The Anti-War: Peace Finds the Purpose of a Peculiar People, Militant Peacemaking in the Manner of Friends

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This book advocates a renewal of the traditional Quaker peace testimony, to meet the challenges of the 21st century. The liberal Quaker renewal of a century ago fostered a pacifist ideology that diverged from the existential faith-commitment to peace manifested by earlier Friends. But the optimism that world powers could be persuaded to adopt peace faltered as military-industrial interests grew more entrenched during the 20th century. Today's darkening human prospect forces Friends to reclaim their identity as a people of God that resists the dominant culture and wages an "anti-war, " a militant inversion of empire's militarist imperatives. Two inverse perspectives are required to reframe the issues. "Peace Finds the Purpose of a Peculiar People" begins with a close reading of 1 Peter 2:4-17. It then describes how the peace testimony developed among early Friends in the 17th century. The essay concludes by applying the framework of peculiar peoplehood, derived from 1 Peter and early Friends, to the current state of the Religious Society of Friends. The other essay of this book, "Militant Peacemaking in the Manner of Friends, " examines the issues inversely. It begins with the Book of Revelation, seen as an apocalyptic unmasking of the Roman Empire's demonic structure and a call for Christian resistance. Then it examines the early Quaker Lamb's War as a nonviolent social revolution inspired in part by a socially engaged reading of Revelation. The essay concludes with fresh perspective on the Quaker social testimonies as an "anti-war" that inverts and subverts today's imperial militarism.