by contemporary Quakers) of nineteenth-century separations and wholesale disownments.

Positive morality rests on a foundation of faith. What is the nature of that faith, and what are its logical consequences? Simone Weil (1909-1943) was one of the most brilliant French thinkers in an era marked by philosophical brilliance. She tried to combine philosophical perspective with a life of action, working in a factory and fighting in the Spanish Civil War in addition to pursuing her studies. After her experience in Spain, Weil split with the Marxists and began studying ancient religion, poetry and philosophy. The Iliad, or The Poem of Force stands out as her most noted essay.