Spiritual Force
Force, Spiritual
Spiritual Force The Quaker Approach, edited by John Kavanaugh. Putnam's. 245 pp. $4. Reviewed by Homer A. Jack LAST YEAR the Religious Society of Friends celebrated its 300th anniversary. This...
...Henry J. Cadbury, chairman of the American Friends Service Committee, gives a history of this peace testimony...
...This book is a collection of thirteen essays by such Quakers as Elton Trueblood and Ira De A. Reid to show how the principles of the Friends have been applied to specific contemporary problems—peace, civil liberties, relief, science, economics, race relations, crime, health...
...The Quakers aim "to be friends rather than to win friends...
...In 1854 the London Yearly Meeting sent two Quakers to visit Czar Nicholas I in an effort to prevent the Crimean War...
...Another facet of the mediation concern of the Friends at the United Nations is given in Elmore Jackson's book, Meeting of Minds...
...In today's world, where the context is atomic bombs and not bows and arrows, how can Friends—and their friends—"help to release the healing stream of divine love without being sucked into the battle for power...
...They suggested certain prison and educational reforms...
...Although the Society of Friends is not a peace society, its peace witness has always been strong...
...They have little to fall back on except their experience of three centuries with Truth...
...Small wonder, too, that the British and American Friends today have an anonymous team at the United Nations using every opportunity to lessen tensions between East and West...
...Clarence Pickett contributes an appropriate epilogue to these essays...
...For guidance to "bring intellectual consistency and spiritual power into current life," Friends cannot resort to ritual or creed or ecclesiastical decisions for guidance...
...Where angels fear to tread Quakers somehow often have long and surprising histories...
...The recent overtures to the Russian people by the Friends are the climax to more than a century-old tradition, beginning in 1818, when two Quakers went to Russia out of "a sense of religious duty laid upon us by the Great Parent of the human family...
...He affirms that Friends must constantly rethink their position toward social problems...
...Small wonder, then, that at the beginning of the Cold War, 4,000 five-gram vials were given to the Russians with the inscription: "This streptomycin is a testimony of goodwill and friendship from the American Friends Service Committee to be used to promote the health of the people of the U.S.S.R...
...In 1798 Quaker George Logan went to France and came back with terms of peace so satisfactory that the war party in the United States Congress had no excuse to start a war...
...This catalogue is made with typical diffidence, with the editor asserting that "the dedicated social pioneering of a relatively few has given the Society of Friends a reputation far beyond any that it deserves...
...Harrop A. Freeman in the chapter on civil liberties admits that "too often Quakers live today on the legacies of respect left by the rebels of yesteryear rather than to dare speak out on modern equivalents of problems which landed their ancestors in prison...
...Their Truth is universal, however, and thus their spiritual power may yet save man from himself...
...As Cadbury affirms, the negative emphasis on peacemaking by personal abstention has its positive side, otherwise mere refusal of war-making would seem "too cheaply bought...
...Elmore Jackson, for example, tells the story of the Quakers and the Russians...
...This positive side differs sharply from the schemes of "Point IV liberals"—to quote Elmore Jackson's phrase—to use food, clothing, and technical assistance "to win friends and influence people...
...Yet few societies of other men in modern times have shown such devotion to the cause of humanity...
...Janet Whitney also warns that it is not the Quaker intention to seem to be saying, "God I thank thee that I am not as other men are...
...In 1938 American Friends went to the Nazi Gestapo in behalf of the German Jews, and in 1951 British Friends made their celebrated mission to Moscow...
...In 1688 Quaker Caleb Pusey went into an Indian encampment which allegedly was plotting an attack on the settlers and found all the warriors were unarmed...
Vol. 17 • June 1953 • No. 6
