This Is That and the Early Friends: Two Kinds of Restoration

I grew up in the evangelical Friends Church and spent the first thirty-five years of my life there. I am Foursquare now. So when I read Aimee Semple McPherson's This Is That alongside George Fox, Margaret Fell, Robert Barclay, and William Penn, I am not conducting an academic comparison. I am reading two halves of my own life.

What I found surprised me. These two traditions are much closer than either would probably have guessed, and where they part company they part company over something worth understanding rather than something merely tribal.

I am not going to adjudicate between them here. I have friends in both, and I have been fed by both. What follows is an attempt to lay them side by side honestly.

What each tradition actually held

It is easy to caricature both sides, so let me be careful.

McPherson's This Is That belongs to early twentieth-century Pentecostalism. Its controlling conviction is that the outpouring described in Acts 2 continues in the modern church. Believers may be converted, filled with the Holy Spirit, empowered for evangelism, healed by divine power, and prepared for Christ's imminent return. She presents her ministry as a continuation of biblical revival rather than as religious autobiography, and her preface repeatedly attributes every success to Christ and describes herself as a yielded instrument.

Early Quaker theology here means what is found in Fox, Fell, Barclay, Penn, and the first generation of Friends. It is a mistake, and a common one, to reduce that theology to a vague belief in inward experience. Early Friends affirmed the authority and saving work of Christ, the present activity of the Holy Spirit, inward illumination by Christ, repentance and transformed conduct, direct divine calling to ministry, the spiritual equality of women and men, rejection of a professionalized or merely ceremonial religion, and a strong expectation that apostolic Christianity could be restored.

Read those two paragraphs again and you will see the shape of the thing. The strongest agreement lies in the conviction that Christianity must be experienced inwardly and manifested outwardly. The strongest differences concern the nature and signs of Spirit baptism, water baptism and Communion, miraculous gifts and healing, and the shape of eschatology.

Where they agree

The present work of the Holy Spirit. Neither tradition will accept a Christianity confined to the biblical past. Christ speaks, calls, guides, empowers, and transforms now.

Direct divine calling. McPherson interprets Jeremiah 1 personally and describes her bedroom experience at seventeen as her "real ordination," even though she was later formally ordained by others. Fox grounded his authority in Christ's direct commission. Early Friends distinguished divine ordination from human credentialing. Neither tradition believes that education or institutional authorization alone makes a minister.

Women's ministry. McPherson's title text is Acts 2:16-18, sons and daughters, servants and handmaidens prophesying. That is very nearly Margaret Fell's argument. Fell would have agreed emphatically with McPherson's use of Joel and Pentecost to defend women speaking by the Spirit. Two traditions three centuries apart, reaching for the same passage, for the same reason.

Evangelistic urgency. Both send ministers beyond settled congregations and regard the world as a field. Early Friends traveled Britain, continental Europe, the Caribbean, and North America under great hardship. McPherson preached in tents, auditoriums, automobiles, and the open air.

Holy living. Neither treats conversion as permission to continue in sin. Genuine faith must produce obedience and transformation.

Restoration of apostolic Christianity. Both believe the vitality of the New Testament church can be recovered rather than merely admired.

Opposition to dead formalism. Both criticize religion that has words, offices, or ceremonies without spiritual life. Fox on hireling ministry and McPherson on the valley of dry bones are making the same complaint in different accents.

And one more agreement I did not expect to find so plainly stated. In her sermon "Soul Winning," McPherson says explicitly that correct theology, tongues, healing, and even miracles are worthless without love. Early Friends insisted that ministry without divine love and spiritual life is empty. On that, there is no daylight between them at all.

Where they differ

Water baptism and Communion. McPherson practiced baptism by immersion and administered Communion as commanded symbolic ordinances, and the book describes converts immersed as a public confession and large congregations receiving Communion. Early Friends rejected water baptism and the outward Eucharistic rite as continuing requirements, teaching that the true baptism is by the Spirit and true communion is inward participation in Christ. This is not a minor liturgical preference. It reflects two accounts of how outward signs relate to inward grace. For McPherson, Christ instituted outward ordinances that bear witness to inward realities. For Friends, the inward reality fulfills and supersedes the outward type.

Spirit baptism. This is perhaps the clearest divide. McPherson distinguishes salvation from a subsequent Pentecostal empowerment, normally associated with spiritual gifts and especially tongues. Early Friends understood the baptism of Christ as fundamentally inward baptism by the Holy Spirit and fire, cleansing the heart and bringing the person under Christ's rule, and did not ordinarily formulate a second-blessing doctrine marked by tongues. Both agree the Spirit must be experienced. They differ over what that experience looks like and where it falls in the order.

Miraculous gifts and healing. McPherson expects tongues, prophecy, healing, visions, and miracles as continuing gifts, and healing becomes a defining article of the Foursquare Gospel. Early Friends accepted prophecy, divine guidance, visions, and occasional extraordinary providences, and they prayed for the sick and recorded healings, but they did not build a doctrine requiring the routine continuation of apostolic signs.

Eschatology. McPherson teaches an imminent personal return, bridal readiness, tribulation, and end-time fulfillment, and much of her preaching runs on that expectation. Early Friends affirmed Christ's return and final judgment but placed unusual emphasis on Christ's present spiritual coming within believers. Their eschatology was less systematized and far less occupied with chronology.

Worship. McPherson embraces music, preaching, visual illustration, altar calls, public praise, and organized revival. Friends center worship on silence, waiting, and ministry arising without predetermined order.

Structure. McPherson's work develops around a gifted central evangelist, large institutions, and coordinated campaigns. Friends favored corporate discernment, recognized but unpaid ministry, and a less centralized understanding of spiritual authority.

The chapter that taught me the most

If you want to see both traditions at once, read her sermon "Tarry Until."

Her teaching there is that believers must wait for Pentecostal empowerment before attempting ministry. Tarrying is prayerful preparation for Spirit baptism.

Now put that beside a Friends meeting. Early Quaker worship is fundamentally a practice of waiting upon God. No one should speak until moved by the Spirit.

The outward practice looks nearly identical. A room of people, waiting, unwilling to move until God moves. But the expected outcome differs. McPherson expects a Pentecostal infilling often marked by tongues and power. Friends expect inward stillness, purification, spiritual discernment, and Spirit-given ministry, without requiring tongues.

That is the whole comparison in miniature: a shared religious discipline serving two different theological frameworks. I have sat in both rooms. The silence feels different when you are waiting for different things.

Two kinds of restoration

Here is where I have landed.

Both are restorationist. Both are experiential, missionary, spiritually egalitarian, and hostile to lifeless religion. Both insist that the Holy Spirit remains active and that ministry must originate in divine calling rather than in human office. They are not opposites. They are cousins.

But they represent two distinct forms of restoration.

McPherson's Pentecostal restorationism seeks the recovery of Acts through Spirit baptism, tongues, healing, miracles, mass evangelism, and the expectation of Christ's imminent return.

Early Quaker restorationism seeks the recovery of apostolic Christianity through the inward Light of Christ, silent waiting, prophetic ministry, spiritual baptism, practical holiness, equality, simplicity, and freedom from outward ceremony.

Their deepest agreement is that Christ is alive and presently governs His people through the Holy Spirit.

Their deepest disagreement is over a single question: how should that present government be recognized?

McPherson points to Pentecostal gifts, healing, evangelistic power, and obedience in the ordinances. Early Friends point to inward conviction, transformed conduct, Spirit-led speech, corporate discernment, and freedom from outward rites.

I do not think that question is a small one, and I am not going to pretend I can settle it in an article. What I will say is that I have watched both answers produce men and women I would trust with my life. That does not make the difference unimportant. It does mean I read the other side's sources as family rather than as opposition, which is most of what I was trying to say by writing this at all.