As I outlined yesterday, other factors quite apart from events in Ukraine are the primary impetus for starting this blog. Nonetheless, I realized yesterday that I needed to address Quaker pacifism and my well known support for Ukraine, because the one thing many people know about Quakers is that they are pacifists and one of the historic peace churches. I realized it is the elephant in the room so to speak, so best to start with it.
First, a little history. When Quakers emerged in the 1640s and 1650s pacifism was not a core concern. Many Quakers had fought with Cromwell against Royalist forces. The Peace Testimony Quakers are known for was drafted in 1660 on Charles II’s return from exile. It was written in the hopes that an open statement that Quakers had no thought of challenging the king’s return would convince Charles II to let them continue to practicing openly. Unfortunately, Charles II did not buy it, and treated dissenters, that is those who did not accept the Church of England as enemies. So began almost 30 years of persecution of dissenters, with Quakers being favored victims. Let me add that during the Protectorate persecution of Quakers was not unknown, but prominent Puritans including Cromwell and John Milton respected Quakers. The situation was different in Massachusetts Bay Colony, where they hanged one Quaker Mary Dyer who returned to Boston to preach her truth after being expressly told not to. In Restoration England no one was martyred but every major Quaker spent time in jail, and whole congregations were arrested. Rather than deter Quakers the persecution became a means in which Quakers demonstrated their depth of their convictions, including the refusal to take up arms for the king thereby transforming the Peace Testimony from olive branch into one of the most widely known peculiarities along side the plain dress most people know from the Quaker Oats box.
In the 18th and early 19th C, joining a militia, or in some instances even accepting Continental Currency during the American Revolution could lead to someone being disowned— this wasn’t the only offense, other things that might lead to being disowned included marrying outside the faith community or other failure to conform to established Quaker norms. In the second half of the 19th C that rigorous enforcement began to wane, and focus increasingly became a matter of individual conscience. A fairly large number of Quakers felt ending slavery was important enough to fight for the Union, but I don’t know how many of those people returned to being practicing Quakers. The establishment of a draft raised new problems. Up to that point one just needed not to join an army to avoid practicing war, while Conscientious Objection was created to allow Quakers and members of other Peace Churches a way out. Not all accepted this. at least one British Quaker, who had felt no qualms about serving in France as part of the Friends (the official name of the Quakers is the Religious Society of Friends) Ambulance Unit, was so opposed to the introduction of the draft in Britain in 1916 that he resigned and then refused to claim Conscientious Objector so that he spent the remainder of the war in World War II posed other questions, and while many Quakers claimed Conscientious Objector status, and a few chose complete non-cooperation, some also decided chose to fight without ceasing to identify with Quakers.
One last point, claiming Conscientious Objector status was not, and is not about moral superiority. It is grounded in the discernment that one cannot kill in good conscience. Many people have come to Quakerism after serving in the military without reproach, going back to veterans of the English Civil War. While it doesn’t happen to everybody by any means, one of the effects war has on people is it creates pacifists. Indeed, a small part of the Quakers dwindling numbers may well be the return to an all volunteer army, that people who might have a predilection towards pacifism are less likely to join, and without a draft the impetus to demonstrate one’s conscience objector status by seeking out a peace church has disappeared. The key is individual discernment, and the recognition that other may assess the morality of military service differently, and notably Quakers were among the first to recognized that Vietnam Vets were not getting the support they needed to reenter society.
