Quaker Theology

Anti-Violence and Quakerism

  • Theology & Peace Witness by Chuck Fager

    A Letter to the Next Director of Quaker House, Fayetteville-Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Here’s the job description in a nutshell: as the Director of Quaker House (QH), besides managing a small non-profit, the essence of the work a call to continue a protracted, hand-to-hand combat with the Spirit of War, operating behind the lines of…

  • From “The Church, the Draft Board, and Me” by George Amoss, Jr.

    This recounts my conflicts with the Catholic Church, whose ethics were called into question by the war in Vietnam, and the U.S. Selective Service System, which refused to honor my conscientious objection to participation in war. In telling that story, it sketches my evolution, despite encounters with predatory priests and a vindictive draft board, from…

  • 00. Can the American Friends Service Committee Get Its Quaker Groove Back?

    Chuck Fager I: The Background of a Concern What we’ve dubbed “The Great Quaker Turnover” has been rolling through Quakerism over the past year. Practically all the “alphabet soup” Friends groups have been changing their top executives: FUM, QUNO, FCNL, FGC, FWCC, Friends Journal. Read More

  • PRELUDE: Two Documents From Discussion held at FGC in Richmond, Indiana, July, 1979

    Chuck Fager [INTRODUCTORY NOTE: These discussions were sparked by an event that is unmentioned in these documents: the publication in The New Republic magazine of a cover story by Stephen Chapman called “Shot From Guns: the Lost Pacifism of the Quakers,” in its June 9, 1979 issue. Read More

  • 01: “Truly Radical, Non-violent, Friendly Approaches”

    (1): Challenges to the American Friends Service Committee H. Larry Ingle Reprinted from Quaker History, Volume 105, Number 1, Spring 2016. Published by Friends Historical Association Nearly twenty-five years ago, on the occasion of the American Friends Service Committee’s seventy-fifth anniversary, Swarthmore College historian Read More

  • 02: From Supporter to Friendly Critic: How AFSC Changed Me

    H. Larry Ingle Friends learn from experience, actually from a dialogue with experience; at its best, the dialogue is actually a trialogue with God’s Spirit an essential third participant. That’s what happened to me as I reflect back on my encounters with the American Read More

  • 03: The Cold War’s Effect AFSC, 1947-49

    H. Larry Ingle Reprinted from Peace & Change, 23 (Jan. 1998) In a year when it received the recognition of a Nobel Peace Prize, the American Friends Service Committee entered into a period of marked transition. This study of the impact of the cold war on the organization Read More

  • 04: Pickett vs. Chambers: A Case Study of Elite Class Power

    H. Larry Ingle Reprinted from: An Early Assessment: U.S. Quakerism in the 20th Century. Papers from the Quaker History Roundtable, 2017. The story I am about to tell is not one that I take great pleasure in relating. For one thing, it deals with a Friend whose life was, in most ways and as Read…

  • 05: “Speak Truth to Power:” A Thirty Years Retrospective (1985)

    H. Larry Ingle When the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) published “Speak Truth to Power” in the spring of 1955, it did two important things, one advertent, one inadvertent. The authors intended to, and did, produce the most lucid pacifist tract ever penned in the United States; Read More

  • 06: AFSC and Southern Appalachian Yearly Meeting & Association

    An Exchange About Numbers; (SAYMA), 2011-2012 From SAYMA’s minutes, 2011: [SAYMA =] Southern Appalachian Yearly Meeting & Association June 9-12, 2011[Below: SAYMA’s logo & Map of Meetings] Warren Wilson College, Swannanoa, North Carolina41st Annual Meeting 41-32: AFSC and Quakers Free Polazzo serves as one Read More

  • 07: A Flicker of Hope: A Friendly Letter

    Written & published by Chuck Fager Issue Number SevenTenth Month 1981 Dear Friend, On the 30th of Ninth Month [1981], near the Oregon coast, a meeting took place which could be very important for the future of American Quakerism. The two top executives of the American Friends Service Committee Read More

