Brian Phillips is currently travelling amongst Friends giving talks and leading workshops on the theme of Quaker Internationalism for the New Century

I want to begin this talk with a tale of two recent incidents from one city in the Balkans.  On Monday, the 7th of May, Bosnian Muslims and representatives of both the international community and the Bosnian Serb government gathered in the city of Banja Luka to begin the long awaited reconstruction of the city’s most historic mosque.  It was exactly eight years to the day that the mosque had been blown up by Bosnian Serb extremists in 1993.   

As local police stood by, around 2000 people sought to disrupt the ceremony with anti-Islamic slogans and songs.  And then the crowd turned violent.  Stones were thrown at Muslim participants arriving for the ceremony. Seven buses which had brought these visitors to the city were duly set on fire. A number of elderly men were attacked as the demonstrators broke through the police cordon.  Thirty people were injured in the assault – and one man subsequently died as a result of his injuries.   

The Muslim flag on the Islamic community center was pulled down and burned – and a Bosnian Serb flag defiantly hung in its place.  The crowd also herded a pig to the site of the old mosque – where they proceeded to butcher the animal and hang its head up for public display.  More disturbing than the presence of Bosnian Serb nationalist politicians and army veterans among the crowd was the fact that schoolchildren were reported to have been at the forefront of this appalling scene.   

For anyone who has sought to help build a culture of peace, justice and human rights in Bosnia during the past five years, this incident could easily be seen as a mark of our collective failure to stem the tide of hatred and violence in the region.  And yet I’ve found strength enough to resist that temptation to despair by recalling another story from Banja Luka.  It’s a story that quite literally happened just down the road from the terrible scene I‘ve described – exactly one month earlier on the 6th of April.  On that date, QPSW held the first ever “Quaker Roundtable” in the Balkans in the very same city.    

In a modest way, it felt as if we were making Quaker history.  This was a unique opportunity for deepening BYM’s spiritual relationship with the Bosnian partner organisations of our QPSW Sarajevo Programme.  We’d been careful to emphasise that our aim in convening the roundtable was not to proselytise - but to inform.  We began by asking each of the participants to tell us something of their experience with Quakers in Bosnia thus far and their understanding of the Quaker faith.  We also asked them to spell out what it was that they most wanted to learn from the day. 

 Some said they were eager to hear more about Quaker history  - expressing curiosity about the Society’s origins and its evolution over the centuries.   Others wanted to know more about the roots of our commitment to non-violence or about our relationship to other branches of the Christian church and to other religious traditions.  One participant talked of how his passion for American films as a child had brought about his first contact with Friends. He recalled that the character played by Grace Kelly in the famous Gary Cooper film “High Noon” had been a Quaker.  Another confessed to his persistent confusion between the words “Quaker” and “cracker”!

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 Nothing testifies more vividly to the genuine spiritual power of the gathering  than some of the comments made at the close of the day.  In the light of what they’d learned about Quaker history and the testimonies, we asked these young people to tell us what it was they would be taking away from the roundtable.   

 One activist from a women’s NGO in Tuzla - from a background of mixed nationality - said that learning about our silent Meeting for Worship had taken her back to a time during the war when she had been very much alone.  It was a time when she had had to reach deep inside herself to find the strength which enabled her to go on living.  She told us she’d been struck by the similarity of her own experience to the Quaker understanding of the Inner Light. 

An activist from a Sarajevo NGO engaged in training for non-violence said that at least two or three times during the day he had thought to himself:  “I am a Quaker.”    

Among participants from Republika Srpska, a youth activist from Srpsko Sarajevo said that the day had brought her an awareness of things she had never faced before.  Hearing about the Inner Light had helped her to recognise that this is the source from which she operates in her own life.  

Another young man from Banja Luka – courageously working to promote the right to conscientious objection there - expressed regret that there had not been any Quaker presence in Bosnia earlier. He speculated about the impact Quakers might have made in the country had they been present at the start of the 1990s.  And he wondered aloud what Bosnia might be like if it were to become a “Quaker state”  where everyone lived in accordance with the testimonies? 

