The Society of Friends (Quakers) are hardly unique in their pacifism. Virtually all of the branches of the historic Anabaptists (Mennonites, Amish, Dunkard Brethren, etc.) are pacifists.
But the Quakers are unique in their successful political activism. Unlike the other small pacifist Churches, the Quakers organized themselves in large organizations, colonized and governed a colony in the Americas, and it was the Quaker organization - organized Quakers - who pressed for and ultimately succeeded in getting slavery abolished in the British Empire, and thereby outlawed on the high seas. It was the Quakers, specifically them, with their SOCIETY of Friends, linked together by a commonality of approach - as a community, not as individual churches following a local charismatic leader - who brought the single pricing system to Britain and thence the world, and who were the energized nucleus of the women's suffrage movement.
It wasn't the fact of their pacifism - there are pacifistic orders within the Catholic Church. It wasn't any specific doctrine such as that - the Quakers have very little by way of doctrine. It was the fact that it was a organized society of individuals who, together, individually sought guidance from the Holy Spirit, and wrote to each other in place to place and organized themselves to do so. And it was the fact that the Holy Spirit responded by energizing this Society to a common mind to go do good things.
The OP urged that people suspend their individual judgment and simply submit to the "superior" theological authority of the high theologians of established churches. The argument against that is all of the death and bitter fruit borne by that approach.
Your comment, perhaps unintentionally, reduces the Quakers in particular to a small sect of pacifists, like the Amish for example. Localized. Individual or small community - but not a large established Church.
The Quakers, however, were (and still are) a fairly large established church. Their organization has had significant numbers and reach, and has had a greater effect for the good on the politics of the last three centuries than any other organized Christian religion. And the way THEY traditionally do theology is to meet in silence, without a preacher or a pulpit or a sermon or a Bible reader, open themselves to God, and ask for the Holy Spirit to come. And then when they sense that he has come they rise and speak - in English, not in tongues - whatever the spirit has impressed upon them. And they have found that throughout a meeting house, and then far and wide across the Society in meeting houses all over the place (who historically correspond with each other), the Holy Spirit seems to say the same thing to many different individual minds in separate places.
Then they pray more, together, in silence, on such things until they start to move towards a unified statement. They don't historically vote - that is an assertion of human power - and they don't debate. Their principle has been to wait until the Spirit brings them to unanimity, and then they record what the Spirit has told all of them, and go out and do it, because each has been separately convinced directly by God, in his own soul.
They have not historically relied upon the Bible for arguments, or the "superior learning" of educated theologians. They have relied directly on the Holy Spirit speaking to them personally - again, the very antithesis of what the OP said.
And it has borne incredible fruit. The single pricing system is not a little thing. It's the reason that kids can be sent to the store to shop for their parents. Do that in an Arab Bazaar and they'll come home having spent $15 for a half-gallon of milk. Pennsylvania colony under the Quakers never had a single fight with the Indians, though the Indians DID kill the Scotch-Irish who came to Pennsylvania. The Indians distinguished, rather easily, between the Quakers who treated them each as individual children of God, did not take their land, negotiated with them as equals, and dealt with them as they dealt with each other, and the others, who came with armed force and took what they wanted.
The Quakers in Pennsylvania demonstrated the way that America COULD HAVE BEEN colonized, had the Europeans been good Christians.
The Quakers in Pennsylvania pressed for the outlawing of slavery from the time that it began. They were frustrated under the British rule (as the "right" to own slaves was a "God-given right of Englishmen", according to the Privy Council), but Pennsylvania rapidly abolished slavery with independence.
Of course women could always rise and speak in Quaker meetings, from the very beginning, as the Holy Spirit comes to both women and men. Anybody who sits in a Quaker meeting who is moved by the Holy Spirit to do so can rise and speak. The fruit of this was born in the 19th Century, when Quaker women in America organized, launched and led the women's suffrage movement, starting in Seneca Falls, NY, in 1848.
Simply put, the Quakers are not simply another small local pacifist sect. They are an organized religion that literally came out of nowhere and that has been more important - as an identifiable Christian church - than any other Christian church in LEADING the changes that have greatly affected our society. The abolition of slavery in the British Empire (with all of the influence that had on the rest of the world), women's suffrage, the single price system - these are not little things, they did not "come out of the air" - they came out of the interaction of the Holy Spirit with Quaker minds in Quaker meeting houses. It was the Quakers who led the charge on these things, did it first, set the example, and whose structured meeting organization gave them the experience at organized meeting structures to be able to lead such things. It is not the nature of small charismatic sects to link up via correspondence and form a whole networked church over a vast geographical area. THAT was uniquely Quaker, and that is what gave them such an outsized ability to influence society given their relatively small numbers.
