New Call to Peacemaking

The Biblical Basis of Peacemaking

by T. Canby Jones

The ground of peacemaking in the Bible is found in radical trust in God’s power to deliver and to save. Such trust rests first upon Israel’s experience of God’s reconciling covenant love expressed towards them in both judgment and mercy. Second, it rests upon Israel’s experience of God’s rule in the affairs of men and nations. Third, both as individuals and as a nation God’s people learned that he is faithful and does in fact deliver persons from suffering and the nation from oppression. For these reasons Israel gradually came to see that kings are not saved by great armies, nor by human strength, horses or chariots, but by radical trust in the power of God. By the time the Pharisees became the dominant religious party in Judæa in the first century B. C., the majority of the people of the nation had come to exercise such trust. They learned that by relying on God’s power to deliver, enemies are reconciled. Christians, in turn, learned both by the precept and the example of Jesus that “a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace” (James 3:18 RSV).

Trust in the Lord’s Power: From Patriarchs to Prophets

Let us now turn to the story of the development of trust in God’s power to deliver and save as a basis for peacemaking in the Old Testament. Abraham exhibited such radical trust as he demonstrated his willingness to obey God’s apparently incredible demand that he sacrifice his son, Isaac. This incident marks the beginning of a series of events in the Bible in which a person takes the risk of ultimate trust which, in turn, frees God to miraculously fulfill, reconcile and make peace.

Again, in the story of Joseph we see one of the greatest examples of reconciliation and forgiveness in the Old Testament. After testing his brothers who had sold him into slavery, Joseph forgave them, saying, “Now do not be distressed or take it amiss that you sold me into slavery here; it was God who sent me ahead of you to save men’s lives.” (Gen. 45:5 NEB) Joseph had learned to trust the power of God to save, saw it at work in his own life, and because of it could forgive and make peace with his brothers.

With Moses we find the lives and safety of many thousands being staked on God’s power to deliver. Moses was called to announce to his enslaved people the day of freedom. As Jacob Enz puts it: “With nothing more than a shepherd’s staff as a scepter of authority he called on the world’s leading monarch to stop the oppression and turn the slaves loose.” [Jacob J. Enz, The Christian and Warfare: The Roots of Pacifism in the Old Testament (Pa.: Herald Pres. 1972), p. 45.] The only weapon the enslaved people had was their willingness to obey. At water’s edge the radical trust in Moses’ voice rang out. “Have no fear,” he said, “stand firm and see the deliverance that the Lord will bring you this day…. The Lord will fight for you; so hold your peace.” (Ex. 14:13-14 NEB) He stretched out his staff, the waters made way, the covenant of Sinai and the whole future of Israel resulted.

During the years in the wilderness and the entrance into Canaan, first against the Amalekites and Jericho and later against many cities, Israel at God’s apparent command destroyed its enemies utterly, devoting all the spoil as a holy offering to Yahweh, sparing none of the enemy alive. This practice was called the cherem.

The two Old Testament events and concepts which end by capturing and sublimating cherem as we move into the New Testament are covenant and lovingkindness or chesed. Covenant is defined by Enz as “the continuing fundamental… interrelationship of person to person and to God ” [Ibid., p. 34.] He defines chesed in turn as “the responsible behavior which covenant relationship or blood relationship expects or assumes.” [Ibid., p. 36.] The essence of God’s covenant lies in his promise to be with, dwell among and sustain his people forever. Its statement in Leviticus concludes with the reminder, “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt and let you be their slaves no longer; I broke the bars of your yoke and enabled you to walk upright.” (Lev. 26:9-13 NEB)

The ten commandments are the by-laws or rules of living out the love covenant oi Yahweh. Shining out from among them is one that says, “You shall not commit murder.” In the light of Jesus’ teachings I find this commandment to be both unequivocal and binding on all who call themselves Christians.

In the stories of Joshua and the Gibeonites (Joshua 9), Gideon’s rout of the Midianites (Judges 7), and in other Old Testament stories the point is emphatically made that it is the Lord’s power which overcomes. We have only to trust in it.

A New Level of Trust

As we move into the period of the great prophets of Israel we observe a deeper understanding of God, his power, his love and the degree of trust necessary to keep faith with his covenant. Suddenly with Isaiah the cherem has come to an end. God still uses Assyria, “the rod of my anger,” to punish Israel and Judah for breaking covenant obedience, but Israel is never again commanded to cherem or holy war against anyone. Instead the people of Judah are called to repentance, obedience to covenant, and quietness and confidence in Yahweh’s power to save. “Come back, keep peace,” says the Lord, “and you will be safe; in stillness and in staying quiet, there lies your strength.” (Isa. 30:15) This same challenge to total trust in God to deliver is expressed more fully in Psalm 46, in which Yahweh makes wars to cease to the ends of the earth. By now the call has become very clear that God’s people are no longer to rely on military might but solely on God’s power.

Isaiah’s prophecy of a Messiah who would not only exercise great dominion but establish a boundless peace adds great strength to God’s demand for total trust. Not only shall this deliverer be known as “Prince of Peace” (Isa. 9:6-7), but:

…he shall judge the poor with justice
and defend the humble in the land with equity;
his mouth shall be a rod to strike down the ruthless,
and with a word he shall slay the wicked.

Round his waist he shall wear the belt of justice,
and good faith shall be the girdle round his body.
Then the wolf shall live with the sheep,
and the leopard lie down with the kid;
the calf and the young lion shall grow up together,
and a little child shall lead them;
the cow and the bear shall be friends,
and their young shall lie down together.
The lion shall eat straw like cattle;
the infant shall play over the hole of the cobra,
and the young child dance over the viper’s nest.

They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain;
for as the waters fill the sea,
so shall the land be filled with the knowledge of the Lord.
     —Isa. 11:4-9 NEB

This vision of the earth become a “peaceable kingdom” is the most important eschatological statement in Scripture of the final fruit of radical trust in God’s power to save.

The message of both prophets and psalmist concerning the things that make for peace puts full stress on complete trust in Yahweh’s power to save.

Three other bases for peacemaking in the Psalms and the prophets must at least be mentioned; they are God’s faithfulness, his forgiveness, and the restoration of the nation after exile. When a people cries out in repentance to God, he takes pity, remembers his covenant, and in limitless mercy shows compassion. This compassion of God is the basis for all human peacemaking, as shown in the 18th chapter of Ezekiel and in Jeremiah. Surely a peacemaker is a person who, rather than desiring the death of the wicked or the enemy, wishes above all that “he should mend his ways and live.”

From Second Exodus to a Kingdom of Priests

During the years of Israel’s exile in Babylonia, a great prophet arose who proclaimed that Israel had suffered double for all her sins and that in tender affection God would comfort, restore, and make straight in the desert a highway on which she could return to Judah. This triumphant return to Zion would indeed be a second Exodus, a new beginning and a renewal of the covenant. God would raise up a servant who would not only bring back the exiles of both Israel and Judah; that was too light a task. It has now become Israel’s calling to be a “light to the nations, to be my salvation to earth’s farthest bounds.” (Isa. 49:6) God, the only God of all mankind, is sovereign lord of all nations, before his majesty they are but drops from a bucket or as mere grasshoppers.

Through the efforts of Haggai and Zechariah to rebuild the temple, and of Nehemiah and Ezra to restore the walls of Jerusalem and obedience to God’s covenant, the people of Judah did in fact develop into a nation that was faithful, by and large, to the precepts of Torah. They were developing into a “kingdom of priests.” The tragedy of exile had taught the Jews that they must keep the covenant. Thus developed the Judaism in which Jesus was nurtured.

The most striking party of Judaism to arise in the period between Old and New Testaments in terms of trust in Yahweh and faithfulness to peace was the party of Pharisees. Though they first supported Judas Maccabeus in a war of religious liberation from the persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes, king of Syria, they withdrew their support when Judas Maccabeus and his successors turned to wars of political conquest. They came to feel that power, conquest, kingship and rule solely in God’s hands, and they looked forward to a divine cataclysm which would bring down all earthly kingdoms, bring history to a flaming climax, and establish the eternal will of God. In Jesus’ day the Pharisees were deeply convinced that would deliver Judaism from the oppression of the Roman conquerors by his own means without resort to the terrorist tactics or violence called for by the Zealots. The Pharisees thus brought to a climax the tradition of radical trust that God would deliver the nation from evil and oppression by peaceful means. Thus when Jesus taught us to love enemies and not to resist one who is evil, he built on a strong tradition of the Pharisees. To his teaching and example we now turn.

Jesus: Peacemaker through the Inward Covenant

The inward covenant of Jeremiah and the universal covenant of Isaiah were both fulfilled through the life, ministry, death, resurrection and preaching of peace by Jesus of Nazareth. The nature of the peace made by Jesus is expressed in this matchless passage from Ephesians:

For he is himself our peace. Gentiles and Jews, he has made the two one, and in his own body of flesh and blood has broken down the enmity which stood like a dividing wall between them; for he annulled the law with its rules and regulations, so as to create out of the two a single ‘ new humanity in himself, thereby making peace. This was his purpose, to reconcile the two in a single body to God through the cross, on which he killed the enmity.

So he came and proclaimed the good news: peace to you who were far off, and peace to those who were near by;…
     —Eph. 2:14-17 NEB

His followers call Jesus both Lord and Messiah because of the limitless love expressed through his touch, teaching and Spirit to persons in every age. Characteristic of human love is its drawing of lines, its refusing to go beyond limits set by family, community, nation or earth. God’s beloved son withholds his love and peace from no one. He saw as the physician of sinners, come to seek and save the lost, and as Son of Man to shatter all dividing walls of enmity and prejudice. Not only Jews and Gentiles has he reconciled but all races, nations and enmities of men, thereby creating both cosmically and on earth a new humanity. This limitless love and reconciling power is the New Testament ground for making peace.

Jeremiah promised a day on which God would make a new covenant. In it he would write his law on men’s hearts, be their God and they his people, and “all of them, high and low alike, shall know me, says the Lord…” (Jer. 31:31-34 NEB). In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus stressed that all obedience and right action begins with the inward intention of the heart. His apostles, both New Testament and early Quaker, proclaimed that Jeremiah’s new covenant was being fulfilled in and through the power of the Spirit experienced by them. Such new covenant power is an important basis for peacemaking in the New Testament.

Again, the apostles and early Quakers, filled with Isaiah’s vision of becoming a light to the nations so that all might know the transcendent sovereignty of the one true God, felt called, as the new and spiritual Israel, to implement Isaiah’s vision of a universal covenant of peace. This, too, is an important basis for peacemaking.

The Authority and Mission of Jesus as Basis for Peacemaking

Jews of Jesus’ time longed for a political and military Messiah who would drive the Romans into the sea and restore liberty and the covenant of Torah to Israel. Jesus was the Messiah but of a totally different sort: a servant Messiah. In his own words, “The Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve, and to give up his life as a ransom for many.” His flouting of the social and religious establishment because of his concern to reach the poor, social outcasts and sinners; his conviction that the last should be first; his entry into Jerusalem on a humble donkey; his washing his disciples’ feet and commanding them so to serve others — all these demonstrate his mission to serve. Jesus stung the pride of James and John with this rebuke, “You know that in the world the recognized rulers lord it over their subjects, and their great men make them feel the weight of authority. That is not the way with you; among you, whoever wants to be great must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be the willing slave of all.” (Mk. 10:42-44 NEB) All military establishments and almost all business corporations with their single chain of command systems fly in the face of this rebuke by Jesus. One cannot serve and be so organized. Even his disciples failed to understand that God’s servant Messiah must suffer, be humiliated and killed. Peter denied that Jesus as Messiah could thus suffer and got called Satan for his mistake. Judas hoped up to and through his betrayal of Jesus that he would at last “take the gloves off” and show his captors his “Messianic might.”

A clear understanding that the Son of Man came only to serve and that real authority is earned only through servanthood is indispensable to peacemaking. Believing the good news of the kingdom means the exercise of radical faith in the healing of the sick, casting out demons, raising the dead, excoriating hypocrisy and rejoicing that the power of Satan is being overthrown. “We live in the life and power in which the prophets and apostles lived,” claimed the early Quakers. The exercise of such bold faith and power makes for peace.

In Matthew 28: 18 Jesus says, “Full authority in heaven and on earth has been committed to me.” Elsewhere he complains, “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I tell you?” Are we ready to do what he says about peacemaking? In the epistles of John we learn that we love because he first loved us, that we must love one another, and that he who says he loves God and hates his brother is a liar. In the Gospel of John we are called to Jesus as the way, truth, good shepherd, bread, water, vine, resurrection and the life. We are exhorted to love him and keep his commandments and to do the truth.

Jesus’ Teaching on Peacemaking and Non-resistance

The two commandments, to Jove the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and our neighbors as ourselves, summed up the law and the prophets for Jesus. He restated the second, “Always treat others as you would like them to treat you” (Matt. 7:12 NEB). Who is my neighbor whom I must love at all times and under all circumstances? There is no person on this earth or any other planet, in this country or any other, in this age or any to come who is not my neighbor to whom I must demonstrate love, thus making peace.

In his Sermon on the Mount the most challenging of Jesus’ beatitudes teaches that those who suffer persecution for the cause of right should “accept it with gladness and exultation, for you have a rich reward in heaven; in the same way they persecuted the prophets before you.” (Matt. 5:12 NEB) To “rejoice and be exceeding glad” when persecuted requires radical trust that your cause is true and that God will bring it to pass.

The nub Of Jesus’ teaching on peacemaking is found in two sayings. In the name of limitless goodness and love he radically alters the law of Moses:

You have learned that they were told, “An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.” But what I tell you is this: Do not set yourself against the man who wrongs you. If someone slaps you on the right cheek, turn and offer him your left. If a man wants to sue you for your shirt, let him have your coat as well. If a man in authority makes you go one mile, go with him two.
      —Matt. 5:38-41 NEB

Peacemakers must be committed so to act. Are we willing to make the commitment?

The other saying is even more important. It lies, in fact, at the heart of all peacemaking. In it Jesus says:

You have learned that they were told, “Love your neighbour, hate your enemy.” But what I tell you is this: Love your enemies and pray for your persecutors; only so can you be children of your heavenly Father, who makes his sun rise on good and bad alike, and sends the rain on the honest and the dishonest. If you love only those who love you, what reward can you expect?… You must therefore be all goodness, just as your heavenly Father is all good.
     —Matt. 5:43-46,48 NEB

We have seen in the Old Testament that radical trust in God’s power to save resulted in deliverance from enemies. Now we are called to pray for them, love them, endure and not retaliate to their violence in order to melt, change, and win them over. Win them over to what? Not to our pride-filled violent position but to the peace of God. Only so can we be called children of our Father who is in heaven. If we respond with hatred, injustice or violence we are ipso facto no longer his  children. Once again, the goodness and love of God knows no bounds. His enemies and ours can come to know his reconciling love through our hands and hearts. Thus shall the kingdom of peace be established. These two sayings abrogate the right of a Christian to participate in or sanction war or violence for any cause. This remains true in the face of the failure of the vast majority for 1600 years to love enemies in this radical way.

