May you experience comfort and peace in the loving presence of God and in the compassion and prayers of your pastors and leaders.

The pastors and leaders of Northwest Yearly Meeting of Friends (Quaker)

To: Baltimore Yearly Meeting
New York Yearly Meeting
Philadelphia Yearly Meeting
Indiana Yearly Meeting
Western Yearly Meeting
Ohio Valley Yearly Meeting
Friends General Conference
QUNO, New York

Dear Friends

I write on behalf of Lancashire and Cheshire General Meeting, within Britain Yearly Meeting. Our General Meeting covers the counties of Lancashire and Cheshire, the cities of Liverpool and Manchester, and the whole of North Wales. We have some 1100 members.

We met yesterday (20 October 2001), and were pleased to welcome Elizabeth Duke, General Secretary of the Friends World Committee for Consultation; she returned to Britain from USA early yesterday morning, having been visiting some of you during recent days. During the course of our meeting, we felt very close to Friends in other parts of the world.

We want to send you our love and support. This is a difficult time for all of us, but especially for you, as we strive to seek a just, not vengeful, response to the attacks on your country on 11 September. We have been heartened by the stand made by so many American Friends, and others, in working so hard towards a peaceful and reasoned resolution to this awful situation. You are all in our thoughts and our prayers.

With our very best wishes,
Peter Speirs, Clerk
Lancashire and Cheshire General Meeting
Carrick Beg, Llangynhafal, Denbigh, LL16 4LP, Wales

Justice, Not Revenge
By Dr. Oscar Arias

In the face of these terrible events, and as we receive the images and words of those lost in last Tuesday's attack and feel the pain of their families and friends, let us affirm our common bonds in shock, outrage, and sorrow. I extend my deepest sympathies to those who lost loved ones in this horrible attack, and , along with all who love liberty and democracy and are committed to non-violence, I condemn this and all acts of terrorism.

At this time of great suffering, I want to make a plea to the American people and to their government not to allow their hearts to be filled with hatred, for this would be granting the terrorists the very response they seek and expect. Instead, I pray that the United States and its allies collectively pause and take a deep breath before responding to this violence in kind.

It is essential that justice be done, and it is equally vital that justice not be confused with revenge, for the two are wholly different. I beg of the United States government to exercise caution and prudence as they plan their response to this unimaginably grotesque display of disregard for human life.

Let justice be done, yes, but let the United States remain committed to its fundamental values, admired and emulated the world over; respect for liberty and for life, especially of the innocent.

I want also to ask the people of the United States, in the midst of their anguish and very justified anger, to remember that extremists of the kind who perpetrated this attack represent only a tiny minority of the Muslim world, and that the vast majority of Muslims pray to the same God as the rest of us - whether Hindus or Jews, Christians or Buddhists - and that is a God of love and not hate, of life and not death. Therefore, let us call upon that God, that power which while being universal is known to each of us in a unique way, to give us the strength to stand firm against the darkness of hatred and violence that threatens us.

Let us seek the light, and reach out in peace to our Muslim brothers and sisters.

I want to suggest that we also take this occasion to re-examine our global priorities and the values upon which they are based. Terrorism is one evil that should not exist in the world today, and there are many others, including poverty, illiteracy, preventable diseases, and environmental destruction.

WE have the resources - both material and spiritual - to eliminate many of these ills. Let us channel them according to the needs of the poorest and most vulnerable among us.

Instead of building bunkers and shields that fail to protect us, let us build good will and harmony, human capacity and understanding, and in this way we shall build the world we want to live in.

We must be the change we wish to see, as Gandhi once said, and not the darkness that we wish to leave behind.

QUAKERS’ FRONTIER MEETING, VOUZIERS 2001. We were a group of Quakers from Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal, Netherlands, United Kingdom, and United States meeting near the Franco-Belgian border from the 29 to 31-09-2001. We unite in the following:

OPEN LETTER TO THE LEADERS OF OUR COUNTRIES

We have been shocked by the events of 11th September 2001.

We have asked ourselves why these have moved us more profoundly even than other disasters of recent years and have struggled to find an adequate response. We pray that the depth of our emotion can be used as a catalyst for lasting change.

We have been thinking about the processes fo transforming situations of conflict and how the energy inherent in conflict can be channeled in constructive ways. In order to do this we need to revise our present understanding of conflict and work on actively listening to the concerns of others.

We hope that the feelings of anger, fear and sadness arising from this tragedy can be understood, and that we can also try to understand the circumstances from which these events arose.

