Force or Power?

Few of "the world's people" know what Quakers are up to when they sit, hands folded patiently, in hour-long silence. They are listening, as some Friends say, "in the silence of all flesh." For central to the Quaker view is the belief that man is a moral ruin, that only in the silent suspension of man's common activities can God "work in and direct the soul" as "by an invasion, a breaking in, a prevailing of the Divine."

Also central to the Quaker view is the exasperating belief that a God of Love cannot be at the same time a God of War, that the injunction which gives Christianity its specific spirit is Christ's specific injunction not to use force.

Last week for the first time since George Fox founded the Religious Society of Friends in 1668, a group of Quakers endorsed the use of force by Quakers. Indiana Yearly Meeting, second largest yearly meeting of Friends in the world, passed two history-making resolutions.

Resolution No. 1: "Indiana Yearly Meeting, while holding its views that the ways of love and conciliation are superior in effectiveness to the use of force in world adjustments, expresses its belief that in a world accustomed to the use of force, the so-called Fulbright Resolution which commits the United States as 'favoring the creation of appropriate international machinery with power adequate to establish and to maintain a just and lasting peace among the nations, and as favoring participation by the United States . . .' is a step forward in the effort to better international relations."

Resolution No. 2: "We do not censure Friends who conscientiously take part in the war effort any more than ourselves for failure to create conditions that might have done much to have avoided this war."

Many a Friend could and did argue that Indiana Yearly Meeting had bravely faced the modern world with a modern realism, that the two resolutions simply put on record views which Friends have long been privately laboring with. The resolutions would enable Friends to exert a force in the postwar world commensurate with their Christian purpose.

By no means all Friends agreed. Some Quakers felt an urgent need to dwell deep upon the teachings of George Fox and other weighty Friends. Some feared that the more Quakers became a force in the world the less they would exert that power which few Quakers would care to express in words, but of which Robert Barclay once wrote: "When I came into the silent assemblies of God's people, I felt a secret power among them which touched my heart; and as I gave way unto it, I found the evil weakening in me, and the good raised up."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.