The ideas themselves came directly from God, out of the air as it were. That's what THEY believe, and judging by their fruit, that would seem to be true. And it would indicate that men and women sitting alone and equal, in silence, with neither book nor pulpit purporting to lead them, talking individually directly to God, produce better practical results than the other models. The ability to find unanimity by sitting in silence is particularly interesting.
Quakers cannot be written off, because they are the primary instrument by which slavery was abolished when it was, and women got the vote when they did, and we have the whole retail pricing system that we have.
They are a direct refutation of the top-down obedience that was suggested by the OP, as they are a granularized, individual-up, unanimity-seeking philosophy that has produced better broad and permanent results than the alternatives, with shedding a drop of blood. That's something. It has to be put on the table for consideration. I've put it there, and I'm going to keep slapping away the hands that would try to take it off the table, because it IS pretty uncomfortable to see it there, and realize that IT is the root from which all of the most important modern strides towards human equality came from. The traditional organized Churches, by contrast, were almost invariably forces for conservatism that fought AGAINST those leveling things.
The Catholic Church certainly didn't do black slaves or American Indians any favors, and the Southern Baptists upheld slavery in America as the Mark of Cain! The strongest organized opposition to women's suffrage came from the Catholic Church.
Real world fruit is the way that Jesus said we would know those who followed him. The Quakers have the best of that, among Christian organizations in the past 350 or so years. They did it the way that is most diametrically opposed to what the OP said - which is why I bring them up.
I note that when Vatican II was being organized, a commission of the Catholic Church specifically went to meet with, work with and seek to understand the Quakers, precisely because the Quaker concept of the "Covered Meeting" where a roomful of people without a leader, each listening to the Holy Spirit moving each other to speak, ultimately comes to unanimity, without a vote and without debates. This was an ideal towards which the organizers of Vatican II strove - to have a council were God really spoke and brought the Church together. Whether that happened or not is a subject for debate. I would say that the fruit of Vatican II has been pretty good, all in all. Certainly I am able to in good conscience be a Catholic thanks to specific doctrines and approaches that came from that Council.
In this way, though, the Quaker example was specifically sought out by the Catholic Church itself, in its highest theological structures, as a thing to be modeled, and ideal to be sought out and incorporated as much as possible, so that the Church could come together, covered by God, and reach a consensus that the participants themselves each felt were moved by God in them personally.
That's pretty hard for Catholics to do, but the POINT is that they recognized that what the Quakers do is what they WANTED to have happen at Vatican II, so they specifically went to the Quakers to see HOW they did it, because there was no working tradition of how to run a Church Council in 1962. The last one hadn't been for over 100 years, and before that there had not been one for 400...and the Church was decidedly not eager to have authoritarian councils such as Vatican 1 and Trent had been.
I'm not telling everybody to go become a Quaker. I AM pointing out that the Quaker approach, individual-talking-to-God and then organized UP from the granular individual, has borne demonstrably better fruit since it came into the world than the other Christian examples. So much so that the heads of my own Church, the Catholics, most hierarchical and authoritarian of all, specifically studied the Quakers as the model of what they WANTED for Vatican II. And Vatican II wasn't perfect, but it was certainly very good.
Personally, from the evidence of the fruit they have borne into the world from their interactions with the Holy Spirit, I would say that the Quaker individual-up approach bears demonstrably superior fruit to all of the other top-down approaches, and I would say that a "return to traditional authority" is the best way to - unintentionally - kill the Church. It's been tried over and over and it doesn't work. The Quaker approach works better, is kinder, humbler, and much more respectful of the individual man and woman.
But it sure is aggravating to small time politicians and petty tyrants, and those who want to move fast and be in charge, all that.
It belongs on this thread, this discussion, because it's the answer to the OP's question: should we turn upwards for answers and unity? Sure. But as individuals, turning upward to God directly. God, then, will inspire each of us separately towards the same things, and we will find natural unity with one another whom God has so moved. Putting the authority in top-down learned theologians will get you men and women bound to stakes and burnt alive. We know that, because it did. It failed. Repeatedly. It doesn't work, and men will walk away from the Church and let the Church die rather than subordinate themselves to men who are just not up to the job. Because really, NOBODY is up to the job. But God is up to the job, and God is heard clearest and best when he speaks to the individuals he made, through the spirit.
Bottom up, not top down. The Quakers prove it works better. Vatican 2 proves it works better even for Catholics.
