What we call the peace testimony is a collection of personal and collective statements that bear witness to how our lives reflect Spirit. The collection below includes expressions of this testimony that apply to how we interact with each other.
Judy Brutz’ original 1984 research shed light on the realities of Quaker family violence. She drafted the following Lake Erie Yearly Meeting call to practice our peace testimony within our homes:
In our Peace Testimony we affirm our faith and commit ourselves not to fight with outward weapons. Our faith and our commitment come from the inward experience of Christ's transforming power and love. As we witness to the world that it is Christ's love, power, and truth which overcome human conflict in the world, we also witness that it is his love, power, and truth which overcome conflict within the family and which overcome the violence within our hearts.
Christ's truth is consistent over time. We are not led to be peacemakers in one situation and to be violent in the next. The Spirit lays upon us both the burden of being peacemakers in all life situations, and also provides the means to lighten the load. Within our strength and skills we often do not live up to the task set before us. We need to face the discrepancy between the statement of our beliefs and our words and action within the privacy of our homes. We need to learn how to accept and trust God's gracious changing in our lives.
Statement of Religious Concern, Lake Erie Yearly Meeting (LEYM) 1984
John Woolman wrote about wealth and power, and it applies....
Oppression in the extreme appears terrible: but oppression in more refined appearances remains to be oppression; and where the smallest degree of it is cherished it grows stronger and more extensive.
To labour for a perfect redemption from this spirit of oppression is the great business of the whole family of Christ Jesus in this world.
-- John Woolman, 1763
A Word of Remembrance and Caution to the Rich, p13
Origins of the query guiding this project...
Now the time of my commitment to the house of correction being nearly ended, and there being many new soldiers raised, the commissioners would have made me captain over them; and the soldiers said 83 they would have none but me.1 So the keeper of the house of correction was commanded to bring me before the commissioners and soldiers in the marketplace; and there they offered me that preferment, as they called it, asking me, if I would not take up arms for the Commonwealth against Charles Stuart? I told them, I knew from whence all wars arose, even from the lust, according to James’s doctrine; and that I lived in the virtue of that life and power that took away the occasion of all wars. But they courted me to accept their offer, and thought I did but compliment them. But I told them, I was come into the covenant of peace, which was before wars and strifes were. They said, they offered it in love and kindness to me, because of my virtue; and such like flattering words they used. But I told them, if that was their love and kindness, I trampled it under my feet. Then their rage got up, and they said, “Take him away, jailer, and put him into the dungeon amongst the rogues and felons.” So I was had away and put into a lousy, stinking place, without any bed, amongst thirty felons, where I was kept almost half a year, unless it were at times; for they would sometimes let me walk in the garden, having a belief that I would not go away.
— George Fox 1651
Journal of George Fox, Friends Library Publishing PDF pp83-84