Jesus as Prophet and Peacemaker

In Luke 9, as Jesus set out for Jerusalem he sent some of his disciples ahead into Samaria to find hospitality. Rejected by the Samaritans because they were Jews, James and John asked, ” ‘Lord, may we call down fire from heaven to burn them up?’ But he turned and rebuked them, ‘You do not know,’ he said, ‘to what spirit you belong; for the Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives but to save them.’ ” (Luke 9:54-56) If Jesus came to save men’s lives by means consistent with servanthood and limitless love, his followers can never resort to fire or terrorism.

In Matthew 23, Jesus prophetically denounces the Pharisees as whitewashed tombs, and charges them with all the blood-guilt of the innocent killed between Abel and Zechariah. At the end his mood shifts to lament:

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that murders the prophets and stones the messengers sent to her! How often have I longed to gather your children, as a hen gathers her brood under her wings; but you would not let me. Look, look! there is your temple, forsaken by God….
     —Matt. 23:37 NEB

Each of his prophetic judgments, whether this one or those against Bethsaida, Chorazin, etc., is motivated by their rejection of God’s limitless love which would have brought them peace.

Many with strained logic suppose that by driving the money-changers from the temple Jesus there used and justified violence. For years the embezzling money-changers had turned Yahweh’s house of prayer into a den of thieves. In prophetic anger Jesus staged a one-man protest demonstration and trashed the place. There were pigeons and sheep flying and running everywhere. Over-priced Tyrian silver coins were rolling all over the courtyard from the overturned tables. The dumbfounded money-changers made no resistance. It was a great scene! The embezzlers got put down. That day Jesus became God’s justice in action. But his action in no way justifies violence or murder. (cf. Matt. 21:12-13)

Such justification is ruled out by the incident in Gethsemane when one of Jesus’ followers sought to resist his arrest by whipping out a sword and cutting off the High Priest’s servant’s ear. But Jesus said to him, “Put up your sword. All who take the sword die by the sword.” Instead of by the sword, we shall die by the weapons we rely on: terrorism, napalm, B-1 bombers and nuclear warheads. By prophetic example, by healing, by teaching us to turn the other cheek and to love and reconcile all enemies, Jesus demonstrated the meaning of “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.” In the face of Jesus’ explicit teaching and example I find it quite incredible that those called “Christians” have found so many ways to justify hatred, revenge, and wars, many of which are aimed at the total annihilation of peoples.

Reconciliation, Peacemaking and Non-resistance in the Teaching of the Apostles

The same call to radical and exclusive trust in the power of God to repay, and the same command to love enemies is also found in the writings of the apostles. We have already noted the beautiful peacemaking passage from Paul in Ephesians 2. In 2 Corinthians 5:18-20, Paul implores people to be reconciled to God through Christ’s love as the ground of peacemaking. Paul frequently lists the hardships and sufferings he endured in order to bring his message of reconciliation and peace. In Ephesians he enlists us in the spiritual w against principalities, powers, and wickedness in government and high places. We should:

Buckle on the belt of truth; for coat of mail put on integrity; let the shoes on your feet be the gospel of peace, with all these, take up the great shield of faith. Take salvation for helmet; for sword, take that which the Spirit gives you — the words that come from God.
     —Eph. 6:14-17 NEB

Paul has here described the only weapons available to those who through radical trust seek to make peace. In 1659 George Fox trenchantly supported this conviction:

Ye are called to peace, therefore follow it…. All that pretend to fight for Christ are deceived…. Fighters are not of Christ’s kingdom for his kingdom stands in peace and righteousness, but fighters are in the lust, and all that would destroy men’s lives are not of Christ’s mind, who came to save men’s lives.. All such as pretend Christ Jesus, and confess him, and yet run into the use of carnal weapons, wrestling with flesh and blood, throw away the spiritual weapons throw away Christ’s doctrine. And such as would revenge themselves be out of Christ’s doctrine. And such as being stricken on the one cheek would not turn the other be out of Christ’s doctrine. And such as do not love one another and love enemies, be out of Christ’s doctrine…. [George Fox, Journal, J. L. Nickalls, ed. (Cambridge: University Press, 1952), p. 357.]

In Romans 12:17-21, Paul reflects Jesus’ teaching by exhorting us to “never pay back evil for evil…live at peace with all men,” and to leave vengeance solely up to God. He continues with Proverbs 25:21, ” ‘If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him a drink; by doing this you will heap live coals on his head.’ Do not let evil conquer you, but use good to defeat evil.” Both Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. relied heavily on those “coals of fire” to change the hearts and attitudes of their enemies in the nonviolent movements for justice which they led.

For centuries Romans 13:1-7 has posed a problem to those peacemakers who would rely solely on spiritual weapons and God’s power to deliver. Generations of Christians have interpreted this passage to mean that we must submit to the governing authorities and that the magistrate bears not the sword in vain toward evil-doers, implying thereby that Caesar must be obeyed regardless and further that neither Caesar nor magistrate is any longer subject to God’s law as described in verses 8 to 10:

He who loves his neighbour has satisfied every claim of the law. For the commandments, “Thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not covet;” and any other commandment there may be, are a summed up in the one rule, “Love your neighbour as yourself.” Love cannot wrong a neighbour; therefore the whole law is summed up in love.

Every magistrate is subject both to the dictates of chapter 12 on leaving vengeance up to God and to this supreme law of love to neighbor. If with his bloody sword or threat of nuclear death he flouts this law, he becomes an agent of Satan and his authority is forfeit. “The whole law is summed up in love.” By this shall both we and the magistrate be judged.

The first epistle of Peter expands Jesus’ counsel that we should exult in the face of persecution. Peter tells us the fiery ordeal we endure is normal and a source of joy since thereby we share in Christ’s sufferings. If our cause be flung back in our teeth that is proof our persecutors have been really stung by the truth. “So even those who suffer…should commit their souls to him—by doing good; their Maker will not fail them.” (1 Peter 4:19) Here again the same radical trust in God’s power to deliver is the sufferer’s prime resource and confidence. Elsewhere Peter reminds us that we are called to suffer for righteousness’ sake, “because Christ suffered on your behalf, and thereby left you an example; it is for you to follow in his steps…. When he was abused he did not retort with abuse, when he suffered he uttered no threats, but committed his cause to the One who judges justly.” (1 Pet. 2:21, 23 NEB) If we are to make peace, we must follow in his steps. In so doing we shall discover joy through the suffering which is required to sow the harvest of peace.

The epistle of James teaches us that wars arise from lusts, aggressiveness and envy. We cannot get what we want so we fight and go to war to get it. Such love of the world is enmity to God (James 4:1-4). In language reminiscent of Psalm 97:10, James gives us one of the greatest peacemaking passages in Scripture:

But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, without uncertainty or insincerity. And the harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.
     —3:17-18 RSV

All that we have sought to express about the requirements of peacemaking is summed up in this passage.

The Lamb’s War in Revelation and the Goal of the Peaceable Kingdom

Early Friends found in the book of Revelation a call to an eternal struggle against war, strife, sin and evil which was to last until the end of time. They called it “the Lamb’s war.” Revelation was written under the conviction that the Roman state was out to murder every Christian. Its theme is expressed in the triumphant “Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life.” (Rev. 2:10 RSV) The demonic Roman nation, identified as Babylon the Great, will be overthrown by an exalted kingly Christ astride a white horse, eyes aflame and armed with the sword of the Spirit coming out of his mouth with which to smite nations (Rev. 1:13-16; 19:11-16). Strangely, the king has an alter ego, a marching Lamb leading his troops against kings of the earth. These “will make war on the Lamb, and the Lamb will conquer them, for he is Lord of lords and King of kings, and those with him are called and chosen and faithful.” (Rev. 17:14) As peacemakers we are Gilled to join these faithful, as members of the army of the Lamb in this “irrepressible conflict,” to conquer by the blood or the Lamb and the word of testimony, loving not our lives “even unto death” (Rev. 12:10-11).

The weapons are spiritual. The sword, God’s saving Word, has two edges: an evangelical cutting edge bringing individuals and nations to their knees in repentance, faith and reconciliation; and a social and political revolutionary cutting edge that sees the establishment of a new radical love relationship on every level of human society as the whole purpose of history. Jesus Christ, the Lamb who was slain, has conquered death and evil and leads his faithful peacemakers in the struggle to make both things happen on earth and in history.

Barbarous nation states, of which ours is one, are involved in Vietnam- and Angola-type wars and in preparing lor nuclear overkill. They will go straight to the destruction toward which they are headed unless they can be brought to repentance and learn the ways of peace. The Lamb, whom we follow, is the Lord and ruler of history. All authority has been given to him. The responsibility to bring repentance and to make both international and interior peace lies upon Its. Join, therefore, the army of the Lamb. Away with Satan’s weapons: violence, terrorism, nuclear weapons! Trust radically in God’s power to save and deliver through the power of the Spirit.

The only thing left to ask is whether we will do it? Will we commit ourselves to obey, implement, and if necessary die being faithful in the exercise of, the precious power of the Lamb which suffers, reconciles, renews and makes peace? If so, we will live to see “the harvest of righteousness which is sown in peace by those who make peace.”

Questions

1. Do you think that the evidence presented for the development of radical trust in God’s power to deliver from oppression and evil, and the triumph of chesed over cherem in the Old Testament is convincing? Does it realistically take into account the sin, disobedience and violence found there?
2. Do you think the peaceable kingdom promised as part of the Messianic hope of Isaiah should be the focus of Christian eschatology? If it were, how would that affect our task as peacemakers?
3. Are you happy with the idea that as far as the peace testimony was concerned Jesus agreed with the teaching and example of the Pharisees?
4. Have you examined the implications of Jesus as Servant Messiah not only for our call to peacemaking but also for other aspects of his mission?
5. Do you agree that Jesus’ command to love enemies and to turn the other cheek is binding on all who call themselves Christian? Is there some sense in which this ethical demand can be understood as binding on all human beings?
6. Do you see the concept of the Lamb’s war as involving both evangelism and social renewal? Do you find the concept of the Lamb’s war a challenge to peacemaking?

Can Wars Be Just?

by Arthur O. Roberts

Can wars be just? No, Quaker collective wisdom declares, “all war is utterly incompatible with the plain precepts of our divine Lord,” no plea “of necessity or policy, however urgent or peculiar,” can release us from that Christian commitment.

This statement in the Richmond Declaration of Faith corroborates what George Fox and others said in 1660: ‘We utterly deny all outward wars…for any end, or under any pretense whatsoever; this is our testimony to the whole world.”

For over three hundred years, Quakers have rejected the weapons of war both for the kingdom of Christ and for the kingdoms of the world. Robert Barclay said that it is impossible to harmonize the command to love enemies with the command to put them to the sword—as impossible as to reconcile Christ with anti-Christ.

Early Christians were pacifist

These positions echo the words of the early Christians. Better to be slain than to slay, said Tertullian. “In disarming Peter, Jesus unbelted every soldier.” Tertullian acknowledged how governments restrain evil. He even prayed for the protection of the empire and its armies—a sovereign God could use them. But a Christian takes no part in violence. Perhaps with greater logical clarity, Origen taught that prayer and holiness alone are the actions of Christian citizens. By use of such means the Christian demonstrates how society is meant to be—and can be. He doesn’t do evil that good may come.

We don’t even watch gladiators kill each other in the arena (pre-television violence) because of moral repugnance, Athenagoras declared, how can we ever participate in killing! During the first three centuries Christians refused to accept empire as the incarnation of the word (logos) as the Stoic emperor Marcus Aurelius wanted. They said that in Christ the word was made flesh. Some lost their lives for such a testimony.

Augustine developed a just war theory

Christianity grew rapidly during that time both within the empire and beyond. By the beginning of the fourth century A. Constantine recognized the tremendous power of this minority religion (IO percent of the population). It was the wave of the future, he decided, so he made it the religion of the empire. Christians were not only tolerated, they were preferred, and, eventually, established. Christians were then in charge, with a crumbling empire on their hands. The political situation changed. In 418 Carthage was under siege by the Vandals; Boniface was trying to defend the city against the barbarians. The great Christian scholar, Augustine, advised him thus: war is not a matter of choice but of necessity; “eternal law requires the preservation of natural order.”

These are practically the words of Cicero. Cicero, a leading Roman statesman of the first century B. C, had developed a theory of war based upon natural law. War, he said, should be used for defense of “honor” and “safety.” For him revenge was a legitimate way to defend honor, War should be publicly declared after efforts at reparation failed. TO fail to prevent a wrong is as blameworthy as to commit a wrong, Cicero thought. To legalize violence (war) is to make violence preserve the state rather than to destroy it. It was a way to fight fire with fire. For Cicero, war is necessary, a basic policy: a state must preserve itself at all costs.

Although Augustine had repudiated much of the pagan world-view, he stuck with Cicero on the necessity of war to preserve the social order. So he took Cicero’s natural law theory and blended it with Christian grace. Augustine wouldn’t make war a simple matter of policy, however; its moral ambiguity troubled him. He agreed with the old Roman statesman concerning the natural order, and that legality lifts the moral burden from the individual soldier. But he refused to acknowledge the state as supreme. States will be judged of God, he said. Governments are provisional. They rise and fall like chariot wheels conveying God on his historic purposes. Rome was expendable. At this point he let Cicero down.

The Christian has dual citizenship, on earth and in heaven, Augustine reasoned. He lives under grace between the ideal and the actual. Therefore the Christian may, and indeed must, participate in warfare on behalf of the sovereign. It isn’t something to glory in, however, especially if the sovereign is unrighteous and his cause unworthy. Then it is profoundly “a matter of grief.” Nonetheless, “wrongdoing of the opposing party compels the wise man to wage just wars.”

Augustine took with seriousness the biblical mandate to live peacefully. It is possible at home, he believed, but difficult in the city and almost impossible in the larger circles of the world. Accordingly, he interpreted Jesus’ admonition to “resist not evil” to mean that one could always have an inward, spiritual attitude of peace even though he might be involved in outward violence.

Because Augustine was a prolific writer and a forceful leader, war came to be accepted within Christendom. The commingling of church and state during the Middle Ages reinforced this. Warfare became more than necessity; it became policy. The Crusades constituted a Christian equivalent to Cicero’s war for honor. Rome pagan and Rome Christian shaped the definition of patriotism in the Western world. When the empire disappeared (no longer holy or Roman) national states developed, and war as glory entered into the ethos of nationalism.

Monastic withdrawal ‘became a way by which sensitive Christians could abjure violence and live within What Augustine termed the higher order. Military exemptions for clergy constitute one legacy from that ancient separation of roles. It was a trade-off. The church permitted war for political aims, seeking only to moderate the violence by supplying rules for fair “play.” In exchange the state acted as the agent to purge out heresy.

Protestants accepted just war views

Luther and Calvin accepted Cicero and Augustine and justified war along similar lines. In the sixteenth century Luther admonished the elector of Saxony, for example, in his war against “that accursed tyrant, the Turk,” to fight courageously with reliance upon God’s help. But he also warned him not to consider his cause altogether righteous and that Of the Turk altogether unrighteous. Such presumption is a sin, and one must submit to the covering grace of God. Furthermore, the Christian ruler and his troops “may not seek honor, glory, land, booty, etc., but only the glory Of God and his name, together with the defense of poor Christians and subjects.” If wars were fought like that, God would vindicate the justice of the war and assure victory through the help of the angel Michael.

By a careful delineation of the differences between moral, ceremonial, and judicial law in the Old Testament, Calvin accepted Cicero’s “natural law” as a pagan approximation of the covenantal relationship of God with human society. All governments, he concluded, not just Christian ones, are under the same natural order. Of necessity governments use war to the proportionate level of violence and enter into alliances for mutual protection or defense. He makes it plain that “Christ by his coming has changed nothing in this respect…the reason for waging war which existed of old still persists today.” (Fox understood and rejected the Calvinist position; Christ “takes away the occasion of all war.”)

The apostles give no direction to fashioning civil government, said Calvin. Their purpose was to establish a spiritual kingdom. So Christians should not hesitate to use law courts or to enjoy the benefits of magistracy and its protection. The gospel will give Christians patience, and by their meek sub. mission to governance the number of good men will be increased. Revolt is never justified although constitutional magistrates may use their offices to put tyranny in check. Calvin does warn, however, that God is sovereign and men may have to disobey a wicked proclamation. Clearly he does not consider the call to arms wicked. He has in mind idolatry, a false claim to worship.

Here is a hard question Calvinists have faced: can a just war be a revolution? If it cannot then the Christian finds himself fighting for the rich and powerful and not fighting for the poor and the oppressed. Theoretically, the tyrant has forfeited governance by his actions, and those who overthrow him are the de facto government. Godly principles, the common good, and the consent of the governed are the cues to mark out the change in God’s anointing.

Just war is theoretically always defensive. Even in overthrowing tyranny it must embody these principles: just cause, just intent, last resort, last possible governmental authority utilized, limited and proportionate means, and a reasonable hope of success. In practice, however, just war advocacy has more often put Christians on the side of the status quo, even if tyranny, than on the side of revolution by the oppressed.

Such are the arguments which have led millions of Catholic and Calvinist Christians to espouse war as a right. The just war view has become dogma to such an extent that it is not unusual for an adult Christian, even a minister, not to have questioned it, and to be astonished at hearing alternative positions stated.

Quakers have witnessed against the just war view

Small wonder Quakers have sometimes wavered in support of their own views. It is a strong tide to swim against. But it may be ebbing.

Indeed, nuclear pacifism is now the stance for many Christians from the just war tradition. They are advising the successors to Boniface that in the atomic age wars no longer serve the interests of justice. The means is no longer limited and proportionate; there is no reasonable hope of success. Hindsight has vetoed claims of necessity which foresight pled. And now historical hindsight proposes to reject even the odds for success upon which prognosis has been made.

Historically, some Friends departed from the church doctrine about peace. For some it marked the influence of non-Quaker thought, not just spiritual immaturity. During the War for Independence revolt seemed the just way to secure the rights of free men. Necessity was pled. When the Civil War erupted, some Quakers justified participation on the grounds of necessary preservation of the Union and the freeing of the slaves. The Underground Railroad was not enough: urgency required stronger measures. World War I rallied some to make the world safe for democracy. It seemed necessary. During World War II, some Friends fought or welded ships to stop the monster, Hitler. It seemed necessary, urgent, a special (“peculiar”) case, the exception to prove the rule. The reasons were sweetened by a prosperity which lifted the burden of the Depression.

Korea, Vietnam and Bangladesh seemed to be necessary wars to some Quakers both from the standpoint of the kingdom of Christ and the kingdom of the United States. Communism must be stopped in Asia, the reasoning went, to protect the values of a free and Christian civilization. Vietnam was tactically, not morally, wrong; it was a “bad war.” But Solzhenitzen stirs within them the feeling that a “good war” may be a necessary instrument for justice and the Christians are called to participate—perhaps in the Near East.

Generally speaking, though, Quakers have acknowledged the pacifist position whether they have been able to come up to it and live by it or not. The peace doctrine has had continuity among all groups of Friends, which is rather remarkable considering other diversities of belief. But there is confusion about the peace testimony. Sometimes it is a doctrinal dead letter, or treated as an option for youth facing the draft. There is ethical confusion. Formalists stick by the discipline and say that “all wars are incompatible.” Situationalists say it depends—their politics seem to tip the scales toward either revolution or defense of the establishment. Pragmatists separate the ethic from the faith and calculate ballistics and politics in seeking the least evil means available.

Thought systems can be clarified

Theologically a Calvinist can choose the lesser of two evils easier than a Wesleyan, who believes the sanctified individual does not commit sin. Maybe theology determines the choice of the adjective used to describe an approved war, “just” or “holy.” Actions which are both necessary and good are done differently from those which are necessary but bad. The crusade is a first rather than a last resort. The holy warrior participates in the highest good, the just warrior in the lesser evil. The crusader finds the war a glorious opportunity which the plodding soldier of the “just” war endures as a grim necessity. For the latter there is no moral alternative. It’s necessary, but grievous.

The one who believes in holiness cannot countenance the situational necessity to do an evil that good may come. He rejects this. Or he tries to, but often ends up taking the crusader’s stance for wars of last resort!

Philosophical confusions result in the same authoritative Scripture being interpreted differently by pacifist or “bellicist.” Consider these three charts, figures 1, 2, and 3.

The first chart shows the model of the commingled cities, the city of God and the city of man. This is Augustine’s thought form. Existentially, one is stretched between the two cities. Hs is in the world but not of it. The middle ground is not easily surveyed or staked; the terrain varies within cultures but the ambiguities are always covered by grace. Bonhoeffer took the tragic moral choice option. He never claimed it was right, only that it was necessary. Love sometimes requires one to “incur guilt on behalf of his neighbor.”

Ambiguity isn’t very tidy. So sphere sovereignty developed. See figure 2. In this rationalistic approach each form of existence has its particular rules, elaborating and extending Calvin’s separation of the outward and the inward. Abraham Kuyper provided some of the theoretical foundations for it. Dispensationalism utilized sphere sovereignty. Basic Youth conflicts seminars make applications of it. By this system Quakers could keep pacifism private and quiet. The situations of this ethic seem preordained: private, interpersonal situations call for pacific response whereas public, international situations call for military response. Although it eased anxiety it also narrowed discipleship. Bonhoeffer rejected it as “cheap grace,” sounding a great deal like William Penn protesting Ranterism (“sinning more freely and at Christ’s cost”). To many Christians, such a “victory of the neat” is a hollow mockery Of Golgotha. They reject sphere sovereignty.

A third approach is the witness model. See figure 3. It also is a modification of Augustine’s analysis. The wheat and tares grow together, but God appoints Christians as witnesses, not reapers. Contrary to Calvin, Christ sanctifies by his Spirit so that we can follow Jesus. Nonviolence is part of the message to be proclaimed to the uttermost parts of the earth. This view recognizes human limitation. But it also acknowledges that a Christian is a new creature in Christ. It refuses to postpone the kingdom. Christ’s way is not an ideal for only a few. It acknowledges the sovereignty of God to utilize various means to human justice. Some wars are more or less just than others. Mixed motives and efforts can be used of the Lord. This can be described as situation grace. It rejects the necessity to do evil. The Christian does not have to bail God out by force of arms. It refuses to divide the ethic. Christ fulfills all covenants. This position seems to me clearest to the Christian vision of our Quaker leaders. Its ethic is based upon accepting Jesus as example as well as Savior—accepting Jesus Christ as Lord.

Jesus rejected the just war view

The temptations of Jesus provide clues to our discipleship. Jesus rejected economics as a sovereign science. Man does not live by bread alone. Economic solutions eventuate in some kind of lifeboat ethics by which some people are sacrificed for others and the haves justify their possessions with war as a last resort. Jesus refused this option.

Secondly, Jesus rejected religion as sovereign; that is, he rejected the religious solution which would maintain cultic power by presumptive and spectacular claims which lack integrity (“leap from the temple”). Inevitably the religious solution calls upon violence to defend its status quo.

Jesus also rejected the political solution; such would mean falling down at the feet of Satan. He would not gain ascendancy using the methods of the world. He rejected Cicero’s option of keeping the state (or the revolt) alive at any cost. I rejected the zealot option.

The three temptations would subordinate obedience to necessity. The principalities and powers would enthrone nomics, religion or politics as supreme. They would treat as ends what are only means. If economics constitutes the end, then eating justifies whatever is required to continue it. If religion is the end, protecting the forms constitutes the necessary means. If political ends are supreme, then anything which keeps the state going is justified. Jesus was tempted as we are, yet without sin. Our Quaker movement is perfectionist. We claim that through his death and resurrection we are enabled to live above sin. We need not be taken by temptations. He baptizes us with his Holy Spirit.

Christian revolutionists see Jesus as a way to get food for the poor. They are tempted to use violence. Christian managers of society see Jesus as a way to utilize stewardship for the good of all. They are tempted to use violence. It is the Quaker conviction that as Jesus rejected the way of violence, so must we.

Jesus rejected the deification of ideas. There is no ideology—no religion—worth killing people for. Jesus has done the dying. He is the high priest and the atoning sacrifice. More than we like to admit, many people feel that Christianity is made safe by killing heretics—political or otherwise—if persuasion fails. It is messy, they think, but necessary. But Jesus Christ has done the dying, as the book of Hebrews indicates, and no more blood sacrifices are needed.

Jesus rejected the political option, and yet Satan as an angel of light, pleading necessity, tells Christians to make the circle of loyalty smaller, to keep the neighbor within the tribe, the country. Jesus was rejected by the Jews and Romans because he refused to make the circle smaller.

According to Quakers, Jesus did not minimize the importance of values. Rather he taught a new way by which people could relate economically. This is the servant role. He taught a new way to be religious, through fellowship; a new way to be political, government under the rule of Christ. The resurrection is a vindication that Jesus’ way is right. The power to accomplish this way is the Holy Spirit, God’s gift. What did Jesus say to the disciples after the resurrection? He talked about the kingdom Of God.

The Holy Spirit is given to bring into reality a new form of human relationship. It brings together those who are far off and those who are near—through the blood of Christ. Joel’s prophecy is fulfilled: the kingdom belongs to everyone. Jesus is at God’s right hand: his way is the power God approves. No army needs to be raised up. Romans 13 directs would-be revolutionists not to rebel with arms; there is a better way, the way of love, which the latter verses of that Chapter so eloquently define. Vengeance belongs to God. The judgment will sort things out.

Pentecost, not Pentagon, affirms the Quaker vision. As early Friends said, “The spirit of Christ by which we are guided is not changeable, so as once to command us from a thing as evil and again to move us unto it; and we certainly know and testify to the world, that the spirit of Christ, which leads us unto all truth, will never move us to fight and war we cannot learn against any man with outward weapons…war any more.”

Summary

In summary, Quaker statements of faith have consistently and knowledgeably rejected the just war position. This theory received definitive formulation by Augustine after Christianity had become the established religion of the Roman empire and at a time when civilization seemed threatened by barbarism. The theory rested heavily upon the Stoic philosophy of Cicero. Prior to the fourth century A. Christianity had been generally pacifist. “Just” war sometimes became “holy” war during periods of the Middle Ages. The theory was reformulated by Luther and Calvin and became as basic to mainline Protestantism subsequently as it had been for Roman Catholicism.

Although the just war theory hedges violence by various moral restraints, such as good cause and the exhausting of other means, history has generally reversed the verdict of just war given at the time of crisis. The theory is realistic about sin, however. It also expresses the weakness of utopian idealism, and it affirms divine grace. It is deficient about the provisions of atonement in Christ; it compartmentalizes the Christian ethic and minimizes the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit.

Support for war involves inadequate models of biblical interpretation. Under Calvinistic influence, Quakers have sometimes pled necessity for wars or revolutions which seemed to be means toward justice. Doctrinally, however, Quakers have held that Jesus’ way of peace is incumbent upon his followers. Such a view receives support from a study of the temptations of Jesus. He rejected the “occasions” for which war is rationalized as just: economic, religious, or political necessity.

NOTE: In addition to basic church history sources, have utilized Arthur F. Holmes’ useful compendium of just war documents, War and Christian Ethics (Baker, 1975).

Questions

1. Do you consider the Quaker peace testimony as doctrine or as an ideal to be striven for?
2. Is there a danger that the Quaker position of rejection of all war fails to acknowledge practical peacemaking by non-pacifists?
3. Give examples of government which is nonviolent. Can this apply nationally? Internationally?
4. Do pacifism and holiness belong together?

Christ and Caesar

by Mark Hatfield

Selected excerpts from Between a Rock and a Hard Place by Mark O. Hatfield. copyright 1976. Used by permission of Word Books, Publisher, Waco, Texas.

Christ’s witness spoke powerfully to his disciples about the political, social, and economic tensions they confronted in their age. His words and teachings, I have come to believe, are no less relevant to similar questions raised in our world today.

[Of Christ’s many teachings and experiences on earth, it might be well to begin with the] confrontation With the Pharisees and others over the question of paying taxes to Caesar. [The Pharisees devised a trap for Jesus with their question about paying taxes to the Roman Emperor. He pointed out that it was Caesar’s inscription on the coin and said,] “Then pay Caesar what is due to Caesar, and pay God what is due to God.” (Matt. 22: 15-22)

Crucial to the passage is the notion that what is due Caesar, and only what is due him. should be. rendered back to him. According to those who study the original Greek of the New Testament, the word chosen by Jesus, translated as “render” or “give back,” means the handing over of that which is already owed as a debt. The implication is that there is a legitimate obligation which government can ask of its citizens, but one with its boundaries sharply circumscribed. We are to give to Caesar only that which is due as his. Then, we are to give to God all that is due as his. And what is that? A few verses later, Christ makes it clear in summarizing the Law: ” ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind.’ That is the greatest commandment. It comes first.” (Matt. 22:37-38)

Our heresy today comes in believing that the spheres of Caesar and God are equal, or that they can never make conflicting claims on the Christian. That is not at all the meaning of Christ’s words. In asking for a denarius, he asked for a coin which bears the inscription of Caesar. According to rabbinic instruction, possession of such a coin was not allowed; because of the graven image, it acknowledged a form of idolatry. Christ exposed the hypocrisy of the Pharisees by requesting such a coin, which at least some in their number carried, and asking pointedly whose image it bears. The coin, bearing Caesar’s image and claimed by him, should be rendered to him. But the person, bearing the image of God, and claimed by him, should be given over wholly to his service.

