The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (809 page)

Free churches
.

Churches free from state control; specifically, the Protestant churches of England and Wales other than the established church. The Free Church of Scotland separated from the Church of Scotland at the
Disruption
(1843). A minority, the ‘Wee Frees’, did not take part in the subsequent union which formed the United Free Church of Scotland (1900) and has survived as an independent body with 21,000 members (1980), mostly in the N. and NW of Scotland.

 
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(1856–1938).
A major founding figure of psychoanalysis, with strong views on the mainly negative role of religion in human life and society. He had a
nomothetic ambition
to become the first to uncover laws as invariant as those of Newton, but in his case governing, not cosmic, but psychological behaviour.
Religion, for Freud, emerges as a collective expression of neurosis, and as an attempt on the part of individuals to escape from the realities of a hostile and indifferent universe. Since individuals recapitulate the history of the human race, the phylogenetic and ontogenetic explanations are variations on the same theme, as can be seen in one of his major analyses of religion,
Totem und Tabu: Über einige Übereinstimmungen im Seelenleben der Wilden und der Neurotiker
(1913; Totem and Taboo: Resemblances Between the Psychic Drives of Savages and Neurotics, 1917): religious solidarity and restraints begin in a primeval rebellion of the sons against the father. In
Der Mann Moses
… (1939; Moses and Monotheism, 1939), he drew on abandoned speculations of biblical historians to produce a theory of Mosaic religion. In
Die Zukunft einer Illusion
(1927; The Future of an Illusion, 1928), he made his most explicit attack on the error of humanity in relying on the collective neurosis of religion. Religion rests on an attitude of
als-ob
, ‘as-if’, in which people seek comfort in a universe which is indifferent to them. They seek it, therefore, in the only place it can be found, in the illusory world of make-believe, in a heaven and God which they project. In a long correspondence with Oskar Pfister (
S. Freud/O. Pfister: Briefe
1909–1939, 1963), Freud constantly reviewed his estimate of religion, expressing occasional doubt about detail but not about the fundamentally illusory and neurotic nature of religion. This itself was deeply embedded in his own lifelong fear of death. His account of religion is generally contradicted by evidence, but his outlook and terminology have remained pervasive.

 
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(Lat.,
frater
, ‘brother’). As applied to Christian religious, a usage which passed into the Romance languages and English, a friar was one who belonged to a mendicant order, as distinguished from those who belonged to monastic orders and were not itinerant. The best-known orders of friars are the
Dominicans
,
Franciscans
,
Carmelites
, and
Augustinians
.

 
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Friday prayer
(of Muslims)
:

see
JUM‘A
.

 
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(1750–1834).
A forerunner of
Reform Judaism
. He argued that prayers for friends and country should be substituted for the
messianic
hope, and that secular law should be studied rather than
Talmud
. He also was tireless in his efforts for Jewish political and civil rights in Prussia.

 
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Friends, The (Religious) Society of
,
often called Quakers

A religious group of Christian derivation, emerging in the 17th cent. under the leadership of George
Fox
. His followers first called themselves ‘children of the light’, following Fox's emphasis on the inner light which takes precedence over external guidance. They came to be called ‘Friends’ from the statement of Jesus (John 15. 14), ‘You are my friends if you do what I command you.’ They were first called Quakers in 1650, when Fox commanded a magistrate to tremble at the name of the Lord—though the name occurs earlier, of those who experienced tremors in a religious ecstasy. The Friends oppose warfare (partly on grounds of the command of Christ, partly because warfare demonstrates a diseased humanity), and refuse to take
oaths
(since walking in the light means telling the truth). They were committed to the abolition of slavery (John Woolman, 1720–72), women's suffrage (Lucretia Mott, 1793–1880; Susan Anthony, 1820–1906), prison reform (Elizabeth Fry, 1780–1845), and the care of the mentally ill.
The resistance of the Friends to 16th-cent. laws of religion led to considerable persecution. Many fled to the American colonies, where William Penn (1644–1718) founded Pennsylvania. Their spirit of personal truth was given classic expression in Robert Barclay's
Theologiae Verae Christianae Apologia
(1676:
Apology for the True Christian Divinity
, 1678). Despite Fox's
Rule for the Management of Meetings
(1688), which gave cohesion to the movement, there have been four subsequent divisions, especially that of the Hicksites, following Elias Hicks (1748–1830).