Actions for Peace

Response to the Iraq Resolutions

Of the Week of October 7, 2002

Whittier First Friends

Peace is a central “testimony” of the Religious Society of Friends. Along with the Church of the Brethren and the Mennonites, Friends comprise the three Historic Peace Churches. Friends, or “Quakers,” can trace this dedication to peace to the 1600’s.

As a Christ-led “Society,” we have been faithful throughout in maintaining a corporate witness against all war and violence. However, in our personal lives, each of us continually has to wrestle with the difficulty of finding ways to reconcile our faith with the practical ways of living it out in the world.

Do we support war as a way of ensuring peace? No.

We believe in “that of God” in other persons, the sanctity of life, and conflict resolution that does not involve the infliction of suffering. We are deeply prayerful for those who participate in violence—both the perpetrator and the respondent—as their violence is reflective of hatred and selfishness.

On pragmatic grounds, war does not pay—its destructiveness almost invariably leaves both the winners and losers dispirited and in disarray. In 1917 Jeanette Rankin became the U.S. House of Representative’s first female member. A dedicated pacifist, she once stated that “you can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.” 

We have no “blueprint” for peace that will spell out every step to be taken. We can claim, however, that peaceful methods of opposing evil are ones of which no person, no group, and no nation need be ashamed.

Like—hopefully—all Americans, we pray for peace.

We pray that the acts of our President and other world leaders are guided by a higher assumption.

Approved by Whittier Monthly Meeting, October 13, 2002