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About The Meeting - Testimonies - Peace

The Testimonies

Click on the links below for information on the other testimonies most commonly recognized by Friends:

The Peace Testimony

Of all our testimonies, our peace testimony may be the most widely known outside our own circles. It certainly isn't the easiest. We reach it at our own pace, and come at it in different ways. We still remember the story of George Fox and William Penn:

When William Penn became a Quaker, he did not take on the simple dress of the early Friends right away. He continued to wear hats. He continued to wear fancy clothes. And he continued to wear the sword that every well-dressed gentleman wore.

One day he met George Fox, and Penn asked Fox about wearing the sword. Penn said it wasn't just about being well-dressed. He said that he had saved himself without violence because of his sword and that, after all, there were places in the gospel where Jesus said that you should take up a sword. George Fox replied, "Then I advise you to wear it as long as you can." Some time later George Fox ran into William Penn again. He noticed that Penn wasn't wearing a sword. "What happened to the sword?" Fox asked. Penn replied, "I did as you said. I wore it as long as I could."

Penn's story illustrates what many Friends feel-- that once they are commited to the Quaker life, they are drawn to certain life choices that they would not have necessarily predicted for themselves. The peace testimony is the perfect example of this, for the ways in which a Friend is called to practice peace may be difficult or even dangerous.

We live the peace testimony in many ways, and we take it on at different rates. Many Friends have chosen to be conscientious objectors of current wars, of compulsory service in the military, or of compulsory military registration. Some have chosen alternative service, serving in the military as non-combatants. Conscientious objectors to compulsory peacetime registration have been jailed, or have found ways to afford a college education without the availability of student loans. Yet conscientious objection is only one of the ways a Friend may live the peace testimony; many Friends are active in peace politics or organizations like Christian Peacemaker Teams, while others choose to quietly manifest peace in their daily lives (e.g. solving conflicts nonviolently).