  • 08: Another False Dawn: AFSC, 1991-1992

    A Friendly Letter, Written & published by Chuck Fager, Issue #127, 12th Month 1991 As the Corporation and Board of the American Friends Service Committee gathered for its annual meeting on 11/15-17, AFSC was on the brink of important change: A new Board clerk has taken hold. A new Executive Secretary, the most pivotal Quaker…

  • 09: Introduction to Quaker Service at the Crossroads – 1988

    Chuck Fager There’s an old Quaker joke: a young woman attends her first business meeting as an adult member, looking to make her mark, and sits next to a weighty older Friend in a grey bonnet who is knitting quietly. An agenda item comes up which requires nominations Read More

  • 10: Gilbert White & AFSC: A Letter to the Editor, Friends Journal, 2006

    H. Larry Ingle & Chuck Fager (Published in the April 2006 issue.) Dear Editor, We were very disappointed in Margaret Bacon’s review of the biography of Gilbert White, Living With Nature’s Extremes. The reviewer dismissed with a throwaway comment the deep concerns Read More

  • 11: Can the AFSC Get Its Quaker Groove Back?

    By Chuck Fager Adapted from Quaker Theology, Issue #18, 2010-2011 I: The Background of a Concern What we’ve dubbed “The Great Quaker Turnover” has been rolling through Quakerism over the past year. Practically all the “alphabet soup” Friends groups have been changing their top executives: Read More

  • Joseph Southall & The Ghosts of the Slain:

    A Quaker Artist Takes on World War One    Editor’s Note: Joseph Southall (1861-1944) was a successful British artist, who was at the peak of his renown and productivity when World War One began. A lifelong Quaker pacifist and socialist, he set aside much of his conventional work to make drawings Read More

  • “Many Friends Do Not Know ‘Where They Are’”: Some Divisions in London Yearly Meeting During the First World War”

    Reprinted from Quaker Theology #11, 2005Thomas C. Kennedyauthor of British Quakerism 1860-1920 Late in 2001 in the terrible aftermath of the September 11th attack on the World Trade Center, Scott Simon, newsman and commentator for National Public Radio who claims membership in the Society of Friends, presented solemn public testimony in which he Read More

  • Everyday/Extraordinary Resistance: Two True Stories from the Vietnam Years

    Leafleting a Meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Marion Anderson By 1970, I had been organizing against the war full-time for five years. First, in Washington where I was an organizer of the televised National Teach-In which was watched by about ten million Americans and then in Michigan as chairman of Michi-gan Clergy Read…

  • Jim Corbett, Sanctuary Prophet of Post-Desert Quakerism

    Chuck Fager Friend Jim Corbett, of Pima Meeting in Tucson, died on his Arizona ranch August 2, 2001 after a short illness. He was 67. With his passing a quiet giant of Quaker resistance departed.     He was a founder of the 1980s Sanctuary movement, which helped save many Read More

  • Remembering Tom Fox Introduction to: Tom Fox Was My Friend. Yours, Too.

    Chuck Fager Christian Peacemakers Kidnapped in Baghdad John Stephens called me with the news: Tom Fox and three other members of the Christian peacemaker Teams’ group (CPT) in Baghdad had been kidnaped. It was just after Thanksgiving, late November, 2005.     That summer of 2005 John had been an intern at Quaker Read More

  • The Quaker Peace Testimony as Questing Beast

    The 1995 Roundtable was sponsored by the Pendle Hill Issues Program, for which I was then the coordinator. I asked Chel to prepare an overview of the Quaker Peace Testimony, because I was looking, quite frankly, for “new talent” and new thinking in the field.

