Silent Meeting, A Wonder to the World : Les premiers quakers et le bruit du monde

Abstract

Early Quakers developed a relation to silence that was quite unique among seventeenth-century English Protestants, even radical ones. The form of worship they had adopted, known as “silent meeting,” departed so much from received liturgy and reformed biblical culture that it quickly became the target of a series of attacks – and later ridicule – that accused Quakerism of reviving monasticism, fostering enthusiasm and / or spiritual lethargy, and above all of promoting a form of religion breaking away from canonical Christian practice and teachings. Quaker response, such as William Britten’s Silent Meeting, A Wonder to the World (1660), took pains to demonstrate the theological relevance and spiritual value of silence, as well as tried to convey to Friends and non-Friends alike the transforming power they experienced during silent meetings.