From the archive: Enlistment: a case for disownment?
Janet Scott highlights a fierce debate
From early in the first world war there was discussion amongst Friends about the attitude to be taken to members of the Religious Society of Friends who enlisted in the armed forces. By 1915 the debate was becoming fierce and it eventually reached the Yearly Meeting. The essential question, which should still concern us today, was how to weigh the freedom of the individual to follow the Light as he or she saw it against the religious Truth encapsulated in the teaching and tradition of the Society.
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