by Katrina Mason

Anyone walking or driving along Harrison Avenue near Mountain Avenue has probably seen the banner outside the Quaker Meeting house with the words, “Let Us See What Love Can Do.” The words are from William Penn, an early Quaker and founder of Pennsylvania. They are part of a larger statement, written in 1691, that reads:

“We are too ready to retaliate, rather than forgive, or gain by love and information. And yet we could hurt no man that we believe loves us. Let us then try what Love will do: for if men did once see we love them, we should soon find they would not harm us. Force may subdue, but Love gains: and he that forgives first, wins the laurel.”

Penn’s statement exemplifies the Quaker peace testimony that  has been central to the Quaker faith from the start.

Forty years earlier, the Englishman who founded Quakerism, George Fox, rejected an offer of an army commission by explaining, “I lived in the virtue of that life and power that took away the occasion of all wars … I told them I was come into the covenant of peace which was before wars and strifes were.”

Fast forward to 1917, when Quakers sought a way to help young people of conscience who did not want to join the military. These men were willing to do other jobs, sometimes menial, as long as they did not have to fight or kill. A new organization was needed to create such jobs, and the American Friends Service Committee came into being.

Two years later, at the end of World War I, the AFSC did something surprising. Learning that there were many children in Austria, Germany, and Poland close to starvation, they brought food to people who had been our enemies just a year before.

This paid off in 1938 when the Nazis, remembering the chocolate drinks and other food that Quakers had provided to German families, were willing to talk with Quakers about their treatment of Jewish citizens.

Back at home, when our government rounded up Japanese-American families near the West Coast, sending them to camps further inland, Quakers watched over their homes so they would not be vandalized. And when the owners returned, the Quakers helped them get their old jobs back or find new ones.

For those who did not want to return to the West, the AFSC founded hospitality centers in cities like Milwaukee, Chicago, and Philadelphia, where Japanese-Americans could safely stay as they looked for jobs.

In the 1950s the AFSC worked in Civil Rights Movement trying to prevent lynchings, foster equity in jobs and housing, and, after the Supreme Court’s Brown vs. Board of Education decision in 1954, helping to integrate public schools. When some communities in the South responded by closing their public schools and creating private schools for white children only, the AFSC encouraged families in the north to offer Black children a chance to live with them and go to their local schools.

The AFSC was active in challenging the Vietnam War in the 1960s with draft counseling and helping young men make informed decisions.

The AFSC has been working in Gaza since 1948, providing humanitarian aid, and seeking the root causes of problems and peaceful ways of solving them.

These are simply a few examples from one faith community of what can happen when one says, “Let us see what love can do.” What if we in Claremont — and all around the country— were to respond to conflict not with anger and violence, but with love?

Katrina Mason is a member of Claremont Friends Meeting and its Peace and Social Justice committee.