In his message and ministry Christ proclaimed the coming of the Kingdom of God. This meant a radically new order of affairs, marked by repentance and a change of heart from within, and the creation of new ways for relating and serving corporately, in society. This constituted a new “Kingdom,” which had a spiritual reality, but which would begin to take concrete shape and form within society. Those who followed Christ were called to him and to this Kingdom of God as their first allegiance and loyalty. The existence of those committed to building this Kingdom and living according to the way of its Lord threatened the political order because it questioned the fundamental assumptions of established power and authority.

The Kingdom of God, though, was not to be identified with the seizing of political power, and it was not to be ushered in through any form of supposedly righteous violence and war. Here is where Christ parted company With the Zealots. Their messianic expectations, and those of many Israelites, visualized a politically triumphant Messiah who would be led by the power of the Lord to drive out the oppressive Romans and establish God’s Kingdom as a nationalistic theocracy ruling over them. But Christ’s proclamation of the Kingdom of God was far more radical; it came only through acts Of unconditional, self-giving love—love that reached even to one’s enemies, and that called for ultimate surrender of the self for others.

In the Garden of Gethsemane, Christ gave himself over into the hands of sinful men. At first, some disciples resisted violently, only to receive Christ’s reprimand, “All those who take up the sword shall perish by the sword.” (Matt. 26:52) Then the disciples fled in disarray and confusion; a few hours later they denied that they ever knew him.

Christ’s resurrection proved his reign over all earthly powers and authorities (Eph. 1:18-23; Col. 2:15).

To understand the full impact of these truths, we need to grasp what Paul meant when he referred so frequently to the “powers” of the world. Basically, this refers to all those ideologies, forces, structures, and institutions that lie at the groundwork of a society or a culture, giving a sense of corporate cohesion.

Paul identifies the powers which rule over human life outside of Christ as the State (Rom. 13:1), customs and laws (Gal. 4:1-11), time and space (Rom. 8:38), life and death (Rom. 8:38), law and order (1 Cor. 2:8), philosophy and tradition (Col. 2:8,14-16) and religions and ethical rules (Col. 2:20-22). When Paul wrote to the Christians at Colossae he addressed himself to the forces which were threatening to entice them away from Christ. The Colossian Christians, for instance, were struggling with the powers of human tradition and public opinion, with forces that would make them observe certain cultural, legalistic codes of behavior.

In New Testament perspective there are only two kinds of people, regenerate and unregenerate. Christ reigns over humanity’s disobedience through the “powers,” such as the State, side by side with the order of “redemption,” where Christ rules in and through the obedience of his disciples. The State operates on principles which unregenerate man can understand and accept: power, coercion, violence. The New Testament accepts this condition of structured disobedience as necessary reality, but in no way gives divine sanction to all its actions. The orderliness in society sustained by the State is to insure that the Church can live and carry on her work. In this way, the State is God’s servant, though the State does not realize nor accept this” and must be continually reminded. Further, God’s providence has designed it to function for the good of the people by establishing justice and restraining evil, a modest but essential role.

These principles are further developed in the New Testament passage most frequently turned to, and almost as frequently interpreted out of context, in discussing the Christian’s relationship to the State, namely, Romans 13:1-17. Those verses cannot be properly understood unless they are read as one section of a coherent body of teaching on the subject of Jove overcoming evil, which begins with Romans 12:17 and extends through Romans 13:10.

The teaching of this Scripture is that for the Christian, love overcomes vengeance; evil is never to be repaid by evil, but overcome by good. The Christian is called to sacrificial, unconditional love of others, and that includes love of enemies. Further, the “law” that the Christian is to follow is summarized and satisfied wholly by love of God and of one’s neighbor—love of all humanity. The final and uncompromised claim on the Christian’s life, then, is the obligation of such love.

As Paul writes to the Christians in Rome, the capital of the empire, the question obviously occurs whether this same attitude applies to even those pagan rulers in power over them, such as Nero. Paul says that it does. Rulers, regardless of any apparent evil, are not exempt from this command of love.

Under such an ethic, is evil never to be punished? Does not justice include the notion that persons are to be held accountable before society for their actions, particularly actions which are harmful or destructive of others? Paul recognizes that there is such a need and that civil government performs this task. Whether it does so fairly and justly, or abusively and oppressively, and what the consequences are, is a question not dealt with in this passage, but addressed elsewhere in the Bible. The point Paul makes is that seeking such justice in a world where sin still reigns is a legitimate function of the State. Insofar as that task involves repaying evil with some other form of evil, though, the Christian can have no part; his or her encounter with Christ reveals the universal truth that evil is never overcome with evil, but rather with love.

It is important to note that here Paul speaks idealistically about the responsibilities of the State and its intended purpose as a “servant of God.” He does not address the truth made all too obvious in Paul’s own life that the State, since it is also in rebellion, will commonly act in ways not in keeping with its appointed end. Paul’s frequent imprisonment by the State provides several cases in point.

The word used by Paul which we sometimes translate as “obey” implies a reciprocal obligation. In Ephesians 5:21, Paul uses the same word in saying, “Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.” This does not mean an uncritical obedience to an authority’s every command, but rather, a spirit of mutual reciprocity. The original Greek means that the Christian should be willing to recognize a legitimate sense of subjugation to earthly authority, just as the State is to be subject to its limited purposes for humanity in God’s ordering of all creation. In the final end, and in the workings of God’s providence which naturally transcend our understanding, the actions of the State, including its evil, are subject to God’s rule over history. In Christ, the ultimate power Of the State over humanity has been subdued and defeated. He now reigns over all, and the Christian can live in that reality.

The first verses in Romans 13 are frequently cited out of their full context as proof that government is a divine institution, or that the authority of government should always be unconditionally obeyed. My own view is that such a perspective is not sufficiently grounded in Scripture, and in actual experience has fostered great naiveté and unwarranted acceptance of the corporate sin of government. It is hard to believe that the government of Hitler’s Nazi Germany, for instance, was divinely instituted and mandated, or that the same holds true for the autocracy of the Soviet Union. It is harder still to believe that God divinely institutes certain governments but not others.

I do not pretend, in any way. to be a theologian; yet it seems obvious to me that Christians who, on the basis of Romans 13, look to government as a divinely instituted source Of God’s authority are making a grave biblical mistake, misinterpreting Scripture and harming their Christian witness. Rather, we must never lose sight of the responsibility to call government into judgment and account to see that it nurtures justice, as defined biblically, Also, the Christian must always view government as part of a fallen order and as motivated by its own pretensions and striving for power. As such it must never be the final authority for the Christian; rather, the revelation of Jesus Christ, and his triumph and love, must be seen as the final judge and authority over all government.

The full thrust of Paul’s teaching in Romans 12:17 to 13:10 is that the mandate of love transcends that of conditional obedience to other earthly authority; our unqualified obligation to love. How ironic it is that Christians have commonly used excerpts from this passage as proof of their obligation to cooperate with a government in acts of vengeance, injustice, oppression, violence, and war!

The teachings in Romans 12-13 (and the similar passage in 1 Peter 2:13-17) in no way exhaust the New Testament’s teaching on the State, a fact frequently overlooked by Christians. The life of the New Testament Church, as recorded in Acts, gives practical examples of how Christ’s apostles and the State Of their time interacted. In Acts 16, for instance, Paul claims his Roman citizenship as a means of demonstrating the injustice that has been done to him. He and Silas had been flogged and thrown into jail without any trial, contradicting their legal rights. It can be said Paul was Witnessing to the State by demonstrating the failure of its purported standards of justice and insisting on a redress of this grievance.

When Paul wrote Romans 13 in about A. D. 57, the Roman Empire and Nero had not yet begun their serious persecution of the Church. That was unleashed a few years later, in A. D. 64. Even so, Paul had referred to the authorities as acting as instruments of Satan after his experience in Thessalonica (1 Thess. 2:14-18). This theme of the demonic character Of the State emerged with force during the history Of the early Church and the writing of the New Testament. We find its culmination in the book of Revelation, where the State is pictured as the “beast from the abyss,” possessing the full powers of Satan and doing his work in the world.

It cannot be argued that this description of the State is limited to the Roman Empire of that time, any more than Paul’s words in Romans 13 apply only to that empire. Rather, Revelation completes the biblical understanding of the State and is applicable throughout history. Thus, the beast in Revelation symbolizes the demonic element, with its potential for ascendancy, in any and all worldly power. Should that picture seem startling and hard to accept, let us remember the temptations of Christ in the desert. Satan’s offer to give to Christ the kingdoms of the world in exchange for his worship of Satan implies that they were in Satan’s power to give over. Yet we know that Christ triumphed over Satan, and over the powers of this world, with his redeeming death and resurrection. So the final demise of such satanic power is certain, but it is only completed at the end of time.

I think we can summarize certain basic biblical principles which should guide the Christian in his or her relationship to any State. First, there is the clear scriptural admonition, mentioned often, to pray for those in authority. Such prayer, in my view, should recognize that the rulers of this world find themselves faced, usually unconsciously, With the temptations of power resulting from the spiritual warfare raging in the world. I know such talk sounds foreign and strange to our modern, secular culture; yet I am convinced that such biblical insight has a deep relevance to this era. Those in positions of authority need our prayers not only for wisdom in facing difficult decisions, but also so that the State may resist those cunning and persistently powerful temptations which would make it an instrument of evil, rather than let it seek its intended and humble place in the divine order of things.

With prayer goes a certain respect for those holding authority, mentioned by Paul and similarly by Peter (1 Pet. 2:17). This respect, however, is rooted in the proper and intended mandate that should be sought by those who hold earthly authority. Often, the Christian may see this mandate far more clearly than the one in authority, and hold it up with greater seriousness. Such respect in no way prohibits criticism and rebuking of those individuals in their misuse of authority. John the Baptist and Christ, as well as the prophets, give us clear examples.

Then, the Christian is to obey the laws of government, so long as this does not entail any disobedience Of Christ, the Lord and King.

The principle of paying taxes is clearly accepted by the New Testament, for the government has valid and important functions to perform. However, whether specific portions of tax might be withheld from the government for activities which the Christian cannot condone could still be an open question not totally answered from Scripture; either side of such an argument could offer strong points from the Bible and Church history.

Next, the Christian is called to responsible disobedience of the government if and when obedience would entail disobeying God. a principle set forth clearly by both teaching and example in the Bible. However. the Christian is still personally accountable for such actions and must willingly suffer the consequences inflicted by the State. This part of the Christian’s witness is evidence of faith in the lordship of Christ, and for the glory of the Lord.  

Finally and most importantly, the Christian community, by its very being, is called to witness to the State with prophetic power. From the Old Testament through the New, we see that God, speaking first through the prophets and then in Jesus Christ, rules over history as Lord, speaking his Word to the world. That Word shatters the myths and pretensions of earthly power, calling them to repentance, and holding forth the understanding of their true identity. This is how the Word addresses us today, in our individual hearts and in the corporate world. As we proclaim and embody its life, we inevitably witness to earthly authority — to the State.  

Questions

1. What is your understanding of Jesus’ position on obligations to government?
2. What, in Paul’s view, are the legitimate functions of the State?
3. To what extent should the Christian submit to the authority of his or her government?

 

The Global Nuclear Threat and the Quaker Witness 

by Charles A. Wells

Basic to the religious philosophy of the Society of Friends is a belief that our peace witness becomes most effective when directed toward creating conditions that remove the causes of war. Friends have been actively engaged in promoting understanding and reconciliation between adversaries, both real and potential, with far more success than is generally realized.

We should be aware that our efforts make the greatest impact on the public conscience when we must overcome barriers to make our witness. barriers created by prejudice and distrust, sometimes even hatred. Quakers have endured much in times past, many have been imprisoned. some have died. Indeed, it is when our testimony and acts of love are caught in confrontation that our witness may be most telling because it “makes the story” in newsrooms—and through those channels reaches deeper and wider into the public conscience.

We have had a recent example of this in the American Friends Service Committee’s postwar reconstruction program in North Vietnam. That the U. S. government had sternly forbidden such efforts drew attention, doubtless prompted millions who saw the press reports to choose sides subconsciously. After that, even casual observers would invariably watch for the outcome.

These observations are appropriate because the major issues concerning war and peace during the months and years ahead are all going to be so formidable that they cannot be dealt with unless factual, well-directed means to meet the issues head-on. Our small presence and quiet voices will not even be noticed unless we brave direct confrontations before the barricades of diplomatic and military power. If our testimony is informed, well-timed and accurately directed, the post-Vietnam years will be a most propitious period, for here the weaknesses of the whole military concept of power have been mercilessly exposed. If we hit the right key with our ram’s horn, walls will come tumbling down.

Militarism today bears little resemblance to its own past. The resources of the earth are dwindling to a shocking degree, hence we have inflation, with war the most costly and wasteful human enterprise. The greatest threat to the earth’s environment is the pollution of the atom, especially as employed in war. For war is no longer a question Of who can win; it is now a question of who, if any, can survive. With the proliferation of tactical atomic arsenals, this becomes more real every year. (Tactical nuclear weapons are small atomic charges to be used as artillery, rocket fire, etc. Military experts freely concede that the acceleration from these small nukes to the giant missiles will be impossible to control.)

Military technology is now so scientifically complex and far removed from ordinary levels of knowledge that the public is becoming numbed toward the dangers and alienated from hope. The fact that many now look on peace efforts with an indifference bred of despair is one of the barriers we must overcome.

We can be encouraged, however, by the growing number in Congress who are disturbed about these developments, especially as inflation compels a more critical scrutiny of swollen military budgets. Proposals for new weapons are now thoroughly examined by concerned legislators and their trained staffs something that wasn’t true even two years ago.

Another favorable factor is the indictment of our military by their own monstrous miscalculations and disastrous failures in Southeast Asia. To push further would have entangled us with great China in an ever more costly debacle, as most military analysts now freely concede. When the alternatives are to risk the threat of a global nuclear war or suffer the frustrations of fighting a limited war, modern armaments are demonstrated to be completely futile in achieving political objectives. The U. S. military know this, that they cannot invade and profitably possess any country with today’s weapons. They can only destroy. Neither the U. S. nor the U. S. S. R. is known to have any scenarios of armed conquest directed toward the other—only “defense” through mutual annihilation. This is an open fact that none disputes.

The record of Vietnam has brought this change and provides opportunity for arousing the public conscience on the necessity for peace far beyond any previous era. If this period passes without the opportunity having been used to the full, our efforts at peace-building will seem vacuous and futile indeed.

There are three major aspects of present U. S. military policy that must be recognized. The first we’ve already touched on briefly—that inflation is making many weapons systems prohibitive in cost. Beyond this is the realization that supremacy in arms can no longer be maintained in any major nation; and that the threat of revolutions, including communism, cannot be resolved by force of arms.

These three problems are no longer in the realm of speculation—they are recognized as facts by all scholars and historians, though the military may do so but reluctantly.

Because of world-wide inflation. the arms race is now almost as destructive to the wellbeing of humanity as war itself, though the pace is slower. The worsening plight Of our urban society cries out to us that we can no longer afford $100 billion-plus in annual military expenditures, let alone the $150 billion the Pentagon plans by 1980. The world cannot afford the $240 billion spent by all nations each year on war preparations in the face of stark hunger mounting ever more fearfully among burgeoning populations. Global catastrophies will overtake us if we do not grasp this truth and act upon it soon.

