Examining the Quaker Peace Testimony

Contemporary Friends have a wide range of beliefs on various topics—all the more reason Adria Gulizia takes comfort in the universality of the peace testimony, a principle that stretches back to Quakerism’s roots in seventeenth-century England.

“I think that’s a beautiful thing that we still have unity in that even as our practice, our way of experiencing God and worshiping God, can be so different,” Adria says. “I’m still very much spoken to by that image of the lion laying down with the lamb and the peaceable kingdom of pounding our swords into plowshares, and instead of focusing on ways of imposing our will on others, really living into that nurturing faithfulness.”

Adria reflects further on how the values of the earliest Quakers continue to speak to us today in the latest issue of Friends Journal. Her essay, “Facing Evil, Finding Freedom,” elaborates on the Quaker view of atonement, and the belief that “freedom in the Spirit… is not metaphorical or abstract but real, concrete, and immediate.”

8 thoughts on “Examining the Quaker Peace Testimony

  1. Bewapening is verkeerd, maar een land ten strijde gaat de mensen uitrusten met betrouwbare materialen.Dat is wat ik vind en ook een goed getrainde conditie.

    Vriendengroet Ad

    (Google Translate offers: “Armament is wrong, but a country going to war is going to equip people with reliable materials. That’s what I think and also a well-trained fitness.”)

  2. I resonated so much with this testimony. I have never heard someone say that needing to be right is coming from the spirit of violence, but it’s something I have felt deeply for many years.

  3. In reference to Friends not taking oaths. I wonder if the Religious Society of Friends influenced the writing of the United States. Constitution. In that the Constitution offers one the choice between affirmation or taking an oath to office holding and judicial proceedings?

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