My Thoughts on the Quaker Peace Testimony

(I am often asked about our peace testimony by non-Quakers. I wrote this piece to share my personal thoughts with those who have questions.)

The Quaker peace testimony was first proclaimed by the early Quakers in England when they declared that:
“We utterly deny all outward wars and strife and fighting with outward weapons for any end or under any pretense whatsoever; this is our testimony to the whole world . . . .
. . . The Spirit of Christ by which we are guided is not changeable, so as once to command us from a thing of evil and again to move us into it; and we certainly know and testify to the world that the Spirit of Christ which leads us into all truth will never move us to fight and war against any man with outward weapons, neither for the Kingdom of Christ nor for the kingdoms of this world...therefore we cannot learn war anymore.”
[excerpts from a “Statement by the Quakers to King Charles II” (1660)]

These early Quakers believed, as we believe today, that war is not the answer. They believed, as we believe today, that living in the Spirit takes away the need for war.

A key to understanding Quakerism is knowing that everything flows from our
personal experience of the spiritual dimension in our lives. Quakers experience
God’s presence in varying ways. Some of us experience this Power as the presence of the Christ within while others may describe it as the Light or as a universal Spirit but however we describe it, every Quaker believes in the private and personal dimension of this inward journey. Quakerism isn’t based on belief. It is based on experience--a personal encounter with the Power within.

The Quaker peace testimony is a "testimony," in that we are "testifying" to
a larger truth. We are acknowledging something-- that there is a Power that
takes away the need for war. Quakers believe that there is that of God in everyone
and that it is the Spirit of God within us all that makes peace possible. We believe that this Spirit has already acted and continues to act in us and our world. We believe that non-violence is the only Spirit-led response to violence.

Obviously war isn't over. People must still want it. And they do. War is
rooted in lusts, James 4:1-3 tells us. Modern American greed for material
things with ever more rapacity and blindness leads us to war. We drive our
S.U.V.s and then fight for oil supplies in the Persian Gulf. We worry that
we won't be popular or “with it” if we don't wear the latest fashions or
don't have the latest technological gadget. When this happens, we stop living
in the Power and the worldly powers convince us that having more
is the way to happiness and that war is the way to peace.

But the Power is always there. We can live in that Power and it will take away more
than the occasions for war, for it will take away the lusts and insecurities
that lead to war. When you've acknowledged the Power, what does faith become?
It becomes a testimony to the world that the Spirit is among us and that we can have peace when we accept and truly trust the Spirit.

There are some Christians who readily agree that there's a Power but conclude that their job is just to wait for the Second Coming in order to bring peace to the world. That's not our way. I believe that the First Coming has given us the way to peace. Our way of working for peace is to turn to the Spirit within, wait for its guidance and then follow its direction through whatever struggle awaits us. When we're doing it right, we become instruments of God in the service of the Spirit.

The Power within gives us the strength to avoid burn-out and it gives us the direction for our work. The biggest marches and the most dramatic actions often achieve less than the simple, humble, behind-the-scenes, year-in, year-out work with those around us. I suspect we're most often used by the Spirit in ways we barely perceive.

Quaker peace-making is not a passive waiting. We listen to the Spirit, we test, we work hard and we use those gifts our Creator has given us. There are problems in the
world, huge ones that need addressing, and we address them as the Spirit moves us.
But we do so out of a joy. And through our work, we ask others to join us in our joy in witnessing to the presence of the Spirit within and following the way of peace.

When you work with the Spirit, you don't get attached to results. Often we'll do things and have no idea how they've affected others. It's not our job to know, for it's not our job to be successful as defined by the world. We strive to be gracious and grounded even when the world rejects our testimony. We will be known to the world by how we witness to our trust in the Spirit.

The Quaker peace testimony is based on a radical, unequivocal trust in the
Power within. We do not differentiate between "just" and "unjust" wars.
We believe that all wars are fundamentally wrong. People sometimes criticize us as being utopian and not recognizing that there are those who would attack us.
We do recognize this but we trust in God and refuse to attack in return. We do not believe that we can kill our way to peace.
We believe that God is present in both our friends and our enemies
We believe that the Spirit tells us without question that war is not the way to peace.

