In 1904, he published Social Law in the Spiritual World. This inner light was something integral to the human condition, irrespective of a person’s religious conviction.īut Jones’ mysticism was always strongly coupled with a sense of responsibility towards the world at large. "The Inner Light is the doctrine that there is something Divine, ‘Something of God’ in the human soul," he wrote. From the writings of the early Quakers, Jones crystallised the concept of the ‘inner light,” an idea central in particular to modern liberal Quakerism. The essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson introduced Jones to the idea of George Fox as “one of a great historical succession of mystics.” This revelation changed Jones’s conception of his family’s religion. Having learnt in the study of natural science that “the world was not made in six days and that man did not begin with Adam,” far from being troubled by the scientific evidence, he found, “his religious faith all the more secure when it marched with facts.” He attended the Providence Friends School in Rhode Island and Haverford College in Pennsylvania and, having obtained an MA from Harvard, returned to Haverford as a professor of Psychology and Philosophy. His uncle and aunt, Eli and Sybil Jones, established Friends Schools in Lebanon (then part of Syria) and Palestine. Jones was born in Maine, USA, to an old Quaker family. He delivered the first Swarthmore Lecture in London in 1908, and is the only person ever to have given two, the second being in 1920. Often described as a Quaker mystic, he was able to reconcile science and modern, liberal thinking with his Quakerism. His influence enabled the two divisions of American Quakerism, which split in the mid 19th Century, to reunite after his death. He was one of the founders of the American Friends Service Committee and an instigator of the Quäkerspeisung feeding programme after the First World War. A passionate believer in the transformative power of education, Rufus Jones was known for his radiant optimism, his storytelling, and his infectious sense of humor, always told in his native Maine accent.Rufus Jones was a highly influential American Quaker. Of his career as an educator, Jones wrote, “I endeavored to make the lecture periods occasions for facing seriously, and above all else, honestly, the difficulties confronting the modern world and to blaze a trail which would make life rich, meaningful and thrilling.” While a student at Haverford, Jones did probably more than any other student has to give students agency and a strong voice in student government and in the honor code. A trip to Berlin by Jones and other leading Quakers to protest the Kristallnacht pogroms was ridiculed Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels in an newspaper editorial and afterwards they focused their efforts on individual refugee assistance. His “central faith in the intrinsic worth and infinite spiritual possibilities of every person” found its greatest expression in his role in founding and guiding the work of the American Friends Service Committee, which received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1947 for helping to feed starving Germans after WWI as well as helping with relief efforts and refugee assistance. Considered by many to be the leading Quaker of the 20 th century, Jones was an advocate for tolerance and reconciliation during a time of conflict and dissension within the community of American Friends. He authored more than 50 books and 1,000 articles on topics ranging from mysticism (on which he was a world-renowned expert) to a history of Haverford College to a compendium of Maine humor. Jones was a prolific scholar who wrote for both academic and popular audiences. A Haverford graduate, and later a professor at the college for more than forty years, Rufus Jones (1863-1948) combined a life of intellectual inquiry with a commitment to faith and to community service.
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