A Minute on Peace
by Paul Rehm
Albany Meeting
The Quaker Peace Testimony—as I understand it—grew from the life and teachings of Jesus, was expressed clearly by George Fox and other Quakers in 1660, and was restated emphatically by New York Yearly Meeting in the current edition of Faith and Practice. Those seeds are among the most important foundational principles of Quakerism and are bedrock reasons for my membership in Albany Friends Meeting.
Our Peace Testimony has been a light by which we illuminate the pathway to peace, guiding our steps and—hopefully—the steps of others.
The minutes our meetings write help clarify our thinking, offer others food for thought and, perhaps, a flicker of light. So it was that Albany Friends created and shared this minute in July:
“Resistance to the war system is vital.” These words from NYYM's book of Faith and Practice testify to Albany Friends Meeting's steadfast belief in nonviolence formed from the life and teaching of Jesus and given voice by George Fox and other Quakers in their 1660 Declaration of Friends written to King Charles II, in which the founding Quakers stated, “We utterly deny all wars and strife and fightings with outward weapons, for any end, or under any pretense whatsoever; and this is our testimony to the whole world.”
Affirming our core principles of supporting life, love and the nonviolent gospel of Jesus, we strive to resist the death and destruction of all war. Therefore, Albany Friends Meeting calls on our government to stop providing weapons of murder and destruction to the Ukrainian government...weapons that assure the shedding of more blood and the loss of more innocent lives. Furthermore, we call on our elected officials to demand an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine and to provide the energy and resources needed for bringing the Russian and Ukrainian governments to the negotiating table.
I believe this minute reflects the Quaker Peace Testimony and could encourage other meetings to consider steps for peace in Ukraine they might feel moved to take.
As you can probably guess, I've not "been disturbed" by the Quaker Peace Testimony (QPT)'s "lack of flexibility" but by the recent writings of a few American Quakers who would apparently modify the QPT to include some contemporary version of the Roman Catholic Just War Theory.
Those who seek flexibility can look to the many and varied ways the QPT's anti-war principles can be put into practice. Creating, sharing and acting upon minutes is but one approach. (I've been heartened recently by Friends Peace Teams' plan to conduct AVP training for Ukrainians.)
Other Peace Testimony perspectives shared in this issue of Spark should help us all gain a broader understanding of how New York Yearly Meeting Quakers view this cornerstone of Quakerism.