The Friends Peace Testimony
as "Questing Beast" -- 2

       Fortunately, I was never pretending to be scientific or systematic in this openhanded approach to data collection. I am aware that what I have from the e-mail responses represents only those Quakers who subscribe to electronic Quaker message centers, who are interested in the question I posted, and who had the time and interest to answer it. With the face-to-face and telephone questioning, I tapped only those Friends I already knew or who crossed my path at Pendle Hill. But I assure you, of the responses I received, homogeneity was not a prevailing feature.
       There may very well me more things to be said on this subject--in fact, I'm confident of it. But as a start, at least, I have a kettle full of a wide variety of species of fish.
       What follows is a discussion of the varieties of our peace testimony experience, as I have been able to categorize them. In the past few days, I've finally figured out the one unifying term that gathers up all the things I've been told about the peace testimony as if it were, after all, a single thing. It is a Questing Beast.
       The Questing Beast is a minor character from the legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Think about the peace testimony as I describe her to you.
       She had the head of a serpent, the body of a lizard, the haunches of a lion, and the feet of a deer. And wherever she went, she made a noise in her belly like "thirty couple of hounds questing." ¹ In other words, she was a mish-mash of many animals, but she was treated and talked about--quite affectionately by the way--as if she were a single being.
       She hardly ever did any harm to anyone, except a little bit occasionally by accident when she got too excited. She lived to be hunted, and when she was not being pursued, she lost vitality and wasted away.
       Her hunter was King Pellinore. He considered pursuit of the Questing Beast, whom he loved, as his special, hereditary mission handed down from a long line of noble ancestors. In additional ways, Pellinore shares some of the less glorious but perhaps more endearing characteristics of Friends. He was always well meaning, if sometimes a bit bumbling and confused. He was unmethodical in the extreme. He had mixed feelings about his mission. He was often distracted by other interests, or was torn between the noble quest and his longing for a good meal and a warm bed.
        And at least once, when Pellinore got carried away to another country, the Questing Beast came to find him.
       This is our peace testimony. It is a variety of animals, all smooshed together, so that we think of it as a single thing. Like Pellinore, we prize our relationship with it. It is ours to follow, even if we are not always sure how to follow it, or whether we might not prefer to do something easier and more pleasant instead. It is a thing to be sought but never captured.
       It wastes away without that pursuit. And only rarely, in very blessed moments, does it come to find us.
       What doth this beast require of us? What do Friends assume that the peace testimony prescribes for them to do or not to do? Certain generalizations were apparent in both the individual statements and in our yearly meeting books of discipline.²

1. It is, first and last, a renunciation of war.

       I was first reminded of the obvious: that the peace testimony was originally, and is still today to a certain degree, principally and fundamentally, an anti-war testimony.

"We utterly deny all outward wars and strife, and fightings with outward weapons, for any end, or under any pretense whatsoever; this is our testimony to the whole world. . . ."

       This 1661 Declaration to Charles II is still one of the two most frequently cited passages in Friends' writings on peace. Likewise, the Richmond Declaration of Faith, which provides the primary statement on peace for Indiana Yearly Meeting, as well as being an important part of other Friends United Meeting and Evangelical Friends International books of discipline, similarly states:

"We feel bound explicitly to avow our unshaken persuasion that all war is utterly incompatible with the plain precepts of our divine Lord and Law-giver, and the whole spirit of His Gospel, and that no plea of necessity or policy, however urgent or peculiar, can avail to release either individuals or nations from the paramount allegiance which they owe to Him who hath said, 'Love your enemies.'"

       And today, this uncompromising position with an emphasis on war survives.
       For example New Zealand Yearly Meeting's 1987 Statement on Peace³ starts out by echoing those early sentiments in modern and more comprehensive language:

"We totally oppose all wars, all preparation for war, all use of weapons and coercion by force, and all military alliances: no end could ever justify such means."

       The peace testimony began as an anti-war testimony, and from there it has spread, but spread farther in some places than others. William Penn--the gentleman who may or may not have carried his sword as long as he could--took the anti-war testimony in the direction of planning governments and institutions that he hoped would foster peace at the world level. John Woolman advised Friends to examine our possessions to see if they contained nourishment for the seeds of war, thus leading us into matters of economics.

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