A youth activist from a small town in Eastern Bosnia said that she’d recently seen the film “Gladiator” -  and that the film’s popularity had upset her greatly.   She’d begun to conclude that human beings love violence - and that this attraction is something deep within them.  The Banja Luka Quaker roundtable had been like a “sign” to her - a realisation that there is an opposing force in the world which is against violence. 

For me personally, the roundtable was one of the most profound experiences of my life as a Quaker.  Rarely have I felt what Isaac Pennington described as the “quickenings and pressings” of the Spirit so intensely as I did in this remarkable gathering.  Any apprehension we’d felt about appearing to evangelise was quickly  dispelled by the evident relish with which participants engaged with what we had to offer them.  We left with a sense that a vital, viable model for international outreach had emerged from this event - one that might soon be extended to other partners working for peace, human rights and social justice elsewhere in the region. 

I begin with these twin tales from Banja Luka because I believe they testify to the enduring power and contemporary relevance of our Quaker international witness.  I believe that the work we as Quakers are carrying out in places like Bosnia today – chiefly through the support of local actors whom we believe to be a leaven for the transformation of their conflict-ridden societies – is nothing less than proof positive that there is indeed an “infinite ocean of light and love” flowing over the “ocean of darkness and death.” 

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Every day, we struggle under the weight of the torrent of tragic news which so often seems to define our world.  Yet I would argue that the authentic communion which we experienced with these young Bosnians in April is as much the reality of our present global condition as the grim events which followed there a few weeks later.  And I’m quite convinced that without the catalyst of BYM’s commitment to these young activists – there might never have been a space in which those “quickenings and pressings” of the Spirit – those unmistakable intimations of the Kingdom of God – could have broken through into this violent world.  To say this is not to make some un-Quakerly boast about our unique gifts as agents for social and political change, but rather to grasp what I believe to be nothing less than our spiritual responsibility.   

I have little doubt then that at the start of the twenty first century, Quaker internationalism is alive and well and urgently needed in the world.  But the continuing validity of that statement depends very much on our ability to recognise the distinctive qualities and the particular value of  our international witness.  During my Rowntree Fellowship,  I hope to help provide Friends in BYM with some fresh tools to discover for themselves how Quakerism and internationalism can be seen as inseparable components of our faith.  I want Friends to delight in their recognition that we have no choice but to be global witnesses to God’s loving power - because we are Quakers.  To paraphrase the American theologian Stanley Hauerwas, “the Society of Friends does not have an internationalist tradition, the Society of Friends is an internationalist tradition.”   

As that claim suggests, this understanding lies at the very heart of our Quaker identity - rooted deep in our 17th century origins.  It is a truth consistent with what Quaker historian Doug Gwyn has described as the way in which  “Early Friends experienced the light not as a warm, cuddly inner teddy bear but as the risen Christ, the ultimate future, the destiny of the universe, breaking into the present.”  Theirs was a faith understood to be nothing less than “…Christ speaking and acting through the lives of transformed men and women, Christ challenging the violent and unjust norms of an alienated society.”   

Gwyn reminds us that this encounter with the Inner Light was “…not a private, inward experience.  It moved outward into society, into history, as men and women followed Christ in a new way of life.”   Not a bad description, I think, of a truly dynamic Quaker internationalism!  But living as we do in a world and indeed in a Religious Society of Friends that seems at times light years away from our 17th century  forebears – how can we generate a similar dynamism about a Quaker global witness for our own time? 

In exploring the characteristics of the Quaker internationalist tradition in talks with Friends,  I’ve often emphasized the essentially dual nature of our historic witness in the world.  In seeking to define that tradition,  I’ve recommended the helpful framework of “prophets and reconcilers” developed by the late Wolf Mendl and others during the 1960s and 70s.  This still seems to me a very accurate way of understanding our Society’s skillful blending of an absolute, prophetic and idealistic perspective on global affairs with a more pragmatic and diplomatic (if no less principled) approach.    

