A Pacifist Dictionary [written by a U.S. Quaker pacifist, posted on the "nonviolence org website"]

A Pacifist Dictionary

By Kate Maloy

Someone recently said to me: My pacifism stops when someone declares war on me. She is apparently a pacifist only until the condition that actually calls for pacifism arises. She wants to know how we can protect ourselves if we don’t return violence for violence. She wants to know what we should do.

No wonder she is at a loss. The human race has almost no experience with lasting peace or its strategies.

Our default has always been war. When at risk, we want to destroy the enemy that has put us there. This is not our noblest option--it comes from reflex, not reflection--but we nearly always resort to it, first or last.

Those of us who hang onto pacifist ideals, even in times like these, are dismissed, attacked, and mocked.

We are dismissed by the likes of NPR’s Cokie Roberts, who, when asked whether there is any opposition to this current war, answered: None that matters. We are attacked in editorials and sometimes by our own friends or relatives as unrealistic, simple-minded, airy-fairy, even dangerous. We are mocked in mainstream media like Newsweek, in which there recently appeared a snide comment about anachronistic, bead-and-Birkenstock types.

The fear sparked by recent horrors intensifies suspicion toward pacifism. People don’t want their traditional forms of defense--the only ones they know--called into doubt. It makes them too afraid. And in turn it makes them scorn us “peaceniks,” as if our ideals deepen their risk, as if we would sacrifice the world before relaxing our principles.

The fact is, we see real safety as possible only through our principles. The more surprising fact is, we can state our principles just like everyone else. We are patriots, and we believe in defense. We love our freedoms, desperately mourn the violence against our country, and long for justice. We recognize the need for sacrifice and courage in these terribles times. We pray for peace. It’s just that we define the relevant nouns a little differently.

Excerpts from a pacifist dictionary might read something like this (though not in alphabetical order):

Patriotism. Unswerving loyalty to the first and foremost principle of our country, which is also the first principle of humanity--All people are created equal. Because violence betrays this principle, true patriotism must seek nonviolent ways both to extend it and defend it.

<> Defense. Protection against violence achieved by eliminating its causes, including hatred, intolerance, injustice, and fear. This is accomplished through the universal application of humanity’s first principle. When all people are treated as equals, there remains little reason for warfare.

<> Freedom. A human condition that arises from a generous sufficiency of food, clothing, shelter, education, health care, civil and religious liberties, and employment opportunities. It is a self-limiting condition; it breeds no desire for excess, whether material, behavioral, or political. A truly free person or nation sees that in a world of finite resources the drive for disproportionate wealth and power necessarily exploits or subjugates others and thus betrays humanity’s first principle.

<> Justice. All actions and policies that ensure and protect humanity’s first principle and guarantee to all people and nations an equal right to freedom.

<> Sacrifice. Forgoing any over-use of resources by countries or individuals so that the first principle can apply worldwide. The only alternative to material sacrifice is blood sacrifice--the continued endangerment or death of the young to save the old or the greedy.

<> Courage. The quality that overrides personal fear in order to keep faith with ideals and act upon them.

<> Peace. An enduring condition that can come about only when patriotism, defense, freedom, justice, sacrifice, and courage--the concepts defined above--prevail among all people and nations. This condition is deeper and stronger than history’s periods of uneasy quiet between wars.

We pacifists know that our definitions are not in common usage. We know we are a tiny minority. We know this war will run over our ideals like a tank. We know we must either take the long view or despair altogether. Pacifism, in the long view, is far from being illogical and powerless, as most people think. It is the only logic and the only power.

The long view sees, for instance, that the use of ever more lethal weapons--from teeth, feet, and elbows to chemical, biological, and nuclear threats--has never increased security but rather has led us into the ultimate danger. It sees that all weapons are powerless against hatred, as our country’s massive arsenal was powerless against militants with knives and boxcutters. It sees the most terrible lesson of war, which is that it does not neutralize peril but doubles it. War creates two kinds of danger--the kind embodied in our global destructive power and the kind embodied in the hatred that first spawned that power.

The only way to extinguish both hazards is to put humanity’s first principle first--to make that, instead of war, our default. The human race has probably needed its wars in order to see the limits of war, but we reached those limits at the end of World War II. That was when the world truly changed. That was when we should have seen that we had forever ruled out either war or humankind.

Thus in answer to that earlier question--What should we do?--pacifists would say: In every moment, act, vote, speak, and choose not for that moment but for what it can give rise to--hatred or compassion, war or peace. Be alert for the old ways and the old rhetoric and recognize what they truly stand for, which is more and deeper peril. Uphold humanity’s first principle at every personal and national decision point, not just when it is convenient. Do these things, and peace will fall into place, slowly no doubt, but with infinite grace.

KATE MALOY is a Quaker author and a pacifist. Her memoir, A Stone Bridge North, will be published in January by Counterpoint Press.

Please visit the following Web sites:

http://www.counterpointpress.com/1582431450.html

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/stores/detail/-/books/1582431450/customer-reviews/ref=ce_dpr_r_4/103-2920403-4907005#tab-link

[Kate Maloy's Stone Bridge North]

My understanding of the conscientious objector status during WWI & WWII is similar to yours- that the requirements were stricter (you needed to have strong credentials, such as being Quaker, Mennonite, or Amish), but that claiming CO was a lot less controversial- once you were registered you simply served in a non-combat role, without the hullabaloo that surrounded CO in the Vietnam era.

