Church and Peace: Barbara Forbes attends the annual gathering

‘This was one of the richest of our meetings.’

Our now-annual gathering of ‘Church and Peace’ took place on 13 March, organised again with our colleagues from the Fellowship of Reconciliation. Although scheduled as the ‘Britain and Ireland Regional Meeting’, we were able to welcome speakers from Belgium and the USA, and participants came from Germany, Switzerland, Hungary, Albania, Russia and Pakistan. Many Quakers attended but also Mennonites, Lutherans, Roman Catholics, Methodists, Baptists, Unitarians – and we were glad to welcome one Muslim.

Our speakers included Lisa Cumming from Turning the Tide and Andrew Tomlinson, the Scottish parliamentary liaison officer for Quakers in Britain. Other speakers included: a theologian working for Pax Christi in Brussels; a director of a US ministry of justice and reconciliation for LGBTQ Catholics; a former warden of Iona Abbey; the Anglican dean of Black and Minority Ethnic Affairs in Birmingham; the leader of St Mary’s Church of England Centre for Peace and Reconciliation in Luton; the mission enabler for the Northampton Methodist District; and the minister from the Unitarian Church in Birmingham and Kidderminster. We were truly blessed that these remarkable individuals had accepted our invitation to work with us.

Planning this event had been challenging. We had been hoping to meet in the Quaker-led Priory Rooms in Birmingham. This of course proved impossible but the downside of yet another online meeting was more than made up for by the upside of such a variety of participants.

Our theme – ‘Building peace from the ground up’ – led us to focus on how we respond to hate and hate speech, with a thought-provoking introduction from Lisa about her work in Bradford, and a workshop focusing on how to respond to hate speech online. Sharon Prentis led us in thinking about ‘Peace in three dimensions’ and about how the church can be a place of peace in a fragmented world – in spite of often having history which makes this difficult.

This was one of the richest of our meetings. The workshops offered experience from the grassroots, suggestions for liturgy and worship, a discussion about moving from non-racism to anti-racism, and an open space where we found ourselves sharing the pain of the Christian community in Pakistan.

We were challenged on many levels. The Quaker thinker and academic Adam Curle has pointed out that we need to transform unpeaceful relationships into peaceful ones, but also to transform the conditions we live in so that they are unfavourable to violence. This latter challenge seems a very high mountain to climb but we surely all know where we are falling short in our Meetings and in our churches.

I think we all left feeling inspired and encouraged. We are already looking forward to next year’s meeting, which we hope will be in the physical presence of one another.

A longer report is at www.church-and-peace.org/en/2021/03/transforming-unpeaceful-relationships.

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