I’ve talked of the genealogy of this tradition which Mendl and others have traced back to the 17th century and the works of Robert Barclay and William Penn.  In this genealogy, we see Barclay the prophet issuing his direct, uncompromising call to European men of state to follow the teachings of Jesus  - an appeal to faith largely unconcerned with the limitations of the present political order.   

And on the other hand, we have Penn, no less rooted in his faith , but diving straight in to engage with the centers of power - working together with those charged with the practical construction and functioning of political and economic institutions. Whereas Barclay addressed the princes and generals from a kind of great spiritual height, Penn was down there seated amongst them - his eye fixed clearly on the achievable and how one is to get there with integrity. 

This reading of the origins of Quaker internationalism marks out what I believe to be the defining strength of that tradition – the capacity to call upon two distinct but complementary strands of our inheritance as and when required.  My own reading of Quaker internationalist history suggests to me that our global witness has been at its most vital and effective when it has carefully nurtured the voice and the vision of both the prophet and the reconciler.   

Where the Quaker internationalist tradition has been at its weakest (and in some instances even compromised), it is the ignorance or neglect of one or the other of these two strands which has seemed to me to be the cause of our lessened impact.  Above all,  our ability to serve as both prophets and reconcilers clearly requires the substantive preparation of the Society’s hearts and minds if any imbalance in our work and witness is to be avoided.       

  So how do we twenty first century Friends measure up to this standard?  On numerous occasions in different Quaker fora, I have often expressed my personal concern about the state of our Quaker internationalism today.  The generosity of Friends’ giving to the 1999 Yearly Meeting International Conflicts Appeal certainly indicated that a powerful faith and will for peace building and international engagement is still at work within our Society.  But in spite of the fact that as a Society we continue to fund, staff and support a range of international work in places like Geneva and Brussels, Sri Lanka and Uganda – the centrality of this work to our collective religious life seems to have been on the wane of late.  By centrality, I mean primarily a shared understanding of a religious imperative for Quaker global witness – a clarity about why it is we feel called to do this work which is rooted firmly in the life of our local meetings.   

Without this dynamic context for the international work carried out by QPSW or QUNO, I fear that our projects and placements might soon become only nominal Quaker work – a mere gesture or symbolic tribute to our internationalist tradition rather than a living manifestation of it that speaks profoundly to our own time.  In addition to this concern about our corporate work, I know from my own experience as one of many Friends who regard their international work for other organizations as a form of Quaker ministry, that it’s sometimes surprisingly difficult to find spiritual nourishment for that sense of vocation in today’s excessively individualized or even privatized Society of Friends. 

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As Quakers, we’ve quite rightly become increasingly professional in our ability to administer funds, manage field workers, lobby parliaments and diplomats.  But I sometimes wonder whether we lack something of the defining, prophetic light that comes from a shared religious life – a shared religious life that is about something more than tracking the individual spiritual journey?   

Perhaps what we lack today is the kind of living, galvanizing theology for global action that could bind us together and inspire both those directly employed by BYM as well those who are working as individuals under concern or for other NGOs?   If we are not to become just another actor in an overcrowded field, shouldn’t we concern ourselves as much or more with the faith that is the foundation of our global witness than with the nuts and bolts of the many issues which cry out for our attention and action?   

Richard Ullmann, one of the great Quaker internationalists of the last century, spoke at Yearly Meeting in 1958 on “The Quaker Peace Testimony Restated.”  He expressed the view that:  “While helping and upholding its individual members in the kind of actions to which they are led, the Society as a body should not degenerate into a pressure group for detailed policies…but should stand as a corporate witness to that Spirit from which Christian pacifist action flows.  It has to preserve the unity in essentials by witnessing to the unchangeability of the Spirit of Christ in the continual change of political situations.”  

Following on from the extraordinary experience of the Banja Luka roundtable – I have become more convinced than ever that it is precisely our ability to express that defining, prophetic light that distinguishes Quakers from the scores of other agencies for good working in post-conflict situations or other humanitarian disaster zones.  Over the past few years, those young Bosnians who gathered in Banja Luka have benefited from all sorts of practical expertise and guidance which QPSW has brought to their work.  But at the end of the day, I believe it is the spiritual orientation of our presence in Bosnia – humbly and quietly conveyed - that has made the real difference in our relationship with them.   

It’s conceivable that much of the practical assistance which QPSW has provided for our Bosnian partners could have come from other international actors – from someone like OXFAM or Save the Children or the International Rescue Committee.  But it’s undoubtedly the way in which we have sought to transmit that knowledge, to share our resources, and to place ourselves in solidarity with their struggles which has set us apart from other agencies for good.  And it’s the supreme value of that dimension of our witness which our partners responded to on that glorious day in Banja Luka in April. 

But the Light which our Quaker workers in Bosnia and other places around the world are being asked to share with local pilgrims for justice and peace will become something of a pale, fragile flame without sufficient spiritual fuel from our meetings back in Britain.  And that poses a challenge to all of us here in Britain Yearly Meeting.  For I believe that the renewal of our internationalist tradition for the new century depends more than anything else on our ability to articulate a new Quaker theology of global activism – non-academic, experience-based, alert both to our own history and to the exciting conversations about faith in action taking place today across the wider Christian tradition and among other faith communities. 

In this age of information overload,  Friends are struggling just to keep afloat on the surging tides of data and statistics, resolutions and policies which can all seem so very crucial to the exercise of our citizenship in the world.  And the ability to sift through that massive information flow  - to extract what is truly useful to us - is indeed important.  But I want to suggest here that our effectiveness as Quaker global witnesses in the 21st century is much more likely to depend on our greater spiritual fluency than on mastery of fact or technical detail alone. 

If there is an imbalance in our Quaker global witness today, I would argue that it is the prophetic strand of our dual inheritance which is comparatively disadvantaged.  We are, after all, children of an intensely secular age – easily drawn into essentially secular conversations which lead us to search for essentially secular solutions.  Perhaps more disturbingly, we are also members of a Society of Friends for whom a protracted identity crisis has too often left us unsure of what it is we want to say to the world.   

Where our voice on global concerns is heard today, I wonder if it isn’t too often issued with a certain blandness rather than spiritual boldness?  In my view, it’s a situation not unlike that described by H.G. Wood in his 1941 Friends Peace Committee pamphlet called “Post War Reconstruction and Spiritual Renewal.”  Surveying the health of the Society’s witness to the world in the midst of the Second World War, Wood ventured that “…the trouble is that we ourselves believe too little, and we are probably too reticent about the little we do believe, and the little we do believe is not an adequate gospel for this tragic world.”   How those words have stuck in my mind during this last, terrible week of appalling violence and subsequent declarations of war. 

 Likewise, Richard Ullmann worried that late 20th century Friends were beginning to misunderstand our testimonies to peace and justice – viewing them simply as a call to work diligently at taking away the occasions of war.  Ullmann felt that we were in effect forgetting that Fox had encouraged us first to focus on “living in that virtue of the life and power” – a rigorous spiritual undertaking which only then equips us to start chipping away at the sources of conflict in the world.   As Ullmann put it, “….we unfortunately accept our peace testimony far too much as part of the traditional doctrines and theological principles of our church, the thing that is ‘done’ once you are a Quaker.  We are thus in great danger of being guided more by the mere notion of peace than by the living presence of the Spirit in our hearts.” 

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In this respect, Friends today could benefit greatly from an amazing bit of Bible study produced by the American theologian Walter Breuggemann.  Brueggemann uses a story from the Second Book of Kings to point up the consequences of losing our spiritual fluency as we commit ourselves to the business of mending the world.  Recalling the time when the besieging Assyrian forces were at the walls of Jerusalem at the start of the 8th century BC, Brueggemann reflects on the delicate moment when the Judean people must enter into immediate negotiations with the forces at their doorstep.   

As those crucial talks are about to begin on the city’s walls, Brueggemann asks us to remember that the common language of the Assyrians and the Judean people is Aramaic.  And it is in this language that the representatives of Israel will need to make their case and argue their position with their opponents.  However, Brueggemann also reminds us that the first language of the Judeans living in the city - behind the wall - is Hebrew.  It is in Hebrew that the people of Judah live out their lives, worship their God, and have come to know His truth.  How then to speak to the world beyond the city walls in such a way that they will be understood by a people who worship other gods?  How to negotiate pragmatically and effectively - while at the same time remaining grounded in the truth that can only be known fully in the sacred mother tongue? 

Bruggemann concludes that the moral of the story for contemporary believers is that: “Christians should be nurtured to be bilingual, to know how to speak the language on the wall in the presence of the imperial negotiators, but also how to speak the language behind the wall in the community of faith, where a different set of assumptions, a different perception of the world…are at work.  The conversation on the wall is crucial, because the Assyrians are real dialogue partners who must be taken seriously.   They will not go away.  But unless there is another conversation behind the wall in another language about another agenda, Judah on the wall will only submit to and echo imperial perceptions of reality.  When imperial perceptions of reality prevail, everything is already conceded.  If the conversation with the empire at the wall is either the only conversation or the decisive one, Israel will decide that Yahweh is indeed like all the other impotent gods… The ground for any alternative will have been forfeited.”  (from Brueggemann, Interpretation and Obedience: From Faithful Reading to Faithful Living, 1991) 

It is this decisive conversation behind the wall – or rather, within our local meetings - that I believe Friends need to nurture most urgently.  How then are we to renew the prophetic dimension of our global witness?  One of the unfortunate side-effects of our energy-depleting debates about whether we are Christo-centric, post-Christian, universalist, or just a loose affiliation of seekers has been the severance of our relationship to a radical Christian internationalist tradition – ironically, a tradition which we ourselves have done so much to develop over the centuries.  This radical Christian vision of global witness is not the only key to renewal – but it is the one which made us internationalists in the first place. And it’s the one which I have personally drawn upon most frequently in my work for both Amnesty International and QPSW.   

My own personal sense of urgency about a need to reconnect more explicitly with a radical Christian vision of global witness is perhaps best summed up in a well-known passage from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison: 

“Reconciliation and redemption, regeneration and the Holy Spirit, love of our enemies, cross and resurrection, life in Christ and Christian discipleship – all these things are so difficult and so remote that we hardly venture any more to speak of them. In the traditional words and acts we suspect that there may be something quite new and revolutionary, though we cannot as yet grasp or express it….It is not for us to prophesy the day … when men will once more be called so to utter the word of God that the world will be changed and renewed by it.  It will be a new language, perhaps quite non-religious, but liberating and redeeming – as was Jesus’ language; it will shock people and yet overcome them with its power; it will be the language of a new righteousness and truth, proclaiming God’s peace with men and the coming of his kingdom.”  

Bonhoeffer’s voice is surely one of the most important in terms of spiritual global witness in the century just behind us.  His words have enormous implications for all sorts of international concerns with which we Quakers are struggling today. But have Friends even begun to engage sufficiently with Bonhoeffer’s many gifts to us as believers and activists? In 1996, an international congress on Bonhoeffer’s work was held in South Africa.  The gathering underlined Bonheoffer’s astonishing relevance to South Africa’s reckoning with its recent past of gross human rights violations and its continuing social and economic inequalities.  But do Friends have sufficient means available to us to take advantage of such insights?  And are we hungry enough for that learning?   

Likewise, I think Friends in recent decades have often missed out on an extremely rich store of inspiration for global witness in the body of thought and action grouped together under the heading of liberation theology.  Liberation theology  – so remarkably in tune with our Quaker vision in its essentials – has been an immensely creative power for good in Latin America and North America, in Africa and in Asia.   But why have its extraordinary insights been so largely absent from the religious life of our Society?   
    
