A Quaker Account of the Inner Light and Sin

by Elizabeth Crownfield

The Quaker doctrine of the Inner Light — the belief that God's presence dwells directly within every human soul, revealing sin and offering guidance — is the theological heart of the Religious Society of Friends. It is a teaching that, taken seriously, is self-implicating: the Light that shows others their failings shows you yours first.

In November 2003, Elizabeth Crownfield, a member of soc.religion.quaker writing under the handle ECrownfiel, posted a frank personal account of what it felt like to live with the Inner Light as a real force rather than a doctrine. She had spent her life among academics and intellectuals who "made their living trying to know it all and prove it to everyone they see." She had learned their habits — arrogance, combativeness, the need to be the deepest person in the room. And she had found, through Quaker practice, that the Light was doing something about it.

What makes this post memorable is its honesty. Crownfield does not write a tidy conversion narrative. She writes about giving a Q101 (Quakerism 101) class, being "corrected" by a woman on the Ministry and Worship Committee, and then spending the next hour wanting to prove how much deeper she was than her corrector — while in the same moment recognizing the absurdity and spiritual shallowness of that very desire. The Inner Light, it turns out, is not a doctrine that makes one feel good about oneself.

I referred in a different post to some of my recent struggles with arrogance and combativeness. I thought maybe I should explore them here a bit.

Last night our meeting had a Quakerism 101 class, and my fiance was teaching part of it. He spoke about the early Quakers' perception of the Inner Light, including their emphasis on the Light's discovering and reproving sin. This is something that means a lot to me, as I've spent so much of my life being an outcast and often saying or doing things (sometimes through awkwardness, sometimes other reasons) that haunt and shame me for years afterward. I've also grown up around professors and other intellectuals who make their living trying to know it all and prove it to everyone they see. I got real good at Monkey See, Monkey Do where arrogance and combativeness were concerned.

I've found that the Light does indeed show up my sin (or, if you prefer different words, my shame, my stupid words and actions, my mistakes, my misdeeds, my wrongheaded ways, my insensitivity, my thoughtlessness...). But in the same moment that I fully acknowledge the sin to myself and to God, it is gone. I'm forgiven, and I don't have to do it again. By acknowledge, I don't mean "Oops, sorry, heh heh," but truly comprehending the wrong I've done, accepting that I've done it and I'm wholly responsible (even if someone else has contributed to it or done a worse wrong to me). I'm still the only one who reacted as I did and I'm the only one who caused my sin, though someone else may have caused plenty of sin of their own.

This may sound like a dismal and self-hating process, but it's really exactly the opposite. It frees me from the self-hatred. I can't tell you how much shame I've been carrying around all my life, and how much of it has lifted simply through looking myself in the face, acknowledging it, and accepting God's forgiveness for it. I believe it is the way toward a radical transformation of oneself and one's life in God's hands.

(My fiance once found himself obsessing over some past wrong he had done — he can't now even remember what it was — and he heard God's voice say very clearly: "That sin is forgiven. Put it away.")

Anyway, all this was behind some things I said in this Q101 class. But as soon as I'd finished speaking the first time, trying to convey some of this, a woman from the meeting stood up and said, as if to correct me, "What's really important to remember is that God is love." She went on to make rather a point of it, speaking as if in opposition to a contrary view, suggesting that I'd somehow said that God was just a grouchy old disciplinarian.

This woman is on the Ministry and Worship Committee and she had the air of speaking from some position of spiritual authority. There were quite a few newcomers among us and I got most annoyed at the idea that they'd take her as an authority on such a thing. Well, I was a trifle peeved by this, but I tried not to get too pissy about it.

Mind you, I really do think that what I had to say was deeper and more meaningful than her "correction," but I've got to tell you I also felt I had to get in there and prove it somehow. We split into small groups and I was in hers, and I tried to expand a bit on what I'd been trying to say. Maybe, I thought, I'd been too one-sided in my words. Maybe what these newcomers really needed was reassurance that God wasn't going to punish them (not that I'd said anything at all about punishment).

So I said that the Light sometimes reproves you and sometimes encourages you, but either way you are transformed and expanded in spirit. She then immediately pipes up to inform everyone that she just spends her whole meeting time getting out of the way and not thinking about herself (unlike some people, she implied), and she "always" meets God in meeting, and it's all just joy, joy, joy. This is a woman who has been taken to task in the past for "correcting" people from the floor of the meeting when they'd given messages she disagreed with, so it's hard to accept the notion that she's absolutely ego-free.

Well, sorry, but I do think she's a bit spiritually shallow (and so do some very weighty Friends in our meeting). But at the same time I couldn't get away from that combative mode of wanting to prove myself deeper and wiser and more understanding. It's pretty silly, feeling petty and competitive about how you are spiritually deeper than someone else. But I couldn't get away from it.

That's all I really have to say about this. I'm not sure if this long post exactly has a point, but I'm ending anyway.

— Elizabeth

Colophon

Written by Elizabeth Crownfield and posted to soc.religion.quaker in November 2003. Crownfield was a regular and thoughtful contributor to the newsgroup, known for her direct, unguarded writing on the practical experience of Quaker spiritual life. She wrote under the handle ECrownfiel.

The Quaker doctrine of the Inner Light holds that God's presence dwells directly within every human soul, available without priestly mediation. Early Friends — particularly George Fox and James Nayler — emphasized the Light's work of "convincement": the discovery and reproving of sin, which they saw as the necessary precondition of spiritual transformation. This post describes that process as a living reality rather than a historical doctrine.

Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026. Original Message-ID: [email protected].

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