Peace Testimony - Development of Quaker Beliefs About Peace

Development of Quaker Beliefs About Peace

George Fox, perhaps the most influential early Quaker, made a declaration in 1651 that many see as the first declaration of Friends' beliefs on peace:

I told I lived in the virtue of that life and power that took away the occasion of all wars and I knew from whence all wars did rise, from the lust, according to James's doctrine... I told them I was come into the covenant of peace which was before wars and strifes were.

The best-known version of this belief was stated in a declaration to King Charles II of England in 1660 by famous Quaker Margaret Fell, following George Fox's imprisonment after an armed revolt by religious radicals in London in January; its issuance at this particular time was as much to remove any suspicion that Friends might have been involved as a desire to make their position clear. This excerpt is commonly cited:

All bloody principles and practices we do utterly deny, with all outward wars, and strife, and fightings with outward weapons, for any end, or under any pretence whatsoever, and this is our testimony to the whole world. That spirit of Christ by which we are guided is not changeable, so as once to command us from a thing as evil and again to move unto it; and we do certainly know, and so testify to the world, that the spirit of Christ, which leads us into all Truth, will never move us to fight and war against any man with outward weapons, neither for the kingdom of Christ, nor for the kingdoms of this world.

Some Quakers initially opposed this statement because it did not deny use of the sword to the magistrate or ruler of the state. It also contained no prohibition against paying taxes for purposes of war, something that would trouble Friends to the present.