The Friends Peace Testimony Reconsidered
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III
To begin to explain why, two major features of the 1660 Letter’s context need to
be underlined, one textual and one historical.
The first is that the 1660 Letter is biblical through and
through. This of course is typical of early Friends; but three biblical themes
are particularly salient in it. They are:
1. The Peaceable Kingdom (e.g., in
Micah 4)
2. The State as God’s Enforcer
(Romans 13:1-7)
3. Spiritual Warfare against
Principalities and Powers (2 Corinthians 10:3 - 5; Ephesians 6:10-18)
The second important contextual aspect is the Letter’s
historical situation: Friends in England in 1660 were a people without worldly
power, facing threats of massive persecution by the authorities. The letter to
Charles II hoped to ward off or mitigate this official persecution (and didn’t
succeed very well at that). Nevertheless it assumed and expressed attitudes
about power and social order which were soon to become important to the shape
and evolution of the testimony it was articulating.
Turning to the 1660 Letter itself, one passage in particular seems to me to best
express the basis of what could be called 1660 Quaker pacifism. Here it is:
Therefore consider these things, ye men of understanding: for plotters, raisers
of insurrections, tumultuous ones, and fighters, running with swords, clubs,
staves, and pistols, one against another; these, we say, are of the world,
and have their foundation from this unrighteous world, from the foundation of
which the Lamb hath been slain; which Lamb hath redeemed us from this
unrighteous world, and we are not of it, but are heirs of a world of which
there is no end, and of a kingdom where no corruptible thing enters.
(Emphasis added)
That is, while in a physical, temporal sense these Friends were still residents
of England in 1660; by the work of Christ’s Spirit within them, in their
essential being they were living somewhere else, namely: in the peaceable
kingdom, an entirely different spiritual reality. In
this new community/state of being, they add, warfare is undertaken in a
characteristic, qualitatively different manner:
“Our weapons are spiritual, and not carnal, yet mighty through God, to
the plucking/pulling down of the strongholds of sin and Satan, who is the author
of wars, fighting, murder, and plots. Our swords are broken into ploughshares,
and spears into pruning-hooks, as prophesied of in Micah iv. Therefore we
cannot learn war any more, neither rise up against nation or kingdom with
outward weapons, though you have numbered us amongst the transgressors and
plotters.” (Emphasis added.)
Here we see two of the Letter’s key biblical themes: the peaceable kingdom
and spiritual warfare. These themes pervade another passage, which
could be called the 1660 Quaker Peace Plan:
“. . . [A]s for the kingdoms of this world, we cannot covet them, much
less can we fight for them, but we do earnestly desire and wait, that, by
the Word of God’s power, and its effectual operation in the hearts of
men, the kingdoms of this world may become the kingdoms of the Lord, and of
his Christ; that he may rule and reign in men by his Spirit and truth; that
thereby all people, out of all different judgements and professions, may be
brought into love and unity with God, and one with another; and that they may
all come to witness the prophet’s words, who said, ‘ Nation shall not lift up
sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more,’ Isa. ii. 4., Mic.
iv. 3.” (Emphasis added.)
Let’s parse this out a bit: For these Friends, war will end when the Word of
God’s power changes enough of the hearts of men, that they will abandon physical
(or carnal) warfare, and immigrate into the peaceable kingdom. The Friends’ role
in this process is principally to desire and wait for this transformation.
The contrast between this quietist outlook and the activist preoccupations of
contemporary Friends is rather stark, and worth pausing over briefly. The modern
ethos of Quaker peace witness was stated in classically concise form by Lucretia
Mott in 1876:
“If we believe that war is wrong, as everyone must, then we must also believe that by proper efforts on our part it can be done away with.”
This outlooks adds two new features to the received witness: First, doing away with war in our time. Few if any of the earlier statements spoke of this; they implicitly presumed war’s tragic persistence, and called for Friends not to take part in it. In the 1660 Letter, the end of war is put off to a distant, likely post-historical future when “the kingdoms of this world may become the kingdoms of the Lord, and of his Christ. . . .” (This is virtually a direct quote from Revelation 11:15, which is definitely talking about the “end of history.”)
The other new feature here is the stress given “proper efforts on our part.” War, it seems, is a social problem like slavery, or like a disease such as smallpox. In a scientific, progressive society these plagues have been all but eradicated, and war is not essentially different; we’re still just working on developing the “proper efforts,” and mobilizing the necessary energy to apply them. The spirit of Quaker peace action today is, I contend, still essentially the same as that expressed by Lucretia Mott in 1876, and it is utterly different in tone and emphasis from what came before it.
But the earlier spirit and emphasis are not absent from our world today. The 1660 Letter and the later Queries remind me very much of the attitude of the stricter Amish sects. Some of these had colonies in a Pennsylvania valley near where I lived in the late 1990s. These Anabaptists carry on their lives as if they are already residents of the peaceable kingdom: they grow their crops, raise large families, trade with the “English” (i.e., non-Amish like me), attend their house church worship services, and otherwise do their best to ignore the corrupt outside world.
And one more thing: they don’t do war.
In the years of the draft, their men trekked off to
conscientious objector assignments in quiet droves–indeed, in much higher
percentages than did draft age male Friends of those decades. While these Amish
do contribute to relief projects, they are hardly peace activists; they don’t
show up for demonstrations; and the constant, Mott-like busyness of my Quaker
meeting a few valleys away would leave them cold. If they have a peace plan at
all, it would rather closely resemble that of the ancient Friends just cited,
focused on “the inoffensiveness of [their] conduct” as a model and a signpost..
IV
So far, this reexamined 1660 testimony may differ in mood and expression from
the excerpts in today’s Disciplines, but not much in substance.
But that is not the case when we consider two other excerpts, addressed
specifically to the role of the rulers who were persecuting them. Let’s hear
them:
“Therefore in love we warn you [King Charles] for your soul’s good, not to wrong
the innocent, nor the babes of Christ, which he hath in his hand, which he cares
for as the apple of his eye; neither seek to destroy the heritage of God, nor
turn your swords backward upon such as the law was not made for, i.e., the
righteous; but for sinners and transgressors, to keep them down.”
(Emphasis added.)
This mention of the ruler’s sword is a rephrasing of Romans 13:1-4. This passage
is worth repeating here in full:
“Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no
authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted
by God. Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed,
and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good
conduct, but to bad. Do you wish to have no fear of the authority? Then do what
is good, and you will receive its approval; for it is God’s servant for your
good. But if you do what is wrong, you should be afraid, for the authority
does not bear the sword in vain! It is the servant of God to execute wrath on
the wrongdoer.” (Emphasis added.)
This brief text is one of the most important biblical passages in Western
political history, repeated down the centuries as the scriptural sanction for
civil power and official use of violent force. And in the 1660 Letter, this view
of it is explicitly affirmed – not once, but twice. Here it is again:
“And whereas all manner of evil hath been falsely spoken of us, we hereby speak
the plain truth of our hearts, to take away the occasion of that offense; that
so being innocent, we may not suffer for other men’s offenses, nor be made a
prey of by the wills of men for that of which we were never guilty; but in the
uprightness of our hearts we may, under the power ordained of God for the
punishment of evil-doers, and for the praise of them that do well, live a
peaceable and godly life, in all godliness and honesty.” (Emphasis added.)
The “power ordained of God for the punishment of evil-doers . . . .” Does this
phraseology ring any bells for us today? It too comes out of Romans 13.
Well, so what? Do these two allusions make any difference to the Peace
Testimony?
Yes, I believe they do. Certainly they did in practice. And the difference did
not take long to become manifest. Only twelve years, to be more precise.
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