Letters - 01 January 2016
From Syrian bombing to simplicity and complexity
Syrian bombing
Like Andrew Hughes Nind (11 December 2015) I, too, believe that there are situations in which the use of physical force is justified. I am, therefore, also not a pacifist in the sense of holding to the principle in all situations. I suspect that, if I had belonged to a different generation, I would have regarded it as my duty to fight Nazism during the second world war.
However, I also believe that the number of occasions in which a military intervention has made a situation safer or more just are extremely few. So, in practically all cases, I abhor the use of violence because of pragmatic considerations rather than the adherence to a principle or testimony.
Further, while I have the deepest respect for those who embrace and bear witness to the pacifist principle, I feel it has little place in a debate such as BBC Radio 4’s Moral Maze (‘Just war and Syria’, 25 November 2015). An allusion to a principle does not constitute an argument unless that principle has been established and agreed by the others in the debate. Where this is not the case, I fear that its rhetorical force may be to create the appearance of naivety.
However, I remain conscious of George Fox’s response to William Penn when he asked his advice about wearing a sword. Fox replied: ‘I advise thee to wear it as long as thou canst.’ I hope I am open to new light on this matter.
Graham Spinks
Andrew Hughes Nind says that he is ‘arguably not a Quaker…’ because he might shoot (if he had a gun) to save innocent victims. He is not, therefore, an absolute pacifist.
Absolutism is arguably something foisted upon us by conscientious objection tribunals. It is a test not generally applied to other moral characteristics. Does a truthful person forfeit the right to strive to be truthful if they can be forced to admit that they might lie to a murderer to save his intended victim? Honesty and pacifism, I submit, are both reasonable and desirable characteristics for an individual to seek to live by.
Truthful people may lie under severe duress, but this does not invalidate truth or imply that the best default is to lie. An honest fear that we might lapse into violence under extreme provocation is not a reason to reject pacifism. And that honest fear should certainly not stop anyone from becoming a Quaker.
T Roger S Wilson
In response to Andrew Hughes Nind, I think the point is that the words ‘gun-toting terrorist’ could equally well apply to the American drone operator sitting in a ‘playstation’ directing fire at ‘targets’ on the ground in Iraq. Four former drone operators have now spoken about their work. [A documentary film, entitled Drone, was released in November 2015. The director was Tonje Hessen Schei.]
Some drone operators apparently refer to children as ‘fun-size terrorists’. So, if we catch the operator in the act of killing civilians should we shoot him? Every death makes the next death. Every war makes the next war. It will only stop when we stop, here, now.
Helen Porter
Are Area Meetings necessary?
Meeting for Sufferings’ recent consideration of ‘the challenges and opportunities facing Area Meetings [AMs] today’, did not include the possibility of laying them down altogether (11 December 2015). Do we need them?
The geographical organisation structure created by the first generation of Friends was a brilliant invention, which has enabled us to survive to the present day. It made complete sense when travel and communication were arduous and depended on physical movement. But many people now know the streets of London or Paris as well as those of the market town up the road, and can talk in their own homes to relatives and friends on the opposite side of the globe.
The seventy-one AMs in Britain are of widely differing shapes and sizes. Their boundaries enclose, but also separate, neighbouring Local Meetings (LMs). AMs struggle to find people to serve, or even to attend, and their role has been blurred and diminished by the transfer of responsibilities to trustees. Their deliberations can seem arcane and tedious to busy attenders. They do not operate, primarily, as worshipping communities.
AMs currently own the properties and hold the money; they admit members and appoint elders and overseers. But, appointments could be local, and membership national. Groups of LMs could form cooperatives to look after property. In these post-horseback days, LMs could join networks radiating across the country to make common cause together.
Ian Beeson
When to stay silent
A press release was sent out from Friends House on 2 December. It announced a Britain Yearly Meeting statement opposing the vote in the House of Commons to extend air strikes to Isis targets in Syria. The press release contained these words:
‘Quakers call for a creative nonviolent response, respecting the humanity of all in the region. Bombing and continued arms sales only fuel the war and lead more people into the hands of extremists. Invest in peace, not war.’
Absolutely, who wouldn’t?
But then there is the awful reality – the graves of murdered women, the torso of an octogenarian scholar tied to a lamp-post in Palmyra. Specifically, what response, from whom, do Quakers call for, to address the immediate and genocidal depravity of Isis?
Sadly, Quakers have nothing useful to say about how, in extremis, the weak and harmless should be protected from the strong and violent. So, we should stay silent.
Colin Rendall
Meeting our MP
Our Bury St Edmunds Local Meeting has set up a small ‘Media and Parliamentary Liaison Group’. It is a rather grand title, perhaps, but our aim is to monitor current affairs and, where appropriate, to contact the local press and radio, or our local MP, to give a Quaker response on a subject of concern.
We recently invited our new MP, Jo Churchill, to discuss with the Group our concerns about current issues, especially the government’s decision to carry out bombing missions in Syria. Jo Churchill is a Conservative and explained to us, in an honest way, her personal reasons for voting in favour of military action. We expressed our views about the negative consequences of aggression and our wish that much more effort should be made to seek peaceful solutions to conflict. Although it was apparent that Jo Churchill and ourselves were probably on opposite sides of the ‘political divide’, we felt encouraged by the fact that we had all listened respectfully to each other and that an open and honest dialogue had taken place. We hope to have further meetings with her in the future.
Perhaps other Meetings have similar contacts with their MPs. ‘Speaking truth to power’ is the responsibility of us all.
Graham Gosling
Simplicity and complexity
Our Friend Derrick Whitehouse writes movingly (11 December 2015) of simplicity and complexity and I felt it apt to recall Matthew 18:3: ‘Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.’
It seems to me there is one point in everybody’s lives when we are totally at one with creation – when we have absolutely no previous experience through which to perceive. It is perhaps the only ‘immediate’ (in the sense of ‘unmediated’) experience we ever have.
This might be the real simplicity for which Quakers strive. The endeavour to return to that kind of simplicity in the silent stillness of worship – and any subsequent partial achievement of it – may be what influences all the rest of our lives, our thoughts and actions, be they ever so complex.
There is a lovely story about a four-year-old boy who couldn’t wait for his new baby sister to come home. The boy tiptoed into her room, stood next to his sister’s crib and said: ‘Tell me about God – I’m starting to forget.’
Noël Staples
Many Friends struggle with the letters of saint Paul in the Bible. I suggest this is partly because he often asserts values that we now reject, partly because he is caught up in disputes that we have long forgotten, and partly because he thinks in a typically Greek way, like Plato, using abstractions to convey his ideas.
It is very easy to slip into abstractions as a way of expressing what cannot actually be put into words. Paul does it repeatedly. Occasionally he manages to do without abstractions, as in Romans chapter twelve, and then there is no mistaking what he means: in simple language, based on verbs, he tells it exactly how it really is. And it is wonderful.
Friends do not have a tradition or culture of rigorous philosophical analysis so they go into semantics individually at their peril, yet they are not impervious to the temptations of abstraction and can easily get entangled by it, leaving themselves and those with whom they are trying to communicate confused and often put off.
Roger Seal
Comments
I, too, question the usefulness of absolutist principles, such as pacifism. Overarching principles don’t deal with concrete situations, and words can mislead. Do we call it war, violence, force, a police action or peacekeeping? Overarching principles seem antithetical to the Quaker tradition of seeking the Inner Light. Such seeking should be specific to a particular situation, not a general principle. If we get low and listen it should not be about abstractions.
By aerifkin@gmail.com on 31st December 2015 - 21:42
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