As for myself, I am a committed pacifist. For me the issue has never been dying for my country, it has been killing for my country, and when draft registration was reintroduced I also registered as a Conscientious Objector and wrote a letter to my Quaker Meeting as documentation. In those days pretty absolutist about passives, but in the 1990s I backed off, and it seemed possible to be a pacifist and still accept that states may need to commit acts of violence to enforce international norms, what is called liberal interventionism. That changed for me on September 11, 2001. I was working in downtown Brooklyn at the time, and had been streaming radio at my desk, so I knew what was going on. As it happened I had some business to attend to at my bank which was up on Montague Street, and around 9:30 I decided I’d take care of that and then wander up to the Brooklyn Heights Promenade and watch the crowd. I must have gotten there at 9:59 or 10:00 at the latest. In the last block before the promenade a man was coming from the promenade shaking his head. He said to me, “The building just came down.” When I got to the promenade a moment or two later, the cloud of debris was still growing. At first, you could still see the shadow-like outline of the first tower, but gradually it disappeared as did all of lower Manhattan. It was a remarkable sight even though we could see nothing and sadly far too few people saw this because the main news feeds were all using cameras based uptown. In any case, we watched horrified, and it was not long before an young man with his suit jacket slung over his shoulder ran down along the promenaded expressing the anguish so many in that crowd, saying “I don’t care where I have to go, I’m going to get the people who did this.” In that moment I knew America well enough to be certain we would insure retribution, and at the same time, the next thought that came to my mind was of a young man in some foreign country, saying exactly the same time in response to a US air strike, and so the cycle of violence would continue ad infinitum. In that moment, I returned to the pacifist absolutism of my early adulthood, and that remains my position now, and yet when Russia invaded Ukraine I recognized that I needed to reflect carefully on peace and a person’s or people’s right to defend themselves. What follows is where I have landed, some may see it as sophistry, and a way to retain my claim to pacifism while cheering on Ukraine, but these work for me, and whether it aligns with this recent restatement of the Peace Testimony in regard to Ukraine, I stand by it.
Killing is wrong, but killing someone who has attacked you is understandable because as long a we are alive, we have a will to live something that other things may be driven by our desire to protect others. That said if killing is wrong, the morally correct thing to do is not to kill, but it would be wrong to treat a killing when someone is threatened in the same way as if someone attacks and kills someone. In society we deal with this through the concept of “justifiable homicide,” but something being justifiable should not be understood as absolving of guilt of committing a sin, even if a finding of justifiable homicide exempts the state from pursuing punishment for homicide. Absolution only comes with asking for forgiveness and so admission of the guilt. War does not alter the moral imperative not to kill. It merely creates another means by which the state establishes circumstances in which it is not obligated to punish people who kill.
As such I still don’t believe in the concept of a just war, but there is also no getting around the fact that this war is happening because Russia attacked. The reasons don’t matter, but none of Russia’s claims stand up to scrutiny. Meanwhile Ukraine and Ukrainians were existentially threatened as profoundly as a victim of a home invasion. In an ideal world, it might be better had Ukrainians prepared for the eventuality of a Russian attack with well developed strategies of passive resistance, but it is too late for that. Should we judge Ukrainians for taking the rhetoric of brotherhood between the three East Slavic peoples and states seriously enough not to think such measures were necessary, at least until 2014? I think not. Ukrainians say if Russia stops fighting the war ends, but if Ukraine stops fighting there will be no Ukraine, we need to take that seriously. They are speaking their truth, and even if we outsiders might see other possibilities, it is not our place to judge, without denying that war is morally wrong. I will close with two thoughts. At the height of the anti-Apartheid struggle, under the influence of Bishop Desmond Tutu, the South African Council of Churches added a phrase to their condemnation of the use of violence that they "understood those who say they have had to adopt what is a last resort for them. Violence is not being introduced into the South African Situation de novo from outside by those who are called terrorists or freedom fighters, depending on whether you are the oppressed or an oppressor. The South African situation is violent already, and the primary violence is that of apartheid, the violence of forced population removals, of inferior education, of detention without trial, of the migratory labor system, etc." Obviously, apartheid is not relevant here but suppression of a culture, forced population removals, and detention without trial all are. This brings to mind the explanation a man from an old Quaker family gave when I asked him years ago why he had joined the navy in World War II. He responded, more or less as follows I don’t have his exact words written down, “The war was there, it wasn’t going to go away. Under those circumstances the best thing seemed to do to do my part to end the war.”
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