If an armed person entered… (my Meeting)
Andrew Clark recounts some personal experiences
In her appeal for ‘fresh thinking’ about the peace testimony entitled ‘Dilemmas of a pacifist stand’ (21 January), Jill Allum makes good points about its mid-seventeenth century historical context, and challenges its contemporary implications. This is helpfully set in its own context by Betty Hagglund from the Centre for Postgraduate Quaker Studies in her article ‘Protest and peace’ (21 January).
The roots of the peace testimony actually lie, as proclaimed, in the brief ministry of the man whom we call Jesus. Under brutal occupation by Roman forces, he proclaimed an ‘Upside-down Kingdom’ in a highly original package of not entirely new teaching. It was outcast and under-dog focused, it rejected not the concept of an enemy but how one should treat the enemy. Masters should wash their servants’ feet, the rich were encumbered not blessed, and the meek will inherit the earth. The Sermon on the Mount is seriously radical. The crucifixion was the upside-down successful outcome, and the early Jesus communities were consequently pacifist for three centuries before the emperor Constantine managed to get them under state control.
When the twenty-four-year-old George Fox metaphorically clapped his hand to his head and said ‘Jesus, what a mess!’, he received the divine inspiration he (in fact, we all) needed: reject the church-state power structures, the intermediaries and the dogma and go back to the Christ of our New Testament origins. Adopting the peace testimony of Jesus is simply and actually a matter of faith. As a result of following it literally in that vein, things could become worse in the short term; it carries no guarantees of an immediate positive outcome. We simply believe that evil has to be faced, and that nonviolence is the way in which we, as Quakers, are called to do it.
Jill Allum’s hypothetical challenge (if an armed person entered… my Meeting) was actually the ‘Fierce Feathers’ story we faithfully tell our children! In my own experience, working for Friends Service Council, in the Nigeria-Biafra civil war (1967-70), I had three occasions when I was faced with such challenges that tested the peace testimony – and admittedly there were no such things as mobile phones in those days to summon aid of any kind:
• At night on the front line, a drunken soldier believing he had caught an advancing enemy put a loaded gun to my head;
• I came across a Red Cross truck driver being lynched by a furious crowd who, correctly, suspected him of having stolen some of their relief food;
• I heard an uproar and came into a medical clinic full of women just as a soldier was raising his gun to start shooting at them.
I was completely unarmed, and in all cases there was an outcome in which no one was physically harmed. I was also untrained for these situations. In case Friends wonder what they would do if it happened to them, my experience is that you simply do not know in advance, so do not expect to have ready-made answers. It may be that you will become temporarily detached from feelings and emotions such as fear or panic. Then you will then give what I can only call a ministry of action and words that will surprise you, the armed person and those around you.
I know that there are many Friends with such experiences, often arising from Quaker projects sited in areas of violence. Witness to the peace testimony does not have to be ‘successful’ in its outcome, only faithfully moved by the spirit in its application. We are The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers).