  • Study War Some More (If You Want to Work for Peace)

    Chuck Fager Introduction Why a study on Quaker peace strategy? From some current perspectives, laboring over the stra-tegy and history of Quaker peace work is a curiosity, if not a waste of time. Larger and more influential groups are at work on peace issues, especially in Washington DC; isn’t our main role Read More

  • “No Country for Jewish Liberals,” “The Half Life of a Free Radical”* Two Reviews

    Reviewed by Chuck Fager These two autobiographical memoirs should be much more different.  They ended up in a stack of books by my recliner, and I was soon struck by a kind of spiritual resonance and counterpoint between them, across seemingly vast gaps of culture and personality. Read More

  • Review Essay: Resistance Theology in Niebuhr, Barth, Rauschenbush & Dorrien; Irony & Living a Theological Saga

    Reviewed by Chuck Fager Adapted from Quaker Theology #11 – Spring-Summer 2005 Six Books by Gary Dorrien, published by Westminster John Knox, Louisville:     The Making of American Liberal Theology: Imagining     Progressive Religion, 1805-1900. 2001. 494 pges..    Read More

  • Forgiveness over Khmer Rouge: a journey or an obligation? A Beginning of Dialogue

    Editor’s Introduction: Forgiveness is a frequent topic of discussion among Friends these days. For American Quakers, most of whom live in relatively comfortable circumstances, the issue is typically posed in personal terms: as a means of coping with lingering grievances, failed Read More

  • Response: Forgiveness and Letting-Go: An Inter-Religious and Internal Dialogue Sallie B. King

    Sallie B. King I thank Claire Ly for giving the interview, “Forgiveness: a journey or an obligation?” in which she shares her reflections upon her experience under the Khmer Rouge regime. Read More

  • “Paper Trail: Writings from the Front Line of Peace Action, Quaker House/Fort Bragg, 2001-2012″* A Review

    Reviewed by John Kiriako This is an eminently readable first-person account of a daily fight for peace during what is arguably the most militarily active period of the past two generations. First, the reader should know what the book is NOT. It is not anti-military. (In fact, Read More

  • “Remaking Friends: How Progressive Friends Changed Quakerism & Helped Save America, 1822-1940″* A Review

    Reviewed by Isaac May In his introduction to Remaking Read More

  • “Climate Wars” & “The Green Zone”* Reviewed

    Reviewed by Chuck Fager Intellectually speaking, discovering the work of Gwynne Dyer was the best thing that’s happened to me in the past several years. Dyer is a Canadian military analyst and columnist. He’s worked with the navies of Great Britain, Canada and the US, gained Read More

  • “Hostage In Iraq” & “118 Days: Christian Peacemaker Teams Held Hostage in Iraq”* Reviewed

    Reviewed by Chuck Fager This is a bad news-good news review. Bad news first: In US army jargon, the “Tooth-to-Tail-Ratio” describes the fact that for every armed soldier on the Baghdad streets or in Afghan mountains, there is a “tail” of eight to ten others, stretching Read More

  • “Study War Some More (If You Want to Work for Peace),”* A Review

    Reviewed by Doug Gwyn This small book of sixty pages offers a good mix of biblical reflection, lessons from Quaker history, and distillations from Chuck Fager’s years of work for peace.  It’s a call to Friends for a more rigorous and long-term Read More

  • Narrative Theology: from Psychological Warfare to Peace; My journey to/into Quakerism and nonviolence

    Jeanne-Henriette Louis My Ph.D. dissertation on the concepts of psychological warfare in the United States during the Second World War originated in the need to investigate the period corresponding to the first years of my life (I was born in 1938) but also to an extremely painful Read More

  • “The Dark Side” and “Never Surrender”* Reviewed

    Reviewed by Chuck Fager Since I live and work next door to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, I looked forward to these two books. From very different angles, they shine sharp spotlights on Fort Bragg and its important role in our current war. Beyond that, they illuminate much of our Read More

  • Four Publications on Torture

    A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror. Alfred McCoy. Holt, 320 pages. Torture Taxi: On the Trail of the CIA’s Rendition Flights. Trevor Paglen and A. C. Thompson. Melville House Publishing 208 pages. $23.00 Teaching About Torture, a Curriculum. Peggy Brick. 19 pages. The Quaker Initiative to…

  • The Sermon on the Mount in the Life and Death of Tom Fox

    Pearl Hoover [Editor’s Note: This essay is adapted from a presentation at a memorial session for Tom Fox at Baltimore yearly meeting, in Harrisonburg, Virginia, August 4, 2006.] This paper encompasses the life of Tom Fox, from his earliest decision to give his life Read More

