Prepared by a called meeting of Friends at Scattergood School in Iowa on the 2nd to 4th of Fourth Month, 1954.
From its beginnings 300 years ago the Religious Society of Friends has opposed the use of force or violence between individuals or nations. Because we believe in conciliation, based on respect and love for all peoples, it is equally impossible for us to advocate the overthrow of any government by force and violence, or to support the war-making effort of any government. Our belief in that of God in every man, and in the essential sacredness of the individual, is unalterably opposed to the totalitarian way of life and its resultant totalitarian state.
Moreover, our nation is “this nation under God” and we reaffirm our unshaken conviction that our highest allegiance is to God. If there is a conflict “we ought to obey God rather than men”.
American democracy was founded on a deep religious faith in the ultimate worth of man; a faith that man has rights and responsibilities given by God; that free men will seek truth and right and will choose them rather than error; that men need not fear to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate error so long as reason is left free to combat it”. The founders believed that a government whose power to interfere with personal liberty is limited, is safer and better than one which prescribes conformity to any orthodox doctrine. We affirm our agreement with these principles.
Today in a time of great social and political tension many Americans are losing touch with the ideals and sources of strength upon which this country rests. In response to the fears and hatreds of today, they fear even their own weapons of war, they are losing faith in man and his relation to God; they are losing faith in the power of ideas freely arrived at to meet and dispel error. They are losing touch with the needs and aspirations of people in most of the rest of the world. Indeed, in their fear of Communism, they are losing faith in democracy.
Civil liberties are founded on God’s gift to man of the ability to search for truth and the freedom to act on what truth he finds. This freedom can only be fully expressed in the social group and it should be to maintain the conditions most favorable to man’s exercise of his God-given rights that governments exist. A government which carries out this responsibility well is, as William Penn said, “a part of religion itself, a thing sacred in its institutions and end.”
If we remember that God and not the state is the source of the truth we seek, then any attempt on the part of government to determine what men may or may not believe, may or may not say, will be recognized as a perversion of the government’s function.
The threat of Communism has caused us to forget these eternal truths. Yet, Communism jeopardizes our way of life not so much by its political and economic theories as by those totalitarian practices which destroy moral fiber, erase human conscience and abolish human freedom. A democratic government which attempts to protect itself against Communism by adopting totalitarian measures is thereby succumbing to the most destructive element in what it fears. No amount of international tension, intrigue, or threat of war can justify measures which are undemocratic.
Increasing encroachments on the freedom and integrity of the individual by irresponsible accusations, by pressures for conformity in thinking, by charges of guilt by association, by insistence on the assertions of guilt and by the assumption of guilt, rather than the presumption of innocence, all have their origin in fear and insecurity, growing in large part out of the threat of war and of Communism and out of the emphasis on military strength and military secrecy. These are essential features of totalitarianism. They create an image of the state as the source of all truth and the object of unqualified loyalty. This is idolatry, and strikes at the root of both American political philosophy and of basic Quaker principle.
Source: American Friend, April 22, 1954. p. 122-123