Comment by Robben Wainer on 2nd mo. 22, 2015 at 7:56pm

I feel that my making a peace testimony is as difficult as being a Quaker is. The faith speaks to a spirit of original nature, to original man, of original birth. I believe that my praying for my enemies is that of seeing through the similarities and differences in values, of competition and discrimination, to teach us, and to mold, or to form with us a humane spirit that is also divine, so that we are blessed by a creator whose heaven awaits those of his people who speak of his will, and which is alive and also of the Earth. It is preservational, not conservatavism which speaks to the understanding that the word of God is alive in his intention to show us the wa, and the path to freedom, enlightenment and awakening.

Comment by Joan Gunn Broadfield on 2nd mo. 23, 2015 at 1:31pm

Jerry Frost said to me when I visited Chester River Meeting as a 'peace and justice coordinator' for PYM:  Did you know that 20th century Friends invented the peace testimony?

I love that statement! I also find it surprising and probably accurate.  If you look at the advices of Friends in the 1800s, you will undoubtedly be shocked by the meansoundingness of them... and the fact that WAR is mentioned (as in, we should not prepare for war, etc)... I'll have to look again, but if I remember correctly, peace is not even mentioned.  (There are references to the peace of Christ, etc, in other writings of the period.)

I have real problems with the fracturing of what it means to have one's life speak. And when we move the socalled 'spices' from an educational realm to a spirit realm, we dilute our faith in continuing revelation. We lean on the energy of creed.

All the statements mentioned here are quite amazing statements of faith. By definition they cannot be my peace testimony, because they are not my life.

Testimony for early Friends was a habit that spoke to an honoring of what God required in their lives. The Declaration was never a peace testimony. It was a letter declaring Truth to the King.

I prefer to think of our values in the language of SPICES... not so different, are they, from values in other faiths? But we believe we are called to live these values, to let our lives speak, to give testimony. That is powerful.

Comment by Johan Maurer on 2nd mo. 27, 2015 at 8:10pm

R.W. Tucker's "Revolutionary Faithfulness" remains worth reading as part of this discussion.

Comment by Patricia Dallmann on 2nd mo. 28, 2015 at 9:27am

Thank you for this reference, Johan. I have read the article through once and have found it full of ideas that require reflection and integration. A second reading is in order! Since the link to Tucker's article did not appear in the QQ post of your comment (it only showed up in the email notification), I will post the link here, as I think there may be some others who would like to read this: Maurers.org/revolutionary.htm

Comment by Patricia Dallmann on 3rd mo. 6, 2015 at 11:06am

I appreciate having had the opportunity to read  R.W.Tucker's "Revolutionary Faithfulness." It is so full of ideas that I've seen played out (unconsciously) in Liberal meetings over the past few decades, and I can't begin to do justice to his thought  in this comment, or even if I wrote a separate blog piece.

However, his central idea is to present the "fundamental difference between religiously motivated revolution, and revolution in terms of a secular ideology." The secular ideology he focuses on is Marxism, which he calls "humanism in revolutionary guise." The "religiously motivated revolution[aries]" were found, of course, in early Quakerism, which was "prophetic, catholic, and revolutionary." (Tucker quotes Lewis Benson there, and elsewhere.) Tucker examines the different aims of the two types of revolutionary impetus intending to answer whether  the two can be integrated for the purpose of achieving social justice aims, a goal of value to both. (This is the point of connection with my blog post which presented various positions [some humanist, some religious] arriving at the same outward activity of refusing to engage in war.) 

One passage in Tucker's essay that I especially like follows:

"Man is the measure of all things" is a phrase the Marxists have borrowed from Protagoras. They interpret it to mean that the purpose of revolution is to put man in control of his own fate. It is impossible to overstate how basic this concept is to Marxist thinking....Christians must say "Yes, and no" to this sort of humanist concern. Man is not the measure of all things. Sanctified man is the measure of all things. That is, Christ is the measure. And it is Christ whom we seek to put in control of our fate.

And here's another near the end of the essay:

Once we offered the world a revolutionary vision. Now we offer it a tactic for solving one of its problems, a tactic that often doesn't work. Once we thought of ourselves as a people of God. Now, in Lewis Benson's phrase, "the rich suburban Friends Meeting has become merely a form of do-it-yourself Protestantism." Once we yearned to serve the Lord, Now we conform ourselves to a Philosophy of Nonviolence. Once our purpose was to be the sort of people who love other people. Now we aim to apply creative nonviolence to conflict situations.

The first Friends stormed the Kingdom as though it were the Bastille. New Christian behavioral patterns, new social and political and economic insights were spun off as a byproduct. A new Quaker movement in the same spirit would of course be pacifist, but pacifism would not be the highest principle to which everything else had to be subordinated, any more than it was to our forebears. The central principle was and should be faithfulness, private and corporate, and its corollary, an openness to the unexpected.  (R.W. Tucker)

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