Peace of the action: Richard Seebohm looks for lessons in the Swarthmore Lectures

‘Our Quaker voices are a resource.’

This summer I watched the television programmes commemorating the D-Day landings of the second world war. Alongside the slaughter of thousands of soldiers on both sides, I watched the story of the historic town of Caen, only ‘liberated’ by being bombed to rubble. Inland, German cities like Hamburg and Dresden were being obliterated, in the belief that this would reduce the fighting morale of surviving Germans. 

Eighty years on, people and places are being ravaged with even greater efficiency, often by remote control, and thus with no personal exposure. No one is held accountable for the additional economic and ecological damage. How can we let this go on?

Our Peace Testimony is unchanged since George Fox and Margaret Fell put it to Charles II in 1660 (‘We do utterly deny, with all outward wars, and strife, and fightings with outward weapons, for any end, or under any pretence whatsoever… The spirit of Christ… will never move us to fight and war against any man with outward weapons’). But over time Friends have continued our discernment on the subject, notably in the annual Swarthmore Lecture. I have been re-reading these in search of some collective wisdom.

The mass of conceptual findings in these lectures is too extensive to transcribe in detail. They show an extraordinary diversity of ways in which Friends have lived their peace witness. Conscientious objection is one obvious example but, as Wolf Mendl saw in his 1974 lecture, we are not mere pacifists. Individual Friends have found themselves in high places, with opportunities for shuttle diplomacy at a United Nations level. There is a history, now tentatively resumed by Braitain Yearly Meeting, of Quaker establishments entertaining representatives of mutually-incompatible regimes in the exercise of ‘quiet diplomacy’. But Friends with expertise in conflict resolution have often had to find their opportunities for service by joining dedicated outside organisations. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT) come to mind. These offer human resources and support that extend outside the capacity or ethos of a faith-oriented body. (The Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI) is a special case: Britain Yearly Meeting administers this on behalf of the World Council of Churches.) Then there is, of course, the Quaker United Nations Office (QUNO) and Quaker Council for European Affairs (QCEA). American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) runs external centres. There are also academic inputs. In Peace Studies, Adam Curle and his successor Paul Rogers at Bradford University have been among those making an inspirational mark. We also still have the Northern Friends Peace Board. 

Quaker House Belfast has not been recounted in these lectures. Some of that story can still not be told, but the big picture (and much more beside) can be found in Anne Bennett’s 2010 Public Lecture to Ireland Yearly Meeting (https://bit.ly/qie2010). Recommending this lecture may be my most significant contribution here – I did not know of it, did you?

I’ll jump if I may to the discernment by Diana Francis (2015). She reminded us that Constantine, in convening the Council of Nicaea in the year 325CE, claimed to be acting on a dream of seeing a cross with the words ‘In this sign conquer’. From then on the military campaigns of Roman emperors dragged Christianity with them. The Council agreed a dogmatic creed, giving us a hierarchical and sometimes militant church model, rather than a community of communities. Until then, Christianity had been a nonviolent faith. 

Back in 1949, Roger Wilson offered some findings on world war one relief work. He told Friends of an aid agency supported by QCEA in its early days, which insisted that its leaders had to have the capacity to subordinate their own interests to the interests of the group they served. This should be the touchstone for national leaders too, he said.

‘Where in the scheme of things could contemporary Friends be doing more for peace? Are we and our testimonies visible where they should be?’

Where factional fighting is taking place, it has been hard to prevent other nations or regimes providing weapons to one side or even both. Where a minority community is oppressed, some members of the minority may feel pushed too hard and engage in outrages. The majority may then designate the whole minority as terrorists, step up the mistreatment, and abandon dialogue. It is a feature of groups that a leader can win allegiance by encouraging members to view outsiders as enemies. Quakers avoid this risk by looking for that of God in everyone, however hard it may be to discern. 

In today’s Russia there are mothers of dead soldiers saying that the regime is treating its people as mere biological units. I had hoped that the Ukrainians would see Russian soldiers as near-kinsmen who were just led by fanatics. This has not always been the case – understandable given the atrocious conduct that has taken place – but the Sunday Times of 18 August tells of captured Russians finding themselves amazed at being treated with kindness.

The lectures do not deal mainly with disagreements and tensions between individuals who know each other. These are the main focus of our peace education programmes for schools. But it can usually be assumed that in conflict situations there will be individuals with whom dialogue is possible. Their disputes may be economic, territorial, or about identity. But an autocrat or dictator may have a lust for power and suppress civil society. Ideology may be a factor. If you believe that one day you will inherit the whole earth, you may think you can do what you like en route. Entry points may not easily be found. All the same, there have been cases where activists can unexpectedly gain enough purchase to discredit a tyrant. Our Quaker voices are a resource. There is lobbying, letter writing, journalism, marching and demos, and sometimes high-profile physical interventions (even sabotage). 

What does all this mean for Friends today, given the capacity we have at present for witness and for work? My personal contribution is to suggest that ‘No hate’ could be a slogan for us to use, as it was in Malaysia in the 1950s (see ‘Conflict of interest’, 21 October 2022). The question I am raising is this: Where in the scheme of things could contemporary Friends be doing more for peace? Are we and our testimonies visible where they should be? Are we nurturing peace activism and peace professionals for the future? Are our structures and programmes facing in the most productive directions? 

What, where, and who? 

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