Understanding the Reality in Palestine

There is a natural affinity among Americans for Israel due to historic and religious connections. However, most Americans have little or no understanding of the plight of the Palestinian people as they struggle to claim the state that was promised to them when the United Nations partitioned Palestine in 1947.

As the Quaker representative on a fact-finding delegation to Israel and Palestine in 2005, I wanted to see the situation there for myself. I talked with both Jews and Palestinians who were working to end the Israeli military occupation and to bring peace to this troubled land. I learned that there are many inside Israel who believe that their government is pursuing the wrong path.

I visited with Rabbis for Human Rights who believe that Israel’s occupation is a violation of the principles of justice in the Torah. These Jewish rabbis work with Palestinian farmers to harvest their olives from groves that have been cut off from the farmers’ villages by the Separation Wall that Israel is building on Palestinian land.

I talked with the Jewish leaders of Gush Shalom, the Israeli Peace Bloc, who told me that Israel’s security will best be served by a negotiated peace with Palestine. Jewish members of Gush Shalom regularly go into the West Bank and join with Palestinians in protests over the building of the wall which they call the Apartheid Wall. I met with representatives of B’t Selem, the leading Israeli Human Rights agency that monitors conditions in Palestine. These Jewish human rights workers shared documentation of thousands of human rights violations by the Israeli military in Palestine.

I saw for myself the 28 foot-high Israeli-built concrete wall cutting through Palestinian land that is separating Palestinian farmers from their olive groves making it impossible for them to earn a living. I visited a Palestinian farmer named Atta Jabar whose home has been demolished three times by the Israeli military because he has had the temerity to object to the fact that 80% of his land had been seized by Israel to build another illegal Jewish settlement on the West Bank. I spent a day in the village of At-Tuwani in the south Hebron hills where ultra-religious Jewish settlers are trying to drive the Palestinian shepherds from the village they have lived in for centuries because they claim that God gave them this land. There are now more than 200,000 illegal Jewish settlers living on Palestinian land on the West Bank. These settlers travel on a highway system throughout the West Bank that only Jews can use.

I talked with a young woman member of the Christian Peacemakers Team who has been working to try to stop violence between the Jewish settlers and the Palestinian shepherds. She told me that their team escorts Palestinian children to school to protect them from attacks from the settlers and that she had been attacked six months earlier by chain-wielding settlers who came out of the woods and broke her arm as she tried to shield the children from harm. Since I have returned, I have learned that these same Israeli settlers have been spreading poison on the fields in order to kill the Palestinian shepherds’ sheep.

I talked with a young Palestinian woman at Birzeit University near Ramallah. She told me about her humiliation at the Israeli military checkpoint that students must go through to get to their classes. She said that the Israeli soldiers told her that she would have to bare her breast in order to get through the checkpoint. I talked with other students who were told that they had to do a dance or to get down on their knees to beg permission in order to cross the checkpoint. There are over 600 Israeli military checkpoints like this one throughout the West Bank and Palestinians routinely must endure this kind of humiliation.

What is happening in Palestine is a complete denial of human rights. Since the 1967 war, when Israel occupied the Palestinian territories, the Palestinian people have been living under a harsh military rule. Israeli forces regularly confiscate private land, imprison individuals without due process and abuse them, demolish family homes, bulldoze orchards and crops, and shoot and kill civilians—and Palestinians are without power to stop one of the world’s best armed militaries. Many more Palestinians have been killed by Israeli bombs and bullets than have Israelis who have been killed by the minute fraction of Palestinians who strap explosives to their own bodies in order to drive out the invaders of their land.

It is time for Israel to end its four decades of military occupation of Palestine and accept the Palestinian state as its neighbor. Peace will come to Israel when justice finally comes for the Palestinian people.