“That of God in every person”

“That of God in every person” expresses George Fox’s conviction that the divine presence is not confined to churches, clergy, or extraordinary visions but may be encountered within every person. In the account presented here, the phrase grows out of Fox’s mystical experiences and becomes a foundation for Quaker belief and practice.

Fox’s inward discovery

George Fox’s conviction emerged during a search for a satisfying religion. He had found elements to value among the Church of England, Baptists, and Presbyterians, but none resolved what seemed lacking. As his mystical experiences accumulated, he came to believe that Christ lived within him and sensed interior movements of the Holy Spirit. Religion, in this understanding, concerned the inner life. What Fox missed in the churches and movements he encountered was recognition of God’s interior presence in every person; his formulation, “That of God in every person,” became a basic belief.

The phrase thus joins an individual experience to a claim about human spiritual possibility. It does not describe a vision that everyone must see or a message conveyed through the senses. Rather, it directs attention to the inward divine reality Fox believed could be present in each person. The book presents this conviction as an outcome of Fox’s own mystical searching and as a principle with wider communal consequences.

Quaker belief and worship

The Quakers’ related teaching is that each person possesses an Inner Light, a divine element that, when attended to, can reveal the reality of God. Worship accordingly takes the form of sitting in silence and listening for the Holy Spirit. At times, a person may be moved to stand and speak about faith. This arrangement gives inward attention a communal setting: silence is shared, while speech arises as a response rather than as the product of a professional ministry.

The account distinguishes Quaker practice from church structures organized around sacraments, ordained ministry, or a binding creed. Quakers have no sacraments or professional ministry, and no official doctrine or creed. An effort to make a formal statement instead produced Christian Faith and Practice, an anthology of Quakers’ spiritual experiences. The form of the book reflects the emphasis: rather than setting out a system of doctrines, it gathers testimony to lived encounters with God.

The belief also entails that revelation did not cease with the closing of the New Testament canon. It remains possible, and every person has the potential to experience God’s presence. In this context, the expression is not merely a statement about Fox’s private experience. It supports an understanding of spiritual authority and religious possibility that is distributed among people rather than restricted to a single institution or class of religious specialists.

Presence beyond spectacle

The wider account of Christian mysticism helps clarify what this inward presence does and does not mean. Mystical experience may include visions or voices, as in the case of Hildegard of Bingen, but sensory phenomena are not presented as necessary. Bernard of Clairvaux reported no sensory experience in his encounter with God; Thomas Merton’s account of his experience in Cuba likewise describes certainty of God’s presence without a sensory encounter. The point, the book stresses, is not the spectacle but the desire for God.

A basic definition of a mystic is someone who has experienced God’s presence directly and with a certainty that resists doubt. Yet the experience is difficult to communicate: language cannot adequately contain what is understood as beyond definition and expression. In Bernard McGinn’s account, presence is the unifying note of Christian mysticism. That framework illuminates the phrase’s emphasis on inward availability, while not making every person’s potential awareness identical to a particular mystic’s experience.

William James’s four marks offer a further frame for mystical experience: it is ineffable, yields a kind of knowledge beyond ordinary reasoning, is often transient, and is passive rather than willed into being. These are general characteristics discussed in the book, not four features individually established for Fox’s experience. Their relevance is to distinguish divine presence from an achievement a person can manufacture or a proposition fully capture in words. The experience may disclose something to the person undergoing it even as it remains difficult to report to others.

An inward conviction lived in practice

The book’s broader account resists treating the search for God as a succession of spectacular moments. Its spiritual guidance emphasizes the cumulative effect of ordinary practices: prayer, meditation, study, and silence. A simple pattern might begin with a Psalm and the Lord’s Prayer, then include silence or a Gospel reading. Such practices are meant to foster receptivity, not to compel an experience. Mystics also prayed the Psalms, fasted, worshipped with others, and sought a simple way of life; their religion was not an occasional leisure activity but the shape of their lives.

This practical emphasis accords with the expression’s refusal to locate God only in exceptional settings. The book describes spiritual life as a cycle of presence and apparent absence: moments when God seems close alternate with dry periods when God seems nowhere to be found. Neither the inward conviction associated with Fox nor the practices surrounding it promise continuous felt assurance. Their significance lies instead in making attention and perseverance possible through changing conditions, while preserving the belief that every person may encounter the presence of God.