A Friends Journal article was the seed for the RE program:  “Do Friends Still Need the Peace Testimony?”  

Introduction to Peace Testimony Discussion by Joy Sylvester-Johnson

Additional Resources

• Quaker Testimonies
• Wrestling with the Peace Testimony
• Peacemaking & the Peace Testimony:  One Quaker Response & A Life Testimony
• "We have come to Kyiv in solidarity and to pray for a just peace"  (This appears in the SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2022 issue of SOJOURNERS Magazine, "Why Our Faith Delegation Went to Ukraine")
• Quaker Faith & Practice, Britian Yearly Meeting, 5th Edition, Chapter 24
• Christian Non-Violence by Walter Wink
• Violence has a Strategy but so does Peacebuilding by Madhawa Palihapitiya
• Facing the Myth of Redemptive Violence by Walter Wink
• The Difference Between a Pacifist and a Passivist by Bret Myers
• Pacifism is Not Passivism by Duane Cady
• Peace Testimony and Ukraine by Bryan Garman, FJ Oct. April 1, 2022

One Quaker Response

We Quakers don’t refer to creeds, or insist that people pass a test of beliefs in order to belong.  So, how can others know what we believe?  We have testimonies and traditions.  To me, that’s just fine.  It seems to me that I need to look at people’s actions in order to know what they believe.  That applies even to myself:  periodic retreats and reflections let me compare what I think I believe, to whether I’ve lived that out in action.

We have a Peace Testimony, one thing we are really known for.  It seems to me fortunate that we see it in testimonies (i.e., people’s lives and actions) and traditions (what we and others see of our collective beliefs in action across time and space.) This way, we are not too stuck on 17th-century phrases or understandings (though we are indeed sometimes fixed on them.). 

What follows is a personal response, prompted by the recent article.

I know that I am one person who does not have a calling to fight in war, to harm others in a military contest.  However, I know at least two other things.  1) There are other people who believe they are called to military service, at least at some times.  2) I am called to war, not to fight in it, but to do my best in whatever way I can: to end it, to support its victims, to counsel its fighters and support both losers and winners afterward, to work toward a society that supports alternatives to war and participates in international structures to stop war.  

We have a testimony and a tradition of pacifism, of not fighting wars. In that, we agree with a few other sects, including Mennonites and Brethren. We Quakers also have a testimony and a tradition of active involvement in wars and conflicts, as ambulance drivers and medics, as diplomats and mediators, as nurses and doctors, as conscientious objectors and protestors, as writers and artists. Our pacifism is opposed to war; it is not a doctrine of non-resistance. We live it out in many different ways, discerning as best we can, individually and collectively, what we are called to do in a given situation. It seems we are inspired by the same Spirit, called to act in different ways.

For 25 years, I was a member of Ireland Yearly Meeting.  Irish and British Friends have had a tradition of writing testimonies to selected Friends whose lives illustrate the living out of testimonies.  In other words, testimonies are not really words, they are lives.  We live them out in our different ways, and in different eras and circumstances, but to me they seem consistent.  They seem to say, across time and space, that this is who we are, and who we try to be.

by Sue Williams, Roanoke, Virginia, August 2022

An example of a life testimony

QUAKER TESTIMONY TO THE GRACE OF GOD IN THE LIFE OF STEVE WILLIAMS

  Steve Williams, who died so suddenly and unexpectedly in December last year, was one of those rare people whose very humanity and goodness directed all aspects of his life and work.  Steve dedicated his life to leading people to find pathways in conflict resolution, to promoting peace and co-operation.  He did this by drawing on his wealth of compassion and concern which were at the core of his being.

Steve was born in Wisconsin in 1951.  At age 13 he left home to study to be a priest.  At 19 he left the seminary and worked for several years in Africa.  He met Sue in the early 1980s and together they left their jobs and became volunteers, first working with street children in Haiti and then refugees in Botswana.  They then became joint representatives of British and Irish Quakers in Uganda and later Kenya.

Sue and Steve moved to Belfast to work at Quaker House in 1987.  In 1991 they began to write their book Being at the Middle by Being at the Edge which was partly about their own experience of work in Northern Ireland but also involved interviewing other Quakers who had done political mediation in other parts of the world such as the Middle East and South Africa.  In 1994 they moved to Island Magee and Steve began his long association with Responding to Conflict.  Then in 1998 they moved to Derry and Steve began his work on his Phd which focused on the role of civil society in political transition in Cambodia, South Africa and Northern Ireland.   Steve was much loved and cherished by Irish Friends who recognised the very significant work he and Sue did at Quaker House on behalf of Irish Friends coming, as it did, at a critical time in the difficult search for peace in Northern Ireland.

Sue and Steve Williams were a team.  They complemented each other very well and brought different skills to the tasks they undertook.  With his soft spoken, gentle manner Steve offered people the space and confidence to volunteer their opinions.  His manner was never assertive and his patience great.  Sue has said that sometimes people they met were unable to recognise the value of Steve’s approach and dismissed him as light-weight.  But Steve’s self-effacing manner, his personal charm and his humility were of course his strengths.

Steve was the epitome of the true Quaker: he put his faith into practice.  At the funeral service at Milton Keynes Meeting many Friends testified to this.  Although Sue and Steve had only been in Milton Keynes for 2 years they had, about six weeks prior to his death, given a talk after Meeting on Faith in Practice.  This talk was obviously a revelation to Friends who attended.  They were humbled and awed by the way Sue and Steve had dedicated their lives to service. They listened to Sue and Steve talk about their work around the world and wondered at this selfless commitment to others in great distress and trouble.  They looked in their own hearts – as I think we should all do – and wondered whether they could say they put their faith into practice.  Steve’s colleagues at World Vision were equally struck by the contribution he made, in only two years, to that organisation.

A maxim of early Friends was to live adventurously.  Steve, gentle giant that he was, was very good at this as well.  He was an entertaining man who loved to laugh and recognised the fun in life.  He loved to walk and cycle and enjoyed the company of good friends providing excellent meals and wine when entertaining.   We in Ireland have lost a wonderful, warm-hearted good person.  It is the same loss for all who knew him and his work.

by Alice Clark

 Additional Resources: