Journey into life

Roger Ellis considers the published version of Gerald Hewitson’s 2013 Swarthmore Lecture

Roger Ellis considers the published version of Gerald Hewitson’s 2013 Swarthmore Lecture | Photo: Photo: Kaustav Das Modak / flickr CC.

Of all Christian traditions, Quakers are most committed to a mystical understanding of religion. They share this understanding with the Carthusians and Cistercians, and with the mystics of the Church. This explains why George Fox felt such affinity with the sixteenth-century Lutheran mystic Jakob Boehme. It is also why our Friend Gerald Hewitson’s inspiring 2013 Swarthmore Lecture (Journey into Life: Inheriting the story of early Friends) structures its account of the author’s life – from the industrial heartland of South Yorkshire, through higher education, to a career in teaching – around moments of heightened spiritual awareness.

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