  • “Many Friends do not know ‘where they are’: Some Divisions in London Yearly Meeting During the First World War”

    Thomas Kennedyauthor of British Quakerism 1860-1920 Late in 2001 in the terrible aftermath of the September 11th attack on the World Trade Center, Scott Simon, newsman and commentator for National Public Radio who claims membership in the Society of Friends, presented solemn public testimony Read More

  • Peace Theology and Foundations for Ecumenical Dialogue

    Lauree Hersch Meyer Editor’s Introduction: In 1999, the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches invited WCC member churches and others who share their concerns to participate in a decade of work to overcome violence in our world. Giving shape and direction to the Read More

  • Milton Mayer, Quaker Hedgehog

    A Review and Profile, by H. Larry Ingle State Authority Over the Individual Oxford-educated political scientist Isaiah Berlin, in his minor classic “The Hedgehog and the Fox” (1953), divided people into two groups, those who understood one big thing like the hedgehog and those, like the fox, who knew many things. The Read More

  • Quakers and The Lamb’s War: A Hermeneutic for Confronting Evil, Non-Violent Resistance

    By Gene Hillman A paper presented at the International Historic Peace Church Consultation Bienenberg Theological Seminary, Switzerland, June 25-28, 2001 As they war not against men’s persons, so their weapons are not carnal nor hurtful to any of the creation; for the Lamb Read More

  • Abolishing War? An Appeal to Christian Leaders and Theologians

    By Stanley Hauerwas and Enda McDonagh As Christians called to serve the Church in differing Christian traditions we appeal to our Christian sisters and brothers to join a campaign to abolish war as a legitimate means of resolving political conflict between states and within them. Although Read More

  • Editor’s Introduction, # 7

    By Chuck Fager This issue of Quaker Theology is one of the most exciting that it has been my privilege to work on. In it the work of serious religious thought is tackled from several strikingly different but revealing directions. We begin with with an appeal by two distinguished Read More

  • A Great Deep: The Peace Testimony and Historical Realism

    By Chuck Fager Walking in the Way of Peace: Quaker Pacifism in the Seventeenth Century. Meredith Baldwin Weddle. Oxford University Pres, 2001 British Quakerism 1860-1920: the Transformation of a Religious Community. Thomas C. Kennedy. Oxford University Press, 2001. Re-examing Quaker Peace Testimony In Read More

  • Quaker Peace Witness After 9/11 – A Resource List

    By Chuck Fager Quaker Thoughts on September 11 Terrorism The shocks of 9/11, the September 11 attacks, on and their aftermath have abruptly put Read More

  • “Refiner’s Fire: A Religious Engagement with Violence”* a Review

    Reviewed by Jeffrey Gros An African American Womanist Perspective on Violence The African American “Womanist” perspective, developed in this volume, is an important explication from within a culture that has been the recipient of violence. It provides both a critique of society’s violent culture and of those whose Read More

  • The Bible & Peacemaking — A Response

    By Chuck Fager Are there other ways of looking at the Bible and what it may have to teach us about Peacemaking? In particular, are there other ways to take the Bible seriously, on this topic? Ron Mock invites his readers to develop alternative approaches, and here I’ll attempt to sketch Read More

  • What Can The Bible Teach Us About Peacemaking?

    (Originally presented at the Quaker Peace Roundtable 2001) By Ron Mock I. Introduction I have been asked to bring to the 2001 Quaker Peace Roundtable a reflection on what the Bible teaches about peacemaking. I accepted the task with some reservations. For one thing, among the peace churches (at least) the subject has gotten a little…

  • A Report on the North American Launch of the World Council of Churches’ Decade to Overcome Violence

    By Ann K. Riggs. April 23 to 25, 2001, I was one of those representing Friends at the launch of the Decade to Overcome Violence of the World Council of Churches (2001-2010). We met at the Scarritt-Bennett Read More