“Gentlemen,
For eight years I have believed war to be impractical and a denial of our Hebrew-Christian tradition. The social teachings of Jesus are: (1) Respect for personality; (2) Service the ‘summum bonum’ [Latin: ‘the highest good’] (3) Overcoming evil with good; and (4) The brotherhood of man. These principles as I see it are violated by participation in war.”
“Joshua Evans, an associate of John Woolman’s, came to his decision to refuse paying war taxes in 1756. Some told him that Christ said to pay Caesar his due, ‘but I saw through their groundless arguments, for there was nothing in the text about War.’ Moreover, Joshua Evans had always paid taxes to maintain government, ‘though not to pay for killing men, women, and children.’
He was sure his path was rightly led, because ‘when my goods have been taken it has seemed as though I had never possessed them and could in my heart love my Opposers and magnify God.’ Joshua Evans and his wife found the way of war tax resistance to be costly in the loss of possessions. Nonetheless, he cheerfully remarks: ‘I saw those who would be the followers of humble Jesus must be willing to suffer.'”
“To conform a little to a wrong way strengthens the hands of such who carry wrong customs to their utmost extent; and the more a person appears to be virtuous and heavenly-minded, the more powerfully does his conformity operate in favour of evil doers… what expressions are equal to the subject, or what language is sufficient to set forth the strength of those obligations we are under to beware lest by our example we lead others wrong.”
“Again and again in history we see that violent persons do not regard their opponents as fully human. The Greeks, it seems, waged war only against ‘the barbarians.’ For the Massachusetts Puritans, the early Quakers were ‘ravening wolves.’ African slaves were thought to be animals. Himmler repeated again and again that Jews were vermin, and vermin must be exterminated. The Nazis, in turn, were ‘mad dogs.’ […]
It is easy to be violent against those who are seen as either inhuman or non-human. The task of nonviolent campaigners, then, is to get the opponent to see them as human beings.”
“In time of conscription and war, we cannot retire for practical purposes from political activity, from attempting to influence the nation’s course, especially when there are still certain democratic channels available for doing so. The movement as a whole should not, it seems to me, become quietist and non-political. That might be merely an expression of an isolationist or escapist attitude, neither of which expresses the true spirit of community with our fellows.”
“It should be the goal of understanding to pierce first through the thin layer of superficial familiarity and then through the hard rock of differing customs, habits and beliefs to discover the real humanity that lies beneath. National, racial and religious differences have not destroyed our common humanity, but they have given it different faces which may tempt us to forget that all the things that really matter, life and death, birth and love, joy and sorrow, poetry and prayer, are common to us all.”
“Let us no longer be blinded by the dim theology that only in the far seeing vision discovers a millennium, when violence shall no more be heard in the land wasting nor destruction in her borders; but let us behold it now, nigh at the door lending faith and confidence to our hopes, assuring us that even we ourselves shall be instrumental in proclaiming liberty to the captive.”
“Today, I invite us to think about [the] Quaker quality of pacifism or non-violence, which in theory is noble and virtuous, but in reality, is profoundly difficult, and perhaps even impossible, because it usually only works until someone we love is threatened. The problem with pacifism is that by the time we reach the point it’s most needed, it’s too late. The anger is too hot, too high, the threat of harm too great. The fire department has been summoned after the building has been consumed.”
“Because of their personal experience and convictions, [early] Friends did not deny the reality of evil and of conflict. Nor did they equate conflict with evil. They were well aware of the suffering which a non-violent witness could bring in an imperfect world.
This is in contrast to those who identify peace with the absence of conflict and value that above all things. It is the latter who have given modern pacifism its bad name and have led their critics to refer to them contemptuously as ‘passivists’.
The failure to take evil and conflict into account as elements in our human condition and an obsession with the need for peace and harmony have led pacifists badly astray… Christian pacifists [are] not exempt from the temptation to sacrifice others for the sake of peace.”
“We are a people that follow after those things that make for peace, love and unity; it is our desire that others’ feet may walk in the same, and do deny and bear our testimony against all strife, and wars, and contentions that come from the lusts that war in the members, that war in the soul, which we wait for, and watch for in all people, and love and desire the good of all… Treason, treachery, and false dealing we do utterly deny; false dealing, surmising, or plotting against any creature upon the face of the earth, and speak the truth in plainness, and singleness of heart.”
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