The Peace Testimony
Editorial
In this issue we remember the moral ambition of a few members of the Religious Society of Friends who, three hundred and fifty years ago, handed a declaration to Charles II: we honour their conviction, reflect on the seed they planted, and consider some of the fruit that it has born through the centuries.
The background to this event, as Betty Hagglund explains, was more complex and politically motivated than some people may think; but at the heart of the declaration were words that clearly set down fidelity to a principle and also contained a sense of vision:
‘We utterly deny all outward wars and strife, and fightings with outward weapons, for any end, or under any pretence whatever; this is our testimony to the whole world.’
These words have prompted, and inspired, remarkable personal and collective witness over three and a half centuries. We can only touch the tip of this extraordinary iceberg of ‘faith in practice’: the Friends Relief Service workers, like those on the front cover, who went to Europe during and after the second world war; the tremendous work done by Quaker Peace & Social Witness; the little known work in the Balkans and Russia in the nineteenth century, reflected in an image on the two pages devoted to a photographic montage of peace witness; and the work done at an international level described by David Atwood.
The Peace Testimony is alive today. In these pages we also urge Friends to support the campaign to raise the age of enlistment from sixteen to eighteen. All of this work has, in a sense, part of its seed in the declaration to Charles II.
In discerning a position that was in unity with and in obedience to the spirit of Christ, Friends found the words ‘utterly deny’ powerful – but not enough. George Fox was to make this clear when he wrote:
‘I told them (the Commonwealth Commissioners) I knew from whence all wars arose, even from the lust, according to James’ doctrine: that I lived in the virtue of that life and power that took away the occasion of all wars… and was come into the covenant of peace which was before wars and strife were.’
Fox was challenging Quakers to look both at the roots of conflict and at the way they lived their lives. Are we free from the lust for wealth, power, status, comfort… the desire to be well thought of by others, or the will to assert our point of view at the expense of others in our work, home or Quaker life?
As Horace Alexander wrote:
‘Has any one of us really learnt to live in such a spirit of gentleness and forbearance and persuasiveness and respect for others that we would dare to say that no careless roughness on our part, no harsh or bitter word, no angry thought even, is sowing seeds of conflict, of strife, of war itself?’
The Quaker way is to take up this challenge, nourished by the gathered meeting and prompted by the spirit within us. James Nayler captured this spirit in his final words:
‘There is a spirit which I feel that delights to do no evil, nor to revenge any wrong, but delights to endure all things, in hope to enjoy its own in the end. Its hope is to outlive all wrath and contention, and to weary out all exaltation and cruelty, or whatever is of a nature contrary to itself.
It is easy to call oneself a pacifist. It is much more challenging to live the Peace Testimony out in practice; but unless others find this ‘life and power’ in the way