We urge that you engage in dialogue with all peoples, listen to their needs and be imaginative as to how we together can transform this crisis into an opportunity to create a more peaceful and equal world.

Op-Ed piece for Greensboro, NC News and Record
Tuesday, November 13, 2001 by James W. Hood

A number of recent letters to the editor and especially Charles Davenport's vitriolic op-ed piece condemning "the banality of pacifism" have prompted my desire to clarify some aspects of the Quaker peace testimony. The Quaker reply to war and violence, like many deeply cherished convictions, is easily misunderstood, especially when grief, hurt, anger, fear, and the desire for retaliation, very real and understandable reactions to the atrocities of September 11, live in the corners of our discourse. This voice for peace, negotiation, and reconciliation, therefore, deserves a clear articulation.

Although I write as a member of the Society of Friends and a professor at Guilford College, I do not and cannot speak for either institution. Contrary to popular opinion, there is no monolithic Quaker creed condemning violence or participation in war. The Society expects its members to labor carefully, both individually and in the context of communal discernment, to discover the principles that will guide them in replying to evil. Robert Smith's 1999 autobiographical essay, A Quaker Book of Wisdom, recounts, for instance, his own decision, highly unpopular in his New Jersey Friends meeting, to take part in the Second World War.

The subtle distinction between a creed and a testimony is especially instructive here. A testimony is a form of witness, not a rule that permits or denies particular opinions or actions. It states a commitment, an intention to live in a certain manner and practice behaviors that incline one toward a particular spiritual condition. It focuses attention on the processes of right thinking that lead to right living rather than prescribing regimens of specific action.

Although Friends have developed varying individual responses to violence, it is true that the Quaker testimony of peace has been so central to our communal seeking for truth that it has become the most prominent marker of our peculiar witness in the world. That witness remains as relevant and peculiar today as it did in seventeenth-century England when George Fox, the founder of Quakerism, first espoused it.

Quakers' utter denial "of all outward wars and strife" is grounded in the radical (in the sense of being at the root, not left-wing) teachings of early Christianity. Jesus' admonitions recorded in the Gospels to "resist not evil" and to "love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you" form the crucible out of which the Quaker testimony of peace emerged. Fox, who along with other early Friends advocated a return to "primitive Christianity," wrote of the necessity of living "in the virtue of that life and power that [takes] away the occasion of all wars." Fox's statements clearly emphasize the necessity of striking preemptively for good against the powers of evil, seeking to root out such problems as poverty, prejudice, hatred, and selfishness that invariably cause violent strife.

The Quaker peace testimony is first and foremost a habit of mind. In the wake of the incomprehensible terrorism to which our nation has fallen victim, such beliefs can seem dreadfully impotent. They appear anything but strategic or tactical responses to the heinous annihilation of innocent lives.

I, too, find myself chafing at the apparent banality of standing on street corners and waving signs that say "Give Peace a Chance." On its surface, pacifism, especially as we stare into such an infernal affront to humanity, seems unnatural, a cowardly shirking from the responsibility of direct response.

But the Quaker position is not as other worldly, not as pie-eyed idealist, as it might appear. In fact, it represents a highly pragmatic approach to achieving the kind of world all responsible human beings seek. The Quaker position seems useless only when one tries to employ it after the fact of violence. That's because it is essentially a proactive, not a reactive, position. The fundamental practicality of the peace testimony lies in its call to live in such a way that September 11 could never happen. It demands a policy of engagement. It asks questions that were to be answered long before mad zealots enrolled in South Florida flight schools.

Yet even in the aftermath of this terrorism, the Quaker position has tangible value. History reminds us again and again that violence fathers itself, that the pounding of cluster bombs and Cruise missiles only hardens the resolve of those upon whom we visit such ministers of annihilation. Terrorism, as we have seen so frighteningly in the past two months, derives its vigor and influence from its adherents' and opponents' states of mind, not from its stockpile of AK-47s or Scud missiles.

Until we learn how to change hearts, we will not unseat terrorism. We will only create more widely dispersed and deeper animosity, in our enemies and in ourselves, because the more we come to hate, the more we succumb to its deforming power. The Quakers and students asking us to "see what love can do" willingly admit their idealism. But in a world where violence has become more and more obviously ideological, it stands to reason that countering terror with engagement and love may be the pragmatism we ignore at our peril. The great virtue of the Cold War doctrine of "mutually assured destruction" rested in its capacity to make nuclear warfare inconceivable. Only when terrorizing one another becomes literally unthinkable, will we have truly conquered.