Untitled Document

Notes from a Talk on the Peace Testimony
given at Solebury Meeting (PhYM)
by Gene Hillman
on December 4, 2005

The first expression of the peace testimony commonly cited, though at this point not yet a testimony but a leading, was the occasion in 1651 when George Fox was in prison in Derby and was offered a captaincy in the Commonwealth army to fight against Charles Stewart (see extract #215 in Faith and Practice). The Commonwealth army was the army of Parliament in the English civil war between Parliament and King Charles I (Charles of the house of Stewart, hence "Charles Stewart") which culminated in Oliver Cromwell being named Lord Protector. Parliament was dominated by Calvinists and one of their tenants was that of human depravity. We are saved by God's grace, and grace and faith are closely intertwined. As with Luther, it is faith and not works that is salvific.

While in many ways allied with the Calvinist Puritans against the high church royalists in this religious and cultural war, Fox believed in the possibility of the perfection of human nature. He finds in the Bible: James's doctrine (Letter or Epistle of James, chapter 4, verses 1-3) that which confirms what he already knows inwardly. It is those still subject to the "lusts" (translated "cravings" in the NRSV) that fight. He no longer was subject to these lusts. Interestingly he finds confirmation in James, a piece controversial for the agents of a Calvinist Parliament with whom he was conversing. James was controversial because they saw it as "works theology" which didn't mention the faith they held to be so important. Luther didn't even want to include it in his translation of the Bible.

Fox felt "a stop" when offered release from prison if he would fight for the Commonwealth. It wasn't until 1660 (1661 by the calendar we use today) when after the monarchy was restored and the new King, Charles II son of Charles Stewart, was threatened by groups that would have him overthrown to bring about the second coming of Christ*. The Declaration of 1660 (published in Fox's Journal, Nickalls edition page 398-403, which a brief excerpt in our Faith & Practice, page 76-7) was the first corporate statement of the peace testimony, signed by twelve Friends including George Fox on behalf of the whole society in a day before there were Monthly and Yearly Meetings to pass minutes. It dissociated us from thosew who would use outward weapons to wage war. It cited James but also gave other scriptural refrences, in particular the example of Jesus telling Peter to put away his sword when he tried to keep Jesus from being arrested (see John 18:10ff). If Peter is not to fight to protect Jesus we are not called to fight either. But the emphesis is on our inner state as reflected in the passage in James, and not on following directions.

Wilmer Cooper, in A Living Faith, lists seven reasons for the peace testimony. His first two are (1) the inward prompting such as Fox experienced, and (2.) the dictates of scripture. The other five are:

Concen for what the use of violence will do to one's own soul, or deepest self.
Concern for that of God in another.
The practical consideration that war does not work.

Notes

* what contemporary situation echoes this? Think Palestine for one, and the evangelical Christians who support the Ultra-Orthodox Jews who would destroy the mosque on the Dome of the Rock to allow the re-building of the Temple, a precondition for the second coming of Christ to their thinking.