Since our military spending is aimed chiefly at defending ourselves against communism, there’s an irony here of historic proportions: The economic deterioration caused by excessive military spending makes a drift toward Marxist state controls inevitable, for, while capitalism must have peace and orderliness to prosper, Marxism is a revolutionary force that prospers in chaos and disorder. George Kennan. distinguished veteran diplomat and creator of the U. S. containment policy, in explaining why our efforts to curb communism have failed, relates how the concept of containment was originally intended to function largely through economic aid, with military assistance a minor factor. Instead, the policy was turned on its head—our massive military containment effort with minor economic assistance resulting in tyrannies that bred revolutions or worse, as in Vietnam.

Supremacy in arms—once a criterion of American policy—can never be regained. The advent of nuclear missiles ended that, as emphasized by nearly all great nuclear physicists who created the atomic age and the science of missilery. Both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. are now capable of wiping out the other’s industrial society in sixty minutes or less. What supremacy can there be in that? None of the new sophisticated missile systems alters this reality. This overkill capacity can only move the moment of awful truth a few seconds closer and churn the mountains of rubble repeatedly in ghastly futility. As critics of nuclear strategy have often asked, how dead can you get?

The Pentagon unwittingly introduced the most fitting acronym for all this a few months ago by labelling the present balance of nuclear weaponry as Mutual Assured Destruction. When Washington wits began to speak of it as MAD, such references were hastily deleted from subsequent Pentagon news releases.

Parity has replaced supremacy in any factual analysis of the arms race. The pressing point here is that our armed forces, long accustomed to supremacy, are Still pretending they can maintain it. The Russians—more realistic, having suffered more extensively and intimately the tortures of modern are openly committed to achieving parity, seeking to war—match U. S. military effectiveness wherever we are in competition. Again nearly all the leading nuclear physicists are convinced that only parity is attainable with nuclear arsenals the parity of death.

The revolutionary movements we are witnessing .in our day are all but immune. to. controls by military force. Both the Korean war and the Southeast Asian conflict were directed against revolutionary movements, the first ending in a stalemate, the second in an astonishing disaster. When the Chinese swarmed down upon our isolated battalions at Yalu River, we were given a glimpse of what might have happened on an enlarged scale if the newly elected President Eisenhower had not been able to force a compromise agreement at the 38th parallel.

A revolutionary war is not a traditional war because in such a conflict it is ideas, not armies, that need to be confronted. Gen. Matthew Ridgway, in a book about his Korean war experience, warned that no amount of firepower and bombing could stop the long overdue revolutions in Asia, or for that matter in Latin America or Africa.

The mention of Gen. Ridgway reminds us of an important asset in peacemaking which has not been adequately employed: the opinions of military men of distinction who have acquired enlightened convictions on these matters out of their own experience. Indeed the immeasureable tragedy in Southeast Asia was foreseen by numerous prominent figures in uniform whose careers had been spent in the Pacific theater.

Gen. Ridgway wrote his book to warn his colleagues as to the nature of the spreading conflict in Vietnam. Gen. David Shoup, four-star general of the U. S. Marines and top commander in Vietnam until escalation, scathingly denounced the American invasion. Admiral Arnold True, American naval hero in the battle of Midway, did likewise, as did Gen. James Gavin who was in charge of strategic planning for the Pacific in the 1950s. All these and many others of authority opposed escalation. There was even Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s oft-quoted dictum in retirement—that anyone who believes we should put our armies on the mainland of Asia ought to have his head examined. Yet the avalanche of our machines and men continued into the morass of Indochina.

The earnest views of all these—almost entirely unknown to the ill-informed general public—should have been marshalled and used to the full during the days when escalation was being stealthily introduced. Their statements were circulated among peace organizations but largely ignored elsewhere. It is not an overstatement to say that, had the words and convictions of these top military men been adequately publicized, the tide of false patriotic fervor sweeping us out into the China seas might have been turned by the public debate this information would have engendered. As it was, only by flagrantly dishonest manipulation and deception of the public was escalation achieved. (This was made fully evident in the Pentagon Papers.)

In evaluating our peacemaking strategies, the above is sufficient to demonstrate how we may fail in getting the most potent arguments and truths before the public. Obviously, whatever we’ve done wasn’t enough, and the issues in the future will be so desperately threatening that we must do more and do it more ably and effectively.

Consider this: The thousands of demonstrators who may walk the streets of Washington and Other cities during days of decision never become visible or a pertinent influence to 99 percent of the public, or even to many Friends. I do not downgrade the importance Of demonstrations in strategic locations, particularly those peaceful vigils in sight of our lawmakers. But how can we back up the witness of those whose testimony is expressed in this way?

Is there any method by which we can reach more of the public, accost the millions of uninformed and indifferent? There are not only other ways, but there is at least one way in which all who are concerned can participate. For various reasons, many feel they cannot join in the pilgrimages, the long walks, the hours of vigil, the carrying of banners. What can these others do?

Each individual who goes to Washington or to the nearest major city on a peace mission must spend money. If the trip is only 350 miles away, to San Francisco, Chicago or Washington, and if only two days and nights are devoted to the effort, each person must spend at least $50, many much more. A group of twenty or so young Quakers journeyed to Washington from the Midwest by chartered bus on a four-day peace excursion—each spending about $130. But that totals for all of them nearly $3,000. Suppose twenty or thirty other concerned Friends wanted to share this responsibility of witnessing but couldn’t take the trip—or felt unsuited for that task by inclination, health, age, or other duties. If the same number of other Friends would contribute. the same amount each, the sum raised would cover the cost of display ads in the press to publish a peace message and to clarify issues with facts. Thus even the stay-at-homes can help reach hundreds of thousands.

If such a plan were implemented to back up every demonstration and vigil—with 200 or 300 Friends on each peace journey supported in other ways by an equal number of equally committed Friends at home contributing amounts similar to the money spent by the pilgrims, we might finance sizeable and impressive announcements in the largest dailies and news weeklies. Millions would see these messages, feel the impact of our peace testimony.

But we must present our messages in fresh language, in that aren’t worn out, bolstered by facts that are startling yet appealing, surprising but unanswerable—to break through the barrier of public indifference to traditional peace talk, so that the public will listen.

These messages will require all the skill and heart our Society possesses. But within our membership are many experienced advertising professionals, designers, layout artists and writers capable of making these display ads models of softspoken but penetrating power. Moreover, once underway, there are many outside the Society who would join in supporting such projects with their talents as well as their finances.

American defense spending now totals about $400 annually per capita, nearly $2,000 per year for a family of four. Is not the hour ripe for such an initiative?

Another program that is already underway: A few colleges and universities have accredited courses on peace subjects and international disarmament, peace-building and the cultivation of international cooperation, or international law and justice. In view of the realities as outlined briefly above, the introduction of such courses on many more campuses would be justified and would soon enlarge the number of those capable of providing trained leadership for peace-building in their communities and the nation. Again, this would be on a professional level, and Friends have many qualified and creative minds in educational circles to promote such efforts by careful research and organization so that the programs are presented specifically rather than abstractly as so much peace advocacy is done.

These suggestions are meant only to indicate that there are new paths toward peace, once our insights and visions have been renewed. This will require the best thinking and the most mature abilities in the Society of Friends, and the most profound spiritual searching by all of us.

Questions

1. What are some favorable factors which will now make a Quaker peace testimony heard?
2. Discuss the observations of military men concerning U. S. participation in Asian conflicts.
3. What are some practical ways Quakers can let their stand be known?

World Organizations and Peace

by Barrett Hollister

The League of Nations collapsed in World War II, and the United Nations is judged by many to be tottering. Our two greatest experiments with world organizations are called failures. What positive possibilities are there in present international peace structures?

Friends were represented in Geneva at the League and since the founding conference of the U.N. have put international representatives at meetings of the General Assembly and other major U.N. bodies. Through resident representatives in Geneva and New York, the two chief headquarters of the U.N., Friends have participated in U.N. deliberations and observed closely many trends and details in the work of the chief participants: national government delegates, members of U.N. secretariats, and non-governmental observers.

Friends participation has been both supportive and critical (as have been Friends relationships with national governments and their representatives in many situations—emergency relief, missions, community development, and others). The U.N. experiences are the basis of our assessments of world organizations—their services, problems, and trends.

Functions of International Organizations

A global institution such as the U.N. has many differences from regional ones, for example, the Organization for African Unity (OAU). A limited function Children’s Fund (UNICEF) contrasts in other ways with multi-purpose bodies like the U.N. itself or the Organization of American States (OAS). All Of the above are intergovernmental bodies. In addition we have hundreds of inter-nation, private agencies from the International Chamber of Commerce, International Committee of Scientific Unions, and World Peace Council, to the Friends World Committee for Consultation. More than 600 of these non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have established consultative status with one or more of the agencies in the U.N. system. While in this chapter we write primarily about the U.N., it is very important to think of it as central to the extensive network of inter-nation and national organizations. The U.N. is the most extensive in range of functions; its members include almost all independent countries; and its working relations with the other intergovernmental and NGO units make it in many ways the most important.

The U.N. was established and for many years has functioned as a Western-style organization with many of the appearances of a government. Civil servants, judges, a parliament-like General Assembly, and other features led many to think of it as a kind of world government, which it is not. Domination by Western nations, particularly U.S.A., was quite satisfactory to Western peoples, including most Friends. In the past decade, however, the world has changed the U.N. into a kind of negotiating caucus in which “West European and other” nations no longer are dominant, but parallel to those of four other regional groups: Latin American, Asian, African, and East European. With less than 25 out of nearly 150 votes, Western interests must have merit for others and win allies that were unnecessary in the 1940s and 1950s.

1. Crucial actions. At many points nations have found the U.N. essential and used it for negotiations and decisions in acute situations. Border disputes, political conflicts, issues over minorities, and other problems have been brought to the Secretary-General and resolved or lessened through quiet negotiations by his representatives. In many such situations, members of the Security Council have been consulted and in some cases have given advice. Typically there is no publicity, so little or no credit goes to the U.N.

Crises reach formal Security Council meetings after bilateral or regional approaches have failed and the problems worsened. There are extensive private consultations under the president of the Council before and during the public debates. From Iran in the 1940s to numerous Middle East crises, nations’ use of the U.N has been important and in many cases effective. In 1973 when joint efforts of U.S.A. and U.S.S.R. were not sufficient to get a cease-fire in the Middle East, initiative by the “non-aligned” members of the Security Council was successful, and the U.N. police force was in position between the antagonists in a matter of hours. U.N. actions are neither a panacea nor effective in quickly solving the basic conflicts. Rather they help all of us by debating alternatives, gaining time, lessening death and destruction, requiring antagonists to justify their actions, enabling the broader world to participate, and slowly building better law and justice. When nations and people use the process and time to erode the injustices, to change attitudes, and to construct better institutional arrangements for managing conflicts, all peoples gain. When bitterness, threats, armaments, fear, and national self-justification dominate, we all lose.

2. Political Forum. While better scientific, economic, or particular facts can help people and governments meet problems, the core conflicts typically are political. As a set of facilities for political debate and negotiation, the U.N. system is invaluable. The safety valve, letting off steam, is one service. Formal complaint and publicized debate in the Assembly or Security Council often help a government’s leaders to meet a domestic pressure at home—they are “doing something” on the national grievance. Frequently during the same hours as the angry debate, serious negotiations are underway behind the scenes at the U.N. or elsewhere. During the Bangladesh crisis the vehement Security Council spokesmen for India and Pakistan made a point of being seen talking seriously in the U.N. delegates’ lounge. Public debate also can add to the heat and anger in a dispute when the direct parties or others use it that way. There must be genuine will for communication and compromise as well as the tactics of confrontation. Many governments think of the U.N. as an arena, a set of institutions and procedures to use for difficult problems. Others, including great powers, go there as a last resort and use it as a scapegoat to blame for their own errors and failures.

3. Investigation and Information. In scores of fields U.N. data are the most comprehensive and reliable that are available. U.N. publications on world population, environment, food supplies, social trends, armament and disarmament facts, refugee situations, health, women’s rights, commodity prices, and many other important subjects are in great demand. Collaboration with governments is vital in collection and some analyses of data. Especially in politically sensitive or inflamed subjects, NGO collaboration is crucial. Reports and pressure on human rights by Amnesty International and others, and on disarmament by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) are frequently cited—and sometimes resented—by delegates.

Frequently the first action of the forum/debate aspects of the U.N. is to call on the Secretary-General or a committee to investigate an issue and report back. While this can be primarily shelving or delaying the problem, it also is an invitation to interested governments and NGOs to work on it. In the early 1960s a discussion meeting at Quaker House, New York, led to a General Assembly resolution authorizing an experts’ report on “economic and social consequences of disarmament,” a landmark document in serious attention to problems of reconversion to peaceful development of industry and employment. That has not obtained disarmament! It has helped to keep the struggle alive and provided better tools and encouragement.

Repeatedly the investigations of the High Commissioner for Refugees and many other competent specialized units in the U.N. system have been the basis for governments and NGOs to mobilize their skills and resources in a coordinated, effective manner. Doctors, architects, oceanographers, and other experts work intimately with similar professionals of other nations across the arbitrary lines of government ministries, voluntary agencies, and world organizations to meet emergencies, to plan and execute a world conference, to lift problems to media and public attention, or to establish a needed new service such as the World Weather Watch.

4. Defining Standards. Part of the investigating and information function is negotiating, revising, and legitimizing standards where none have existed, or revising and improving those that are out of date. For more than ten years the Trade Law Commission has been renegotiating details and major provisions for bills of lading, insurance, damages, and innumerable other provisions essential for world trade. It was a Hungarian delegate who proposed the timeliness and the general way of proceeding on this a process that involves all economic and social systems. Often the national experts and world civil servants engaged in the process are not on the front page. The International Atomic Energy Agency’s inspectors of nuclear facilities are mentioned in the general media, their services being what they are. Will governments use IAEA to tighten and raise the standards in this dangerous, important field?

In 1974 the U.N. established a commission and special secretariat to review the range and roles of transnational corporations. A Finnish director and Latin American deputy head this staff with Chinese, German, Greek, and other professional colleagues. Can they formulate, and will their commission adopt, an effective code of conduct and other important standards for these very powerful world institutions? The voluntary codes of industrial countries’ groups are less likely to emphasize social justice for the poorest peoples.

5. Allocating Responsibilities. In our era of recognizing the real complexities of many global problems, we run great risk of subordinating or even forgetting the true simplicity of basic values of caring and sharing. Too often the participants in governments and world organizations are lost in the complexities. Both the great varieties of national interests and the astonishing opening for NGOs, when effectively used, help to keep the goals of social justice before appropriate parts Of the U.N. The Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC) following the lead of other more specialized NGOs. participates actively in the Commission on Human Rights and in the Congress on Prevention of Crime to expose the wide use of torture. The U.N. Declaration on Torture codifies and publicizes the principles involved. It is up to Friends meetings and both national and local groups to press these on our governments for action.

