Friends Journal –
Rejecting the False Reality
By Patience A. Schenck
A Recommitment to the Peace Testimony
Friends have been distracted from our peace testimony in recent years due to the importance of addressing climate change and racism. Developments in Ukraine have forced us to once again examine a part of our tradition that many of us find difficult to understand.
We are familiar with the words of early Friends in their 1660 Declaration to Charles II:
We utterly deny all outward wars and strife and fightings with outward weapons, for any end, or under any pretense whatsoever; and this is our testimony to the whole world.
Do these words make sense to us?
Patience A. Schenck
Patience A. Schenck, a member of Annapolis (Md.) Meeting, lives at Friends House in Sandy Spring, Md. She has written Pendle Hill pamphlets on the call to social action and on our testimony on equality, and she writes occasional book reviews for Friends Journal. She clerks the Friends House Diversity Committee.