US Friends unveil ‘Common Testimony’
US Quakers have unveiled a new project
US Quakers have unveiled a new project aimed at supporting Meetings to heal interpersonal violence within their communities.
The resource, from the ‘Life and Power: Quaker Discernment on Abuse’ project, is called the ‘Common Testimony’. Inspired by a seventeenth-century statement on war by Quaker co-founder George Fox, the testimony encourages Quaker Meetings to reconsider their traditional peace testimony in light of interpersonal violence within their own circles.
The resource emerged after two years of dedicated listening and testimony-gathering from the project’s convener Windy Cooler, from Sandy Spring Monthly Meeting in Baltimore. It aims to enable Friends to ‘explore critical questions around abuse, safety, and peace in community settings’.
Lynette Davis, one of the listeners from Ujima Friends Meeting in Philadelphia, said: ‘Creating a common testimony to the very real hurt, abuse, and trauma experienced in places that purport safety is shining a light on the issues we as a community cannot afford to ignore if we wish to call ourselves children of light.’
The three-page ‘Common Testimony’ represents the voices of forty-one Friends who responded to the project’s central query: ‘Do we live in the virtue of that life and power that takes away the occasion of child abuse, intimate partner abuse, and all forms of violence within the family and community?’
The testimonies have been crafted into a unified, anonymous statement. This is designed to be used in a structured discernment process inspired by Quaker traditions, known as ‘Coming Together for Continuing Revelation’.
Lori Pineiro Sinitzky, from Green Street Meeting in Philadelphia, and 2024 co-convener of the Friends General Conference Gathering, said: ‘Friends have a long history of speaking truth to power but our cultural need to be good Quakers has created barriers to truth-telling and peacemaking within our communities… I believe Friends will find this process user-friendly and transformational.’
The process aims to ‘move beyond individual clearness toward a collective understanding that emerges from shared experiential wisdom’. Taught at Woodbrooke, Friends General Conference Gathering, and Beacon Hill Friends House, there will be ‘new opportunities for participation through Woodbrooke in 2025’.