As for the "Christian" issue, that's a tough question, and I think that Quakers are not of one mind about it. Certainly, Quakers are Christian in a historical sense; they arose as a heretical Christian movement in 1600's England, along with the Puritans, Shakers, and many others (and like the Puritans, were persecuted and many were chased to Holland and the colonies).

However, Quakers are notoriously non-doctrinal, so there's no official Quaker creed which states that they are or are not Christian. There are a few core beliefs (that the "Spirit" or "Light" lives in everyone, adherence to pacifism, along with a few others), but nothing like a Nicene Creed that lays out exactly what the theological doctrine is. Quaker doctrine does not include any statement about the precise nature of the trinity, whether Jesus was "begotten, not made", original sin, or other traditional theological topics. Quakers do not practice a number of traditional rituals, such as baptism or communion, but they do perform religious weddings.

I think that the situation among practicing Quakers is much like the situation in other mainline Protestant churches (Episcopal, Presbyterian, etc); some people will say that they are Christian and that Christ is the literal son of God, others will say that they are Christian (in that they worship the Christian God) but that Jesus should be understood to be a great teacher, not the Messiah, and still others will agree that Jesus was a teacher not the savior, and think that that probably makes them "not Christian". It's all a matter of what people understand to be required to count as a Christian.

Different meetings/congregations will have different feels to them. I've been to a conservative meeting ("conservative" in the sense that it's like meetings from the early 1800's, not in its politics which are, by tradition, quite liberal), where a Bible was one of the few books present that people would look at and read from (but usually the parables, not the more doctrinal stuff in Paul's letters). Another meeting I've gone to (and didn't much like) has a "New-Agey" feel to it, and you'll hear more about Gaia than Christ. There are evangelical Quaker churches (mostly in the southwest) where members are "born again through Christ". All of them call themselves Quakers, and the main Quaker organizations try to represent all of their viewpoints.

Overall, though, Quakers spend very little time on whether they are Christian or not, and what it takes to count as Christian; this, I think, is part of the reason why they often don't seem like real Christians. I think the feeling is that it's easy to just say that Jesus was or was not divine, but what's hard (and what really counts) is whether your actions reflect your belief that there is something of the divine in everyone.

I would say, though, that the divinity of Christ is (still) integral to the mainline Protestant churches

I agree- the official doctrines of all the mainline Protestant churches I know about still include a statement of the divinity of Christ. As you say, a few ministers here or there might publically disagree, but that doesn't change the official creed of the church.

I was thinking about the actual parishoners, and there I think that there's a wide spectrum of beliefs on these matters. Specifically, I think there's a lot of Episcopalians, Methodists, etc. who would say that they worship the Christian God but do not believe that Jesus was the only son of God in the full literal sense (it is a remarkable and difficult, almost impossible, thing to really believe, as the Catholic Church has been insisting for millenia), even though that belief is part of the official church doctrine.

I think it's like that with the Quakers- parishoners there too have a broad spectrum of beliefs. The difference is that there isn't an official statement on the matter.

completely off-topic from pacifism, but (sort of) relating to the Christian-ness of Quakers, I found this neat little discussion of baptism. It was recorded by Voltaire, who in his insatiable curiosity visited Andrew Pitt, an English Quaker.

"...After a healthy and frugal meal, which started and ended with a prayer to God, I set about questioning my host. I started with the question that good Catholics have put more than once to the Huguenots:

"My dear Sir," I said to him, "are you baptized?"

"No," replied the Quaker, "and neither are my brethren."

"My God!" I replied, "then your are not Christians."

"My son," he replied in a gentle voice, "do not swear. We are Christians and try to be good Christians, but we do not think that Christianity consists of sprinkling cold water on the head."

"Good Heavens!" I replied, shocked at this impiety, "have you then forgotten that Jesus Christ was baptized by John?"

"Friend, no more swearing," said the benign Quaker. "Christ received baptism from John, but he never baptized anybody. We are not disciples of John but of Christ."

"Alas," I said, "you would surely be burned in countries of the Inquisition, you poor man. For the love of God, how I wish I could baptize you and make you a Christian."

"Were that all," he replied gravely, "we would willingly submit to baptism to comply with thy weakness. We do not condemn anyone for using the ceremony of baptism. But we believe that those who profess so holy and so spiritual a religion as that of Christ must abstain, as much as they can, from Jewish ceremonies."

"What! Baptism a Jewish ceremony!" I exclaimed.

"Yes, my son," he continued "and so Jewish that several Jews today still use the baptism of John. Consult antiquity. It will teach thee that John only revived this practice, which was in use a long time earlier amongst the Hebrews, in the same way as the pilgrimage to Mecca by Muslims is copied from the Ismaelites.

"Jesus was willing to receive the baptism of John, in the same way that he submitted to circumcision. But circumcision and the washing with water must both be superseded by the baptism of Christ, this baptism of the Spirit, this washing of the soul, which is the salvation of mankind. Thus the fore-runner, John, said:

'I baptize you to the truth with water, but another will come after me, mightier than me, whose shoes I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with fire and the Holy Ghost.'

"Likewise, the great apostle to the gentiles, Paul, wrote in Corinthians: 'Christ has not sent me to baptize, but to preach the Gospel.'

"Indeed, this same Paul only baptized two people with water, and this was in spite of his inclination. He circumcised his disciple, Timothy. The other apostles also circumcised all who wanted it. Art thou circumcised?" he added. I replied that I did not have that honour.

"Ah well," he said, "Friend thou are a Christian without being circumcised, and I am a Christian without being baptized."

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