Quakers around the world are marking the 350th anniversary of the first formal declaration of the Quaker Peace Testimony.
Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) have launched a wide range of initiatives to stimulate awareness of the testimony and action throughout 2011. They are encouraging Friends to reflect on the historic declaration and also to ask themselves tough questions about what the Peace Testimony means today. Quaker Peace & Social Witness (QPSW) have invited Quakers to write up to 350 words as a twenty-first century form of the peace declaration. It is hoped that unity can be reached on a modern declaration at Yearly Meeting Gathering in July at Canterbury. They have also launched ‘Peace 350’, a workshop that Meetings or other groups can adapt. It uses the declaration to help participants think about ‘what the Peace Testimony means today, to the Society and to themselves’. Sam Walton, peace and disarmament programme manager at QPSW, told the Friend that he knows of at least twenty Meetings that have already used the workshop, but that the overall number is probably higher.


Friends are also encouraged to use QPSW’s website to write up to fifty words in answer to the question: ‘What is the Peace Testimony’s challenge to me?’ The replies will be collated and possibly used at Yearly Meeting Gathering.

The timing of this month’s anniversary has caused some confusion. The original declaration was published in January 1661 but is dated ‘Eleventh Month 1660’. The apparent discrepancy is explained by the fact that at that time the year began in March.

The Friends who signed the statement, including George Fox and Margaret Fell, declared ‘we do certainly know, and so testify to the world, that the spirit of Christ, which leads us into all Truth, will never move us to fight and war against any man with outward weapons’.

Sam Walton said that the Peace Testimony today is as relevant as ever. He added that QPSW’s work is ‘very much led by the testimonies’, and that the department wants to ‘nurture the Peace Testimony within Friends’.

Sunniva Taylor, QPSW’s peace and sustainability programme manager, encouraged Friends to remember the breadth of the Peace Testimony. She told the Friend that it is not only about what we are against. It also involves a vision of a peaceful world.
By way of example, she asked: ‘What would a nonviolent economic system look like?’ She insisted that the current economic system is violent, because it harms both people and planet. Therefore, ‘When Friends live sustainably, they’re doing peace work’.

Meanwhile, Quakers in Staffordshire say that they are ‘heartened’ by the nationwide support they have received for their suggestion of a memorial to Quaker service during world war two at the National Arboretum.

Since Staffordshire Area Meeting (AM) proposed the idea, another twenty-eight AMs have minuted their support for it. A further two AMs minuted questions, which Staffordshire Friends say they found helpful. A report is being prepared for Meeting for Sufferings’ attention in April.

‘The memorial is unfolding as a valuable means of outreach to thousands of visitors to the arboretum,’ said Peter Holland of Stone Meeting, ‘And we need to frame our witness in terms which will still resonate in the centuries ahead. Our words will, literally, be carved in stone.’

The Quaker reputation for peace work continues to be one of the Society’s most well-known characteristics. A major survey of British public attitudes to Quakerism in 2009 found that nearly two-thirds of respondents identified Quakers as ‘a pacifist organisation’.

For more information on QPSW’s projects to mark the anniversary, please visit http://www.quaker.org.uk/350.

Comments

• Posted by John H on January 20, 2011

  I am afraid that the reference to Margaret Fell signing the Declaration is to confuse two events.  On 5th June 1660, Margaret Fell gave a document to Charles II and Parliament about the Quakers which dealt with Quaker suffering; oath-taking; paying Priests; deference to rank; opposition to treachery and plotting and supported the King and Parliament.  It was signed by her, George Fox, Richard Hubberthorne and eleven others.  After the Fifth Monarchy uprising, on 21st January 1661, George Fox, Richard Hubberthorne, Francis Howgill and nine others gave the King the Peace Declaration.  Presumably, Margaret Fell was not then in London and so was unable to sign, if she had been asked which we do not know.  The important factor was that although both declarations claimed to speak for all Quakers, it actually said”... we, as to our own particulars, do utterly deny ...”  In other words, each Quaker had to act on this on their own conscience.