I want to be clear here that when I talk of a radical Christian vision - I’m not urging Friends to turn back the clock to some lost golden age – nor to exclude essential dialogues with other faiths and their traditions of global witness.  My own interest in the brilliant work of Islamic scholars on the subject of human rights in recent years helps me to remember that the contemporary insights of other faith traditions must be a vital resource for Quaker global witness, too.  And that dialogue with Islam on the subject of peace, justice and human rights has never been more necessary than at this very moment. 

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During the year ahead, in discussions and workshops throughout BYM, I’ll be asking Friends to reflect more precisely on the nature of our faith in relation to various pressing global concerns.  Through simple group exercises, using selected bits of Scripture, writings from other faith traditions, as well as contemporary comment, I’d like us begin to explore what it is that Quakers want to be saying to the world on a variety of crucial issues – in terms of our belief.  These include the fresh challenges to nuclear disarmament now before us; the humanity and safety of refugees and asylum seekers; the abolition of torture and ill-treatment; and the international agenda regarding justice and reconciliation in the aftermath of war crimes and crimes against humanity.  At the core of this exercise is the question of how we as Friends can better ensure that our global work and witness is founded upon a right ordering – faith always serving as the catalyst for action rather than the other way round.   

One of the issues I want to ask Friends to address through these exercises is - of course - the dreadful prospect of the National Missile Defense system - or NMD.  It’s absolutely right that Quakers should engage with the issue of NMD in terms of its appalling potential costs and the terrible blow it will deal to the whole architecture of international arms control.  But building on Mary Lou Leavitt’s 1986 pamphlet on Star Wars: The Spiritual Challenge - perhaps we also need to be framing our concerns more explicitly in terms of our faith?   President Bush is keen to declare himself as a man of faith – a devout Christian.  Shouldn’t we then continue to voice our opposition to NMD in no uncertain theological terms? 

As Mary Lou suggests, isn’t the whole idea of a society choosing to base its sense of security on faith in some foolproof, protective shield actually a kind of idolatry?  When I’ve heard American and even some British politicians extolling the virtues of NMD, I’ve often been reminded of the prophet Isaiah’s cry:  “Shame on those…/Who rely on the power of horses/ Who put their trust in the number of their chariots/And in the strength of their cavalry/Who pay no heed to the Holy One of Israel/Nor seek counsel from the Lord!”  (Chapter 31)  Now there’s  a prophetic voice which has clearly lost none of its salt and none of its relevance to the present day - particularly in the light of last week’s tragic events and what may follow in the weeks to come.  But are we prepared to hear that voice - and to respond accordingly?  

As we may be about to discover all over again, prophecy is an awkward, uncomfortable and sometimes very lonely vocation.  As the great Brazilian radical bishop, Dom Helder Camara once said, “if we are to be pilgrims for justice and peace, we must expect the desert.”  But I’m convinced that this is what Quaker internationalism for the new century must be about.  What we as Quakers are doing today in Bosnia, in Uganda and elsewhere – what you and many other Friends are doing in your local communities – is first and foremost an act of faith.  I know from my own experience in the Balkans, all we can really be sure of is that we’re planting the proverbial seeds – sometimes in what feels like barren soil - the fruits of which we may not see in our own lifetimes.   

We live in a world too often obsessed with undertaking action only if it can be defined in terms “achievable objectives” and “verifiable end results.” In such a context, the faith at the core of our witness, our activism must therefore be a point of resistance.  In a culture which sometimes seems to assign value only to those endeavours which come complete with pre-determined “success criteria,” Quakers need to be better prepared to follow another way altogether.  And it’s a way which may require of us what Rowan Williams has described ironically as “the obstinate uselessness of witness to God’s truth.”    

That’s a phrase I’ve been holding on to with all my heart and all my strength these last ten difficult days.  I hope it will inspire you, too, as you reflect this morning on the present moment and what it is we want to say to the world.  In this uncertain hour, Friends, let us embrace those prophetic words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer – who wrote in a letter from his prison cell in July 1944: 

“…it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith…By this - worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life’s duties, problems, successes, failures, experiences and perplexities.  In so doing we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world  – watching with Christ in Gethsemane.”