Friends in Europe

Marisa Johnson writes about a long-standing relationship

Since the result of the British advisory referendum on membership of the European Union, I have often be asked by Friends what impact the decision to leave would have on Friends in Europe and the Europe and Middle East Section of the Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC).

I must confess that I am puzzled by this question: the Europe Section of FWCC pre-dates all of the European institutions, including the Common Market, which became the European Union, and it has among its members Friends already in countries outside it – in Norway, Switzerland, Russia and Georgia – as well as in the Middle East.

The question has, nevertheless, set me thinking about the origins of the Section, which came formally into being in 1938. Its first meeting was held in Doorn in central Netherlands, on 9 May 1938, following the 1937 World Conference in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, which had established a permanent committee to support the work of connecting Friends across traditions and across the world – work begun in 1920 with the London Conference. The Epistle of German Yearly Meeting in 1929 expressed the need for worldwide cooperation among Friends, and this had been heeded at last.

European Friends held seven regional conferences between 1931 and 1937. Much of the first set of minutes of that first meeting dealt with the planning of the Eighth European Conference, which later took place at the Folk High School in Vallekilde, Denmark, from 8 to 12 September 1938. The topics on the agenda were:

 
• Some forces which challenge Christianity;
 
• The totalitarian state;
 
• Anti-Semitism;
 
• The relationship of Friends to the ecumenical movement; and
 
• The Quaker community, in terms of source of experience, Meeting for Worship, Inward Light and publishing truth.

The second meeting of the Section, held at Friends House in London on 31 May 1939, was similarly concerned with the planning of the Ninth Conference, which took place in Geneva from 10 to 14 September 1939. The agenda considered:

• The failure of the democratic state;
 
• What is the relationship between Christianity and democracy?
 
• The problem of overcoming evil and violence; and
 
• What is our special task today in view of the world conditions?

As well as consideration of these dark and weighty matters, Friends, poignantly, minuted arrangements to meet again on 14 May 1940 in France to plan the Tenth European Conference – to take place in Sweden in August 1940. These meetings never took place, and the next set of minutes are from May 1946. In the opening minute we read: ‘Friends knew that across the flaming frontiers other Friends were living and praying, united with one another in love and, even though their faith was at times sorely tired, they never gave up their belief in the City of God triumphing over destruction.’ This sentence conveys vividly the distress and anguish of those long war years, when Friends found themselves in countries at war with one another.

We can only hope and pray that our current circumstances are not going to degenerate into such devastation, and hold on to our hope in the eventual liberation of all humanity. We must commit ourselves to be humble instruments of the work of redemption, which ‘creation still awaits with eager longing’ (Romans 8:19).

Marisa is executive secretary to Friends World Committee for Consultation’s Europe and Middle East Section.

---

Comments

Please login to add a comment