Observations placeholder
Quakers - Woe to the bloody city of Lichfield
Identifier
015091
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
George Fox was one of the founders of the Quaker religion, and as William James says
“no one can pretend for a moment that in point of spiritual sagacity and capacity, Fox’s mind was unsound… yet from the point of view of his nervous constitution, Fox was a psychopath or detraque of the deepest dye, his journal abounds in entries of this sort”…………
In effect, William James thought George Fox was possibly mentally ill. This sentence is wonderful from the quote below
"And no one laid hands on me"
And of course, no one would because this was Britain and the British are on the whole a tolerant lot and they would be thinking ‘oh crikey another one on the loose’. And most British people are pretty tolerant of the harmless mentally ill.
James did not in any way criticise Fox’s contribution to the progress of religious or spiritual thinking which on the whole was positive and for the good. But William James was of the opinion that hugely destructive and influential religions/political institutions have spring up around the rantings of just a few psychotic men.
A description of the experience
George Fox – quoted in The Varieties of Religious Experience – William James
It was winter, but the word of the Lord was like fire in me. So I put off my shoes, and left them with the shepherds; and the poor shepherds trembled and were astonished. Then I walked on about a mile, and as soon as I was within the city, the word of the Lord came to me again, saying cry ‘Wo to the bloody city of Lichfield!’ So I went up and down the streets, crying with a loud voice Wo to the bloody city of Lichfield! It being market day, I went into the market place and to and fro in the several parts of it, and made stands, crying as before Wo to the bloody city of Lichfield! And no one laid hands on me