IMYM Faith & Practice, 2009, pp 169-172
9.01 Let all nations hear the sound by word or writing. Spare no place, spare no tongue nor pen, but be obedient to the Lord God; go through the world and be valiant for the truth upon earth. . . . Be patterns, be examples in all countries, places, islands, nations, wherever you come, that your carriage and life may preach among all sorts of people, and to them. Then you will come to walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in every one; whereby in them you may be a blessing, and make the witness of God in them to bless you.
George Fox, 1656
9.02 We are a people that follow after those things that make for peace, love, and unity; it is our desire that others’ feet may walk in the same, and do deny and bear our testimony against all strife and wars and contentions. . . . Our weapons are not carnal, but spiritual. . . . And so we desire, and also expect to have liberty of our consciences and just rights and outward liberties, as other people of the nation, which we have promise of, from the word of a king. . . . Treason, treachery and false dealing we do utterly deny; false dealing, surmising or plotting against any creature on the face of the earth; and speak the Truth in plainness and singleness of heart; and all our desire is your good and peace and love and unity.
Margaret Fell, 1660
9.03 Prison shall be my grave before I will budge a jot; for I owe my conscience to no mortal man; I have no need to fear, God will make amends for all.
William Penn, 1668
9.04 Answer the Witness of God in every man, whether they are the heathen that do not profess Christ, or whether they are such as do profess Christ that have the form of godliness and be out of the
Power. George Fox, 1672
9.05 The Cross of Christ . . . truly overcomes the world, and leads a life of purity in the face of its allurements; they that bear it are not thus chained up, for fear they should bite; nor locked up, lest they should be stole away; no, they receive power from Christ their Captain, to resist the evil, and do that which is good in the sight of God; to despise the world, and love its reproach above its praise; and not only not to offend others, but love those that offend them. . . . True godliness doesn’t turn men out of the world, but enables them to live better in it, and excites their endeavours to mend it; not hide their candle under a bushel, but set it upon a table in a candlestick.
William Penn, 1682
9.06 Every degree of luxury of what kind soever, and every demand for money inconsistent with divine order, hath some connection with unnecessary labor. . . . To labor too hard or cause others to do so, that we may live conformable to customs which Christ our Redeemer contradicted by his example in the days of his flesh, and which are contrary to divine order, is to manure a soil for propagating an evil seed in the earth.
John Woolman, c. 1763
9.07 Love was the first motion, and then a concern arose to spend some time with the Indians, that I might feel and understand their life and the spirit they live in, if haply I might receive some instruction from them, or they be in any degree helped forward by my following the leadings of Truth amongst them. . . .
Afterward, feeling my mind covered with the spirit of prayer, I told the interpreters that I found it in my heart to pray to God, and I believed, if I prayed right, he would hear me, and expressed my willingness for them to omit interpreting, so our meeting ended with a degree of Divine love. Before our people went out I observed Papunehang (the man who had been zealous in laboring for a reformation in that town, being then very tender) spoke to one of the interpreters, and I was afterward told that he said in substance as follows: “I love to feel where words come from.”
John Woolman, 1763
9.08 For Friends the most important consideration is not the right action in itself but a right inward state out of which right action will arise. Given the right inward state, right action is inevitable. Inward state and outward action are component parts of a single whole.
Howard Brinton, 1943
9.09 As Friends, we need to develop our spiritual lives so that we may become increasingly able to speak to “that of God” in those with whom we come in contact and to point out to them by our lives as well as our words that there is a power and a spirit within them that can make war impossible. We should show by our lives that they as well as we are responsible to this authority within, and none other.
Pacific Yearly Meeting, 1950
9.10 …know only too well what a poor old broken world confronts us at the present moment. This is not time for soft and easy optimism. Jeremiah the prophet usually took a dark view of things. He did not expect the leopard to change his spots, or the Ethiopian to go white. He looked for no miraculous panacea—no balm in Gilead—to change the hard conditions. But watching a potter remake a spoiled vessel on his potter’s wheel, he suddenly has a vision of reality and in a flash he saw that that is what God does with His world. He does not scrap the marred clay. He remakes what has gone wrong. How often He has done it! What a list it is!
From The Luminous Trail, quoted in
Harry Emerson Fosdick, ed., Rufus Jones Speaks to Our Time, 1961
9.11 Individuals can resist injustice, but only in community can we do justice.
The defense of human rights . . . is faith-based and worship initiated, but we need look neither to Heaven nor to the Bible nor to corporate conscience for the higher law that overrules unjust laws.
In the United States, protecting people from human rights violations is, if nonviolent, never illegal.
A society’s constituent individuals and communities retain primary responsibility for protecting human rights, a responsibility that we may entrust but never forfeit to the state.
Much that has been labeled “civil disobedience” is, more accurately, civil initiative; it is the exercise by individuals or communities of their legally established duty to protect the victims of government officials’ violations of fundamental rights.
Excerpts from “Sanctuary as a Quaker Testimony,”
a report by Jim Corbett to Philadelphia Yearly Meeting , 1986
9.12 It is thought that realizes will. Only a thinking man can live. Only a thinking people can create history. Only a thinking kind can live in the midst of the dead.
The future always belongs to us. It is neither the working of nature, nor that of fate. It comes by our resolution.
Only a person who resolves not to be enslaved enjoys freedom. Only a person who resolves not to assert his own enjoys freedom. Only the person who resolves to love even at the cost of his own life can win love.
The first ingredient of life is courage.
The problem of today is not that of knowledge or technology. It is a spiritual problem. It is a question which requires a revolution in our outlook on life, on history, and on the nation.
The world today does not require an increase in technology, nor an easier access to its store of learning. It requires faith and spirit to overcome the present hurdle. The age calls for a new religion. Ham Sok Hon, 1965
