Quakers, known formally as the
Religious Society of Friends, are generally united by a belief in each human's ability to experience
the light within. Some Friends understand this as a kind of divine spark, some aspect of the divine that inheres in the human, which they often express as "that of God in every one". For this idea, they often turn to a passage in the journal of
George Fox, the prophetic founder of Quakerism. However, this idea of the Light as divine spark was introduced, not by Fox, but by
Rufus Jones early in the twentieth century, as clarified by Lewis Benson. Friends often focus on feeling the presence of God. As
Isaac Penington wrote in 1670, "It is not enough to hear of Christ, or read of Christ, but this is the thing – to feel him to be my root, my life, and my foundation..." Quakers reject the idea of
priests, believing in the
priesthood of all believers. Some express their concept of God using phrases such as "the inner light", "inward light of Christ", or "Holy Spirit". Quakers first gathered around George Fox in the mid–17th century and belong to a historically
Protestant Christian set of
denominations. ==See also==