QUAKER BELIEFS
Saturday, November 7, 3:30 p.m. (via Zoom).
This ‘Reading & Discussion’ will discuss an excerpt from Chapter 7, “What is the Lamb’s War?”, from A Sustainable Life: Quaker Faith and Practice in the Renewal of Creation by Douglas Gwyn, pp 114-115..
The term “Lamb’s War” derives from Revelation 14:1–5, in which John sees Christ as a lamb standing on Mount Zion (the spiritual mountain Micah saw — see Chapter 4) with faithful men and women standing together with the lamb. They stand against the violent and alienating powers of the Beast and False Prophet (portrayed in Rev. 13). The early Quaker Lamb’s War confronted a variety of social injustices. But it focused primarily against the established Church of England with its monopoly on religion, its power to coerce all to attend, its vast properties, and its enfranchised clergy supported by state-enforced tithes. Early Friends by the thousands nonviolently confronted the state-church alliance that deformed human consciousness by forcing it to conform to creeds and swear oaths of allegiance.
Over the centuries since that first generation, the experience of peace has led Friends into conflict with a variety of social monstrosities. For example, for John Woolman and Levi Coffin (a leader in the Underground Railroad), the pre-eminent monstrosity was the institution of slavery. For Lucretia Mott and Susan B. Anthony, slavery was compounded by patriarchy. For twentieth-century Friends, it has been the massively enfranchised military-industrial complex.
Source:
- Gwyn, Douglas (2014). What is the Lamb’s War? In A Sustainable Life: Quaker Faith and Practice in the Renewal of Creation. (pp. 114-115). Philadelphia, PA: QuakerPress of Friends General Conference
Excerpt also available at (retrieved October 31, 2020): https://www.fgcquaker.org/sites/default/files/attachments/Sustainable%20Life%20-%20The%20Lamb%27s%20War.pdf
Zoom connection information for this event is URL: https://zoom.us/j/92398341668 | Meeting ID: 994 4553 2926.
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