Lead: Discouraged over the persecution of his fellow Quaker’s William Penn attempted to establish a godly refuge for them on the west bank of the Delaware.
Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.
Content: Of all dissenting groups tossed up in the heady days of religious experimentation during the English Civil War, the most unlikely victims of persecution were the members of the Society of Friends or, as they were derisively known, the Quakers. Most of the Friends had been somewhere else before they settled into the little groups of Seekers that gathered in private homes for prayer and meditation during the Civil Wars against English King Charles I. They had been part of the puritan movement – Presbyterians, Congregationalists and Baptists – and had despaired of what they considered the dry and tedious orthodoxy animating so-called normal puritanism. Rallying and uniting these small groups by the 1650s was the incendiary preaching of men such as George Fox, James Naylor, William Dewsbury, and Richard Farnworth. They claimed in their preaching, direct contact with God. Within a decade Quakerism had secured over 50,000 converts.
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