Because of the multiplying issues on our crowded planet, activists are faced with many choices on where to lodge the world debate, negotiation, monitoring, etc., of each great issue. Where should policies on energy, commodities, environment, monetary system, food supplies, etc., be settled and implemented? Each nation or group of nations maneuvers to place those subjects most important to it in an arena where those nations have the greatest influence. The Sixth and Seventh (1975) Special Sessions of the General Assembly adopted, with important dissents, principles that could help to make possible a more just and effective world economic order. Where are the long and difficult negotiations on implementation and refinement of the fine principles to take place? Developing countries want the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development where they predominate. Richer, industrial countries prefer the World Bank or a special smaller body such as the Conference on International Economic Cooperation with just twenty-seven members.

While the U.N. has no formal allocating authority to assign subjects to specific agencies, it is the near-universal and most experienced organization. There are tough coordination problems among the agencies within the formal U.N. system—World Health Organization, UNESCO, UNICEF, etc., and the struggle with these will continue. While they are significant and difficult, history is likely to judge these disputes as primarily bureaucratic. More important, U.N. actions have significant weight and legitimacy. Many governments have defied particular U.N. actions. On many more they have acquiesced and supported. Almost all nations want, even strain, to become members. The Peoples Republic of China fought, politically, for the Chinese seat. The two Vietnams and their supporters felt the 1975 refusal to accept both as U.N. members a serious matter—obviously judging participation in the U.N. as important to their legitimacy, their being fully accepted in the world.

The need for an allocating and legitimizing authority is clear. It is a logical function for the U.N., which is doing much of it now. Extending that function by exercising it should be a major policy of governments and their delegates.

Criticisms and Problems

1. Futile, a failure. Particularly in the U.S.A. and some other great powers there is a deep reeling that the U.N. is futile. We do not have peace or justice in the Middle East or Southern Africa. The arms race mounts, and human rights problems multiply. The U.N. has failed! Our hopes in 1945 now seem romantic. The critical problems, however, are due to ourselves and our governments far more than to the U.N., which is an instrument, a set of facilities. Do we rationally blame the axe when the tree falls on the house?

Are we able to see that middle and small powers, the great majority of peoples, see the U.N. as valuable? They often send their best men as representatives. All new countries seek membership promptly. Aren’t many of us seeing the real world problems in the U.N. mirror and blaming the mirror?

One strand of this feeling emphasizes “the irresponsible little dictators” who have more votes in the U.N. than great powers. Many of the best initiatives and finest representatives in the U.N. come from small powers! The veto in the Security Council enables the five great powers to protect their interests and is there to be used in extreme cases. Isn’t this criticism of the voting system primarily a backlash against the Western powers losing dominance over others?

2. World Government. World Federalists and some others said in 1945 that the U.N. Charter was fatally flawed in not providing the direct elections, taxing powers, etc., of a world government. In their sense thirty years have proved their point, but such a charter was not possible in 1945 and is not possible now.

Much of this debate overemphasizes structures of government and skims over problems of changing attitudes and feelings. We have to act where we are now, to move from the present situation with all its serious faults. We cannot start over. There are small bits of trans-national authority exercised by U.N. specialized agencies and a few regional organizations such as the European Economic Community. The Law of the Seas negotiations include a possible deep seas authority with regulatory powers over part of the “common heritage of mankind.” It is highly important that such experiments be extended and enlarged.

It is ironic that in an era of some fading of Western nationalisms, our former colonies (most of the developing countries) are exercising virulent nationalism. We must not forget that we continue to press national interests drastically, too, and that for many nationalism is a liberating, enlarging, dignifying stage of development. Key questions include: How do we get clear responsibilities onto the governments of new countries? How do we join in developing truly adequate patterns of their participation in the world economic and political decisions that direct their and our destinies? On such questions the U.N. system is one of our chief hopes.

3. Everything is politicized. Anti-Israel and anti-apartheid proposals are raised and sometimes passed in many U.N. meetings, including resolutions with only remote relevance to the agenda. However, for peoples and delegates suffering particular injustices these issues are relevant. Great Power governments that pay the large assessments see financial costs as relevant to every proposal. In 1969, for example, U.S.A. and U.K. delegates insisted on a 25% cut in the budget for environment conference preparations before debate on the substance! Isn’t the issue, “Whose ox is being gored?” [Much is written on the financial costs of U.N. to the USA. For years that was just over 30% of the U.N. budget, recently cut to 25%. U.S.A. proportions of world gross product and use of non-renewable resources would justify 40%! U.S.A. ranks 14th among nations in per capita contribution to the U.N., and in percentage of Gross National Product contributed, about 68th.]

Virtually all important world issues are political problems. It is a key skill to get important factors identified, investigated, and debated without either precipitating the related political conflicts or ignoring the fact that at some stage of the negotiations those political aspects must be dealt with. When someone charges “politics,” ask yourself, “Does he fear that he is not getting his way?” and “Is this the time and place for dealing with this issue?”

4. Social and Economic Justice. After years of technical assistance, international aid, human rights debates, development decades, and world conferences on global issues, the U.N. is trying to negotiate a “new international economic order.” Declarations, charters, and plans of action have been adopted by very large majorities with some strong dissents by industrial nations. Brief treatment of such extensive studies and debates is certain to slight and misstate different participants’ truths.

The general political lines are clear, with many variations in important parts. Developing countries want more—resources, trade, voice in key decisions, recognition of their status as nations, and great changes in the institutions and arrangements that many Asians, Africans, and Latin Americans see as restricting them, holding them down.

Industrial countries want assured supplies of raw materials, workable trade, money, and other systems for the necessary world interdependence, and orderly, not chaotic, patterns of change. The confrontations between developing and industrial countries are enormously complicated by grievances and historic injustices that make most of us concentrate on the other side’s extremes. The actions of Stalin, Amin, and Nixon are extreme, not typical. The Bangladesh war or Lockheed bribes likewise are not typical examples of their regions. While such examples were tragic and real, they are selected to show the worst and must not be allowed to form our conceptions of East European, African, or Western peoples and governments.

Friends need to study such issues carefully and to apply our religious guide. What do true caring and sharing call for us to do on these public policy issues? In what ways have FWCC efforts to implement the concern for the right sharing of world resources helped us to do better? What lacks in Friends work can we identify? Two general guides are: 1) U.N. attention to the new international economic order tends to concentrate on quantitative, measurable, economic factors. The social aspects including human rights are more important. 2) The most difficult parts of efforts toward a new international economic order and the right sharing of world resources are changes in attitudes and official policies in industrial countries, and very possibly we Westerners need the help of developing country peoples to make the necessary changes—…the beam that is in thine own eye.”

Conclusion

The U.N. and wide range of world (including regional) organizations may have as many or more problems than other human institutions, but there is good evidence that they are better than most governments. More effective world institutions are one necessity for us to build a more just and more peaceful world. The ones we have are inadequate and invaluable! Religiously motivated work, especially on such important matters, is optimistic, not cynical. God’s will for us is true brotherhood—real caring and sharing.

Recommended Reading

The U. N. and Human Survival, by Henry Beerits (Phila.: American Friends Service Committee, 1976; 84 pp., $1.50).

A History of Quaker International Peacemaking Efforts

by Duncan Wood

Origins

Friends nowadays are accustomed to attribute their efforts at achieving international peace to what they call their “historic peace testimony.” We do well to remind ourselves that Friends of the first generation did not think in terms of separate testimonies in favor of peace, or honesty, or simplicity, or equality, but regarded all these and other virtues as stemming naturally from a new way of life inspired and directed by the spirit of Christ. At a very early date George Fox claimed that he “lived in the virtue of that life and power that took away the occasion for all wars.” [Christian Faith and Practice, London Yearly Meeting, 1960, Section 613.] In their first public statement, where they declared that they “utterly (denied] all wars and strife with outward weapons,” Friends attributed this stand to “the spirit of Christ, which leads us into all truth [and] will never move us to fight and war against any man with outward weapons, neither for the Kingdom of Christ nor for the Kingdoms of this world.” [Ibid., Section 614.] Thus, our original witness was not simply a peace witness, it was a call for a profound spiritual revolution, for the creation of a New Man, freed by Christ from the “lust whence all wars did rise.” [Ibid., Section 613.]

It is in the light of this attitude to the world that we must judge the first Quaker effort to achieve international peace, Robert Barclay’s appeal to the delegates assembled at the Peace Conference at Nijmegen in 1678. Barclay’s “Epistle of Love and Friendly Advice,” addressed (in Latin) “to the Ambassadors of the several Princes of Europe,” was accompanied by copies of his Apology, a comprehensive statement of Quaker principles and insights, furnishing the true bases for lasting peace. [Margaret F. Hirst, The Quakers in Peace and War (The Swarthmore Press Ltd., 1923). pp. 147-151.] Barclay and his contemporaries, who had come into “the covenant of peace which was before wars and strifes were,” [Christian Faith and Practice, Section 613] yearned that others should reach this blessed state—and who better than those in a position of authority who, once they had seen the vision, should indeed be able to put an end to earthly strife with outward weapons, freeing themselves and men everywhere to engage in the Lamb’s War on behalf of the Kingdom of God and His righteousness?

It is difficult for Friends of the 20th century to appreciate, still more to emulate, the spirit of 1678. The ambassadors at Nijmegen were all practising Christians and they belonged to an age which relished theological disputation; the 400 pages Of Barclay’s Apology may well have found readers among them, anxious to while away the idle hours of dilatory and slow. moving negotiations. We live in a very different age when we cannot expect government delegates to be versed in theological questions or to be able to spare time to consider them. Above all, we ourselves have changed: we lack the courage and the confident conviction which led the first generation of Friends to preach their Quaker gospel to high and low alike. Nevertheless, before we dismiss Barclay’s intervention as irrelevant to us and to our times we should pause to note its enduring quality. Lengthy and learned though his message was, Barclay presented it with humility, as coming from “one who by the world may be esteemed weak and foolish.” The best of our efforts at making international peace have been conducted in the same spirit. We offer not the one and only solution to this or that problem—an attitude which leads to confrontation—but suggestions which may open up new possibilities. On the other hand, there is a point on which we are more uncompromising. We still insist, as Barclay did, on the relevance to politics of the wisdom derived from spiritual insights: as he put it, “since your work is that which concerns all Christians, why may not every Christian who feels himself stirred up of the Lord thereunto, contribute therein?” This does not mean that our peacemaking consists simply of preaching religious pacifism; it is rather a question of our maintaining that man’s needs and nature are not exclusively material but also spiritual and that, if the spiritual is neglected or frustrated, no earthly peace is possible; “except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it.”

The spirit of 1678 is relevant in another way to our own times. Barclay proposed a revolutionary solution to the problem of peace in his time. It is now widely recognized that lasting peace will indeed require revolutionary changes. Until quite recently we tended to assume that all that was needed—and this is, admittedly, a good deal—was to effect certain changes in political institutions, such as the creation of a world government to replace the chaotic system of sovereign states. It is now seen that, important though such changes are, they are not enough: the new world order will also require a new man, ready to practice not only peace but also equality and simplicity. a man spiritually transformed. We must therefore regard the total Quaker witness as an essential part of our efforts to achieve international peace. realizing that our concerns for racial equality and for the right sharing of world resources must go hand in hand with our concern for peace, and that all must be derived from deep religious conviction.

The Holy Experiment

No account of Quaker peacemaking efforts, however brief, could omit reference to the Holy Experiment, launched by William Penn a few years after Nijmegen. For more than half a century the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania provided an opportunity for Friends to practice their ideals of government and an answer to their opponents who held that these ideals were impracticable. Penn’s revolutionary approach to international and interracial relations remains an inspiration, but we have to recognize that it was made in Barclay’s world, that is, in a world very different from ours. Furthermore, it was a world already in process of change. During the 18th century the American colonies began to lose the relative isolation from the outside world and from one another which they had enjoyed in the 17th, It thus became more difficult to maintain in one state principles which were not accepted or practiced by its neighbors, a fact which we should ponder today whenever we urge our own government to take a unilateral action in favor of peace.

A community which adopts a radically different policy from its neighbors requires a high degree of commitment on the part of its members. Was it therefore a mistake to adopt a policy of religious toleration which led to the steady increase of non-Quaker elements in Pennsylvania and eventually left the Friends outnumbered? Should this have been avoided by some sort of Quaker totalitarianism? Or is this a contradiction in terms? How far is liberty, as the term has been understood for the past two centuries or more, truly compatible with the maintenance of the peaceful world to which we aspire? It would. however, be wrong to attribute the end of the Holy Experiment exclusively to the influence of non-Quakers. Friends themselves were not entirely blameless, for success depended on preserving the inward and spiritual grace from which the outward manifestations of peace spring; a generation lacking Penn’s inspiration failed to maintain his vision.

The Peace Testimony in the 18th Century

Friends of the second and third generations do indeed seem to have lacked the fire and fervor of the pioneers. In the 18th century they made few noteworthy peacemaking efforts which could truly be described international. In 1748, when a peace congress met at Aix-la-Chapelle, London Yearly Meeting, reviving a memory now sixty years old, arranged for a Dutch Friend to distribute copies of Barclay’s Apology to the assembled delegates. One cannot help wondering whether this was done as much out of respect for tradition as from concern. The ambassadors reacted in a variety of ways, ranging from real interest to mild amusement, suggesting that the Enlightenment may already have reduced the effectiveness of this particular approach. On the eve of the War of Independence, some British Friends did attempt, without success, to persuade their government to adopt a more pacific, and much more rational, policy towards the American colonies; and both British and American Friends [Wolf Mendl, Prophets and Reconcilers (London: Friends Home Service Committee. 1974), pp. 30-31] expressed their regret that American independence had been attained by violent means.

In another respect, however, the 18th century made a very important contribution to Quaker peacemaking efforts. Peace may have become a “testimony” but it was a testimony very faithfully maintained. Friends were enjoined not to perform military service, or to pay military taxes in lieu of service, and if they were merchants, to refrain from arming their vessels against pirates. Discipline, enforced through Monthly Meetings, was strict; backsliders risked disownment. For the majority of Friends this may not have involved more than irritations or, at times, unpopularity; but on occasion it meant serious hardship. One example may suffice—that of the experience of Friends in Ireland during the rebellion of 1798: “They were caught between two sides who waged a conflict of the utmost savagery, and their conduct became the epitome of the peace testimony in action: absolute non-participation in the struggle; refusal to provide themselves with any means of self-defense; relief of suffering and provision of refuge to people on both sides; readiness to suffer insults and physical assault. They were open in their dealings with all parties and displayed great moral and physical courage,” [Ibid., pp. 31-32.]

