Talking about nonviolence and FOR

Along the lines of Ruby Sinreich's presentation of the non-violent movement, for those who may not
have read reviews of two useful books, one on the history of FOR and the IFOR and the other on the history of the War Reisters International, I am posting my reviews of both books. At the start of the two movements, many of the people were the same, having a religious hat in FOR and a secular one in WRI.
This is the review of the FOR history. The WRI history,by Devi Prasad who was Secretary General during the 1960s with the interest in the Vietnam War and decolonization, is especially good on the period when he was in the leadership role, is in the next posting. Rene Wadlow
Paul R. Dekar
Creating the Beloved Community : A Journey with the Fellowship of Reconciliation
(Telford, PA: Cascadia Publishing, 2005, 326pp.).

The Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) began symbolically on the eve of the First World War as Henry Hodgkin, a British Quaker, and Friedrick Siegmund-Schultze, the German pastor of Potsdam and chaplain to the Kaiser , parted after the creation of the World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship through the Churches. They said “We are one in Christ and can never be at war.” A few weeks later, Germany and England were at war. Henry Hodgkin helped draft a statement first for the Quakers and then for the creation in England of the Fellowship of Reconciliation which said in part “ That the Power, Wisdom and Love of God stretch far beyond the limits of our present experience, and that He is ever waiting to break forth into human life in new and larger ways.”

In Germany, Siegmund-Schultze faced the death penalty for his pronouncements against the war and was forced into exile. He lived until 1969, thus seeing the Second World War as well as some of the most aggressive phases of the Cold War.

Hodgkin who had been a missionary doctor in China had good contacts among American Quakers as well as among the YMCA which had been active in China and with others such as Grace Hutchins, a former principal of a school in Wuchang, China, who became the associate editor of the FOR magazine. He drew upon these contacts to organize a branch in the USA in November 1915. What was remarkable for the time was that among the 68 founding members, half were women. Some of the women went on to help found shortly afterwards two, not specifically religious, peace organizations: Emily Greene Balch and Jane Addams – the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom; Tracy Mygatt and others – the War Resisters League.

After the war in 1919 Christian peacemakers met in England to develop an international body; the International Fellowship of Reconciliation was officially founded in 1923 with England and the USA as the strongest groups. Paul Dekar’s book is a journey primarily through the US branch but as events in the rest of the world crowd in on the US, peacemakers from other countries appear in the narrative.

While reading Dekar’s journey, it is useful to read in parallel Devi Prasad’s recent history of the War Resisters’International: War is a Crime Against Humanity (London: War Resisters’ International, 2005, 556pp.). Prasad has written a secretariat-centered history of the London-based WRI and so events in the UK are highlighted. There are both similarities and differences between the USA and the UK, and between the religious FOR and the non-religious WRI. Nevertheless, there are people who have been active in both and others who are active in one because of friendship, location and issues. There are also the ironies of history. In the US, Norman Thomas and his brother Evan were both opposed to US entry into the First World War and became in 1917 officials and staff of the FOR. Both brothers were active Protestants and could be ‘at home’ in liberal church circles. However, Norman Thomas was better known as the candidate for US President for the Socialist Party, most of whose active members were secular Jews from Eastern Europe and Russia. Non-violence and the struggle against fascism were strong issues in Socialist circles with the start of the Spanish Civil War and then the aggressive policies of Mussolini and Hitler.

In somewhat similar ways, racism in the US and Northern Ireland in the UK are the local setting for non-violent actions and efforts at peacemaking. In the US, Martin Luther King, an FOR member, was the model of a person first involved in the fight against racism, who then became increasingly active on Vietnam War issues. King stressed the link between injustice at home and injustice abroad.

The title of the book “Creating the Beloved Community” comes from an oft-used phrase of Martin Luther King Jr. in describing the aim of overcoming the tripartite personal, economic, and political oppression. As James Lawson, who later became FOR chairperson, wrote in 1959 “ Only if the Negro is strong enough to love and forgive, while pressing on for a new society, will the end to segregation and racial hatred arrive.”

As Dekar points out “FOR members have not typically held a narrow view of peacemaking. FOR members have sought not only to oppose war, but also to identify and alleviate causes of war.” As Alfred Hassler, FOR Executive Secretary from 1958 to 1974, wrote “ Those of us who believe in the ability of non-violent methods to deal effectively with this problem of social change and revolution must consider whether it is enough to apply the tactics of non-violence to individual circumstances in isolated places, or whether we must not now seek a total strategy that envisions a non-violently organized total world community in which the well-being of all is the responsibility of all.” He went on to stress the necessity for individuals of all countries to identify as world citizens and to shape a wider vision of the world at peace. He saw the need to provide concrete, visible, and simple means by which greater numbers of people might contribute to shaping life on earth in different ways and to use new technologies in more appropriate ways.

Dai Dong, a Vietnamese term for “a world of great togetherness” was such a transnational effort linking war, ecology, poverty and other social issues, especially at the time of the 1st UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm 1972. As Dekar notes “Dai Dong and FOR highlighted a people-centered development vision that embraced an agenda markedly different than that of the world’s governments.”

As we look over the history of FOR, we are reminded of a talk in 1967 of Martin Luther King Jr. “The past is prophetic in that it asserts loudly that wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows. One day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.”

Rene Wadlow