| | by admin | | posted on 9th January 2026 in Seeking Faith & Practice | | views 76 | |
In the early days of Quakerism, George Fox asked a question that still stands before every Friend: without a creed, what can you truthfully say from your own experience?
Quakers have never adopted a creed or fixed statement of belief. This is not because belief is unimportant, but because no formula can replace experience. Faith, for Friends, is not something inherited or recited. It is something encountered.
Without a creed, no one can answer Fox's question for you.
No authority can speak in your place.
No words are required beyond what is honestly known.
The question is not, “What should a Quaker say?”
It is, “What can I say, truthfully, from my own experience?”
For some, the answer comes slowly. For others, it remains unfinished. Quakers make room for uncertainty, for searching, and for silence, trusting that faith does not need to be hurried into words.
During the summer of 1652, Fox spoke at Ulverston steeplehouse in Lancashire, during the unsettled years following the The English Civil War Period. Churches were divided, authority was contested, and Christians argued fiercely over doctrine, scripture, and right belief.
Fox entered the church while a sermon was being preached. Margaret Fell was present, listening from the congregation. Fox did not address the crowd in general, but spoke directly to the preacher in the pulpit, challenging him in the moment of ministry.
It was there that Fox asked his disarming question:
“You will say, Christ saith this, and the apostles say this; but what canst thou say?”
He was not dismissing scripture. He was refusing to let anyone hide behind it. In a time when faith was defined by confessions and creeds, Fox turned attention back to the individual and asked whether what was spoken came from lived experience, inwardly known and faithfully walked in.
Over time, Friends came to express the answer to Fox's question less in statements and more in conduct. How we listen. How we act. How we treat others. How we respond to conflict and injustice.
This is why Quakers say, “Let your lives speak.”
Not as an escape from faith, but as its deepest expression.
The question Fox asked in 1652 is still asked today. It is not a test, and it is not an argument. It is an invitation to Let your life speak.