It is clear that the corporate witness of the Irish Friends resulted from the faithfulness of the individual members. As London Yearly Meeting expressed it in an epistle issued during the Napoleonic wars: “Friends, it is an awful thing to stand forth to the nation as the advocates of inviolable peace; and our testimony loses its efficacy in proportion to the want of consistency in any.” [Christian Faith and Practice, Section 617.] Our credibility as advocates of international peace depends upon our members remaining faithful to our testimony.

Quaker Outreach in the 19th Century

It was during the period of the Napoleonic wars that Friends began to engage in public campaigns on behalf of particular humanitarian objectives, such as the abolition of slavery or the reform of the prison system. Though the Friends who took the lead in these movements were undoubtedly motivated by very deep religious convict ion, they did not assume that their goals could be reached only through universal adherence to Quakerism: the abolition of slavery and prison reform were capable of being achieved and maintained by men of goodwill of all faiths, or even of none. These concerns had international implications, and Friends travelled widely to promote them, seeking the interest of emperors and kings and others highly placed in government, who respected them for their religious zeal and practical competence, even if they were not always prompt to carry out the reforms which Friends pressed upon chem. This was indeed international work, though the relevance to peace of these social concerns may not have been as obvious to the Friends who first espoused them and who could not know that a century and a half later slavery and prison reform would figure on the agenda of United Nations, a body which has no doubt that the enjoyment of human rights is essential to true peace.

Thus, the name of Quakers became associated with “good works,” an association greatly strengthened by the wartime and post-war relief work, first undertaken by Friends during the Napoleonic wars, then after the Crimean War and, subsequently, during and after every major armed conflict to the present time. Relief to the victims of war is not always accepted as work for peace, being sometimes dismissed as a mere palliative or as an act of expiation by hypersensitive consciences for the sins of bellicose humanity. Friends have never been worried by such criticisms. War victims cry out for help and their call must be answered, particularly if it is a call from a recently defeated enemy. It is not necessary or even right—to look for the long-term results of humanitarian action. There are still some grateful survivors from the million German children who received Quäkerspeise after the First World War—but very many of them must have lived only long enough to help man the invading Nazi armies. Let it not be said that the Quakers of 1920 were wrong to save these children for Hitler’s purposes; they did what was right at the time. In the judgment of the Nobel Committee, Quaker relief work is indeed a contribution to peace, justifying the award of the Peace Prize in 1947 to the American Friends Service Committee and the Friends Service Council.

Propaganda for Peace

Friends have also campaigned more directly in the cause of peace, and from a very early date. William Penn (1644-1718) [William Penn, “An Essay Towards the Present and Future Peace of Europe, 1693-4,” in Works (London, 1726), included in F. B. Tolles and E. G. Alderfer, eds., The Witness of William Penn (New York: Macmillan, 1957), pp. 140-159] and John Bellers (1654-1725) [John Bellers, “Some Reasons for an European State” (London, 1710), included in A. Ruth Fry, John Bellers, 1654-1725 (London: Cassell, 1935)] both outlined constitutions for an international organization which would replace war as a means of settling disputes. These writings were not accepted by contemporary Quakers as official pronouncements since the authors did not model their world organizations on the practices of the Society: William Penn’s scheme envisaged a form of collective security and provided for a voting procedure. Penn and Bellers, however, belong to the line of prophets, which includes Henri IV of France, Rousseau and Kant, whose thinking eventually produced the League of Nations. A century later both English and American Friends promoted the establishment of peace societies [The New York Peace Society and that of Ohio were founded in 1815, the London Peace Society in 1860] with the aim of disseminating propaganda against war and in favor of arbitration, thus beginning a long tradition of peace education which continues today with undiminished vigor. These peace societies had a Christian basis but were by no means confined to Quakers, who, from the beginning, worked alongside others who shared their aspirations but not necessarily the religious outlook from which these aspirations sprang. The peace movement grew steadily throughout the 19th century, holding many international congresses, urging (through the Quaker, Joseph Sturge) the inclusion of an arbitration clause in the Paris peace treaty of 1856, and contributing to the summoning of the peace congress at the Hague in 1899 (at which Friends were represented by a delegation), to the establishment Of the International Court of Justice and to the welcome given to the League of Nations in 1919.

Friends did not wholeheartedly welcome the League because the provisions in the Covenant for military sanctions conflicted with their pacifism. Some declared themselves in favor of “a” League but not of “the” League. These Friends were true to the tradition of their ancestors who could not accept Penn’s proposed compromise with “the world.” This is part of a perennial problem: just how far should compromise go? Can Friends accept a minor evil if it gives some assurance of averting a greater one? If they do so, do they fatally weaken the purity of their witness?

Quaker Work at United Nations

Eventually Friends overcame their hesitations about the League. In 1926 they sent their first official representative to Geneva, beginning an association which has been maintained with United Nations, both in Geneva and New York. The purpose of this representation is twofold: to bring to the international organization such insights as Friends may have on the problems with which it deals, and to inform members Of the Society about the progress and the setbacks of the organization whose success depends upon the full support of its member states and of their citizens, designated in the Charter of the UN as “We, the Peoples.” At both the League and UN, Quaker representatives have been active in promoting disarmament, human rights, the cause of refugees—with much assistance to the official responsible bodies—and the cause of social and economic justice. Some of this activity is akin to “lobbying,” for example when Quaker representatives urge government delegates to take a sympathetic view of the rights of conscientious objectors or of the needs of a particular group of refugees; but not all the work is so clearly directed to a specific objective. Both at New York and Geneva there is now a Quaker House where delegates and others have the opportunity to discuss international problems from a fresh perspective and in a more tranquil atmosphere than that of the UN conference rooms and corridors. Friends do not normally formulate solutions to international problems, but can on occasion claim to have facilitated them. The Quaker representatives at New York and Geneva do not work in isolation from the rest of the Society, for their effectiveness depends upon the readiness of Friends everywhere to promote in their own countries the aims and objectives of United Nations. It would be difficult to overrate the importance for our international peace efforts of the work done by Friends in their—notably, in London through the Peace national capitals and International Relations Committee, and, in Washington, through the Friends Committee on National Legislation and other institutions—to bring Quaker views on foreign policy to the attention of their respective governments.

Personal Relationships

Friends have undertaken many projects based on the premise that sound international relations are not the exclusive domain of governments but also involve relations between persons and peoples. The program of international workcamps is one such project. The Swiss founder of the workcamp movement, Pierre Cérésole, was not a Friend when he conceived his idea, though he did eventually join the Society after long association with it, for Friends were quick to see the importance of his movement: it stressed the value Of international comradeship in practical humanitarian work, offered a valid and positive alternative to military service, and was based on the concept of interdependence. Friends have also played an important role in extending the workcamp movement from western Europe to other parts of the world and have been active in attempts to associate it more closely with United Nations which now has its corps of UN volunteers.

One of the advantages of a workcamp is the opportunity it provides for the exchange of ideas between people of different national backgrounds. A program of international seminars, started by AFSC after the Second World War—which had so disastrously severed international links—was aimed at putting these exchanges on a more systematic footing. The Seminar Program in turn gave birth to a more specialized program for promoting personal contact, the Conferences for Diplomats, inaugurated in 1952. These conferences do indeed afford their participants (who now include representatives of other professions than diplomacy) the opportunity to discuss specific international problems, but of at least equal importance is the opportunity to make personal friendships across national or ideological frontiers. When inviting governments to send representatives to these conferences Friends have had to make it clear that they will not attempt to convert their guests to Quakerism. [This is because many of today’s governments have official creeds—Catholic, Muslim or atheist—to which they expect their representatives to subscribe.] In this respect their aims are now more modest than those of Robert Barclay. In another respect, however, they maintain the spirit of 1678, since a Quaker conference is an occasion to examine contemporary problems in the light of accumulated wisdom, to recognize the relevance to practical politics of philosophical and spiritual insights.

Friends have engaged in other forms of personalized diplomacy. After the First World War “Quaker Embassies” were established in a number of capital cities, especially in the countries where the post-war relief work conducted by Friends had made them very widely known. There was at that time a widespread reaction against war and good reason to hope that many people might be encouraged to turn to Quaker, or at least to pacifist, ideas if there were a center of information and advice within reach. These Embassies did become growing-points for indigenous Quaker groups in some European countries but the reaction of the thirties frustrated the hopes of their founders. The Embassies in Berlin and Vienna, for example, after a period as centers of growth, found themselves forced into the role of places of refuge for a persecuted remnant. The influence on events of these Embassies, and of the movement they were designed to encourage, had been disappointingly small.

During and after the Second World War, Friends undertook relief work not only in Europe but also in Asia, and this necessitated the acquisition of premises which may have been conceived in the first instance as administrative centers but inevitably also took on the role of centers of information and rallying points for small groups of local Friends. When the post-war relief period ended it was decided to appoint Quaker International Affairs Representatives (QIAR’s) in some of the capital cities where “Embassies” were already established. These representatives were conceived not so much as ambassadors for Quakerism but rather as the ambassadors of the Society, with the task of getting to know the country and its people and reporting on developments which were significant for Friends but might be overlooked by the press. Essentially, their task was to educate the Society of Friends in foreign affairs—they might even be described as a Quaker intelligence service if that term had not acquired so sinister a meaning. To aid them in this task they were expected to be in touch not only with people naturally sympathetic to Friends but also with people in government or other positions of influence and responsibility. They often played a very valuable role in recruiting participants for Quaker conferences.

This particular pattern has not been followed everywhere. In Algeria, for instance, relief work begun during the period of hostilities was followed not by the setting up of an embassy or the appointment of a QIAR, but by a program of long-term development aid, noteworthy because it involved not only the traditional Quaker service bodies but also, for the first time, a project directed by European (as distinct from British and American) Friends. Friends have undertaken development work in the wake of the wars in Nigeria and Bangladesh, but development projects elsewhere have been stimulated by other causes, often resulting from long Quaker association with the country in question, as is notably the case in Kenya. Friends have concentrated their efforts on such questions as community development, low-cost housing, maternal and child care and family planning advice; they are now working on the principle that their projects, once launched with the aid of Friends from industrialized countries, should as soon as possible be handed over to indigenous management. Those who initially conceived and directed development projects may not have thought of them as forming part of our international peace efforts, but it is becoming increasingly clear that during coming years relations between rich and poor, or north and south, will be at the center of our peace concerns.

East-West Relations

Until recently we gave a much higher priority to international relations of another category, those between East and West: these, it is fair to say, dominated our peace efforts from 1950 onwards. Since it was impractical to appoint a QIAR to Moscow or Peking, visiting missions of British or American Friends were sent to the Soviet Union and to the People’s Republic of China. In their country of origin these missions were, of course, conceived as private affairs, but on arrival they took on a more public character and Friends were able to meet with Soviet or Chinese government officials. In these meetings an exchange of views was possible. On their return home the members of these missions published reports of their experiences and fulfilled many speaking engagements to convey their impressions to a wide audience. Visits of this kind to the Soviet Union and (in recent years) to China have now become so frequent that it is difficult to think back to the days when a report from a Quaker mission helped to dispel widespread ignorance or when the mere announcement of a Quaker mission to the USSR made front-page news, as was the case with the British Quaker mission of 1951. At that time, when the cold war was at its height, Friends were almost unique—at least among those not classified as “fellow travellers” the belief that it was possible to bridge the gulf between the USA and the USSR. American Friends were particularly stout champions of this view to which they gave expression in a series of publications, culminating in Speak Truth to Power (1955), a comprehensive statement of Quaker views on the proper conduct of Great Power relationships.

Many other efforts have been directed to the improvement of East-West relationships. One of the early ambitions of the program of Conferences for Diplomats (which initially brought together diplomats only from western countries) was the inclusion of diplomats from the socialist states of eastern Europe. Not only was this achieved in 1956, but later on a pattern was set of holding one conference each year in one of the east European countries. A special tripartite program, combining aspects of workcamps and seminars, has for a number of years brought together younger people from the USA, USSR and the United Kingdom, meeting in rotation in the three countries. A series of bilateral seminars, with participants from the USA and the USSR, has forged links between post-graduate students of East-West questions. The AFSC’s school service organized exchanges of Soviet and American teachers. The negotiation of all these projects with the responsible authorities in Moscow has necessitated an annual visit by Quaker representatives. All in all, a great deal of effort has gone into this aspect of Quaker foreign policy. There can be no doubt that the effort was a response to a widespread concern in the Society, symbolized for British Friends by a special East-West Relations Committee which functioned throughout the fifties.

Yet another element in Friends’ East-West work has been the posting of QIAR’s in Vienna and Berlin, the former with wide-ranging responsibilities for visiting Austria’s socialist neighbors, the latter with the more restricted mandate of getting into touch with people on the other side of the Berlin Wall and informing Friends about the state of relations between the two Germanies. It can be said that the presence of this QIAR enabled Friends to “recognize” the German Democratic Republic, by inviting it to send representatives to conferences, before the official diplomatic world felt able to do so.

Mediation

The stationing of a QIAR in Berlin is an example of Quaker intervention at a point of acute international tension. Another example is the Middle East. Friends have been long established in this troubled part of the world with schools at Brummana (now 100 years old) and Ramallah; they have also been engaged for some time in work for the children of Palestinian Arab refugees. After the Six Day War in 1967 QIAR’s were appointed and based in Cyprus so as to be able to make friends in both Israel and the Arab countries and to report on the attitudes which they found. The major result of this enterprise has been the publication of Search for Peace in the Middle East, in which an attempt is made to summarize the historic causes of the conflict and to suggest the possible lines of a solution. This publication has been of very great educational value, particularly in western countries which bear much responsibility for a situation which they do not always fully understand. It must, however, be asked whether, by going into print in this way, Friends may not have disqualified themselves from acting as mediators.

Mediation is a task to which many may feel called but few are chosen: even the chosen do not always meet with success. One of the most moving of the Quaker efforts at mediation was undertaken by Joseph Sturge who visited Czar Nicholas I on the eve of the Crimean War, bringing a message of Christian love from the potential enemy. Joseph Sturge’s mission had the blessing of London Yearly Meeting and the support of Friends who opposed the British government’s warlike foreign policy and were fortunate to have their spokesman, John Bright, in Parliament. Friends were, however, in the minority, and rising war fever in Britain prevented the Czar from responding to Joseph Sturge’s appeal though they parted on a note of friendship. In modern times Friends have made similar efforts to mediate in the war between Nigeria and Biafra, in the Vietnam War, and before the outbreak of the war between India and Pakistan in 1971. The fact that none of these efforts achieved success does not invalidate them; to have tried and failed is better than not to have tried at all.

