Quaker Peace Testimony
[Under development: 8 June 2005 ]
During the Second World War, some people, in good conscience, carried out acts that in other circumstances they might have considered wrong. In particular, several Christians were part of a plot to kill Adolf Hitler.
· Are there, for you, circumstances in which the end justifies the means?
Regarding physical coercion, can the end ever justify the means? In the passage below, Quakers of the seventeenth century believed that it cannot.
· What do you believe about
1. smacking children?
2. boxing and wrestling
3. physical violence?
4. capital punishment (e.g. for terrorists, serial killers, paedophiles, etc.)
5. military force?
6. battles and wars?
· How, if at all, are these beliefs reflected in the counselling relationships you choose / choose not to have?
· What other beliefs, if any, do you bring to the counselling room?
Quaker Peace Testimony
We utterly deny 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. The 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.
declaration to Charles Stuart II, 1661
