Explore Quaker Theology and Spirituality with Stuart Masters

Speaking

Swarthmore Lecture 2026

Tangled Roots: Navigating the Complex Legacy of Early Quakers

Britain Yearly Meeting (1-4 May 2026)

Stuart will be giving the 2026 Swarthmore Lecture. His lecture will focus on the faith and practice of the first Friends and explore how their complex legacy presents Quakers today with a range of challenging choices and dilemmas.

Stuart will describe the diverse mix of characteristics visible in the early Quaker movement that have produced several creative tensions for subsequent generations to navigate. Friends practice a Spirit-led faith based on continuing revelation, making them cautious of human traditions. However, since they have established a tradition of their own, how should Quakers balance the inward guidance received in the present, with the beliefs and practices inherited from the past? There is also a long-standing creative tension between communal order and individual freedom. Sometimes Friends have enforced uniformity through systems of corporate discipline, while at other times they have promoted freedom and a permissive attitude to individual belief and behaviour. The first Friends combined a contemplative spiritual practice with a strongly embodied charismatic response, but subsequent generations have struggled to hold these two elements together. Finally, Quakers have always found themselves caught between the world as it currently is, and a vision of a new creation of peace, justice and truth. How should they balance the desire to play a constructive role within the world, with the need to resist its violent, unjust, and destructive ways?

Stuart will argue that by grappling with these issues, Friends can develop a deeper appreciation of the roots of global Quaker diversity and become better able to navigate important choices and dilemmas when they encounter them today.

Centre for Anabaptist Studies Annual Lecture 2026

Anabaptists and Quakers: The Historic Peace Church Contribution

5.00pm on Wednesday 19th November 2025 at Bristol Baptist College

This year, the Anabaptist movement is celebrating its 500th anniversary, and last year Quakers (also known as ‘Friends’) marked the 400th birthday of George Fox, one of its key founding figures. Together, Anabaptists and Quakers have been called the Historic Peace Churches, sharing a notable family resemblance. This lecture will examine these two radical religious traditions and assess their contribution to the wider Christian Church. In seeking to do this, it will examine their tumultuous beginnings, outline key similarities and differences, review patterns of development and diversification over time, touch on shared relationships and collaborations, assess their potential weaknesses, and highlight what they might offer in a world after Christendom.

This lecture will be live-streamed. Here is The link.

For further information about this lecture or any aspect of the Centre, please contact Stuart Murray Williams at anabaptist@bristol-baptist.ac.uk

The Salter Seminar 2020

Creating Heaven on Earth: The Radical Vision of Early Friends

This online seminar was delivered for the Quaker Socialist Society in November 2020. The normal Salter Lecture had been cancelled due to the Covid lockdown.

The Quaker movement emerged during a period of great social, political, and religious turmoil. A strongly embodied sense of divine indwelling convinced the earliest Friends that they were participating in the coming of heaven on earth. This experience seemed to turn the world upside-down and disrupt existing relationships between men and women, between rich and poor, and between different cultures and faiths. However, as persecution increased, and God’s kingdom did not come, Quakers faced a struggle to survive within a hostile world. The movement endured, but lost much of its social, political, and economic radicalism. What can we learn from the experience of our founding mothers and fathers? How can we maintain a radical vision within a hostile world?

More information is available here:

Salter Seminar Video: Heaven on Earth (2020) – Quaker Socialist Society