There are lessons to be drawn from these efforts. In all cases the reputation of Friends for “good works,” for pacifism or for impartiality would not have been sufficient to qualify them as mediators. If they were called upon, it was because there were individual Friends well known to the parties to the conflict and equipped, through long involvement, with knowledge of its causes. In some cases Friends were at a disadvantage, for a mediator is not as a rule associated in any way with either of the two adversaries. If an English Friend could aspire to mediate between England and Russia in 1854, or an American Friend to mediate between Hanoi and Washington, it was because both had dissociated themselves from their government’s official policy. All these points are illustrated by a case in which Friends were able to play a positive mediating role. In the long-drawn-out dispute between the British Raj and the people of India, the existence in London of an India Conciliation Committee, led by Friends with long experience Of India and deep concern for its future, did much to ease the passage to independence. Some of the members of this committee played a very important role, still affectionately remembered in India, as intermediaries between the British authorities and the members of the Congress Party, notably Mahatma Gandhi. If English Friends were acceptable to Indians this was because they had not hesitated to criticize the policy of their own government—to “speak truth to power.” They would, however, have forfeited the confidence of that government had they not also “spoken the truth in love.” This is perhaps the most important lesson of 300 years of Quaker efforts at international peacemaking, which began with “a Message of Love and Friendly Advice.”

Though it ends on a positive note this has been an account of effort, rather than of achievement. If Friends were a purely secular peace society they would have gone into liquidation long since, for they cannot possibly justify their 300 years of international peacemaking on the basis of results. If we can forecast that Friends will not abandon the struggle it is because they are a different kind of society, belonging with those described in the Epistle to the Hebrews as confessing that they are “strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one.”

Bibliographical Note
The peace work of Friends up to the year 1920 has been very fully treated in M. E. Hirst’s The Quakers in Peace and War. It is perhaps too soon to write a sequel though some research (still unpublished) has been conducted into specific aspects of recent international peacemaking efforts. Friends are referred to E. W. Orr’s The Quakers in Peace and War 1920 to 1967 (Sussex: W. J. Offord and Son Ltd., 1974), which contains a comprehensive collection of Quaker statements on peace and war for that period, and to Wolf Mendl’s Swarthmore Lecture, Prophets and Reconcilers, which contains many references to early and recent peace-making efforts.

Questions

1. Should Friends have confined themselves to proclaiming the full and undiluted Quaker message, instead of trying to apply Quaker principles to specific international problems?
2. On what points can Friends compromise with “the world,” and on what points should they remain firm?
3. Should Friends work in the world, seeking the support of like-minded (but non-Quaker) people for a policy of revolutionizing it? Or should they become a people apart, setting an example of a new society in detachment?
4. Do you believe that the Quaker vision of a peaceful world is obtainable through the reform of existing human institutions?
5. Do you believe that in a peaceful world man must forego some freedom of choice (e.g., in habits of consumption and family size)? If so, will it be sufficient to impose legal restraints on the pursuit of happiness, or is it necessary for churches and for philosophers to redefine the concept of happiness?

Just International Distribution of Food and Resources

by Franklin W. Wallin

The Fourth World Conference of Friends in 1967 adopted a statement on “People, Food and the Sharing of Resources—A Vision for the Future” which included these words: “We call upon the peoples and the governments of the earth to stop squandering resources on armaments and destruction, to promote family planning and health, to curb population growth, to increase and share food production, and to further economic and social development.”

We have yet to meet this call, but our understanding of it has quickened. We feel the need to fit our actions to its imperative. This selection of ideas from current thinking on world food and resources may help each person in designing an appropriate personal strategy for responsible participation in a planetary bargain for survival. I have drawn freely from the works of others. The footnotes are an invitation to read more widely.

I am much indebted to the work of four groups. First, the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies Program in International Affairs. under the direction of Harlan Cleveland, particularly two papers—Human Requirements, supply Levels and Outer Bounds: A Framework for Thinking About the Planetary Bargain by John and Magda C. McHale, and The Planetary Bargain, Proposals for a New International Economic Order to Meet Human Needs, a report of a workshop July 7 to August 1, 1975. [The Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies, P. O. Box 2820, Princeton. N. J. 08540.] Second, the Overseas Development Council, under the leadership of James P. Grant, particularly the book By Bread Alone by Lester Brown and Erik Eckholm. The Overseas Development Council also published a series called “Communique.” [Overseas Development Council, 1717 Massachusetts Avenue N. W., Washington, D. C. 20036.] Third, the Institute for World Order. under the leadership of Saul Mendolvitz, particularly On the Creation of a Just World Order, Preferred Worlds for the 1990’s, [Institute for World Order, 1140 Avenue of the Americas. New York, N. Y. 10036] a group of essays by scholars from around the world who introduce us to thinking practically and globally. Fourth, the reports of Right Sharing of World Resources from the Friends World Committee for Consultation, 1506 Race Street, Philadelphia.

Understanding of the world food and resource problem is changing. Many used to think there was little we could do to escape the inexorable law that population would outrun food supply and non-renewable resources. We cannot overlook this logic of long-range tragedy, but we are learning that it is not yet necessary to despair or adopt some kind of “lifeboat ethics” or “triage” to save the few from the tragic consequences of scarcity. Improvements have been made recently in producing food and we have enough capacity to feed our world, if we could only distribute it equitably. We can slow the increasing population by accelerating social and economic development. We can change consumption tastes which drive up demand for food and resources. We can no longer believe the problem is caused by some law of nature beyond our control. The bad news and the good news from recent thinking about the food, population and resource problem is the same. We are both a cause of the problem and the means to its solution. It is within our capacity to make the difference. Harlan Cleveland says:

We the people of the biosphere [the shell of life around this planet] can probably lay our hands on more than enough of the relevant resources to enable all members of a growing world population to maintain minimum standards of life (some of them will even have a crack at liberty and happiness) without threatening the outer limits of an astonishingly rich and adaptable environment. IF…. The IF is a question about our collective will to get on with it, our collective imagination to invent the institutions of fairness, our collective capacity to manage interdependence and finance great leaps forward. [Harlan Cleveland. Introduction to John and Magda Cordell McHale: Human Requirements, Supply Levels and Outer Bounds (Princeton, 1975); a policy paper of the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies.]

Awareness that our actions can make a difference is the first step. Some facts may help us to understand how the race for food and resources is going:

Over the past decade (1963-1973), food production in both the developed and the developing countries has expanded about 30%. [Lester Brown and Erik P. Eckholm, By Bread Alone (New York: Praeger, 1974), p. 37.]

The fact that for so long a period food production in the developing countries as a whole has kept ahead of a rate of population growth that is unprecedented in world history is a tremendous achievement. Furthermore, food production in these countries in 1972 was 20% greater than in J 966, the previous year of widespread bad weather, so that even between the troughs of the longer-term trend, production has outpaced population growth. [United Nations: Assessment or the World Food Situation, Present and Future, U. N. World Food Conference, Rome. November 1974 (New York: United Nations, 1974), pamphlet no. E/Conf 65.3: p. 31.]

The United Nations has recently revised its world population estimate downward. In 1975 the United Nations’ prediction points toward a population of six billion in the year 2000, whereas previous forecasts had ranged between seven and eight billion. What happened to the billion or more people? They are casualties of the development process. We are beginning to see on the global scale what has been observed by demographers on the national level in highly developed countries. As people’s social and economic well-being improves, they move into towns and cities; the Status Of women changes; pressures for having large families are reduced; the techniques of family planning become more available; and as the news media get the word around, fertility rates begin to skid. These facts indicate that there is a real possibility that food supply could still be ahead of population demands by the year 2000, but there is a limit.

Serious technical constraints limit the rapid or indefinite expansion of food supply. All four of the major resources used to produce food—land, water, energy and fertilizer—are now in increasingly tight supply. We cannot expect an unlimited growth in food supply nor can we reasonably expect the rates of increase we have recently achieved by technical means to continue into the next decade. The early gains were big and relatively inexpensive; later gains will probably be smaller and more expensive. The “Green Revolution” in India is a beautiful but pitiful example. With new seeds and farming methods, India almost reached food self-sufficiency in 1972. But in 1973 the dramatic increase in cost of fuel that was needed to pump the water during a drought and provide the fertilizer for the new seed combined to wipe out the gain. Our food and resource problems are interdependent, and programs for increased production are necessarily complex and often limited by unforeseen changes in other sectors of our interdependent globe. The supply of food rests with choices about priorities for land use, allocation of fertilizer production, and the price of energy. A strategy for world food and resources must focus on supply of food and its relation to other resources. Doubling or tripling production is essential in the next 25 years.

Current thinking about increased food production places more and more emphasis on rapid increases in production in the less developed countries:

The shortfall in food production in developing countries, now placed at 20 million metric tons, may more than quadruple in ten years if present population trends continue. Since the cost of covering this deficit by imports from food-surplus nations would place an intolerable strain on their weak economies, the poorer nations have little choice but to increase their rood production substantially. [Ford Foundation Report (320 E. 43rd St., New York, N. Y. 10017), 1976.]

Probable methods include: expanding the “green revolution” to other grains; increasing the use of fertilizer, particularly in less developed areas where marginal increases in yield per ton of fertilizer are greatest; improving land distribution and pricing systems which encourage production. These are all strategies which will be particularly effective in increasing production where it is needed most. Such strategies extend from one’s own garden and farm to national policies influencing world markets and aid programs. But increased supply strategies are only half the race. The outcome will also be determined by the changes in demand for food and resources.

Current understanding of world food and resource problems is undergoing greater change with respect to consumption than with respect to supply. The emphasis used to be heavily focused on limiting population, usually in the less developed countries. But now there is increasing emphasis on changing consumer patterns, particularly in the most developed countries such as the U. S. A. The affluence which gives people the capacity to satisfy their desires means that 7% of the world’s population consumes nearly 35% Of the world’s resources. The changes in eating habits and consumer patterns of North Americans in the last 25 years accounts for increases in consumption of food and resources which would have fed the entire increase in population of Asia in the same period. Changing patterns of consumption have been dramatic. If Americans consumed food in the same pattern and proportions as were customary in 1950, vast surpluses of grain would become available If those surpluses would be distributed equitably there would be more than enough calories and protein available to make up the under-production in developing countries.

We can all be winners in the world food race. But we must find a way to run the race together. The most promising, but not the only, strategies now focus on increasing production in the less developed world, decreasing consumption in the most developed world. and achieving a more equitable and effective world food distribution system. Each of these three key elements involves the would-be activist in a still wider set of problems. Any effective strategy must be a comprehensive strategy.

The conjunction of the food, energy, fertilizer, and distribution problems requires a comprehensive approach going well beyond the immediate needs of each. This in turn requires a network of cooperation across a wide range of functional areas and among a number of “problem-solving” institutions. One approach would be to identify opportunities for building multi-national coalitions to ease this set of problems. For example. the implementation of the resolutions reached by the World Food Conference in Rome in 1974 can be achieved only by a combined approach. Both oil—and food-producing countries must help to establish and finance a world food reserve system. The technology of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development countries and the energy and capital of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries must be used to increase world fertilizer production, and the World Bank should be used to help channel increasing resources from capital-surplus countries into a myriad of investments to expand food (and energy) output in the developing world. The world’s principal potential for low-cost expansion of food production lies in the developing countries. including those in South Asia, and many in Latin America and Africa; large-scale increases in food production in the developed countries are possible only at substantially higher costs because of scarcity of land and water and diminishing returns on still more intensive use of inputs such as fertilizer and capital. A cooperative approach that combines a set of factors must focus on this single issue: global food policy. We must have a comprehensive strategy to ease several problems at once: recycling, scarcity, inflation, development, and the acute problems of the “forgotten fifty percent.”

There is also the need to address urgently the value issues familiar to Quakers seeking a less materially oriented and wasteful system for human progress. Willingness to accept more austere and less wasteful lifestyles makes possible a sharing of resources with the world’s poor majority. With proper leadership in the affluent countries, acceptance of slower rates of growth, and the imperatives for greater sharing of goods in tight supply, we can hope to avoid an irreconcilable conflict between the rich and the poor. In many instances a more efficient and austere lifestyle among the affluent could be of benefit to all. Just as the slower speed limits and greater use of smaller cars that are a consequence of the energy crisis may turn out to be of net benefit to American society, a less wasteful and more efficient use of food in the United States might significantly increase life expectancy among Americans and decrease inflationary pressures. Altruism and self-interest combine to lead us toward a new style of life.

We are making a choice. To choose survival, we should develop a strategy for ourselves, for our Meetings, and for our country. We must see the world as a community and design a dynamic international system that (a) focuses on human needs, (b) enables nations to choose differing development strategies yet work together to pursue them, (c) is fair to the newcomers as well as to the old-timers in world politics, and (d) achieves a greater sense of security (predictability) in international economic arrangements. This is a bargaining process in which all parties to the bargain must stand to gain more than they will lose.

On food, the Rome conference has pointed the way to more food aid, emergency stocks, a system of world food reserves, and a major productivity push in the food-short regions. Wide fluctuations in prices and interruptions in supplies of raw materials and fuel should be controlled by floor and ceiling prices and a buffer stock system, coordinated and funded by an umbrella commodity organization but negotiated case-by-case in separate but parallel bargaining. The world lacks effective mechanisms to perform many Of these key global functions. Filling the gapingg gaps in the international system is urgent.

The global “commons,” the planet we share, requires international monitoring and management; it is time for governments and international agencies to be guided by concepts of “ecodevelopment.” The world community needs a “resources alert” to keep track of how nations are depleting scarce resources which may later be necessities of life for other nations, A new planet-wide mapping and resource appraisal program is needed, to enable each nation and region to under. stand its own potential for self-reliance and to guide the bargaining about interdependence. The ocean commons offers great potentials for feeding our world if managed in the common interest. It is in the interest of the developing countries to share revenues from the deep seabed and from exploitation of the continental margins. And it is in the general interest of mankind to set up an international seabed authority able both to license and to directly manage the resources under international waters.

A new planetary bargain will require a period of creative institution-building comparable to that which followed the Second World War. The boldest minds from many cultures will need to work hard to make the needed changes, and to keep change peaceful.

We, you and I, are part of the food resources problem and its solution. We have the capacity to make the change if we move effectively within the current generation. A fairness revolution is in progress.

What you can do:

1. Don’t let the problem overwhelm you; develop a personal and group action program.
2. Change your life toward simplicity and work to share released resources.
3. Educate yourself and others for global citizenship so you can help change the system by creating and supporting attitudes and institutions for interdependence and self-reliance.

How shall we know we have done the task?

Then the king will say to those on his right hand, “You have my Father’s blessing; come, enter and possess the kingdom that has been ready for you since the world was made. For when I was hungry, you gave me food; when thirsty, you gave me drink; when I was a stranger you took me into your home, when naked you clothed me; when I was ill you came to my help, when in prison you visited me.” Then the righteous will reply, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and fed you, or thirsty and gave you drink, a stranger and took you home, or naked and clothed you? When we did we see you ill or in prison, and come to visit you?” And the king will answer, “I tell you this: anything you did for one of my brothers here, however humble, you did for me.” (Matthew 25:34-40 NEB)

Questions

1. What are the most efficient and effective ways to increase the world’s food supply? You ought to have three or more answers to this question.
2. How can you influence the world food distribution system? Think of markets at home as well as world crop monitoring and food bank or reserve systems.
3. Assuming you could not change anything else, how would it help some and hurt others if you became a vegetarian?
4. Why is a combined approach so essential to the solution of the world food and resource problem?