The spirit of love

Diana Francis, who gave the 2015 Swarthmore Lecture at Britain Yearly Meeting, has spent most of her working life as a full-time peace practitioner, writer and campaigner. She talked to the Friend about her family, her faith and her work.

by Diana Francis and Ian Kirk-Smith 2nd October 2015

What was your background?

My mother came from a vicar’s family in Wales. They belonged to the Church of Wales, the established church, and my father came from a working class family in Devon. He was a Congregationalist.

Both became conscientious objectors in world war two. They were absolutely against war and for peace and social justice. These were two sides of the same coin for them – as they have become for me. I was brought up in the Congregational Church. I understood from the word go that Jesus was a person who had showed us how to live and how to treat other people. I learnt that living the gospel – the good news of how people could be towards each other and God – was our job in life. Faith was not to be separated from the way you lived your life. The idea of faith and practice was absolutely a part of my upbringing, and from their point of view practice included being a peacemaker and being against war. So, it wasn’t through Quakers that I came across that idea. I got it from home and then came to the Religious Society of Friends when I was getting weary of being an ‘outsider’ in my views about peace.