Prophetic Quaker Witness

“The words we Friends use to describe our prophetic witness ministry—testimony and witness—are judicial terms. They come from a time when Friends believed the world to be under God’s judgment, when we believed ourselves to be witnesses for the prosecution, testifying with our words to the character of God’s judgment, presenting our testimony as God’s righteous indictment of a world fallen out of the Life, and testifying with our lives to the way God wanted humans to walk over the world toward its restoration in Christ.”

“Generally, ‘witness’ refers to our actions regarding injustices and inequalities in the outside world. Friends are said to ‘witness’ to their beliefs; our daily behavior is our ‘witness’ to the validity of the testimonies. In other words, Friends’ witness is manifested by what we do and how we act in the world outside the meeting. Friends are known to ‘live our beliefs out loud’ or ‘let our lives speak.’ Integrity compels Quakers to notice and address what goes against our testimonies of peace, equality, stewardship, simplicity, integrity, and community. That noticing and addressing — that action — is Quaker witness.”

“You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

“It is impossible that a mere man, with all his abilities, arts, and acquirements, can turn people from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, which is the very end and work of the Gospel ministry. Indeed, it must be inspired men, gifted by God, taught and influenced by His heavenly Spirit, who are qualified for so great, so inward, and so spiritual a work. Ministers of Christ are said to be His witnesses, and the credit of a witness is that he has heard, seen, or handled something true.”

“Dwell everyone in your own light, so will every one have an ear kept open to hear the bridegroom’s voice. He that is born of god knoweth the deciding betwixt the good motions and the bad, and so cometh to know the word of god in himself, and so he beareth not witness of himself, but of the father who hath sent him, and so it is no more I but the spirit of my father which speaketh in me.”

“We need both a deeper spirituality and a more outspoken witness. If our spirituality can reach the depths of authentic prayer, our lives will become an authentic witness for justice, peace and the integrity of creation, a witness which becomes the context for our prayer. Out of the depths of authentic prayer comes a longing for peace and a passion for justice. And our response to violence and injustice is to pray more deeply, because only God can show us the way out of the mess that the world is in. And only God gives us the strength to follow that Way.”

“In our world today, it is entirely too easy to witness all kinds of brutality and alienation, and yet not to bear witness. We can watch the news reports… but if all we do is watch, how is that different from voyeurism? The voyeur’s eyes are not soft, for they look in expectation of titillation, of being stimulated, of gaining something for oneself; and once that is satisfied, they look away. The eyes of a witness see the hard things and do not look away.”

“Stand up ye prophets of the Lord, for the truth upon the earth; quench not your prophecy, neither heed them that despise it; but in that stand which brings you through to the end. Heed not the eyes of the world, ye prophets of the Lord, but answer that in them all, which they have closed their eye to.”

“The prophets’ great contribution to humanity was the discovery of the evil of indifference. One may be decent and sinister, pious and sinful. The prophet is a person who suffers the harms done to others. Wherever a crime is committed, it is as if the prophet were the victim and the prey. The prophet’s angry words cry. The wrath of God is a lamentation. All prophecy is one great exclamation: God is not indifferent to evil! He is always concerned, He is personally affected by what man does to man. He is a God of pathos.”

“I think I have wasted a great deal of my life waiting to be called to some great mission which would change the world. I have looked for important social movements. I have wanted to make a big and important contribution to the causes I believe in. I think I have been too ready to reject the genuine leadings I have been given as being matters of little consequence. It has taken me a long time to learn that obedience means doing what we are called to do even if it seems pointless or unimportant or even silly.”

“We seek a world free of war and the threat of war. / We seek a society with equity and justice for all. / We seek a community where every person’s potential may be fulfilled. / We seek an earth restored.”

“Stand up ye prophets of the Lord, for the truth upon the earth; quench not your prophecy, neither heed them that despise it; but in that stand which brings you through to the end. Heed not the eyes of the world, ye prophets of the Lord, but answer that in them all, which they have closed their eye to.”

“Even in the wicked, God has a witness which is pure, which checks them often, though they do not regard it.”

“Katherine Evans, Margaret Killam, and Elizabeth Hooton were emotional, and the intensity of their public voices, which hostile contemporaries described as shouting or screaming, may well have held a residue of personal frustration or exultation; more importantly, it was an expression of the prophet’s ritually expressed anguish over the nation, mediated through the conventional language and behavior of biblical figures.”

“Many of us feel a chronic discomfort in American society, much like what young George Fox felt in his time and place. It is a sense of alienation, born of living among people who apparently feel ‘whole and at ease in that condition that was my misery.’ But that misery is the fruit of our own alienation from the witness of God in us. Living closer to that source, we can sense more easily the discomfort of others, whatever appearances they (and we) maintain.”

“To be spiritual requires me to live in such a way that it conflicts with the usual way of doing things, and so it is inevitably political. But not acting at all in the public realm is a vote for business as usual.”

“I heard that New England had made a law to put the servants of the living God to death if they returned after they were sentenced away, which did come near me at that time; and, as I considered the thing and pondered it in my heart, immediately came the word of the Lord unto me, saying, ‘Thou knowest not but that thou mayst go thither.’”

“We have often wondered whether there is anything Quakers today can say as one. After much struggle we have discovered that we can proclaim this: there is a living God at the centre of all, who is available to each of us as a Present Teacher at the very heart of our lives. We seek as people of God to be worthy vessels to deliver the Lord’s transforming word, to be prophets of joy who know from experience and can testify to the world, as George Fox did, ‘that the Lord God is at work in this thick night.'”

“Quakers view truth as something that happens, it occurs…. Truth is not a dead fact which is known: It is a living occurrence in which we participate, the guiding concern of people bearing witness is to live rightly, in ways that are exemplary…. Quakers are convinced that genuine leadings all proceed from a common ground, spring from a unity which we seek and find.”

“Our witness tells us that we need not wait for nuclear warfare to strike us before we strip our lives of… superfluities; we need not wait for events to bend our wills to unison…. We must simplify our daily routine without waiting for legislation; we must take our political and public responsibilities without having to take the negative action of being ‘against’ nuclear testing, the death-use of science, the military-moulding of education.” 

“Love was the first motion, and thence a concern arose to spend some time with the Indians, that I might feel and understand their life and the Spirit they live in, if haply I might receive some instruction from them, or they be in any degree helped forward by my following the leadings of Truth amongst them.”