The Truth of Our Life: The Quaker Vision - PRE-ORDER for 10/20/26 release
The Truth of Our Life - The Quaker Vision
In The Truth of Our Life, acclaimed Quaker scholar Rex Ambler argues that both traditional Christianity and modern secular culture have lost touch with the most important truth of all: authentic lives grow from the truth revealed through direct experience. The truth for each person is unique and untraceable, a wonder . . like the path of a sailing ship at sea.
Returning to the revolutionary insights of George Fox and the first Friends, Ambler shows how the Quaker experiment offers a challenging but practical path toward community, discernment, justice, and spiritual freedom. It invites readers not simply to learn about Quakerism but to undertake the experiment for themselves.
Praise for The Truth of Our Life:
This is Rex Ambler’s most ambitious and wide-ranging work to date, a lifetime of spiritual inquiry distilled into a single, coherent argument. Drawing on decades of scholarship, personal meditation, deep spiritual exploration, and his close reading of George Fox, Rex asks what the early Quakers’ vision of “truth” can offer a world still grappling with the wreckage of modernity and the fragmentation of religious life. The book is remarkable is its scope. It moves with equal confidence through the 17th century roots of Quakerism, the crisis of Christian authority, the limits of Enlightenment reason, and surprising encounters with Freud and Gandhi, finding in each a common thread: the possibility of a truth that is lived rather than merely believed. Rex writes not as a historian cataloguing the past, but as a searcher who has tried the practice himself. - Francisco J. Burgos, Executive Director of Pendle Hill
In The Truth of Our Life, one of the sharpest Quaker thinkers of the past half-century reflects on decades of study. In an overview that extends over two millennia and ranges from the Apostle Paul to Gandhi, Rex Ambler offers a compelling understanding of what Quakerism can and should be.
- Thomas Hamm, emeritus Professor of History, Quaker Scholar in Residence at Earlham College
This recovery of the [Quaker] experiment anew for our fractured world calls us again to be provocateurs of love. - Windy Cooler, Convener, Friends Incubator for Public Ministry
What makes The Truth of Our Life strikingly distinctive is that it’s readable and practical. Ambler skillfully leads Quakerism into non-combative conversations with Freud and psychoanalysis, Derrida and postmodernism, Habermas and critical Marxism. How can Quakerism engage current intellectual, personal and spiritual voices with confidence and humility? It’s a wonderful addition not only to comparative spirituality, but perhaps even more significantly, comparative models of personal and communal discernment. A must-have source book for reflective Quakers and others. - Joe McHugh, author of Startled by God: Wisdom from Unexpected Places
How do we make sense of life? This exploration of Quakerism offers keen insight into that Reality. - Max Carter, Quaker Studies at Guilford College, retired
Ambler’s work focuses on the history of the empire and the ways in which imperial power has shaped Christianity. He argues that this influence has led to the prioritization of wealth and authority over the well-being and interests of ordinary people. As a foundational element of Christianity’s spiritual tradition, Ambler explores how biblical teachings have consistently emphasized a genuine search for truth as central to the practice of faith. Ambler highlights a pivotal moment in history when Christianity became closely aligned with the Roman Empire in 312 CE, following Constantine’s conversion. This alliance established a significant turning point, as the priorities and values of the empire began to influence the direction and focus of Christianity. The book also considers the impact of scientific discovery, philosophical enlightenment, human self-assertion, and the French Revolution in shaping modern understandings of truth and Christianity. Ambler discusses Quakers’ search for truth and our inability to fully embrace the traditional Christianity that had been shaped by imperial influence. Quakerism continues to challenge both empire and church by encouraging people to seek truth independently, without reliance on external authority or interpretation. - Vanessa Julye, co-author of Fit for Freedom, Not for Friendship: Quakers, African Americans, and the Myth of Racial Justice
Ambler argues that post-truth societies create an illusion of hyper-individualism and separation. Quaker faith and practice are more urgently needed than ever before. - Barbara Birch, author of Lectio Divina: Revelation and Prophecy
Author: Rex Ambler
Publisher: QuakerPress of FGC (2026)
ISBN: 9781733412698
Paperback, 458 pages