"But the individualism of the Friend," Birdsall continued, "goes further than this. The sixty evangelists who, in 1654, went out of the north of England to preach a spiritual religion, proclaimed a single great spiritual truth. Upon it they based their religious system; it has been from the time of George Fox to the present the fundamental doctrine of Quakerism. It pronounces the worth of the individual to be supreme, holding that each human soul is imbued with the divine, and that every human being may drink for himself of the water of life."

FGC’s first paid staffperson, Henry W. Wilbur, was an indefatigable advocate for these convictions, summed up for him under the headings of the Inner Light, opposition to creeds, the reality of evolution and progress, and their application to religious thought and practice. He was as able as others to find these features in Fox and the First Publishers. In a 1908 treatise on doctrine and discipline, however, Wilbur took pains to point out that these "highly favored and undoubtedly inspired persons were limited by the general knowledge of their time. . ." and "were not able to rise entirely above the current superstitions of the age in which they lived."(Wilbur: 3)

To this all-too brief sketch of the 1900 vintage liberal image of Fox there still another stroke is needed, by way of foreground, namely the rise of the skeptics and the dismissal of theology. This attitude has already been foreshadowed by Isaac Post’s Fox, though in fairness, Henry Wilbur felt otherwise, and wrote repeatedly on doctrinal and theological issues.

But Wilbur dropped dead, probably from overwork, in the middle of the 1914 session of FGC, in Saratoga, New York. And with him went, as far as I can tell, the main liberal energy for engagement with what could broadly be referred to as theology. And with that, I contend, also went much of the liberal Quaker impetus to examine Fox and his colleagues in any depth, at least for the next several decades.

In my reading, two of the most articulate and important exponents of this dismissal soon came to the fore. One was Jesse Herman Holmes, a legendary figure on the Swarthmore campus for close to forty years. The other was Jane Rushmore, who only had two years at Swarthmore, but became equally legendary, just a bit later and based in downtown Philadelphia.

In the first third of the last century, Holmes was nearly ubiquitous in FGC circles: appearing at conference after conference, speaking and leading workshops; writing prolifically in Friends Intelligencer, and traveling widely among eastern Friends, unmistakable in his goateed vitality, preaching his various causes, including civil rights, peace, Prohibition, and Debsian socialism. He was also the last Clerk of the Longwood Yearly Meeting of Progressive Friends in Kennett Square, that font of all things forward-looking or just plain peculiar (and a spiritual heir to Isaac Post).

In 1924, while many in Quakerdom were celebrating the 300^th anniversary of Fox’s birth, Holmes observed the occasion by publishing four articles on doctrinal issues in Friends Intelligencer, the liberal organ. Three were a series on "Christian Theology," and the four are worth tarrying over, because they lay out the basis of what became the reigning FGC ethos in this field.

He began by setting the scene: "The controversy which is rending several of the so-called ‘orthodox’ or ‘evangelical’ churches," he wrote, "is just an old conflict in a new form. It sets in opposition once more authority and intelligence; tradition and the spirit; a static and finished statement and the ever new and ever growing truth."

And then Holmes decided to tell us how he really felt: "It will not do to lightly set aside this recrudescence of superstitious creed, for it is a symptom of the larger swing of a frightened and almost despairing humanity away from democracy and the faith in man implied in democracy, and toward autocracy with its finished codes and its supermen who hand out the predigested truth to the world of lesser men." (Holmes, 19)

He also heaped scorn on the calls for an inerrant Bible as "no more than an absurdity." (Ibid., 556) But his heaviest artillery was aimed at "the general theological scheme which has been erected in the slow development of the great Christian church machine."

In Holmes’ view: "This theology is neither Jewish nor Christian. It is a curious mixture of these elements with much larger importations from Greek philosophy and Oriental pessimism." By contrast, Holmes declared, "It should be plain that early Christian theology assumed a world fundamentally good created by a benevolent deity who is also a loving father to mankind. His character is revealed through the life and teaching of Jesus . . . ." Holmes insisted that in this simple schema, minus a few fillips, "Friends will hardly fail to recognize . . .the essential and characteristic faith of their own people."(Ibid., 557)

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