Quakers: The faith forgotten in its hometown - BBC News
It was the faith of two US presidents and several prominent UK industrialists, yet the origins of the Quaker religion are little known today by people living in the English town where it began. However, a new heritage trail targeting the American tourist market is aiming to change that.
In 1647, George Fox, a cobbler, was walking past a church in the East Midlands when he received what he described as a message from God.
Quakers: The faith forgotten in its hometown - BBC News
The son of a Leicestershire church warden, he had spent years wandering around an England torn apart by civil war and increasingly disaffected with the establishment church.
The vision of Christianity he received outside the church in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, was deeply radical - God was within everyone and there was no need for priests.
Famous Quakers include William Penn, who founded Pennsylvania in 1681, ex-US presidents Herbert Hoover and Richard Nixon, English actor Sir Ben Kingsley and musicians Bonnie Raitt and Tom Robinson
It was the faith of two US presidents and several prominent UK industrialists, yet the origins of the Quaker religion are little known today by people living in the English town where it began. However, a new heritage trail targeting the American tourist market is aiming to change that.
In 1647, George Fox, a cobbler, was walking past a church in the East Midlands when he received what he described as a message from God.
Quakers: The faith forgotten in its hometown - BBC News
The son of a Leicestershire church warden, he had spent years wandering around an England torn apart by civil war and increasingly disaffected with the establishment church.
The vision of Christianity he received outside the church in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, was deeply radical - God was within everyone and there was no need for priests.
Famous Quakers include William Penn, who founded Pennsylvania in 1681, ex-US presidents Herbert Hoover and Richard Nixon, English actor Sir Ben Kingsley and musicians Bonnie Raitt and Tom Robinson